Grumpy Techs

I especially enjoy receiving emails about issues we have completely nothing to do with yet we’re told we need to fix them. Granted, most endusers are just too braindead to even realize that just because something plugs into the wall whether it’s a data connection or even to an electrical outlet, they assume it MUST be related to technology, therefore, it must be OUR problem. What I especially enjoy, however, is when a “junior IT tech” assumes that anything technical is OUR problem. C’mon, moron; you’re supposed to be on OUR side.

That being said, I was emailed the following:

I need access to this website. http://www.imadouchbag.com [not really, but you know...]

Our system doesn’t block it but the site doesn’t load quickly and rarely with all its parts visible. I need the site to load quickly and completely because I am responsible for introducing it to all the employees, how to use their user names and enter their passwords. Is our system hindering access to this site?

Ummm, yeah, okay. I’ll get right on contacting the website developers and telling them that THEIR site has to load quickly because, I’m sure, they want all their site’s visitors to have a crappy experience with slow downloads and convoluted processes.

Actually, what I found out is that the website uses caching servers (many larger sites do now, of course) and that our firewall had a problem with the caching servers. I mentioned this to the junior tech who immediately responded “should I ask them to stop using those servers?”

True story.

:::sigh:::

So I’m strumming along working on a few projects when I receive a heated email from an enduser:

Please get these people off my can! I keep deleting them and they KEEP writing about this scam of an “emergency” almost everyday! Can you possible [sic] block it? I am soooo sick of it appearing in my inbox day after day. Thanks

The crux of the message is:

Bank of Montreal Security Alert

An attempt to access Online Banking was denied on:

Wednesday, 25 Feb 2009 at 1:04:26 EST

Access was denied for one of two reasons:
Incorrect attempts to access and Login failures.
Signing on from a different location or device different from your location and your IP address.

I sent a message back suggesting the enduser email their SSN and contact info to the bank and suggested they apologize profusely for inconveniencing them. I also mentioned that, in addition, they should click on that link right away but since this is probably very sensitive information, I suggested doing this in the privacy of their own home. Wow, you would think an account holder would WANT to keep their records up to date. I personally only shared my bank’s account info with about 50 close friends on Twitter. (Was that a bad idea?)

Really, I’m not sure what the big deal is about this. I mean, whenever I’m registering at porn sites, I usually use a bogus Hotmail account, not my work email account. *sigh*

On another note, I was “summoned” to one of the higher-up offices to “address a very important email issue.” Since that sounded like something I should take care of right away, I took the shorter of the two longer routes to get across the complex (I stopped for only one cup of coffee instead of my normal two). I get there and ask what the problem is only to find out “I don’t know how to create a ’sent’ folder in email.” What. The. Fuck? (These are people who are paid three times as much as me whom are in charge of our company.) I quick sit down and get to work when I’m blasted with all kinds of questions related to printing, document storage, etc. I calmly turned around the asked the person if they’d like me to fix their email “problem” or if they’d like me to address one of the other 50 issues they mentioned to me? “Ummm, just fix my email, please.” (OF COURSE it’s the email that’s the problem! We won’t even mention “operator error.”) With the email “issue” fixed, again, I was blasted with a bunch of questions when my cell phone started beeping. Good thing my coworker sent me a text message right at that time to let me know the cafeteria was giving away free bagels.

Hey, I gotta eat, right?

Ever have one of those days when you just wanna tell people to “fuck off”? Yeah, today’s one of those days for me (actually, been one of those months but I won’t bore you with the details).

I especially love whenever I go to sit down in the cafeteria to enjoy my breakfast when I was bombarded with technology questions. (Actually, I made two mistakes here: going to the cafeteria and not thinking some moron was going to ask me something and, number two, “enjoying” a free breakfast. Oh, wait. I just figured it out. No free breakfast when you’re on call 24/7. Damnit.) Yeah, at 7:15am. May I eat my bagel first?? “Ummm, no.”

Me: *happily munching away on my bagel but not trying very hard to be inconspicuous (my mistake)*

User: “Hey, I have a question!”

Me: *thinking “Wow, good morning to you too! Yes, please join me and chew my ear off on what kind of laptop you should get for your aging grandmother who can barely see a 60″ plasma screen let alone a 13″ laptop monitor.”* “Okay.”

User: “Well, about 10 years ago, so-and-so had email set up so that everyone can see this calendar on their desktop.”

Me: *thinking “What is it with public calendars of all of a sudden?? Did the public calendar fairy bear her head and subconsciously declare to everyone that ‘we’re gonna start being more productive’ and this, in turn, makes me get off my ass so people can blame me for the delay in getting all the calendars up and running??”* “Well, that was a little before my time since, you see, I’ve only been here three years, two days, nine hours and 43 minutes.”

User: *blinking* “You’re counting how long you work here down to the minute???”

Me: *sly grin* “Sometimes. Look, my bagel’s gone cold so what’s the problem?” (Mind you, dear readers, that I’m still NOT on the clock yet.)

User: “I need everyone to see this calendar in order to…” All of a sudden Hakuna Matata starts playing on the coworker’s cell phone. “Damnit, hold on…”

Me: *sitting there trying to stuff as much bagel into my mouth as I can so I can make a rapid depature* “Mmmmfffffff…” (Too late; the call ends.) “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”

User: “Thanks. So, how’s it going?”

Me: “I’m sorry but I gotta run and get working on your calendar thing.”

User: “Oh, great!!! Don’t let me hold you up.”

Actually, have I started working on the calendar problem? Ummm, no. But wait, there’s more!

One of our more “popular” endusers bounds up to my desk, shoves a laptop in my face and screams “THISCOMPUTERISN’TPRINTINGANYMORE!!!!” I calmly sit there with a silly grin on my face which only pisses her off even more, of course. Now she’s turning several shades of red and purple until she…starts crying and exclaims the “big boss NEEDS this document in two minutes!!!” So now I give a soft “it’ll be okay” and look at her screen. The “important document” turns out to be a picture of dogs taking a bath. I look back at her and she starts screaming again at me to “FIXIT!!!!!” With that, I got up, walked away and am now finishing this up in the server room while I cool down. Good thing everyone’s scared to come in here.

Every so often I’m tasked with working on some pretty cool projects (actually, since there doesn’t seem to be any direction where I work, I usually just assign myself a cool project or two that I run with). The latest one is setting up a system and network monitoring application based on Nagios. Yes, I know. “Nagios sucks, try XXXX instead,” etc. Thing is, I looked at a bunch of open source monitoring apps and I like Nagios. End of discussion.

Occasionally, however, my frame of mind becomes “jaded” when I need to work on a “real” problem such as giving a user access to a “very important calendar.” I especially get very nervous about the future of my position with my employer when the “this HAS to happen TODAY!!!” is added at the end of a request. Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but I have an agenda and if my agenda involves working on my self-assigned project, I shouldn’t be interrupted for something as mundane as adding a user to a calendar. Because I was a bit irritated at this interruption, I decided to have a little fun with the requestor:

Requestor: “I need Blah Blah added to the Blee Blee calendar right away as this is very important.”

Me: :::thinking “Of course, it’s very important. It probably ranks right up there with launching rockets and saving lifes.”::: But, instead, “Certainly! I’ll be happy to do that for you! I’m a little tied up with something right now so…”

Requestor: “Did you HEAR what I said??? I SAID this has to happen RIGHT AWAY!!!”

:::crickets chirping:::

Requestor: “Hello? Ummm….HELLOOOOOO???”

Me: :::quietly::: “Yes, I’m still here. From the urgent tone of your voice, I can tell this is probably something very important, yes?”

Requestor: :::sigh::: “Wow. Yes, yes it is.”

Me: :::still quietly::: “Well, I’ll just drop what I’m doing and get right on that for you then. Bear in mind that I might have a few questions so I hope you don’t mind me calling you to clarify some info should need be.”

Requestor: “Fine, whatever. Just let me know what you’re finished.”

Now, I could have gotten pissed off with this one. (Hell, I could get pissed off with a lot of what I put up with at this place.) But, instead, I decided to have a little fun. So, knowing that it would take me exactly 30 seconds to fulfill this “request,” I started writing down a number of questions, many of them ignorant, but all of them designed to be spaced out over a period of 45 seconds between each other to get this person so pissed off at me because of my “stupidity” that they simply wouldn’t be able to think. I did exactly that, i.e. calling them back every 45 to 60 seconds with “I’m so sorry but I have yet just another question.”

When all was said and done and the requestor had then turned into a puddle on the floor, I decided to change the color the calendar foreground and background colors to black on black. This encountered a “WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CALENDAR?????” Needless to say, I fixed it quickly (after exclaiming “I’d look into it if time permits as I’m really busy,”) which eventually earned me many mentions of praise and appreciation.

Amazing how we can turn a really shitty experience into an awesome experience (for me) while watching coworkers turn into puddles.

Back to my project now as I really wanna finish it up so I can break something to ensure the monitoring works.

I rarely eat breakfast in the cafeteria for fear of getting cornered by coworkers who don’t seem to appreciate nor understand that one doesn’t actually go “on the clock” prior to 8am. Hell, if one hasn’t had coffee before 8am and they start in, that should be an automatic “get out of jail free” card. So, that being said, I was feeling ecstatic when I was trying to enjoy my breakfast, by myself, mind you, when all of a sudden someone whom I’ve dealt with many a time before, decided to “join me.”

Coworker: “Hi, GT! Do you mind if I join you? I promise I won’t ask anything about computers.”

Me: ::::thinking “uh oh”:::: “Sure, feel free and I promise I won’t ask you about whatever it is that you do.”

Coworker: ::::smiles, takes a seat and starts commencing with the small talk, i.e. “How’s it going? How’s the weather, how are the kids, etc…::::

SCREEEEEECHHHH!!!! BAMMMMM!!!!!

Coworker: “Um, mind if I ask you a question about my computer at home?”

Me: ::::eyes rolling back into my head:::: BOOOOOM!!!! ::::headdesk:::: (Actually, no, not really but how I wish.) “Um, sure but I’m gonna have to charge you by the minute since I’m not yet on the clock.”

Coworker: :::laughing::: “Oh, you’re funny!”

Me: :::deadpan expression::: “I’m serious.”

Coworker: :::gulping for air::: “Ummm…well, okay. Do you do any side work?”

Me: “Not since I had a ‘client’ call me in the middle of the night after he picked his printer up and dropped it on the floor in frustration then expected me to fix it for him. But, ask your question.”

Coworker: “Okay, thx. I have a computer at home but I live out in the boonies and can’t get a high-speed connection; only dial-up. Yet, whenever I try to go to YouTube, it just runs so slow.”

Me: ::::wondering how I can have some fun here:::: “Hmmm, let’s see. You might be able to double your speed by splicing the telephone wire that runs into your modem. All you gotta do is take a knife and cut the wire in half right before the plastic connector. It’ll basically double the copper wiring inside the cord which, in turn, will double the throughput into the connector and your overall speed. After doing that, I bet you’ll be able to watch YouTube videos in a matter of seconds instead of hours.

Coworker: “Wow, thx, that makes a lot of sense!”

Me: “Oh, one more thing. Before you do that, if you wanna test your speed, make sure you go to Lemonparty.org. They have a great speed test calculator there. Run the test before splitting your wire then after to compare the speed difference.”

Coworker: “Hey, great idea! I’ll definitely give that a shot. You’ve been so helpful!”

Me: “Well, I’ll send you a bill.”

I can almost hear the shrieking now.