Grumpy Techs

It’s “Funny Email Day” here at GT!  Yes, this is one of those rare occasions when we receive a number of emails to share along with our dear readers.  Got some you wanna share with us?  Submit them! Here we go.

The following email came from an individual who was hired to be “technically competent.”  Now, I’m not exactly sure what that means but it probably requires some kind of common sense on the job.

“Hi Guys-
XXXX has a folder on the XXXX server that she doesn’t use.  If possible she would like it deleted.
Thanks-
XXXX”

There are probably a multitude of questions that could be asked of this request but what might be the most relevant/obvious one?  YOU’RE CORRECT!!!  Needless to say, we decided to play a bit of “good cop/bad cop” on this one:

Bad cop answer:  “The XXXX folders with the user name are the users’ home folders. They are automatically created by Active Directory when a user is set up and are an integral part of the user setup. Those won’t be deleted. Other folders that the user (or Tech) create can be deleted.”

Good cop answer: “Actually, if she doesn’t want it, may I take it, please?  Huh?  HUH?????”

(Now, which reply do you think came from your smart ass Grumpy Tech?  CORRECT AGAIN!!!)

Here’s another email you might find a bit fun:

End user: “Just got this [and that's all he said.]

—– Original Message —–

POSTAL INSPECTION SERVICE,
PO BOX 555, NEW YORK NY 10116-0555

This is to notify you that we have intercepted your parcel from West Africa that DHL COURIER SERVICE is making the delivery and we have stopped the delivery process for some security reasons stated below:

1.  Our scanning system has detected that your parcel contains a confirmable ATM CARD to the tune of $1,500,000.00 USD.”

Now, just how do you think we replied to *that* one?  Of course!!!

“So what are you going to do with all the money?”

Hope you got a chuckle out of these.  That being said, we’re more than happy to pass along any fun email tidbits.  Enjoy!

Current Mood:  grumpy

Lately it’s been the email server but (knock on wood) that seems to be under control.  Now it’s one of the printers.  Only this time, it’s not the printer’s fault.  It’s (again) operator error.  (And, no, I’m not the operator.)

I get an email from one of our “brightest”:

“Hello, GT.  Our printer is out of ink.  What do we do?”

Well, let’s see, there could be a number of options.  You could kiss it gently and try to coax more ink out of it.  You could whack it over the imaging drum with a sledgehammer.  Or you could give me the model number and which color is out and I *might* be able to order it for you.

“Why do you need the color of ink and the model number?  Don’t you know what kind of printer we have over here?”

:::sigh:::  Let’s see…  On this 700+ workstation, 900+ user network which has about 30+ network printers, ummmm, no, I can’t remember which model *your* specific printer is nor do I have any “inkling” (like that one?) of which one of the four color cartridges are out.  Just bloody tell me so I can help you.

“Fine.  Whatever.  It’s a blah, blah and the **** color is out.”

See, wasn’t that fun???  And so painless too!

However, after checking, I discovered that the ink actually has about 30% of ink left.  Now, y’all may feel differently but being the green dude (“green” as in cheap.  I don’t give a shit about the environment.) I hate to waste good money, especially if it’ll save my budget at the end of the fiscal year and I can throw myself a keg party.

“But it says ‘low on ink.’  Just put a new one in.”

Further analysis finally prompts this gem from the end user:

“When I printed something, it came out in black and white.”

Me:  “Well, did you set the print job to ‘color’ for that job?”

Enduser:  “Set the job?  You mean I have to tell the printer to print in color???  Why doesn’t it just know???”

Wow.  Another impressive “rocket scientist.”

Yes, folks it’s time to “name that email”!  Here’s one that we received today which is sooooo totally related to work that I immediately took care of the enduser’s request!

XXXXX,

I received an email ice cream coupon from Ben & Jerry’s and I am unable to open it.  Is there anything I can do so that I am able to retrieve my birthday present from Ben & Jerry’s?  I don’t want to lose out on a free ice cream.

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

XXXXX

So, based on the tone and idiocy of this email, can you guess what level this employee is?  You can?  You’re CORRECT!!!  This is an “associate VP” position!  That being said you can assuredly bet I *immediately* took care of this email by immediately deleting it and blocking the B&J domain at our spam filter level from accessing her inbox ever again.  Now she’ll just *have* to remember the ice cream *surprise* for herself on her birthday.

This is why I get the big bucks, folks.

Y’all remember this one?  Yeah, the mail server went down again today.  Fortunately, it’s a VM so I’m thinking of just taking it offline this evening, allocating more memory and CPU (although shortage of memory seems to be the problem) and seeing what it does.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t help the mass number of calls we get.

:::RING, RING, RING!!!:::

Me:  “this-is-GT-yes-I-know-the-mail-server-is-down”

Caller:  “Oh, I thought it was just me doing something dumb.”

Me:  “Well, that’s a matter of debate.  Thx for calling.  Gotta run.”

:::RING, RING, RING!!!:::

Me:  “this-is-GT-yes-I-know-the-mail-server-is-down”

Caller:  “Ummm, do you know the email server is down?”

Me:  ::crickets chirping::  “It is?  Gee, thx for letting me know.  Let me get back to fixing it.”

:::RING, RING, RING!!!:::

Me:  “this-is-GT-yes-I-know-the-mail-server-is-down”

Caller:  “Ummmm, Millenium is down.”

Me:  “Okay, I’ll have to get back to that after I fix the email server.”

Caller:  “Actually, I meant email.  Email is down.”

Me:  “Very helpful, thx.”

And the be all, end all kicker.   An email.  From a user.  Telling me that the email server is down.

Ummm, thx?

Believe it or not, dear readers, things have been pretty quiet on the GT front lately.  I’m not gonna just write random posts for the sheer purpose of ensuring y’all get a post every day.  That would be lame.  I’d rather post something funny or mind numbing when it comes up.  That being said, here are a few little things that happened recently y’all might enjoy.

After finishing converting the 2k3 Microsloth domain to 2k8 and feeling pretty good about myself, I decided to enjoy a bit of “downtime” by logging into our content filter and checking out where people are heading.  I was disappointed to find many of them are simply shopping or watching YouTube videos of Susan Boyle or whatever.  Yeah, pretty lame.  I was hoping to find a cool porn site or something useful.  So, I dug a little deeper and found out that a certain group of individuals who share a single account (fortunately, only three of them so it’s easy to pin down) were visiting a bunch of “questionable” websites very late at night (yes, we’re a 24/7 organization here).  Well, after bookmarking a few meaty choices, I decided to have a little fun.

I called the group’s supervisor and showed her the records.  Of course, she was mortified but I suggested we have a little fun with this group of employees.  We rigged her Crapple so that she could log in to their Crapple (they do shift work so it’s a shared computer) remotely without their knowing.  I showed her how to create “subliminal messages” via the Textpad feature so the next time they logged on and started playing around, she could send them little love notes.

Last night, one of the employees came on and started poking around the ‘Net.  The supervisor immediately saw this and waited to set the hook.  As soon as the employee hit one of the “sites,” the supervisor took over the computer and started in.  Now, the funny thing is that we had also rigged the computer to grab audio and video from the built-in webcam.  This is what we got:

Supervisor (via the computer, of course):  Send this note – “Does your mother know what you’re doing?”

Employee:  :::surfing the ‘Net::: “O. M. G.  W. T. F.???”  :::looks around nervously:::

Supervisor: “Thaaaat’s right.  W. T. F. indeed.  Again, does your mother know what you’re doing?  And, you know, I *could* be God.”

Employee:  :::nervous laughter:::  “Ummm…I…Ummmmm…”

Supervisor: “I would suggest that you no longer visit these sites.  In fact, I suggest you receive counseling or even go to confession if you’re Catholic which I happen to know you are because, after all, I’m God.”

Employee::: “Ummmm….okaaaaieeeee.”  Powers down the computer.

The supervisor shared this with me and was rolling on the floor.  I thought it was cute, of course, but, hey whatever floats her boat.  She’s under the impression that said employee probably won’t be using the computer much anymore.

Here endeth the lesson.