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Tech Stories Archives - June 2011
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1.
Thank Root for Cloned Drives
First thing I hear when people start arriving this morning is they can't connect to our QuickBooks server. This is ultra-bad because Wednesday is the day our payroll gets submitted. So I duck my head into the Accounting office to check on it, and I see the dreaded "C:\Windows\System32\blahblahblah is missing or corrupt..." Black Screen of Death.
Run the server to my workbench, where I can't even get it to power back up. PSU tests bad. Seems that it failed sometime between 9:00pm last night and 3:00am this morning, and the improper shutdown hosed Windows.
Fortunately, since it's a critical system, I keep a cloned drive in it that remains disconnected from the board. Last cloned image was March 18th. So, swap in a PSU from a spare system, swap the drives, copy over the databases from the fubar'd drive to the clone, and it's back up and running in less than an hour.
To add to this story, I do not understand the propensity of people to knock on my door or just randomly open it when they're walking by. Everyone knows that Riff's Door Shut = Something Bad Happened. So after the third interruption, I get on the PA and say in the most irritated voice I can muster, "The Accounting Server fried this morning, so anyone who wants to get paid today needs to leave me alone!"
Nary a peep from anyone after that announcement.
Meddle not in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle and quick to fix your paycheck... or delay it.
[By: RiffRaff / 2011-06-01]
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Or appropriate it in the name of Stupidity Tax...Bravo! -ChildofCthulhu
oWow. They let you near the PA? If I were in your position, they'd better not let me anywhere near it. And leave offering of Starbucks coffee cake Although, I'd think in that situation mustering an irritated voice would come down to "should I use the leave me alone, I'm waking up, or the leave me alone something about to get broken voice". Kudos on getting the server back up so fast. - AdmiralLaurie
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2.
So...13th of Never, then?
I'm working on an Access Management queue now, taking in tickets for a large Norse medical group and outputting provisioned access. Yay. So Friday I get two tickets--one asking for a termination of access for a person on 05/32/2011, and the other asking for us to transfer access for a person on 06/31/2011. Yes sir, I can alter time, speed up the harvest, and provision access on dates that don't exist... >;)[By: snowcrash
/ 2011-06-02 ]
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2011 is a double-secret Leap Year. Those date show up once every 1,000,000 years, just like 2/29 shows up every 4 years. -LordObsidian
I blame Harold Camping -ActingUpAgain
The bitch of it is, if you just accomplish the requests on the first day of the following month like any sane person would, someone might complain that you were 'late' in doing them--these things were supposed to be done by the end of the month, after all! Hey Crash, long time. :) -NightSteel
Snowcrash! (yaya! still alive!!) what? can't alter centuries old and world wide accepted time/date standards? Bah! :P -Harm
'Crash!?! How ya BEEN? Yeah, getting those dates cleared up just might need to appear on someone else's radar screen.... -Grue
"I'm sorry, sir, I'm only a droid. I'm not very good with temporal mechanics." -Captain Trips
[Starts Stoking the Tardis Steam Generator with Coals] Here, take this mallet and whack the thingamigger next to the doowhacky and we'll start the Timey-Whimey ...ummm.....Stuff! -ChildofCthulhu
Or... you could do nothing and just wait for those dates to show up in your calendar. And when the fishies ask about the changes tell them exactly what you're doing. -buitre
Kick 'em back where they came from w/ POINTED references to their mistakes, & listen to them imitate Homer. http://soundfxcenter.com/download-sound/homer-simpson-32-dohs-sound-effect/ -MadJack
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3.
stupid inbred sheep f*ckers
Yeah, it's been a while since I posted anything. But here's some fun I've been dealing with.
The room that our servers are currently in is...large. We had space for our server racks and bench space for our 2nd tier techs and all was fine with the world.
Then some twit decided that the servers for "System G" had to get out of where they were and go somewhere else. I guess they saw our space and said "This would be excellent". And so they told manglement that they needed to move 5 racks and could they move them into our space. Manglement, of course, being of the "clueless wonder" type, said "OK".
The 5 racks grew into 12 racks over the course of 3 weeks.
But wait, this gets better. As far as anyone can tell, the sum total of evaluating the space for cooling and power needs was a quick walk around. No heat load testing, no evaluation of power needs by anyone who even resembled an electrician in a former life.
So we reduce the amount of bench space for 2nd tier by 2/3, and they move their crap in, only to find that there's not enough power for all 12 racks of crap. Even better, when they fired up 5 of them, the cooling could barely keep up. They have 8 (I believe) running now, and it's a battle to keep the room below 90 degrees.
Of course, this is somehow our fault. Never mind that no one bothered to consult us. And, we're making unreasonable demands like the door has to remain locked (NO, you can't tape the door open!)
So now, we're looking to move our equipment out of there so they can deal with this shit. We have another room that will work, but it has to be reconfigured and the cooling has to be verified. But these same assmunching fucknuggets who FUBAR'd their own move are now thinking that "OH! That'll be an EASY move for you guys."
WHAT? You fuckers are living proof of the Douglas Adams quote: "Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." Did you learn nothing? Oh wait, all the problems you had were OUR fault. Fuckers.[By: Grayhawk
/ 2011-06-02 ]
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Is that Douglas Adams or Mark Twain? -thx1138
DA quote - salmon of doubt IIRC. -Harm
Sounds like it's high time to slaughter the suits. -Stryker One
lol. I see you were a step ahead of me. (re: my comment on your update!) -TechMama
OK, so it is entirely our fark-up, but somehow this has transmogrified in "all-your-fault",DESPITE you saying that is was a non-starter.
Bonuses for the retarded monkies who thought of this, P45s for the techs who told them not to. -lineswine
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4.
UPDATE: stupid inbred sheep f*ckers
Just saw an email from the HMFIC: "Please raise the temperature alarm threshold to 91 degrees, as maintenance feels the current alarm is untenable due to the fact that they cannot maintain stability at 84 degrees."
This not 20 minutes after an email went to this twit stating that 81 degrees was a generally accepted upper limit by IT...[By: Grayhawk
/ 2011-06-02 ]
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document document document - as WHEN teh equipment fails... they will no doubt blame your group for their own stupidity. -Harm
81 sounds a bit warm still. -Holdfast
Apparently, 81 degrees is the "power saver" upper temperature limit for Google. It's recommended to be lower as a rule, but hell, 80 is still better than the 90+ we've been running. -Grayhawk
For a server room, even 70 can be too high - 65 is better. 91 is just asking how long before shit hits the fan -- not "if" but "when"!!! -Captain Trips
And if you're using a "comfort" HVAC? Somehow I manage to balance it out to keep under 80 in there. If I had it where it should be, the boss would be after me like he is in winter to turn the HVAC up because it's making his zone work harder... -ChildofCthulhu
Can you get a quick estimate of the replacement cost of every piece of equipment in there? Then you can reply "Raising the threshold to 91 degrees will lead to equipment failure, costing the company around $$$$$$$$ in replacement costs." -thx1138
Just get all your equipment out as quickly as you can. Make it exclusively their problem. -ThinkGuy
@CoC: *channeling burrkiss* Cold weather makes a lot of peoples work zones harder. Some harder to work with, others just harder. *runs* -linuxmatt
Cluebat the living SHIT outta those mouth-breathing, molten bags of meat. -Seamus
Wow, a prime example of treating the symptom instead of the problem. I'm speechless. -Calydor
Present them a bill for the standby replacement equipment (including prep time) to remain available prepped and unused for when, not if your equipment fails. -McSmiley
Hey, it's easy enough to raise the temperature alarm level per their request -- just move all the equipment to another room and set ITS alarm level appropriately. :) -TechMama
LART with extreme prejudice. -lineswine
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5.
Life in the corporate world.
Welcome to life in the corporate world! http://imgur.com/gallery/PQGHd[By: ecoli / 2011-06-02]
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You know why Marines are called jarheads, right? That's where their brains are kept, in jars in the Commander's desk with a little sign saying "Do not return to owner until separation."
-VoiceOfSanity
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6.
A/C in the old days
Grayhawk's story, "UPDATE: stupid inbred sheep f*ckers" reminded me of this.
When I was in high school, the teacher marched the algebra class down to a converted classroom to show off the school's recently acquired computer. She explained some of the capabilities and uses of the computer, mainly to schedule classes for 2000 students, report grades and calculate GPAs. I asked why it was the only cool room in the school, in June, in New Jersey. She said that electronic components would be damaged if they got too warm. That is when I decided that I had to find a way to work next to the computer.
[By: BurlyJ / 2011-06-02]
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[Like] -Divinar
[Like] -Omega
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7.
No phones - F* inContact
We use inContact as a vendor for VOIP and apparently they did an upgrade last night. Our phones have been down since 2:00am ET and just finally came back online in the last couple of minutes. It's caused a nightmare for us and I suspect the rest of the day will be spent fielding calls from angry customers wanting to know why they couldn't reach us when they needed to.[By: CelticSkyhawk / 2011-06-03]
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I thought those people were supposed to be jolly...*runs for the LART shelter* (and before anyone gets mad...you think gargoyles are skinny?) -GargoyleTS
awww crap. Got my people mixed up. I blame having been awake for all of 15 minutes. Next time Gadget,next tiiiiiime.... -GargoyleTS
And here we have one more example of why I don't want to go VoIP at home! Give me my hard-wired land-line any day. Separate lines, separate power source, and I don't even need main line power to use it (I've got a couple of old, unpowered phones, and a butt-set.) -Captain Trips
AHH , The old story of "all my eggs in one basket" save money, save tine, bla bla bla -beatmewithstick
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10.
[OT] Looks like I'll have story material
I just accepted a job at a call center doing tech support for customers of a certain cable modem manufacturer (the company also makes phones that are fond of the word "Hello"). Looks like I'll have some stuff to post once again![By: linuxmatt / 2011-06-05]
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZi8oBCeWAs -Stryker One
congrats on the job -Ramblin
I'll take a DOCSIS 3.0 modem, thanks! ;) -Caboose447
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11.
Here we go Round the idiotbush...
Most of my friends, family and vague acquaintences know that some evenings are better than others for getting ahold of me. Friday nights, I can be generally in a better mood than, say, Wednesday after two or three nights of little sleep. Thus, begins the tale.
The phone trills, carrying with it the sense of urgency that only a family calling can provide. I managed to snatch it off the stand, but not before nearly flipping my bedside filing cabinet, which would've taken the laptop, speakers, coffee mug and other odds and ends.
My grandmother starts blathering the second I answer. Her high, heavily drawled voice reminds me of the tape players that chatter like a chipmunk when put into fast forward.
Her: it's broken! (repeat four or five times, so fast it's almost run together)
Me: What was the last thing you touched?
Her: I was trying to get a greeting card for your little sister.
Cue me banging my head on the padded arm of my chair.
Me: ok, what's on the screen right now. I can't see it from here, so you have to be my eyes.
Her: it's blue, and there's a bunch of writing.
me: have you restarted it?
Her: what's restart?
Me: (through slightly gritted teeth) It's where you turn it off, then on again. Kinda like when you turn the mixer off to scrape the edges.
Her: oh, ok, let me try that.
(after a five minute wait).
Her: what's system32?
me: Oh lord, um, what brand is...
Her, (completely shrieking over what I'm trying to tell her) Fine! You broke it you f*cking twit! I'm taking it to geeksquad!
Enjoy it being brought back in flaming unrecognisable blobs. Oh and say bye-bye to all the pics of me. I don't have copies. Interrupt, insult and and disobey me, and you'll be stuffed in a phone booth, the exterior and interior of which will be coated with copper foil, and plugged into a 240-volt outlet.
Enjoy the free defibrolation, bitch! Thank $deity for hang-up buttons and VOIP devices.[By: AdmiralLaurie / 2011-06-05]
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She gave herself the "you've got an e-card from" virus, and YOU are the fucking twit? I think we need some redefinition here... -Captain Trips
Your grandmother called you a F*&%ing twit?? That's messed up... -JoeLugian
Jl, that's SOP for that side of the family. Good thing I'm now far, far away from that. the hangup button is a beautiful thing. -AdmiralLaurie
I love my mother to much to let her think I ruined her computer. I've sent her to Data Doctors from day one. -AngrySup
She's an utter retard, you KNOW that, right? -lineswine
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12.
Shuffling the deck
The new supervisor of our section has hit the ground running, and has several people, for lack of a better way of saying it, wondering how much longer they're gonna be here. He's already taking to rather radically reorganizing the section, since he feels several of the people in higher pay grades have become far too complacent in their current roles, not to mention several people in the lower pay grades. So they've been shifted to begin doing radically different work, as of one week from now.
A few of the higher pay grade folks have already taken issue with him, saying that he's forcing them to take on additional work, which is code for saying they're being forced to do actual work for a change. He's responded back rather bluntly that because they're being paid more, they should be expected to know more and do more work, so they should quit whining, and either put or shut up.
That being said, I'm being shifted from the Helldesk to working Tier 2, which is a good thing, since I've been working the phones since early February, and I needed to break outta here with a quickness.[By: skippytpodar
/ 2011-06-06 ]
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If government workers had to produce as much as private sector workers we could shrink the govt. payroll by 40% or more I'm guessing. -Starfury
i think fear of geting canned is a great motivator. Private sectore - you can be fired - public sectore - it takes YEARS for that to happen.. meanwhile several consultants are hired to get teh work done - and not renewed once the work IS done.. -Harm
I'm thinking several economies would benefit from the golgafrinchans' methodology and shoot the 'middlemen' and middle management out into space...or into slave labor camps...yeah that'd be cheaper and more entertaining. -ChildofCthulhu
But then it would only be a matter of time before the rest of us are eaten by the giant mutant star goat. -AmazingKreskin
I hated working for the govt as a contractor because I noticed how hard it was to fire the govt employees. We had one guy come in drunk, and they couldn't seem to ger rid of him. If you were a contractor, however, you could be fired just because. I am so glad I am out of there. -TechieSidhe
Sounds a lot like the whole Blue Badge vs Orange Badge thing at M$. Blue = M$ Employee (Best Pay, Best Benefits), Orange = M$ Contractor (whipping boy). -Stryker One
I worked as a govt. contractor for a short while myself. GS-14 = can't cut him from the Internet as he infects the network with every email-transmitted virus and runs his MLS company out of his cubicle. Contractor = canned for simply looking cross at the GS-14 for being a security risk.
-VoiceOfSanity
New word--gov-nugget. -vacuumtubes
green badge = expedable. red badge = fuck up as much as you like. its not easy being green. -Harm
Hey hey guys and gals, not all Govt workers are that slack! I work for a Govt disorganization here in NZ, and I'm almost single-handedly responsible for the entire network (admittedly because my offsider can't do his job properly). :) -Enzedder
hey I resemble that remark "slacker .gov worker" that is. -deedadee
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13.
WWDC keynote
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/omtlivestream[By: 0gr3 / 2011-06-06]
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WTF is a WWDC? -Divinar
Worldwide Developers Conference. It is where Steve Jobs gives all the new Apple buzz each year. T'was a livestream but is now over. -0gr3
Oh well - couldn't throw tomatoes at him through the screen anyway. -Divinar
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14.
Found that server (and a minor rant)
The new PowerEdge that went missing is safe at home in one of my cabinets.
Now for some history; the company has a datacenter, where I live most of the time, but we also have satellite clusters around the facilities used by individual development groups. If you guessed this decision was made by a control-hungry group lead, you're correct. He was a favorite in the company and higher-ups gave him what he wanted most of the time (he did at least deliver good results). But however good he was, he wasn't an IT professional. Our current datacenter was designed to house all of the company's equipment, including the dev clusters. Upside of the current setup is I have extra space and no cooling problems. Downside is pretty much everything else.
What happened Friday was a tech thought the new server was for one of the clusters since the same model had been ordered for it. They signed it out and went off to install it, happy as a clam, leaving us with no shiny new ORB backup machine. I tracked it down this morning and installed it where it's supposed to be.
The moral of this story: Let IT do IT. I'm working on a plan to start moving everything into the datacenter by the end of summer, hopefully that goes well.[By: ThinkGuy / 2011-06-06]
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Corollary: just because you successfully hooked up your Wii to your TV does NOT make you "IT" -Captain Trips
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16.
Death to Database Designers
If I ever discover who designed this database, then I'm going to kill them, slowly and creatively, over many days, and then invent a method of resurrecting them so I can do it again.I've just spent the morning trying to figure why I get a 'field not found error' when I try to access the table 'Order_Components', only to discover a second table, called 'Orders_Components', which has completely different fields, inlcuding the one I'm trying to access....[By: Shaede / 2011-06-08]
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Ooh, just wait until you find the Order_Component and Orders_Component tables that you need to perform a union query on to get the *full* results... :) -Diptera
Or you find that there are also tables called Orders_Component and Order_Component with the singular form of Component... and you have to join all 4... -virtualchoirboy
Ok. Not all database designers are like that. Just most of the other students in my Database Design class. -linuxmatt
And no-one complied a data dictionary? -Wraith556
Order_Componets. -concept14
Did you get the fields from Orders__Components too? -smellystudent
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17.
AUX codes
For anyone who has worked in a call center prolly has a general idea how these work. We have a suite here. (Break, Meeting, SME, Project, Coaching, Tool Failure, Training. 1-7 respectively). I found out my paper has a back and decided to change them a bit.
- 1. Avoiding Work
- 2. Under the tree. Meetings take place outside
- 3. EXP gain. LEVEL ++
- 4. Officially Avoiding Work
- 5. Manager yelling at me
- 6. Puter broke I am not allowed to fix my system here
- 7. "Learnin'"
- Next Two I added
- 8. Zombie Attack
- 9. Alien Invasion
What do you think?
[By: DarkRookie
/ 2011-06-08 ]
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heh -- oh i remeber thise.. AUX 76 ( TL coaching) was unofficially changed to Liquide Lunch for the tech supervisor team... -Harm
#3 made me think of this cartoon: http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2003-06-12 -Erictheblue
I don't miss those from my previous work. The support desk I'm at now doesn't have them, thankfully. We got break and we got work and that's all we need. -thisid
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19.
health update
Update to http://www.techcomedy.com/single/new_stories.php?content_number=85831. First of all, thanks everyone for the karma. Spoke to my doctor (or more specifically, his Physician's Assistant; I normally don't like dealing with PAs, but she's nice and works directly with my MD, so that's OK). All my bloodwork came back OK, so no concerns about cholesterol or diabetes. Also my EKG was fine, so likely the good old ticker is still OK. I'll still be on high blood pressure meds, but got switched to a different med; now on a beta blocker, since the initial medicine they gave me caused a couple of minor arrythmias. Anyway, I've got another followup in 3 weeks, and a full physical exam next month, but looks like I'll probably be OK. [By: tech4alltrades / 2011-06-08]
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That's pretty good news! -Grue
glad to hear it!!! -ecoli
That's great news, good to hear another one of us who'll live to fight another day. I'm a 11 year hypertension survivor (amongst others). -lineswine
Been on Beta blocker since 1980=don't let them hump the dosage up too much! Be prepared for your toes to feel cold, even if they aren't! -jerrybear
Glad to hear everything came back ok! Sending some more Health Karma your way to keep it that way, and t keep your BP well controlled on the meds you're taking. -noongsaao
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20.
NT/OT - Fishie drivers
Just as there are fish trying to flip the "turbo" switch on the back of their power supplies, there are fish trying to drive with their head between their knees. http://vimeo.com/24572222 (I'd embed, but I haven't found it on YT)[By: linuxmatt / 2011-06-08]
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Not once in that video did an "almost crash" involve two parties driving/riding correctly. My eye saw more bicyclists screwing up than pedestrians or cars combinded. Especially the bikes going the wrong way - they should be free hits! -Divinar
bicyclyes are required to obey the same laws as cars. it is a free hit. -burrkiss
KNOW AND OBEY IOWA’S TRAFFIC LAWS "A person riding a bicycle on the street or highway has all the rights, and is required to know and obey all traffc
laws and rules of the road, applicable to the driver of a motor vehicle." IE When you bounce of my drivers side door when running a light, I do NOT pay your medical bills, and YOU fix my car. -burrkiss
In Georgia they just passed a law that motorists are REQUIRED to move over three feet when passing bicycles. On two lane roads that means waiting for traffic to open up so you can go halfway into the oncoming lanes because bike riders usually ride 1 - 1.5 feet from the side of the road. Makes for interesting drives to work. Oh did I mentioned cyclists are not allowed to ride on sidewalks where available? -CelticSkyhawk
In Indiana bicyclists have taken to riding against traffic, and I can't say that I really blame them for it, even though it is technically against the law. -RiffRaff
I never thought I'd be saying this, but Burkiss, I'd like to hear more about that. -charred
~10 years ago a numbnut on a bike tried to force me to yield by running a stop sign. I stepped on the gas to prevent my car from running him over. He bounced off my door instead. Cop explained that even though my attitude was not polite, bike rider was farked. The bike rider also got a ticket for FTYROW. -burrkiss
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