Dear Users… (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people) Part 10

[TragicMonkey]

Oh, dear, yet another person fell into the trap of confusing these two completely separate things:

1. This report is an accurate summation of the data that is currently in the database.
2. This report is an accurate reflection of reality.

As Moses said unto pharaoh: "Garbage in, garbage out". They spend most of every day cramming turds into there, what did they think would come out the other side, petit fours?

[a_unique_person]

To give the appearance of activity, send an email. To appear to be more active, send two emails.
To give the appearance of being a manager, request more emails, using email.

[arthwollipot]

I should have mentioned earlier. I had my Performance Appraisal with the boss last week. This is something that I always find stressful and anxiety-inducing, even when they have nothing but good things to say about me, which they did.

It also formally acknowledged that I am now the senior agent at my level (APS4), which means that I am the automatic tap if someone is needed to do Higher Duties as Team Leader (APS5). I also kind of committed to applying for the position should one of the three TL positions becomes vacant in the future, which it definitely will.

To give you an idea, the salary range for an APS4 is AU$67,100 - $73,256 and an APS5 is $73,636 - $79,841. Use your favourite currency converter to put that in terms that are familiar to you. I'm doing pretty well on my current salary, but the next level up is going to be sweet.

It is waaaay outside my comfort zone, but it's pretty clear that actually getting the position if I apply for it is a shoe-in. My bosses want me in the position (I know this because they said so). And also, it will allow me to put an almost-literally magic word on my resume: "supervise". With experience supervising staff, a whole new world of future opportunities opens up. And this is by far the easiest way for me to get that word on my resume, since most supervisory positions require experience in, you know, supervising. And this is the reason I'm very confident that one of the three TL positions will open up in the not-too-distant future - it's a common jumping point for people to go on to bigger and better things.

Things are looking up in Wollitown.

[ZirconBlue]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

I should have mentioned earlier. I had my Performance Appraisal with the boss last week. This is something that I always find stressful and anxiety-inducing, even when they have nothing but good things to say about me, which they did.

It also formally acknowledged that I am now the senior agent at my level (APS4), which means that I am the automatic tap if someone is needed to do Higher Duties as Team Leader (APS5). I also kind of committed to applying for the position should one of the three TL positions becomes vacant in the future, which it definitely will.

To give you an idea, the salary range for an APS4 is AU$67,100 - $73,256 and an APS5 is $73,636 - $79,841. Use your favourite currency converter to put that in terms that are familiar to you. I'm doing pretty well on my current salary, but the next level up is going to be sweet.

It is waaaay outside my comfort zone, but it's pretty clear that actually getting the position if I apply for it is a shoe-in. My bosses want me in the position (I know this because they said so). And also, it will allow me to put an almost-literally magic word on my resume: "supervise". With experience supervising staff, a whole new world of future opportunities opens up. And this is by far the easiest way for me to get that word on my resume, since most supervisory positions require experience in, you know, supervising. And this is the reason I'm very confident that one of the three TL positions will open up in the not-too-distant future - it's a common jumping point for people to go on to bigger and better things.

Things are looking up in Wollitown.

That's awesome!

[Hellbound]

Dear user,

When you send me a ticket claiming “password reset is not working”, in which the included screenshot clearly shows the new password you’re attempting marked as “weak” and the error message “You cannot use that word as part of your password”, do not expect a non-snarky response.


Sent from my volcanic island lair using carrier pigeon.

[Wudang]

I recall working in a mainframe systems programmer department. One team looked after VM/CMS systems and another MVS. One of the VM managers after bitching about how insanely biased we were against VM because not all of us had VM ids was asked if he had a MVS id. No, so shamefacedly asked for one. It was given. Then he bitched about how our system was so unfriendly and we couldn't even set up a new account properly. So we checked the logs. He was entering his incredibly trivial password as his userid as evinced by the "Logon id tuesday1 not recognised".

[JoeMorgue]

I've become firmly convinced that there is no surer method of making your users turn their computers off then to send out several e-mails that say "During the evening of XXXXX day we will be performing critical updates, it is vitally important that you leave your workstations on when you leave for the day."

I'm not kidding that I am metaphysically certain fewer users would have turned their computers off if we just said nothing.

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue

I've become firmly convinced that there is no surer method of making your users turn their computers off then to send out several e-mails that say "During the evening of XXXXX day we will be performing critical updates, it is vitally important that you leave your workstations on when you leave for the day."

I'm not kidding that I am metaphysically certain fewer users would have turned their computers off if we just said nothing.

One of the places I worked at had solved that problem by using WOL (qv). if you happened to be working after hours, you could be snapped to attention at 3 in the morning as all the computers in the building started powering up.

[alfaniner]

Originally Posted by Hellbound

Dear user,

When you send me a ticket claiming “password reset is not working”, in which the included screenshot clearly shows the new password you’re attempting marked as “weak” and the error message “You cannot use that word as part of your password”, do not expect a non-snarky response.


Sent from my volcanic island lair using carrier pigeon.

Just yesterday I had a problem creating an account on a new site. I saw the message that said I had a "weak" password, but that's the one I use for sites that don't matter. It took me several tries to realize that the message meant I couldn't use that password and needed a stronger one, even though it didn't specify that.

[Wudang]

Originally Posted by alfaniner

Just yesterday I had a problem creating an account on a new site. I saw the message that said I had a "weak" password, but that's the one I use for sites that don't matter. It took me several tries to realize that the message meant I couldn't use that password and needed a stronger one, even though it didn't specify that.

I would passwdsafe's random password generator a lot more if sites could just be upfront about their password rules, especially which special characters are valid and/or required on that site.

[JoeMorgue]

I'll never for the life of me understand a site/program in 2022 have a maximum password complexity.

[Wudang]

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue

I'll never for the life of me understand a site/program in 2022 have a maximum password complexity.

A couple of years back someone tried to defend that by saying it might have an IBM mainframe background. I told him that was bollocks as the security model should never work like that.

[catsmate]

Originally Posted by Gord_in_Toronto

One of the places I worked at had solved that problem by using WOL (qv). if you happened to be working after hours, you could be snapped to attention at 3 in the morning as all the computers in the building started powering up.

In this day everyone of significant size should have have WoL set up.

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Originally Posted by catsmate

In this day everyone of significant size should have have WoL set up.

I would have thought this to be true but is anyone, anywhere using Wake-on-Modem (WoM) anymore?

[catsmate]

Originally Posted by Gord_in_Toronto

I would have thought this to be true but is anyone, anywhere using Wake-on-Modem (WoM) anymore?

I haven't seen an internal modem in a while, and IIRR serial modems did not do WoM.
Also I haven't seen an RS-232 in a while.

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Originally Posted by catsmate

I haven't seen an internal modem in a while, and IIRR serial modems did not do WoM.
Also I haven't seen an RS-232 in a while.

Apparently in doctors', lawyers'. and real estate agents' offices all over the world fax modems continue to whistle and beep away. My Brother printer/scanner has one built in but I've never tested it.

As for RS-232. Well. There is nothing to be said for RS-232.

[novaphile]

Favourite pet peeve for sites with STUPID password rules, is a superannuation site that clearly states:

"Password must be AT LEAST eight characters long."

After wasting approximately one hour, I discovered that they meant:

"Password must be EXACTLY eight characters long."

The same site says that the password must not be recorded anywhere, including in any password management system.

At least that idiocy can be ignored.

[novaphile]

Work has taken a turn for the better.

I have separate ID/password combinations for all the different domains that I need to connect to (because I maintain servers/software/services on those domains).

We're moving to Delinea Secret Server and Connection Manager to manage this.

So now, I literally do not know or care what my various domain passwords are, because SS maintains them for me. They're all ludicrously strong, and automatically updated.

Connection Manager links to Secret Server, and I have a host of 'connections' set up so that I can RDP or Telenet to any server with a couple of mouse clicks.

Note that Secret Server is set up with encyrpted sessions and two factor authentication.

I'm a happy man.

All the workarounds etc. that I used to maintain in KeePass have now gone away.

(Password expiry, and password inheritance)

[The Man]

Originally Posted by Gord_in_Toronto

Apparently in doctors', lawyers'. and real estate agents' offices all over the world fax modems continue to whistle and beep away. My Brother printer/scanner has one built in but I've never tested it.

As for RS-232. Well. There is nothing to be said for RS-232.

A couple of years ago one of my coworkers had his luggage broken into and stuff stolen on a trip home to China. He had to fax a list of what was lost to the air carrier.

The RF ID tag readers we use still have RS-232 connections between them.

TLG-I1-1000-S0-00EB

[Wudang]

Originally Posted by Gord_in_Toronto

There is nothing to be said for RS-232.

Despite much googling I am unable to find a video of Spitting Image's RS232 Interface Lead song that hasn't been suppressed for copyright violation.

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Originally Posted by Wudang

Despite much googling I am unable to find a video of Spitting Image's RS232 Interface Lead song that hasn't been suppressed for copyright violation.

Maybe that should be "save our collective sanity"?

[HansMustermann]

Dear sysadmins:

1. Don't presume to change my settings every time, when they're irrelevant for security or anything. And I don't mean password, but stuff like on the laptop I have to use for work at the moment, every flippin' time it forces my magnification to 100% and unchangeably without logging out. I'm an old guy, and reading 4k resolution without SOME magnification is just flippin' medically impossible for me.

2. Unless there is a hacking attack happening RIGHT NOW, piss off with the scripts that give me a big flippin' pop-up -- which can't be minimized or closed or anything -- in the middle of the screen to tell me to reboot right now. If it can't occur to anyone in the IT department that I might be actually doing something more important right now, like being in a meeting with your company's clients to solve an actual issue they're having, then I hope their job gets outsourced to someone who can sometime soon.

3. No, you don't have to review my architecture and need convincing about why I do or don't need persistent queues, or how my load balancing (which is calculated so it can still work if one server goes down, hence the others aren't running at 100%) is a waste of a computer, or whatever, unless you actually are an architect. The guy administrating the queue server is not it. Especially when it comes to how I load balance the web servers. That's not even related to his job or work experience.

Short version: In the meantime I'm actually 100% convinced that a large part of the drive to move to Amazon's or Google's or Microsoft's clouds is just people being sick and tired of dealing with their own IT department.

[lauwersw]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

Dear sysadmins:
Short version: In the meantime I'm actually 100% convinced that a large part of the drive to move to Amazon's or Google's or Microsoft's clouds is just people being sick and tired of dealing with their own IT department.

Absolutely! Infrastructure-as-code is so much better in all facets than infrastructure-by-helpdesk-ticket! Almost instant, no typos, no questions, sane safeguards, ...

[catsmate]

Originally Posted by The Man

A couple of years ago one of my coworkers had his luggage broken into and stuff stolen on a trip home to China. He had to fax a list of what was lost to the air carrier.

Whenever my flight is delayed I insist on the airline facilitating me sending the two telexes I'm allowed by law.

Originally Posted by The Man

The RF ID tag readers we use still have RS-232 connections between them.

TLG-I1-1000-S0-00EB

So USB-to-serial converters?

[The Man]

Originally Posted by catsmate

So USB-to-serial converters?

Nope, the older systems (and I'm just talking early 2000's) ain't gots no such USB thang. They are our own control computers. The newer stuff, while they do use standard computers with some USB ports, those ports ain't used for the ID readers or anything having to do with the equipment it runs. That's all just serial.

ETA: Oh while the older stuff's user interface is touch screen it does have PS2 connectors for an external keyboard and mouse.

[JoeMorgue]

Yeah our big client had the bright idea of outsourcing their entire IT support to 3 guys in India. They came crawling back after literally about an hour.

________

The IT industry needs to finally fish or cut bait with passwords. It's been a sort of open secret I think for a long time that we've reached the point of no return in the complexity/security ratio in what an average user can be expected to remember.

We need to rip the bandaid off and just move to tokens or biometrics handled via single point sign on.

But as I said before I'll find that planet of Eva Greene and Olivia Wilde clones before that happens.

[Blue Mountain]

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue

Yeah our big client had the bright idea of outsourcing their entire IT support to 3 guys in India. They came crawling back after literally about an hour.

________

The IT industry needs to finally fish or cut bait with passwords. It's been a sort of open secret I think for a long time that we've reached the point of no return in the complexity/security ratio in what an average user can be expected to remember.

We need to rip the bandaid off and just move to tokens or biometrics handled via single point sign on.

But as I said before I'll find that planet of Eva Greene and Olivia Wilde clones before that happens.

Biometrics should be used only for identification ("this is who I am") and never for authorization ("I would like to get access this system.") The reason is if your biometric information is stolen, how do you ever fix that? Get a facelift? A finger transplant? A password or token provides a second layer of security between you and your data.

I cringe every time I see someone using Apple's FaceID to unlock their phone. What's to prevent a bad guy from stealing your phone and pointing it at your face to unlock it? Sure, it will probably lock again after a few minutes, but in that time at lot of damage can be done.

[Blue Mountain]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

Dear sysadmins:

Short version: In the meantime I'm actually 100% convinced that a large part of the drive to move to Amazon's or Google's or Microsoft's clouds is just people being sick and tired of dealing with their own IT department.

No. Have you ever managed AWS / Google / Azure instances? All they do is provide a hardware layer so you don't have to look after the servers yourself. They do not provide the expertise needed to keep the instances updated with the latest security patches, properly maintain access credentials, separate business data into segments so one single virus doesn't bring down the whole company, put guards in place so your email server doesn't get hacked into, build robust databases (Excel spreadsheets can make neat databases, but I'm not certain how well they're designed, or if there are nasty bugs lurking there), build usable dynamic web sites, or apply your business logic to the problem to come up with a solution. Cloud providers don't even do backups unless you're aware enough to turn on snapshot features or implement the backups yourself.

Sure, the I/T department can be frustrating to deal with. I've been in that place my whole career (and in one place I was the I/T department.) At the same time, the finance and legal departments can be frustrating to deal with as well. But there's a reason businesses hire people with expertise in those areas. Would you outsource your legal team to a bunch of people in China? Or trust your business's financial data to some web site out of Eastern Europe?

If you're interested, read a few pages of Reddit's Tales From Tech Support to see what happens when businesses don't have a competent people doing I/T, or clueless managers who understand why having competent I/T is a good thing.

[JoeMorgue]

Because evil outside agents attacking your system specifically with nefarious intent is the most sexy yet least actually common threat that 99% of IT infrastructures (and something like 99.9999999% of individual users) will ever have to deal with.

It's like getting rid of all the fire extinguishers in my house because I'm afraid that if the KGB sends their absolute best assassin to take me out specifically they will be able to use the fire extinguisher in my kitchen to distract me before shooting me with their gun that fires ice bullets.

The IT Security field is becoming so over-obsessed with external targeted threats that they are starting to develop anti-vaxxer logic.

The biggest threat to my network is the incompetency of my users and I'm well aware of it.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by Blue Mountain

Sure, the I/T department can be frustrating to deal with. I've been in that place my whole career (and in one place I was the I/T department.) At the same time, the finance and legal departments can be frustrating to deal with as well. But there's a reason businesses hire people with expertise in those areas. Would you outsource your legal team to a bunch of people in China? Or trust your business's financial data to some web site out of Eastern Europe?

If the in-house departments were staffed with the same kind of cockwombles some IT departments are staffed... maybe I'd be more inclined to take my luck with the Chinese instead.

Originally Posted by Blue Mountain

If you're interested, read a few pages of Reddit's Tales From Tech Support to see what happens when businesses don't have a competent people doing I/T, or clueless managers who understand why having competent I/T is a good thing.

Haven't read that particular thread, but yeah, dealing with whole IT departments staffed by incompetent managers with BOFH wannabes -- minus the competence -- is my problem. I'm talking people who not only were on the left side of the Dunning-Kruger side of the spectrum, when it came to the ratio between delusions of competence and actual competence, but who seemed to feed their sense of self-importance by trying to be a bottleneck. Same as the guys who feel important by driving 30 in the fastest lane, just to know that they have the power to make someone else late and annoyed.

Like, literally, here's a story for you, if you're into stories: both me and my brother sent a request for MQ queues for different project on the same day. Both requests were really identical, except for one detail: my brother wanted persistence on the queues, while mine were for synchronizing a cache, so I didn't need the messages persisted. BOTH came with the objection that no, that choice is against their guidelines, we must schedule a meeting to convince them why we want that persistence and respectively why not.

Literally, ANYTHING you wanted from those guys, and sometimes anything they heard you want from someone else, they had to first try to be a roadblock. Really, try to not do their job.

Honestly, if the Chinese want to admin those queues for me instead and are less of a pain to deal with, <bleep> if I'm not even ok with them reading what comes down those queues. Bearing in mind that any message coming through them in the case in the story said no more than "invalidate cache" or "config changed, reload it"

And I could tell you quite a few more, but let's leave it at that.

Mind you, not ALL IT fellows. I've met some which were good at their jobs and super-helpful. Like there were two at a company I've worked for in 2000 or so, nicest people I've ever met. Also stoned like a biblical hooker. I'm talking the kind who actually brought and smoked weed at the company barbecue. But I guess they might have needed that, after dealing with the rest of us

[arthwollipot]

I genuinely try to be as helpful as I can be, unless you're being nasty. If you shout, talk over me, swear at me, or are generally unpleasant, I will not be inclined to make your life any easier. On the other hand, I have callers who are always super nice and are a pleasure to talk to. I will go an extra mile for them. Heck, two if I can.

[lionking]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

I should have mentioned earlier. I had my Performance Appraisal with the boss last week. This is something that I always find stressful and anxiety-inducing, even when they have nothing but good things to say about me, which they did.

It also formally acknowledged that I am now the senior agent at my level (APS4), which means that I am the automatic tap if someone is needed to do Higher Duties as Team Leader (APS5). I also kind of committed to applying for the position should one of the three TL positions becomes vacant in the future, which it definitely will.

To give you an idea, the salary range for an APS4 is AU$67,100 - $73,256 and an APS5 is $73,636 - $79,841. Use your favourite currency converter to put that in terms that are familiar to you. I'm doing pretty well on my current salary, but the next level up is going to be sweet.

It is waaaay outside my comfort zone, but it's pretty clear that actually getting the position if I apply for it is a shoe-in. My bosses want me in the position (I know this because they said so). And also, it will allow me to put an almost-literally magic word on my resume: "supervise". With experience supervising staff, a whole new world of future opportunities opens up. And this is by far the easiest way for me to get that word on my resume, since most supervisory positions require experience in, you know, supervising. And this is the reason I'm very confident that one of the three TL positions will open up in the not-too-distant future - it's a common jumping point for people to go on to bigger and better things.

Things are looking up in Wollitown.

I missed this. Well done Wolli. My son has been in IT at a large university for about 15 years. He used to get really annoyed by consultants getting paid many times his rate and not making a big contribution, but he plugged away, worked hard and is now at the top of the tenured staff range leading major projects.

But he is seriously looking at moving to NBNCo, where wages are ridiculous. Doing the same job he’s doing will see him on $150-160k ( he’s on about $120k now). I think this will be a mistake as tenure itself is probably worth the difference.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

I genuinely try to be as helpful as I can be, unless you're being nasty. If you shout, talk over me, swear at me, or are generally unpleasant, I will not be inclined to make your life any easier. On the other hand, I have callers who are always super nice and are a pleasure to talk to. I will go an extra mile for them. Heck, two if I can.

As I was saying, I'm not tarring everyone with the same brush. Some people are competent and helpful, some less so, and those two MQ server admins were... in a class of their own. If you're in the helpful category, I can only thank you for it. You have my gratitude.

[Filippo Lippi]

I asked our trusted out-sourced DBA's why a job had failed, they sent back the text for the error code from the manual. Ffs

[HansMustermann]

Ehh... Our DBA at some point, we asked if it's possible to run the new (at that point) optimize task that Oracle had started including in the latest (at that point) version of their database. It ran some statistics on the database, and asked if you want to save them or not. The DBA dutifully ran that, answered "no", and sent us a screenshot of the terminal window, as "now you can use that to optimize your queries." There was absolutely no information in there for anyone to use. It was just saying that Oracle is running those statistics and whether to save them or not.


Though speaking of databases we had an even better one, in the form of an Oracle consultant supposed to help us optimize our database. As I was saying in the other thread, we had literally two dozen major applications using our services, so eventually it did get a wee bit laggy. So let's pay a consultant to configure our database or tell us how to write more optimal queries or whatever is needed. (And we're talking the kind of guy that charges more per hour than what you'd think is a good IT monthly wage.)

He comes, spends a couple of hours with us going through the database, sees one config value -- let's call it OptionX -- set to false. Says, "ah, that's why it's slow. That option right there, you need to set it to true."

We thank him profusely for solving our problem, write the ticket to the DBAs to please change that setting, should be the end of the story I guess...

... except now everything is even slower.

So a couple of weeks later we pay the same guy another king's ransom to come have another look, see if he has other ideas.

So he comes, spends an hour or so looking through database logs and setting and so on, sees OptionX set to true. "Ah, you have OptionX set to true, that's what's slowing it down. You have to leave that on false."

I literally nearly assaulted him.

[Wudang]

A big tech company I worked for had its pensions department (actually a 2nd limited company) buy an AIX server and trained a couple of staff to run it rather than deal with tech companies Service Delivery team any longer.

At a certain big bank we had an argument with the head of Webspheres admin because almost every request his staff made some error. He absolutely refused to consider using the many admin scripts IBM provides or that we offered to provide because "it would all work if people didn't make mistakes". I'm glad I wasn't at that particular meeting as there would have been a "diplomatic incident". We have <multiple expletives deleted> computers and scripts so people don't have the opportunity to make mistakes.

My last job all our services ran on aws and it was great. The main reason was that our CTO (in a company of 10) was one of the best ops people I've ever worked with. She dealt with aws and listened to what we needed.

[Yalius]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

I should have mentioned earlier. I had my Performance Appraisal with the boss last week. This is something that I always find stressful and anxiety-inducing, even when they have nothing but good things to say about me, which they did.

It also formally acknowledged that I am now the senior agent at my level (APS4), which means that I am the automatic tap if someone is needed to do Higher Duties as Team Leader (APS5). I also kind of committed to applying for the position should one of the three TL positions becomes vacant in the future, which it definitely will.

To give you an idea, the salary range for an APS4 is AU$67,100 - $73,256 and an APS5 is $73,636 - $79,841. Use your favourite currency converter to put that in terms that are familiar to you. I'm doing pretty well on my current salary, but the next level up is going to be sweet.

It is waaaay outside my comfort zone, but it's pretty clear that actually getting the position if I apply for it is a shoe-in. My bosses want me in the position (I know this because they said so). And also, it will allow me to put an almost-literally magic word on my resume: "supervise". With experience supervising staff, a whole new world of future opportunities opens up. And this is by far the easiest way for me to get that word on my resume, since most supervisory positions require experience in, you know, supervising. And this is the reason I'm very confident that one of the three TL positions will open up in the not-too-distant future - it's a common jumping point for people to go on to bigger and better things.

Things are looking up in Wollitown.

Is that a comfortable income in Australia? Google gives it to me as 80,000 AUD ~= 55,000 USD. That's a little above the median for T1 reps where I am.

[lionking]

Originally Posted by Yalius

Is that a comfortable income in Australia? Google gives it to me as 80,000 AUD ~= 55,000 USD. That's a little above the median for T1 reps where I am.

It depends on your circumstances and dependents. If you own your property and have, say, one dependent, you can live comfortably on $A80k. If you are paying off a mortgage and have children, you can survive, but less comfortably.

My son in IT who I mentioned upthread is on about $A120k, has a mortgage, wife and young child, and can afford an annual overseas holiday, is doing okay, but is not rich. He has asked for a $A20k pay rise. That will make a difference.

[arthwollipot]

Originally Posted by lionking

It depends on your circumstances and dependents. If you own your property and have, say, one dependent, you can live comfortably on $A80k. If you are paying off a mortgage and have children, you can survive, but less comfortably.

I have a very small mortgage thanks to my family trust, and I live alone. I am quite comfortable on my current salary and would be very comfortable with the promotion.

[arthwollipot]

AAAAnd so the MoG hits us full swing. Today is the day when 99% of the changes to departmental organisation as a result of the election hit, and wouldn't you guess it, phone wait times are over an hour right now. We have 110 calls waiting in our queue, and 15 Tier 1 agents available to answer them.

Fortunately for me, this week I am doing VoIP and shouldn't need to take many calls.