Preserved Topic: Pleasing your IT department

The complete guide to pleasing your IT department
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When you call us to have your computer moved, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals, dried flowers, bowling trophies and children's art. We don't have a life, and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.

Don't write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages from here.

When an I.T. person says he's coming right over, go for coffee. That way you won't be there when we need your password. It's nothing for us to remember 700 screen saver passwords.

When you call the help desk, state what you want, not what's keeping you from getting it. We don't need to know that you can't get into your mail because your computer won't power on at all.

When I.T. support sends you an E-Mail with high importance, delete it at once. We're just testing.

When an I.T. person is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and spill your guts right out. We exist only to serve.

Send urgent email all in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery.

When the photocopier doesn't work, call computer support. There's electronics in it.

When you're getting a NO DIAL TONE message at home, call computer support. We can fix your telephone line from here.

When you have a dozen old computer screens to get rid of, call computer support. We're collectors.

When something's wrong with your home PC, dump it on an I.T. person's chair with no name, no phone number and no description of the problem. We love a puzzle.

When an I.T. person tells you that computer screens don't have cartridges in them, argue. We love a good argument.

When an I.T. person tells you that he'll be there shortly, reply in a cathing tone of voice: "And just how many weeks do you mean by shortly?" that motivates us.

When the printer won't print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print jobs frequently get sucked into black holes.

When the printer still won't print after 20 tries, send the job to all 68 printers in the company. One of them is bound to work.

Don't learn the proper name for anything technical. We know exactly what you mean by "My thingy blew up".

Don't use on-line help. On-line help is for wimps.

If the mouse cable keeps knocking down the framed picture of your dog, lift the computer and stuff the cable under it. Mouse cables were designed to have 20kg of computer sitting on top of them.

If the space bar on your keyboard doesn't work, blame it on the mail upgrade. Keyboards are actually very happy with half a pound of muffin crumbs and nail clippings in them.

When you get a message saying "Are you sure?" click on that Yes button as fast as you can. Hell, if you weren't sure, you wouldn't be doing it, would you?

When you find an I.T. person on the phone with his bank, sit uninvited on the corner of his desk and stare at him until he hangs up. We don't have any money to speak of anyway.

Feel perfectly free to say things like "I don't know nothing about that computer crap". We don't mind at all hearing our area of professional expertise referred to as crap.

When you need to change the toner cartridge in a printer, call I.T. support. Changing a toner cartridge is an extremely complex task, and Hewlett-Packard recommends that it be performed only by a professional engineer with a master's degree in nuclear physics.

When something's the matter with your computer, ask your secretary to call the help desk. We enjoy the challenge of having to deal with a third party who doesn't know anything about the problem.

When you receive a 30mb (huge) movie file, send it to everyone as a mail attachment. We've got lots of disk space on that mail server.

Don't even think of breaking large print jobs down into smaller chunks. Somebody else might get a chance to squeeze a memo into the queue.

When you lose your car keys, send an email to the entire company.People out in Pofadder like to keep abreast of what's going on.

When you bump into an I.T. person at the grocery store on a Saturday, ask a computer question. We do weekends.

Don't bother to tell us when you move computers around on your own. Computer names are just a cosmetic feature.

When you bring your own personal home PC for repair at the office, leave the documentation at home. We'll find all the settings and drivers somewhere.

Remember, Keep it crashing!

Hehe...that's great!

I think I'm in love...some friends of mine work in IT support, I'm definatley going ot send this one to them.

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When you bump into an I.T. person at the grocery store on a Saturday, ask a computer question. We do weekends.

When you're getting a NO DIAL TONE message at home, call computer support. We can fix your telephone line from here.

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yeah, no kidding...

I'ma see if I find that email we had floating around tech support... every time a stupid user called it got appended..


Code - CGI - links - DHTML - Javascript - Perl - programming - Magic - http://www.twistedport.com
ICQ: 67751342

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some friends of mine work in IT support, I'm definatley going ot send this one to them.

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Trust me on this. If they're either A) Resonably competent, or B) Been at it for more than six months, they've already seen it. It was first emailed to me in 1995 or '96.

Still, it remains true today and I'm glad to have had a little reminder of why I got out of that part of the business after 17 years.

Yeah, I remember when that email made the rounds, but it still cracks me up.

Still cracks me up too. Although now I laugh at myself for how long I stayed in that line of work before I realized how bad it was for my sanity. Such a daft boy.

Actually, I'm beginning to realize that users aren't as bad as management. At least users don't have executive power.

I hear you there. After mergers, divestitures and downsizing they're terrified of not looking busy, which only gets them in the way of any work being done at all. It's not like the old days when you could tell them to go play golf or something.

Funny thing is, there are just as many stories about tech support as there are about users. When you delve into computers and use them as much as some of us, tech support becomes an obstical to getting what you want, like say a password reset on dsl service using PPPoe. The popular term is tech monkies. Not to offend anyone, but alot of tech support is just taking complaints and reading answers aloud from a database.

hehe, the IT guy at my office is a good friend of mine. Have to send this to him.

Later,

C:\


~Binary is best~

Not where I used to work it wasn't. The tech support department at te high school where I used ot work were very busy people, mainly becuase teachers are one of the few users who are able to come up with new faults on computers on a daily basis. I mean, fault databases would like ot say they can cover almost anything...but they are nothing when placed up against a teaching staff of 130 most of whom appear ot be computer illiterate.

Surprisingly the most computer illiterate teachers sometimes seemed to be the IT teachers...there was really only one guy there who knew what he was doing.

When your retractable Cup holder is stuck in your pc.... call the IT department....




"Freedom of speech is by no means freedom to insult others" from the Razorart goodbye letter.

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Not to offend anyone, but alot of tech support is just taking complaints and reading answers aloud from a database

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No offense taken. I have a similar view of many people in support. I blame A+ certification on making it too easy to get a job in the field.

Good troubleshooting requires true knowledge and understanding of all the factors that may be involved in the problem. You need to know how to think.

A+ certification courses don't teach either how to understand problems or how to think. All they teach is how to pass the test. Which is why you end up with tech parrots (monkeys is a little generous) on the helldesk.

And don't get me started on MCSE...

I didn't have to work tonight anyway. So I'm back to finish where I left off.

Another part of the problem is user perception. IT is a field of specialties. No one can know everything there is to know. There's just too much for any single person to learn and understand.

Unfortunately, the general population doesn't know this. Many see only an amorphous thing called "computers" and so the expectation is that whoever they talk to (helldesk, field tech, their dog) will not only know what they're <edit: what the user is talking about> talking about but will instantly dispense the correct information or will instantly solve the problem for the user.

This is unrealistic.

Equally unrealistic are the technologist's expectations that the user community *wants* to know about their PC. All most users want to know is only what they absolutely need in order to do their own job. Not a bit or a byte more.

Putting the shoe on the other foot, I have no interest in most user's jobs and many of their jobs are outside my skill set or even my ability to learn. Why expect anything different of them?

So lots of expectations need to change.

* HR departments' reliance on certifications of dubious value to make hiring decisions,
* Newly minted certifications holders need to know they've been taken and all their money bought was the ability to take one test, and three to five years down the road they'll really have earned the job title,
* User expectations as expressed in Dufty's original message and finally,
* the IT communities' perception that everyone should be as interested in technology or have the same ability to learn as the techs. Face it. We work with pretty abstract stuff.

And don't get me wrong, there are lots of people who I've worked with over the years who I both admire and respect. Just as there are many who should go back to flipping burgers.



[This message has been edited by brucew (edited 02-13-2003).]

As far as the knowledge range of the tech monkies(or parrots) go is such(as seen at my old highschool). If you dont have an interest in learning(about computers) then your knowledge wont excede your everyday task. Sure the tech people at the school could fix some random computer stuff, but they have the password to foolproof(which is easily removed/disabled but getting harder, much harder). And their solutions to complex stuff is often just re-imaging the harddrive across the network. Beyond those everyday task, knowledge is lacking. Even fixing printer errors and such can often be beyond them.


Question, is foolproof to keep dumb people from messing up the computer/restricting access or is it to make it to were even the simplist problems can only be fixed by the tech lady? I mean I wish I could could get a business to put a program on their computers that didnt let people boot up without my password. And then make the company pay me 30$ an hour to keep me in the building incase a computer needs to be restarted.

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If you dont have an interest in learning(about computers) then your knowledge wont excede your everyday task

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I agree with that if we're talking about people in their 30s and younger. Out in the corporate world there are still those, from early to mid 40s and up, who grew up thinking computers were big, temperamental, mysterious things that require 40 people in white coats to run. I got my first computer when I was 25. It was the first time I'd ever even touched one. That was 1982.

Many people still in the workplace were older and got their first computer plunked on their desks later than I did. Many of those people are afraid of the damned things. They have this fear that they're going to break it. Those are the people who don't want to learn about them and whose knowledge many times isn't enough to do their job.

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the tech people at the school could fix some random computer stuff <snip> their solutions to complex stuff is often just re-imaging the harddrive across the network

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I did field service for 22 school districts in four counties of rural New York State back in the 90s, so I'm not surprised. First, schools can't afford to hire the best and the brightest. Second, when it's one or two techs in a school against hundreds of students trying to break into the systems and messing things up, or doing it by accident, re-imaging is the more efficient way to handle the problem.

If you were the tech and you 10 computers to fix today, would you A) go from one PC to the next trying to figure out what they messed up this time, then what you have to do to fix it, or B) Use one server to blast images on them all simultaneously, which way would you choose so you could go home on time?

Me? I'd pick imaging every time. Hell, we had to glue the mice shut so kids wouldn't castrate them (take out the balls) to get out of doing their assignments or just to f**k with the teacher. Sure, we had to trash every mouse once it got gummed up, but we didn't have to buy mouseballs by the thousand and run around replacing a few dozen every day. Same thing as saying, "just image the sucker."

And locking people out of everything is simply self-defense. Who can keep up with a few hundred students trying to outsmart you for six hours a day?

Schools are tough on computers and techs. When I left that job to support 9,000 users in a 5.1 million square-foot factory, it felt like a vacation.

Even though I cant relate directly to your point of view, I see where you are coming from and respect the problems of working in a school environment. I guess my frustrations with the situation was in the minority, seeing as im one of the 8 outa 210 people who actually finished CISCO(and passed, 12 actually finished, the rest got cut at exams, kinda like a halflife almost) at my school. I liked everything open and accessable. It was ritual after every semester break on the first day back for us to remove the newly imaged foolproof from the computers(it was routine for them to reimage all the student computers over breaks). Ahh the good old days.

P.S. Yeah I know I got way of topic but its 4:30 and ive been f**king with this blasted rocket raid 1520 card for the past 6 hours, and just got through writing like a 2 page email(if you dont mention EVERYTHING youve tried, then they will suggest you try something you have already done) to tech support over at Highpoint. The fact that there is NO online support for their products is kinda wierd, even upstart Korean companies usually have furoms or something from the getgo. Im about to return this freaking thing and get a performance controller. Not to mention the damn wires on these new serial drives are so f******* finiky that if you mess with anything inside the case and start the computer, the controller wont find the drives and you have to turn it off and jiggle(no shit-jiggle) the wires and turn it back on. What is that shit all about?????

I really feel for tech suppport people in schools. In no other tech-support job do several thousand people pit themselves against you simply ot make your job harder.

RazorX:

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if you mess with anything inside the case and start the computer, the controller wont find the drives and you have to turn it off and jiggle(no shit-jiggle) the wires and turn it back on. What is that shit all about?????

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RAID on Serial ATA? What you're experiencing is called being on "the bleeding edge" of technology. Now you know where the term came from.

My rig has a Highpoint controller in it and I was frustrated about the absence of tech support too. Then I remembered Highpoint, like Nvidia, is an OEM. So just like Nvidia, there's little or no support for end-users, who generally aren't their customers anyway. Although from the sound of your post it almost seems like the card you're using is a Highpoint as opposted to a card made by someone else with a Highpoint chip on it. Which is it?

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I guess my frustrations with the situation was in the minority, seeing as im one of the 8 outa 210 people who actually finished CISCO

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Yeah, I hear you there. I always had the same troubles myself. Since you know more you figure you're due extra privledges. Perhaps so, but unfortunately schools are oriented toward the majority and if the majority isn't ripe for it, you're not going to get it either.

Not at all unlike real life...

<edit>You might try http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php . A quick search on Serial ATA didn't come up with anything like your problem, but maybe you can start a thread on it. </edit>

Skaarjj:

Yeah, but frustrating as it is, it's really part of the learning experience for the students. Not just technically (where, personally, I feel that if you can't blow it up properly (as opposed to accidentally) you don't fully understand it) but socially too, like the direction the past few notes on the thread have taken.

Still, last year (or was it the year before?) I *almost* took a job at a Catholic high school of 250 male students. Flawed logic told me that it would be different in a suburban private school. Fortunately I came to my senses after the interview where I noticed there weren't any nuns brandishing rulers.



[This message has been edited by brucew (edited 02-13-2003).]

Its a High-point original.

Well, the real problem is that users have unreasonable expectations. Always have, always will. I could tell you some real stories from when I was at HP, EDS, and GM. And most don't want to learn.

But the best I've had in a while is when a client called and said that things 'weren't working right'. I get to the site, and find this:



I should add that there were over 100 people connecting to this one server. Man were they pissed when I told them I needed to down the server for 10 minutes...... (but not as pissed as when they saw the bill...)



[This message has been edited by Pugzly (edited 02-14-2003).]

Heh. That would be a nice one to sneak on to a co-worker's wallpaper.

When I was at Danka we had a special code for that sort of problem description. You never wanted to see "Dunno it's busted" come up on your pager.

In the spirit of learning, how did you go about fixing that? Just an array rebuild? Ive never messed with raid-5 and its kinda hard to tell exatctly whats going on from the picture, but how is windows still running if all of the disks have failed? Well on second glance it says they are online, but also that the partitions have 'failed'. Sorry to bug you but im kinda interested here.

[This message has been edited by RazorX (edited 02-14-2003).]

[This message has been edited by RazorX (edited 02-14-2003).]

Because windows is running on the local computer, and the HD are storage, would be my first guess...in answer to this -

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how is windows still running if all of the disks have failed?

--RaxorX

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However, I'm also curious as to what the fix was...

Okay - let's see if I have it all right.

Drive C: is mirrored using two 8.5GB volumes from the first two drives. This is the system and boot drive. Since it was just a mirror, the server kept running (albeit logging a ton of events to the system log).
Drive E: WAS RAID 5 using the three 8.4GB volumes that are in light blue.

One of the drives for volume E: failed. So, the client removed the drive (the one listed as 'missing'), and replaced it with a drive (the 'unallocated' drive) sent from the vendor (IBM). But the volume was never repaired (which is why the volume says 'failed' even though they have three good drives). I *believe* that in all that noodling around, that's what caused the mirror for C: to break. On top of this, he swapped the drives while the server was up, but the drives aren't hot-swappable!

To make matters even worse, the original configuration, from what I've determined, was drive E: was actually a mirror of drive C:!!!!!!! And they were backing up BOTH DRIVES!

So data would be written to the drive C: mirror, and then mirrored to the drive E: array, and then, later than night, backed up TWICE onto tape. No wonder one of the drives failed! Here's what I did (after making the screen shot and calling a few friends):

I removed the raid 5 volume.
I removed the 'missing' drive.
I created a new mirror with the left over space from the first two drives. This became E:
I created a new volume with the last drive, and put the tape backup logs, print spool, and other dynamic stuff there. This became F:
I broke the C: mirror, and recreated it.
I changed the backup jobs to act accordingly. They now backup stuff in 1/4 of the time it took originally.
All with no down time. (The down time mentioned in my original post was for something else)



[This message has been edited by Pugzly (edited 02-15-2003).]

Cool stuff, however is the drive windows is running on hidden in the drive manager, cause ALL the drives are reported 'failed'. On second thought, nm. Ive never used mirroring, so the screenshot looks a little strange to me, ontop of them setting it up weird from what you say, so it would take to long to explain whats going on to me.


[This message has been edited by RazorX (edited 02-15-2003).]

OK Yall. Got my response from Highpoint. First I would like to post my email to them, pay attention to the caps area.


It is now 4:08 in the morning, and I have had very
unfavorable results for the past 6 hours trying to
configure my rocket raid 1520 card. First trouble was
that while trying a fresh install of XP after setting
up the array with two 80GB WD 8MB cache hard drives,
windows would try to format an NTFS partition. At
100% it would say it could not partition the drive. I
thought this was odd. So I slaved each WD to a Maxtor
that had an XP install on it and formatted each
separately to verify they worked(which they did).
Upon recreating the array and trying an install again,
XP no longer detected a hard drive when it came time
to partition and copy the files(keep in mind I know
about installing the RAID controller drivers at the
start). This was even stranger. I then went back and
destroyed the array and recreated it, same deal. I
then decided to go ahead and set up the array
alongside the previously mentioned Maxtor install of
XP. Everything went fine again in till the already
installed Xp needed to format the array, upon 100%
completion it said it couldn't format it. Then Xp
reported the drive as disconnected every time I tried
to click on it. I HAVE USED THE NEWEST DRIVERS, AND
UPDATED THE BIOS. Im at the end of my rope, leaving
the only option as returning the controller and going
performance. Unless of course you can guarantee me a
different version of your companies controllers will
work. I found the lack of support on the web site
disapointing too. If you could please fill me in on
the problem here, I would love to get this
straightened out and start enjoying your product.


K. Here is their response. Once again notice the caps area.


Hello,

HAVE YOU TRIED INSTALLING THE LATEST DRIVER AND BIOS VERSION FOR THE
CARD?
What other kind of PCI devices were installed into the system?

HighPoint (head tech monkey) Technologies


Bah. Whatever. I got it working on my own.