User diagnosis: Wait what?

[root]

Just had a lovely message from a user.
actually it's not from the user it's from the CTO of the company...

the user has complained that his VDI machine has really poor performance.
the underlying issue is that there is really high SAN activity and not enough spindles they've reached an IOPs limit.

this is in hand, we're expanding the SAN.

So I send out an email basically saying, we're waiting for your business to approve the actions that will resolve this issue, so I'll close the ticket and we'll work on the other ticket for SAN upgrades, this problem will be fixed when that issue is fixed.

the response I get is, This issue is not fixed.

I know the issue is not fixed, my entire email which was send to the user with the CTO copied was explaining that the issue was not resolved, but that the ticket was effectively a duplicate of another ticket and would be closed, the only reason I sent the message was to inform the user that the problem is you Mr CTO we are waiting for you to approve actions that will allow us to make improvements to resolve the end users issues...




And just this second a guy walks into the room from an IT disposal company, (the people who take and wipe systems and sort out disposal in accordance with RoHS and recycling restrictions.)

"hi, I'm here to collect five servers"
"nope, you're here to collect a single DL360 G5"

 

[iPwn]

Since when have we offered [...] chat dates.

You haven't seen that part of the site yet??

-------------------------


I received a laptop back from our Merchandise Buying team. It was so incredibly loaded with malware and games you could not boot Windows normally. After much digging, I find all kinds of programs used for illegal things, and even some adult programs. Now, the buyer who used this laptop was a quiet older gentleman, very good at what he did, but I had to start thinking of company liability if this guy had performed something on a company device. So I draft up this email to his manager, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt as much as possible and we agree that we'll just talk to him to see what he'll tell us about all this crap on his laptop and go from there.

So we pull the guy into a room and the conversation begins.

I ask him about a few of the programs and what he uses them for, and of course he denies all knowledge.
So I ask him about the games on the laptop to which he replies "well, sure. I've installed a few card games because we often have to wait in airports for hours... so I kill time with those."
Okay, I can understand that one. "But you don't know how these other programs got installed {listing them}?"
"No, I don't even know what those are."
At this point, I'm not sure if he's telling the truth or just pulling my leg. But I thought about some of the games I found (the type commonly recognized with malware) and just thought I'd pose the question:
"Charles, what do you do when you see a pop-up Window?"
"Click Yes until they stop"


"Charles, I'll go ahead and clean up the laptop and get it working like new again... just promise me two things: Check with me before installing any games from now on, just so I can tell if they're malicious or not, and if you don't know what the pop-up is asking, you'll click 'No' until they stop. Deal?"

---------------------------------------------

Win! Found the picture (although the text was readable so had to edit some company info out)...

We got a request from our customer service department that one of the CSR's needed a second monitor to display information on. We set it up no problem. Well about a week later, I had a different ticket up in Customer Service and found that second monitor... displaying information:

 

[Smart_Guy]

That's what I call a Bulletin Monitor ha ha...

 

[BK_123]

You haven't seen that part of the site yet??

No, It must be coming soon

 

[root]

that second monitor is awesome.

 

[iPwn]

Came to work this a.m. with this email in my inbox:

"
Hi [Me],

I got word back from [Vendor] as to the issue we were seeing in the feeds. There are a few required parameters missing when the feed is built. Those parameters are showing within the ‘fields' section of the datafeed utility but aren't actually including anything when the feed is built. Let me know what you need from me on this. If you want to stop by I can provide more detail also.

Thanks!
"

The datafeed utility is the project I just launched to deliver product information to affiliate sites. So, before digging into my code, I decided to see which fields he was using. Now, the fields are driven by a SQL table, depending on the field you select, it will return the appropriate data about the product (e.g. Quantity Available, Price, etc.). I have a "Blank" field in there for some affiliates that ask for data we don't provide. Well, when I opened his feed, he had used the "Blank" field for almost every data point and then just changed the custom header (field title as displayed in the resulting file) to what he 'wanted' to be displayed.

Oh users, I heart you.