Thurisaz Posted April 11, 2006 Share Posted April 11, 2006 Now is this impressive or what? I feel an almost physical revulsion thinking about doing my work... even though I'm currently reassigned to another team! Okay, so I work in the helpdesk. To those who know what the word means, this is enough of an indicator already of what deep doo-doo I'm usually in. But hey, a certain amount of cursing and complaints is normal for everyone working with those fucking PCs of course. No big deal. Except for... ...first, M$. 'nuff said already, but just to get a bit more specific: Surely you've heard about that security leak in the M$ internet explorer (boy, a leak? What shocking "news"!!!). The choice is to either wait for M$ to publish a patch for the shit... or to turn off that option known as "active scripting". Forget about the first option as M$ is still relaxing or whatever M$ does when the whole world curses them. The second option? Oh great. So active scripting is disabled for security reasons. It sucks royally for private PC users. Now did you ever stop to estimate how many fucking websites depend on active scripting today and simply won't work without it? Combine this with a total count of roughly... 6,000 to 8,000 users worldwide, depending on whom you ask. Most of them need the web for their daily work. Most of them need websites that depend on active scripting. Speak the acronym with me: "FUBAR"! Think there's any decent normal work that can still be done at my workplace? And who's got the trouble and the work? Yep, the poor shmuck's who get called whenever something doesn't work... we at the helpdesk. And then there's the second thing... all users have their own "H:\" drives on network shares where they store their "personal" stuff. "Personal", of course, meaning work stuff they need personally. If you've ever doubted that claim that the demands of the consumers are absolutely unlimited in scope, I gladly invite you to do my job for just one week. I think the record so far was... "Incident (no disk space left on the H:\ drives) closed (12:29). 25 GB free space." "New incident (no disk space left on the H:\ drives) opened (13:34)." Now we have that persistent problem again, since two weeks I guess. Only that this time the department maintaining the file serves says "Nada". And they're right... as users are, the majority of them has stored their own collections of funny videos et cetera on H:, gobbling up countless gigabytes of space that should be reserved for work data. Users: "We need more space!!!!1111!!!!!" Users' applications: "§$W&$%&!" (read: they go down in flames because they need at least some space on H:) Department maintaining the file servers: "No way. Get rid off your multimedia shit first." Users (call helpdesk * 8,000) So far I was lucky - I spent the better part of last week as backup for my co-worker Rieke at the user management. Much to do here too, but at least you can work on it with some concentration without a phone constantly interrupting you. And as Rieke is on vacation this week I've got some more "almost-holidays" now (praise her holiday planning!). The only bad thing is that next week I'll be back in the midst of the chaos... Aaaaah, that felt good. Rant over. With some luck I entertained someone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chefranden Posted April 11, 2006 Share Posted April 11, 2006 ...first, M$. Why don't you just switch to FireFox? My son uses it on the networks he administers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trashy Posted April 11, 2006 Share Posted April 11, 2006 I've got more problems with the network admins than anything else. They run scripts to delete duplicate files and move all the user's files into a different directory structure, then wonder why we get so many calls the next morning! Every time they do something I brace for the impact..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evelyn Posted April 12, 2006 Share Posted April 12, 2006 Have you ever read this: Bastard Operator From Hell The truth is stranger than fiction... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thurisaz Posted April 12, 2006 Author Share Posted April 12, 2006 ...first, M$. Why don't you just switch to FireFox? My son uses it on the networks he administers. Hey, it's not about me personally. For that kind of solution you gotta convince the bosses of the VW bank. (And considering how much "own stuff" is running on our systems, including about 5.4 million web portals to all kinds of systems, I don't want to even start to imagine the additional work of adapting all that HTML and other code to the quirks of some other browser. In fact, one of the reasons why we still don't have disk space quotas set for our users and departments is that while the servers can do that without any problems, several of the bank-specific applications commit suicide immediately if we activate that option... the curse of writing your own code you know) Let alone that active scripting got blocked at the proxy server too. It doesn't matter currently what browser you use (some here have firefox and use it), you still get "active script removed" in plain text everywhere on the page where there was one of them. I've got more problems with the network admins than anything else. They run scripts to delete duplicate files and move all the user's files into a different directory structure, then wonder why we get so many calls the next morning! Every time they do something I brace for the impact..... I hear you brother! Well, it doesn't happen every fucking day here, but yes, I do know the "let's change something and not tell anyone" phenomenon too... Have you ever read this: Bastard Operator From Hell The truth is stranger than fiction... Not only do I know the BOFH... I wish I was him! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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