Categories: Work

Internet? We don’t need no Stinking Internet!

Apr11
Published on: April 11, 2013
Categories: Technology, Work
Tags: ,
Comments: No Comments
 

So We have a slight issue here at the Insane Asylum. The ADSL Line that out VoIP server is on can not keep a sync, The second it connects up it then disconnects. It has been doing this for two days now.

This is bad enough, but not something we could not deal with since we have two internet lines coming into the building. But Our main line is behaving just a “Tad” better. It can stay connected for a whole FOUR minutes before dropping the connection.

Hey, The Internet in four minute segments is not that bad right? How about the speed of that line has dropped due to the constant disconnects and is now syncing up at a WHOPPING 0.5Meg.

This is no where near enough to supply the amount of people here trying to work. So even thought we were able to do a bit of creative patching and got an old style phone working (One phone for all the numbers coming into the building) We do not have enough of a connection to the Net for us to do any work even if you were lucky enough to get us on the phone.

There is just one question remaining.

Who has the board games?

CN

No Comments

Conversations with Support – Updated

Feb13
Published on: February 13, 2013
Categories: Office
Tags: ,
Comments: No Comments
 

This morning as I was in the Support Office attempting to dismantle a multimeter using a Swiss Army Key (Long story and totally Irrelevant here) the following conversation happened between OfficeBitch1 and myself. I should point out OfficeBitch1 (A name given him by TheGovernor)  used to be the main Support Guy of the Asylum many years ago, and has recently come back one day a week to get himself back into IT.

OB1: “I cant log in!! Has my password been changed?”

OB1: “Stupid keyboard is broke! the m key doesn’t work, no wonder I cant log into my account”

GN: “The m key is broke? do the other keys work ok?”

OB1:Yes, everything is fine bar shift-m”

GN: “Hang on, lower case m works? just shift-m doesn’t?”

OB1: “yes. m works by itself, it doesn’t with shift”

GN: “Why don’t you use caps lock then?”

OB1: *Typing* “arrgh That doesn’t work either!!!”

GN: “Did you turn caps lock off after you typed the M?”

OB1: *mutters* *types*

In his defence, the issue was that he was using the wrong email address as his username, and he had his laptop set to numlock so the m was in fact a 0. Even still I feel for anyone phoning the Asylum today for support.

Update:

I was right in worrying. I just had a simple “add this text to dns record” support ticket escalated to 3rd line Server support on the one day of the week when we have double the normal amount of support guys in. Apparently Cut & Paste is too advanced for 1st & 2nd Line Support.

 


No Comments

Insane-Cam

Sep20
Published on: September 20, 2012
Categories: Office, PhotoBlog
Comments: No Comments
 

TheGovernor has recently Implemented a bizarre new security regime here at The Insane Asylum. This basically involved placing a “Hidden Camera” in the Padded Cell of YoYoMan.

Here we spot the lesser spotted YoYoMan in his unnatural habitat.

This may have seemed a Good idea at the beginning. But alas we are not called The Insane Asylum for nothing.

The local Wildlife spot the hidden camera.

Along came Tux and frightened the poor Roo away.

Awwwww
They made friends.

And thats why we can’t have anything NICE!!!!


No Comments

StopGo roadworks guy You owe me a Pint

Aug22
Published on: August 22, 2012
Categories: Work
Comments: 1 Comment
 

Some time ago I wrote a post praising the good work done by StopGo men. I even doffed a pint to their hard but important work.

The original post can be found here -=> “A thanks to the StopGo roadworks guy

I now wish to retract my earlier admiration for these evil power mad people, who have nothing better to do than stand about causing problems for poor commuters.

Let me explain why I have had a reversal of opinion.

This morning on my daily commute I came across some “Gully Cleaning” in progress midway down a LONG straight road. There was a StopGo man standing by the works van with his little sign which was showing STOP in my direction.

Now I was the ONLY vehicle on the road, long straight road, with Just me driving towards the StopGo Man who is signaling with his sign I have to stop to let the none existent Cars from the other direction come through first.

Now Since I’m still a bit away I figure he will swap the sign as I get closer. NOPE. It still says STOP, as I slow down as I get closer and closer to him. Until I reach him and have to come to a complete stop since the sign is still saying STOP.

He looked at me, checked the NONE EXISTENT oncoming traffic, checked me, checked again and changed his sign to GO.

WHY god darn it WHY???

I was the only car on the road, he could easily have checked and changed the sign to save me having to stop. I figure the evil jumped up person wanted to abuse the small power he has in his life. After all his entire role in life to so stand and hold a stick. There are not many jobs where you could be replaced by a pile of dirt and still have the same competence of work.

*mutter*

 


1 Comment

Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day 2012

Jul27
Published on: July 27, 2012
Categories: Holiday, SysAdmin, Work
Tags: ,
Comments: 3 Comments
 

I thought I would take a minute out of my busy hectic day to give a shout out to all my fellow under-appreciated systems administrators out there in their dark offices on this the 10th Annual System Administrator Appreciation Day.

Consider all the work your sys.admin does behind the scene, keeping your network connection running, your email not being overly flooded with spam, your IM’s running at a decent speed, and being there to fix a server outage at 3am just so some people can go look at the funny picture you uploaded.  Consider how often this creature gets thanked on his day to day fight against spammers, hackers, lUsers, Software Updates, etc Consider this, then be happy that this IT Hero gets one day a year when (s)he gets appreciated.

So everyone, go take a coffee, cake, or gift to your sysadmin now. or at least drop by their hidy hole to say thanks.

For more information on this IMPORTANT festive day go read THIS SITE

For those about the Insane Asylum Myself & Demop can be found in Mission Control, and are fond of Cake, Beer, & Chocolate (Oh and anything with glowing blue LED’s) !!!

CN

P.S.

Consider this as well. Your Friendly SysAdmin has access to your email, they know what you have been doing and to who. They see all the packets of data traveling back and forth from your machine, seeing when you are working and when your just browsing ebay/facebook/etc, They know what websites you’ve visited (and can change your history to show you been looking at p0rn in the office), Stuff you may not want made public.  They control your password, your login name, your email address, how much of the networks bandwidth you can use, what IM clients are banned, and a million other things that help you through the working day.  Consider this well, and remember, “Its only one day a year!


3 Comments

Inmates Assemble

Apr27
Published on: April 27, 2012
Categories: Entertainment, Films, Work
Comments: No Comments
 

Last night some of the Inmates at the asylum staged an escape, we went over the tunnel and through the wire before making a mad run through torrential rain into England for FREEEEEEEDOM and the Avengers movie. The escapees consisted of, DemonPengu, YoYoMan, Myself and a Hobbit. Why “and a Hobbit?” well I think all good stories should begin with …. and a Hobbit.

Now there may or may not have been an incident with the cinemas WiFi connection, and very poor security *cough* (default password) *cough* But thats a different story for another time. So Drinks, Popcorn, Chocolate & tickets were collected, and our team of escapees sat down ready to watch the film. And what a film!!!!

What can I say about this film?

Seriously! What can I say, This film is a sequel not only to IronMan I & II but also  The Hulk, Thor & Captain America. We are talking five MASSIVE action films all with their own main character, and these five sequels combined into one uber-film. And this is not to mention the other Main (But no individual films yet) characters of Hawk-eye, Black Widow, & Nick Fury.

As you would expect of this film, the action, effects, and heroness* are out of this world (And not just because there was an Alien Army, and two demi-gods involved). All in all, it was everything you would expect in an Action Film!

What you may not expect, and I know I for one did not expect it as the pure comedy gold this film contains. Its rare to hear an entire audience pissing themselves laughing in an action film, and during this film, the audience laughed a LOT!.  I have actually been to comedy films where the laughter was not as loud and honest as it was in this film.

So we have, Heroes, Villains, Action, Effects, Comedy, Fantasy Characters, Monsters, Space Army, Spy’s, Soldiers, Secret Organisations, Futuristic exo-armour, Gods, Heartbreak & romance. I was going to say all they were missing was a funny CGI/Animated talking pet until I remembered the Hulk. This film really does have everything!!!

Put simply. The four of us left the cinema after the film, stood outside and seriously considered going back in to see the next showing. And at least two of the Inmates did re-watch it the following night (i.e. tonight). I think thats testament to its awesomeness all by itself.

*Its a real word. I made it up and decided it is real!

No Comments

Customer Rant

Apr11
Published on: April 11, 2012
Categories: Customers
Tags: ,
Comments: 1 Comment
 

Because its healthy to vent the spleen!

Now I’m sure I have Blogged about this customer before, but for the life of me I can not remember what name I gave him (Maybe I should keep track of the names I assign people). Anyway today we shall refer to the Customer/Company/Person as Gillid*

Heres an extract of a Phone conversation that just happened.

Gillid: “Hi, I was told that since TheArchivist* no longer works there you may be able to help me!

CN: “I may be able to, whats your problem?”

Gillid: “I have a website where I upload loads of data to it every few months, and our CMS that RedBack* made does not work so TheArchivist normally does it for me!

CN: “No problem. If you email me the data, and let me know what is what in it, I’m sure I can sort it out for you but getting your CMS fixed may be a good idea. Now I’m not sure what you’ve been charged for the data entry in past…….”

Gillid: “Oh TheArchivist did it all for free!

CN: “Well we won’t be doing that, you’ll have to pay for our time doing it

Gillid: “OH. can you give me TheArchivist’s personal email address or phone number?

CN: “No. I’m not giving out peoples personal info!

Gillid: “ok. I’ll upload it myself!!!!” *Hangs UP*

Thirty minutes after that phone conversation the Support Department get a ticket from Gillid asking for TheArchivists contact details. They guy is seriously trying to get hold of one of our x-employees in the hope that the guy will do work for him for free while no longer being associated to the Asylum?

And after all that If it was just a quick data import into a mySQL DB I’d have probably only charged him £15 or some nominal price.

 As normal Names changed to protect me from lawsuits… err I mean to protect the innocent.

 

CN

1 Comment

MEME: Tech Support

Feb17
Published on: February 17, 2012
Categories: MEME, Work
Tags: ,
Comments: No Comments
 


No Comments

People are Stupid.

Feb09
Published on: February 9, 2012
Categories: Customers
Tags: ,
Comments: 1 Comment
 

Well technically I guess that should be “Customers are Stupid“. You do not believe me? Well here are two examples that happened this week.

Example 1:

I was being nice and answered the phone to help out the support guys, and the conversation went a bit like this :-

CN:Good afternoon How may I help you?

Customer: “Hi, Yes. I can’t send or receive any emails. its broke!

CN: “OK. What error are you actually getting?

Customer:can not connect to server

CN:Ok, are you actually on the Internet?

Customer:YES. I am on the Internet doing things, the Internet is fine, it’s just my emails that is broken

Customer: *noise of many people talking in background*Yes. I’m on the phone to them now. Yes I have email issues. Ok I’ll pass them over to you when my mails sorted

CN: “You got other issues there?

Customer:Yes, they say we have lost the Internet. So Whats the issue with my emails?

She honestly thought the fact they were not connected to the Internet had no connection with her problems in sending and receiving emails.

Example 2:

Now this was a ticket the Systems department had. A Customer had not been receiving any email conformation from their website for the last 3 months. And they knew from the orders that they should have had a fair few.

We had been looking into it on and off for a while since a grep of the site showed that it was not set up to actually send emails to the address they insisted received them.

So after many attempts I finally got them to check the header of an old email and give me the actual email address that the emails go to before being forwarded or downloaded to the end account.

So I have the real email address and decide to test it simply to start with. So I log into the account, and there sat in the INBOX are 50+ unread emails from the website.

Turns out they had forgotten to actually download the emails for the last few months.

Seriously, people get an IQ=IQ-100 as soon as they decide to contact our support department.

 

CN

1 Comment

Ghost in the Asylum

Sep01
Published on: September 1, 2011
Categories: Ghosts, Work
Comments: 3 Comments
 

The Asylum may or may not be haunted.

This morning I was stood in the Support Office talking to ItWerWobbie* when I heard someone walk up the stairs to our floor and saw them walk past the door to the support office as they passed down the hall.

Shortly after @DemonPengu* ascended the stairs, and came to the open door.

 

IWW: “Who was that?

GN: “I dont know. Hey @Demonpengu who came up before you?

DP: “huh? no one?”

GN: *quickly checks upstairs rooms to see who came up* “Err there’s no one up here?

IWW: “you heard/saw it as well right?

So two of us heard someone ascend the stairs and walk past, we both saw from the corner of our eyes a person walk past the door to the room towards the front of the building where there are NO exits. Yet there was no body there!

Explain away!**

(*) We never use real names here on the Three Ninjas, for security, peoples safety against stalkers, and to prevent any nasty legal action if we accidentally mention little know facts like ItWerWobbies fetish for amputee midgets.

(**) Seriously. Any explanations welcome, comment away if you can explain what may or may not have happened.


3 Comments
page 1 of 15 »

Welcome , today is Sunday, May 19, 2013