The Three Ninjas

The Unholy Trinity of Bloggers

Tags: Customers

People are Stupid.

Feb09

by CodeNinja

Published on: February 9, 2012

Categories: Customers

Tags: Customers, Work

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.

1 Comment

Battle to be The King of Idiots

Oct29

by CodeNinja

Published on: October 29, 2010

Categories: Customers

Tags: Customers, Idiots

Comments: 1 Comment

This week at the Asylum has been a bit weird (And I mean weirder than normal) We’ve had two customers fighting to be crowned “The King of Idiots.” Now you would not think that was a title anyone would actively seek out, but I swear the two nominated contestants must have been. There is no other explanation for the level of stupidity involved.

Contestant 1: (We shall call them Santa & the Elves)

For several weeks now Santa has been emailing our Support department asking for some DNS changes to be made for their domain name. And every week they have been informed the changes were done weeks ago. This finally got escalated to me to look at, and I inform them that the changes have all be done.

I get an email from Santa saying that where www is working and pointing at the correct IP, the domain name by itself is not pointing at the right IP so could an A record be created. So I point out www is a CNAME that points at the domain. so whatever IP www goes to is the one the domain name by itself goes too. *Repeat four Times*. Since Santa is getting nowhere with emails, he decided to phone me up and explain again how www goes to the right place, and can we point the domain to the same place as www. This time as well as explaining it all to him, I logged onto our primary NameServer and emailed him the actual zonefile for his domain to show him where things went.

Santa then asked would I mind talking to his head IT elf, I agreed so the IT elf phoned and used the same words as Santa. I explained again, and the elf came up with this solution. “If we change the www from a cname to an a record it may work?” I had to check I had heard him right and that his plan was for me to change the one he claimed worked, and set it up exactly as the one he claimed did not work?

Santa then decided we need a conference call with all the elves, and some clever dwarfs who were walking past at the time. In this call they suggested that since www worked when it was just an alias for the domain, that couldn’t we leave it pointing to the domain, and change the domain to point to the www? I believe they could tell by the sound of *BANG* *BANG* as my head banged against my desk, that maybe that would not work.

It was during this conference call while their head IT Elf was muttering that the DNS was all wrong, and his load balancer was not working because of it, which in turn stopped their certificate from working. As soon as I heard cert, I stopped them to ask was this about a SSL cert? (Which it was). They had got one www.domain, only when they went to domain it was giving warnings. And they believed if they could just get the DNS & load balancer working right, this problem would be resolved.

I had to explain what DNS and URL’s were, to several people who were IT professionals, with claimed experience in hosting, networks, dns, etc..

Contestant 2: (We shall call the Seaman)

I was asked in my role of Linux Sys.Admin to help the Seaman with any problems he had moving the hosting of a website over too us. Now there should have been no problems really since the Seaman is a professional web developer.

Now, His entry was a late one, and only lasted one day, as opposed to Contestants 1′s weeks. Yet on that one day he managed to phone up for help over a dozen times, heres a few of the problems he had.

P: FTP will not let me connect to the server.

S: Spell FTP correctly, and it will work

P: It says it can not load the file, but the files there

S: You realise Linux is case sensitive right?

P: I can not write collected email addresses to a file

S: Make the file writable and not read only.

S2: Errr why are you using a flat file, you have a MySQL DB with that account?

I’ve not decided on the winner YET. I’m leaning towards Contestant 2. Mainly because “How do you spell FTP wrong?” come on, its three letters, and you say the three letters when saying the word F T P?

1 Comment

Just when I thought they couldn’t possibly be any dumber…

Aug25

by CodeNinja

Published on: August 25, 2010

Categories: Customers

Tags: Customers, Idiots, Work

Comments: No Comments

…..they go and do something like this… and totally redeem themselves!!

I am a true believer of the phrase “Customers are Idiots“, but sometimes they seem to go out of their way to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that this phrase is true.

Recently one of our customers RedBack* ceased trading, and a load of their customers were emailed suggesting they move their hosting & emails over to the Insane Asylum. I was given the pleasure of helping a load across to us. Now some came across with little or no problems, where as others caused a variety of problems. And then there was Zoolander*.

So I copy their website and database from the RedBack server that’s shutting down over to one of ours, I change connection strings and paths accordingly and get it up and running. I recreate email accounts on our system and send them all the details with the instructions to change the nameservers over to ours and they will be up and running.

So a couple of weeks go past and I get a phone call from Zoolander that goes a bit like this.

Z: “We’ve changed the nameserver things like you said and now our email has stopped working!”

CN: “Yes, it will since you moved over to us. you need to use the new email details I previosly sent you.”

Z: “I don’t understand, its all technically, can’t you just do it for me?”

CN: “Well you need to change the setting in whatever email client you use on your computers, but if you need our guys can connect to your machine and do it for you.”

Z: “I dont do email on my computer, just my phone. I just go to the webpage and do mail.”

CN: “You only use webmail? Then you just need to use the webmail address I sent you and you’ll be fine”

Z: “what? so my webpages address will change? it wont be on www.zoolander.com* any more?”

CN: “NO. just the address of the webmail you used has changed.“

The following morning I get into the Asylum to find an email from one of the Zoolander’s Directors home gmail account, all urgent and shouty like. I could tell this as it was all written in CAPS! The basic gist of the email was that they had tried logging into the new webmail address i gave them, and their old username/passwords were not working. So I politely resend them the details I sent before the move with the NEW usernames/passwords and point out the NEW system required NEW details.

Two hours later the phone rings. And its Zoolander.

Z: “Hello, We’ve tried using the new details, only we can’t work out what goes where, so could ou talk us through it?”

CN: “no problems, what problem are you having?”

Z: “Well we need to know what to put in the box that says username, and what goes in the one called password?”

CN: “What did you have in the email I sent you?”

Z: “email address followed by my email address, then username followed by a username, then password followed by password. I just don’t know which ones I’m supposed to use.”

CN: “OK. where it asks for your username, type in your username. and put your password in the one asking for password.”

Z: “That seems to have worked. thanks”

CN: *Unplugs phone for rest of the day*

I know there is a stereotype belief that people in the fashion modelling industry are not known for playing with a full set of cards. But at least try people…..

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

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The Universe Hates me

Dec30

by CodeNinja

Published on: December 30, 2009

Categories: Customers, Holiday

Tags: Customers, Holiday, Idiots, Work

Comments: No Comments

I am on holiday this week. A full week away from the Insane Asylum, work, customers or as I like to call them “The Bane of My Life“. So far I’m still full of the festive cheer, festive beer, and festive treats. I have been working my way through the DVD’s I got for Xmas, There is a nice layer of snow over everything making the world look a peaceful place. There is only one thorn in my festive happiness…… CUSTOMERS!

Monday the Governor of the Asylum threw a support ticket at my email marked urgent. It was from a customers developer. They had asked for a new hosting area with Joomla installed on it, and it was done on the last working day of the year (last job before we finished for the day)

Monday:

HI. You set up a Joomla hosting for us, and you set it up wrong. I can not get it to upload modules, I’ve checked the permissions via FTP and they are wrong. I need this installed correctly, fix the permissions and test it!

Hello? We installed it wrong? Have you ever installed Joomla? You ftp the files to your hosting, go to a webpage, answer a few basic questions and its installed! Idiot!. Ok, so he has a permission problem, so he’s decided to use the web server to upload the files instead of putting his FTP details into Joomla’s config to let Joomla handle it. OK. Now. the guy knows enough to check permissions with FTP. So why does he not change them with FTP to fix his problem? Its a rush job, we’re on holiday, be quicker to do it himself. Anyway, permissions changed, idiot informed it quicker to change them himself.

Tuesday:

Hi. Our developer is being a hero and working over his holiday to get our new website developed, He has a problem with you installing Joomla wrong, can you fix this urgently!

OK. Now I am mad. Firstly: -Your developer may be working over his holidays, That does not mean everyone else should be working over theirs. Secondly:- The Install was not done incorrectly, Your developer does not seem to have a clue. Thirdly:- I spoke to your developer yesterday, If he’s not informed you thats his problem not mine!

Do you get the feeling I’m not a people person?

Wednesday:

Hi. I changed the permissions on the folder and it still will not let me upload files. Can we restart and install Joomla correctly!

OK, maybe he has a point. Lets look. ok, he lists the directory he having trouble uploading into, he says he set permissions to 777. Oh, thats odd, permissions have not been changed. oh look, theres a directory of the same name one branch down, and that has 777 permissions, The idiots only changed the wrong directory. I would not mind but he sent me the path to the correct one, why couldn’t he have followed his own instructions.

If I get another set of emails from him, I may just stop being polite.

No Comments

Off the Rails

Dec09

by CodeNinja

Published on: December 9, 2009

Categories: Customers, Programing

Tags: Customers, Programing, Work

Comments: No Comments

When learning a new programming language, The Internet convention is to make a “Hello World” program. For those of you none-coders out there, that is as simple as it sounds. A simple program to output the words “Hello World” onto your screen, or a page on a web browser. The idea is to use something very simple, so you can speedily see the output of your code before you start on anything more complex. In theory there is nothing simpler in code than the Hello world program.

For example:

PHP: <?php echo “Hello, world!”; ?>

ASP: <% Response.Write(“Hello, world!”) %>

ASP.NET: <asp:Label ID=“Label1″ runat=“server” Text=“Hello World”></asp:Label>

BASH: echo ‘Hello, world!’

You noticing a trend here? Very simple, and not much code involved. Hell if we look at assembly language itself, which is considered a complex and long language.

bdos    equ    0005H
start:  mvi    c,9
        lxi    d,msg$
        call   bdos
        ret             

msg$:   db    'Hello, world!$'
end     start

Now. this week I have had to look at the insanity that is called “Ruby on Rails“. One of our customers is demanding we host/support it as he now has a new “Developer” (And I use that title in the loosest way) And the new guy only does Ruby On Rails (Or RoR from now on). Now we have the facility to host it pre-setup on our servers. So all we had to do was throw up a quick test page to double check it was all running OK. What was needed was a RoR “Hello World” test.

So following the examples in a book I set about writing a simple application to display “Hello World” onto the web-page. It took several hours of work, required over 200 different files, and a virtual-Host setup different to normal hosting before the words “Hello World” were there on the screen.

How shit a language (If i can call it a language) is RoR? Instead of the normal ONE line of code it took 207 individual files to do the same thing. Has there ever been a shittier application language invented? If there is then I have never heard of it.

And to top it all off. the Developer in question seems clueless about the language. For example he did not have a public folder (required by Apache). he removed the default index page (which is correct) only he never re mapped root in the config/routes file. And has been bombarding our support ticketing system with very basic questions.

On a side note. While learning RoR, I got bored so played on the Interwebz. I found this developers, Twitter, Blog, Facebook, Company website. Yes it turns out he is a freelance web applications developer. And yet his website is the worst I have seen in a long time.

Takes all sorts I suppose.

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MPD – Its not just me!

Apr28

by CodeNinja

Published on: April 28, 2009

Categories: Customers

Tags: Customers, Work

Comments: No Comments

Its good to know that its not just my non user-friendly tendencies that makes me want to correct MPD’s irritating faults and dispose of his body down the well in the gardens of the Insane Asylum.

One of the fellow inmates here “Stylee” has been dealing with the guy all day so far, and it looks like the other inmates should start a book on which one of us flips out and kills him first.

It should be interesting the next time he makes it into the Asylum for a meeting.

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Why do they never learn?

Mar18

by CodeNinja

Published on: March 18, 2009

Categories: Customers

Tags: Customers, Work

Comments: No Comments

I am considering hiring a HitMan.

MPD has Just phone me up, disturbing my afternoon nap to ask “That functionality you said in your email that the site had. err How do I get it to work?”

So I start explaining it to him for the 6Th time, while just looking at his code to see if there’s a problem preventing the functionality working, and I spot a small problem, THE TOTAL LACK OF MY CODE.

He’s only gone and overwritten all my work with old copies of the files again!

Vent over, but seriously, If you know any good assassins? Let me Know

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Beware Ninja Developers

Mar12

by CodeNinja

Published on: March 12, 2009

Categories: Customers

Tags: Customers, Work

Comments: No Comments

All is on edge in the Techno Insane Asylum today, I think its just a coincidence that I also happen to have brought a shinai into the office today.

“You took a weapon to work?” I hear you ask!

Which tells me two things :-

You don’t know me,
You don’t know developers.

I should also point out that MPD was due into the office for a meeting today, This is the MPD who has on several instances deleted my work. And needs to be taught a lesson. And let me tell you its very satisfying to walk into a meeting with a customer who has annoyed you carrying a shinai, and answering his quizzical look “This is for a health & safety lecture, on the dangers of deleting a developers work!“

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Some people seem to want me to hurt them!

Mar09

by CodeNinja

Published on: March 9, 2009

Categories: Customers

Tags: Customers, Work

Comments: No Comments

“I’m not antisocial: I’m just not user friendly!“

I’m almost positive he’s doing it on purpose! In fact I am tempted to bring a shinai to the meeting tomorrow and teach the customer, not to mess with me!

I’m working on MPD‘s project. Now it was decided I was only doing the fancy backed magic that makes it all work, leaving a very boring, plane, basic front for a web designer to work his magic on.

That was the theory! only MPD has decided to do the web design himself to save money. He also plans on doing all future updates/tweaks to the code. Now on the whole I am in favour of the customers looking after their own sites once they are finished. As long as they know what they are doing, alas MPD has no skills in web design/programing/IT, But its all ok, He’s going to learn as he goes (and theres a two week going live turn around on the new system)

So, I have two weeks to write a full, multi user, multi site site, all complex stuff, and while I am doing this, he is writing the style and content on the same site i’m working on. And I’m sure he’s trying to see if he can make me explode. Some examples :-

Last wednesday I turn up for work, open up his site and stare blankly as all my links, and options are gone. Nothing, blank screen. Well that should be “apparently a blank screen” for all the data was there, it was just written in white writing on a white background. So quick email to the bloke asking basically “WHY?” to which it takes several follow up emails to point out “everything’s now white?” it really did take several emails.

Last Friday I refresh the form I’m working on for it all to vanish, well the labels were there, just all the data entry bits were gone. Now this time I was more prepared for it and checked, and sure enough it was there just invisible. Turns out he’s writing the style for IE and it does not work on other browsers.

No wonder their old developers quit.

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Why oh Gods, Why?

Feb12

by CodeNinja

Published on: February 12, 2009

Categories: Customers

Tags: Customers, Work

Comments: No Comments

So we have a new customer, lets call him “MPD“.

Simple job (in theory) He’s fallen out with his web designers/holders and needs his site putting up somewhere else, (or he split from company and wants to go into competition, I did not ask which). Now he had a copy of his site, and database, so it just needed uploading, and tweaking so it could pretend to be dozens of different companies… Easy!

OK, data uploaded, db converted from access to mysql, testing site…. Part doesn’t work. Checking… OK we missing loads of tables, inform MPD and get “oh, didn’t i give you latest version!” new DB got, uploaded…

So yesterday afternoon MPD came into the Insane Asylum under pretense of getting a quote for a site re-write. But no! all afternoon spent going over code “tweaking things” since the code is not a live version and has bugs. And its written by the person who hid the bible code in the bible.

At one point i spent 2 hours trying to find a file in use to fix one problem, only to find out MPD had put wrong values in.!!! Arrrggghhhhh!!!!

Then this morning, MPD phones up again to say the site mysteriously stopped working since it was fixed day before. After checking, i notice the files have a timestamp on them of midnight, so i check he did nothing to them “no i done nothing.!” “no i done nothing” “oh. you mean change things, yes i did that”

MPD only uploaded code copy from his laptop overwriting my changes!

I HATE CUSTOMERS!!!

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