by CodeNinja | Apr 11, 2012 | Customers
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.
by CodeNinja | Feb 9, 2012 | Customers
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.
by GothNinja | Sep 1, 2011 | Work, Ghosts
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.
by CodeNinja | Jul 1, 2011 | Work
The guys over at Buzby have been busy again. This time they have been considering “SECURITY” which I think is a very Important & Valid thing to be considering (Especially these days) Only I think they need to do some more work on it.
For example, they are concerned about sending customer data back and too to their CP’s. Now this I can understand, you would not like the idea of your personal details being handed about freely over the net. So this is how the details are now securely transferred.
I as a CP upload some data over SFTP to their sever, their systems runs on the data and does what I request (All nice and secure so far). I then have access (again by SFTP) to an output file telling me which records worked, if there was any errors, etc.
Only now I get an email to tell me if there is any problem with any records. But what if my email is compromised? its not very secure so they put the text they are sending me in a file, ZIP it up with a password protection and email me the password protected file. And then at the same time send me another email with the password to the file in it. So if my email had been compromised they person would be unable to access the file since the password was in a separate email.
In theory sending the data in locked files is good, but it should be with an agreed on password so the password does not get emailed. Or maybe a PGP encrypted email? Or I could just collect the file over SFTP which was set up wit certificates, encryption, blah, blah, blah.
I’m sorry, I’m all for trying to improve security (I need to hurt one of the drones at the Insane Asylum and point out his passwords are retarded) But emailing the password to a secure zip file to the same email address, at the same time? Madness.
Also, they are not very long passwords, I’m sure a zip password recovery program would access it in no time at all. (I may test that and tell them how easy it was to access the file without the password)
I do give them ★★ (2 Stars) for at least considering security!
by CodeNinja | Apr 20, 2011 | Work, Office
by CodeNinja | Mar 31, 2011 | Work
Its been a while since I have vented my spleen on here about the things that go on at the Asylum. So I thought I would take some time out and have a little “Vent“.
I was originally hired at the Asylum as a Developer, and advanced my way up the ranks to Head of Development, then after an asylum wide reshuffle I relocated to the Systems Department as a Linux Sys.Admin.
Now I occasionally get thrown small development jobs are are complicated or in a rush, which is fine as we all like to help each other out. Only now its getting a bit silly.
I’m thrown Dev job after Dev job and told theres more coming in (am I a dev again?)
Then “Oh can you just make some android apps for layar?” (I know nothing about phone dev, and not done any programing in many many years)
Followed by “I’ve ordered a Mac Mini, so you can start on making some layar based iPhone apps now” (Ignoring the facts 1)I’ve never used a mac 2)I know nothing about using mac’s or mac software & 3) I know nothing about programing iPhones)
Now I’ve been asked to take part in a conference call to deal with a customer who’s website is bringing down the windows server its hosted on to discuss best ways of resolving these issues. (err I barley use Windows as a user unless I really have to, and that’s normal windows, I know nothing about Windows servers. I think our Windows Server guy would have been a better choice for this call)
And that’s just this week.
So here I am, your friendly neighbourhood Swiss-army CodeNinja
