confessions of a network manager

Hello, operator?

2006-04-05T15:47:00.000+01:00

I’ve got an old bank of data modems dialling out repeatedly to one of our suppliers at the moment. It’s good fun. Since most PBX’s don’t know what to do when you don’t select an option, it transfers you through to an operator. Of course, in this case, the agent on the phone will just get a load of whistles + squeals until the hang up. Probably got 15-20 modems on the go at the moment, all set for auto-redial.

Might give it another 20 minutes or so then call them up and see if we can discuss why my parts ordered yesterday for a 9a.m delivery still haven’t turned up and why I got a load of attitude from some snotty little kid plucked straight from school trying to patronise me about the fact that they don’t handle deliveries personally and so can’t be held responsible for delays.

Yes, sunshine, when you’re dealing with me, it’s all very personal.

A shock a day keeps the bandits at bay

2006-04-05T10:46:00.000+01:00

Am really not in the mood to be here today. Whenever you end up having to work such a weird couple of shift patterns, you just feel wiped out. This is the downside to working in IT support and only just about made up for by the additional pay allowance. Still, since I’m unlikely to win any awards for employee of the month, I’m not too bothered.

We’ve actually had quite a few problems with vandalism on machines recently. People have trying to prise the cases open and are breaking the locks on them (yes, most are lockable cases). This is annoying as it means a report has to be filed, I have to deal with the helldesk to get it resolved, and money which should be getting filtered in my beer money or junket fund gets squandered on replacement cases.

So, am running a little 12v battery inside the cases with a wiring loop running to the lock at the rear. Insulated off, this should prevent the entire case becoming live, although to be honest I wouldn’t be too concerned if it did. But, 12v is enough to give people a decent little shock should they try anything.

Pop-ups galore

2006-04-04T16:04:00.000+01:00

My attention returned to the intern this afternoon. After a bit of a nap followed by an extended lunch hour and a half, I kept using Remote Support to take control and load up various sites unsuitable for the office, shall we say. Hoping that his supervisor would walk past in light of his performance assessment from last week, this kept me entertained for a good hour or so. Don’t know why he didn’t just logoff. But, I overhead one of the sales assistants talking about it around the coffee machine - along the lines of “and did you see what he was looking at earlier?!”.

Word is bound to spread and get back to his supervisor by Friday morning…

Rise + shine

2006-04-04T11:06:00.000+01:00

Truth be told, I’d fallen asleep around midnight and was rudely awoken at 4a.m by the early-bird engineer. A good trick I learnt a while back was to close your office door and scatter a box of paper clips on the floor. Then lie down with your foot pressed against the door and have a nice bit sleep. Should someone walk in, the door is stopped by your foot, you get woken up by the bashing of wood against bone, and it looks like you’re just trying to pick up all the paper clips. Of course, a comfortable floor helps.

Still, my cross-over cabling caused chaos. The early-bird engineer replacing me didn’t perform any routine checks (I knew he wouldn’t), so it wasn’t until a little after 8a.m the problems started. The helldesk were overloaded by 8.30a.m apparently, and they’d actually called me by 9a.m. I managed to wangle an additional call-out bonus since technically I was off-shift, and rocked up half an hour ago to what looked like a scene from War of the Worlds.

All sorted now though. Everyone thinks I’m wonderful by getting it all resolved so quickly. The helldesk look like (even more, if possible) incompetent fools. Plus, it’ll be lunch time in a little over an hour.

Now then, where’s those paperclips…

Keeping an eye open for ghosts

2006-04-03T22:02:00.000+01:00

Looking on the bright side, I didn't have to face a Monday morning. Just as well really. With payday falling ever so conveniently on Friday, the weekend was begging to eat (or rather drink) up all my money. Still, having being called last night by our on-call engineer saying he was ill (he better be on death's door), I pulled working the graveyard shift tonight.

For those not familiar with graveyard shifts, it's where you get to sleep at your desk, wander around the building checking through people's drawers for good stuff to steal, and get paid an out-of-hours bonus. A good deal all things considered, except we don't have the 12-hour rule built into our contracts (something that will be changed in a couple of months when it's due for renewal), so I'll be working until 4a.m, then will be back in at 10a.m. It's a split-shift thing which balances out apparently. Not that I'll do much tomorrow either.

But, enough of the explanations. I like the graveyard shift, aside from the previously mentioned pleasures of getting paid extra to steal stuff, as the security guards are always a good laugh. Not uncommon for the scotch to get brought out by midnight and low-grade porn to be loaded up on the security monitors. I also have a good few hours without any of the helldesk around which makes it very peaceful, and loads of time to cause problems.

In fact, I've come up with a good one this evening - I'm about half-way through switching all our backbone patch cables to cross-over cables. I know fine well none of the techies on the rota first thing in the morning will figure it out, meaning I get to ride into work on my steed at 10a.m (well, maybe a touch later...), shout at them all to give me 20 minutes in the server room to sort things out, before casually walking out with everything working.

One worrying thing has caught my attention though. There's a few people reading this now (the more the merrier - tell all your friends, especially those working in IT that want some practical suggestions rather than comic-book stories found elsewhere) and e-mailing me, but a certain Snowman (or Snowball, or something) displays a worrying self-photo on their website. Nuff said about that the better. Keep up the studies young man - you'll get that job flipping burgers in McDonalds once you graduate no problem.

Things not to do on Friday - 1) annoy me

2006-03-31T11:49:00.000+01:00

Hacking the access time logs on our swipe card system is becoming my new favourite hobby. I got bladdered last night and only rolled into work about 20 minutes ago, but again, if anyone checks with security I entered the building at 8.26a.m.

My adjustments yesterday really seems to have caused problems for our intern. Saw him holding back the tears as I came in. Looked like he was heading to the beancounters, probably to pour his heart to his cousin, wondering how he could have received such a harsh assessment of his work when he’s tried so hard to be punctual and hasn’t even used the Internet all week. Still, he’s got next to turn over a new leaf and really excel himself, so long as I don’t get in the way, of course.

But, as soon as I parked myself in my office, the phone goes. One of our sister companies asking for some IT support. Asked them how they got my number and why they weren’t running through their own systems support and it turns out this seminar the IT Manager attended a couple of days ago included him handing out my phone number to the execs from our sister companies in a shameless brown-nosing effort to keep them sweet. As if running all the systems here isn’t a full time job (well, as full time as an 11.20a.m start can be…), I now have incompetent fools from other companies wanting to be best-buddies with me needing help installing their new printer. Told them their printer actually uses Canon drivers, and directed them to the Canon website in search of a 993c inket printer driver to download and install.

Might need to update by inbound call handling scripts to re-direct them elsewhere like I often do with salespeople. And I should go explain to the boss why it’s not a good idea to hand out my direct line to every Tom, Dick + Harry who can’t tell the ‘On’ button from their own arse.

Performance evaluations

2006-03-30T14:38:00.000+01:00

Well, the hardware tech got around to re-imaging the IT Manager’s laptop, much to my amusement. The IT Manager was not happy and has launched some internal investigation to find the ‘joker’ that ‘violated acceptable user policies’ on so many of the office machines. He feels he needs to crack down the amount of ‘practical jokes’ going on. I take offence at that, wasn’t a practical joke at all – well, the Live CD’s were, but his machine was an unashamed act of pure vandalism.

But, our intern has not escaped my games today. After getting bored with this head of department from this morning (and yes, her home directory isn’t very homely anymore, unless you live in a home recently burgled leaving nothing but some old milk and cheese in the fridge), I decided to play with various log files.

I know he’s going to get his end of week evaluation tomorrow morning, which includes going over things like how punctual you’ve been, amount of time taken on breaks, internet usage times, etc. They’re now showing him rocking up anywhere between 5 and 25 minutes late the last 4 days, leaving a couple of minutes early each night, and taking a few extra minutes each break period. Plus, there are a number of ‘Access Denied’ messages for his Internet usage.

It’s nothing that will get him booted out, wouldn’t be any fun that way, but certainly enough for him to get a rap on the knuckles and leave him squirming to think of excuses.

I am not a morning person

2006-03-30T10:27:00.000+01:00

Just had a head of department send me a very snotty e-mail complaining about my attitude this morning. She caught me in the lift and asked me to set a projector up in one of the meeting rooms to which I replied the helldesk were responsible for such requests, not the network manager, who has slightly more pressing matters to take of. Like getting breakfast from the canteen. Or a cup of coffee.

Turns it she took offence, surprise surprise, and is insisting on an apology. I would send a reply to her e-mail, except her e-mail had just gone down, taking her mailbox with it. Am guessing when the helldesk try restoring it, a security error might present itself informing them the operation could not be completed. I suppose I could call her on the phone, but then again I’m guessing her phone is currently engaged, on a call to the helldesk reporting her machine ‘just died on me’. A similar problem to her mailbox may become apparent with her home directory. Haven’t decided on that last part.

How’s that for a bad attitude?

Drink, anyone?

2006-03-29T14:59:00.000+01:00

Well, the IT Manager only rolled in 20 minutes ago. Must have been a free lunch on or something. Claimed the traffic was a nightmare too, which of course explains why it took 2 ½ hours to travel 25 minutes across town from where his seminar was. Got to hand it to him, he’s a master at blagging free food + drink.

Still, the helldesk have been suitably confused by his machine continually booting into Edubuntu each time they power his laptop up. I casually wandered past and suggested the laptop gets re-imaged, knowing the IT Manager probably has a stack of porn on it already, even though he only received it a couple of weeks ago. The colour drained from his face quicker than the remaining drops of wine from the bottom of his glass when someone informs him it’s their round.

Wonder how long it will take for them to figure out the BIOS has been changed and the CD-ROM disabled. Suppose it will keep the techie busy for a good hour or so.

Look kids - pretty icons

2006-03-29T11:57:00.000+01:00

With the IT Manager out this morning, it’s been a perfect opportunity to have some fun. Can remember reading a couple of weeks ago about some French guy popping Linux Live CD’s into computers in various shops around Paris or somewhere foreign like that, then rebooting them for a laugh. Let the side down a bit by also providing instructions as how to get Windows back, but the idea was sound.

So, whipped off a dozen or so Edubuntu CD’s (very kidified and simplistic!) on our duplicator first thing this morning and wandered around the building slipping them into various drives whilst people had gone off for their morning coffee. Of course, the IT Manager’s shiny new laptop has been treated to a full install. Gave me something to do for half an hour.

The helldesk have already figured out what’s been going on after the phones started ringing and one of them checked out the machine in question, so are now just telling people to reboot and remove the CD. They’ll just tell the IT Manager to do this when he gets back into the office this afternoon and that’s the fun will really start…

Up + down + up + down

2006-03-28T14:43:00.000+01:00

Turns out playing with the lifts wasn't much of a challenge. They hadn't changed the admin codes so it was very easy to zip down to the basement and randomly mash the keypads to send lifts to various different floors. One of the security cameras is on the blink meaning I can't see when the fools from the beancounter department are using the lift, spoiling part of the fun.

But, at least the interns' machine was returned from the workshops with new RAM. Am concerned about the hardware tech - he never repairs things that quickly. Will need see what's wrong with him. Gives me more opportunities to cause some problems for the little kid though. E-mails could be the next step in harassing him, or MSN maybe. Was being very (un)subtle in talking with one of the helldesk trying to suss out whether IM was allowed in the workplace. MSN is too easy to intercept, though scanning through some of the stuff our very naughty admin assistant from research sends to her boyfriend certainly brightens the day up somewhat!

Need coffee quick

2006-03-28T10:35:00.000+01:00

Admittedly I had far too much to drink last night, which explains why I didn't roll into work until 10a.m. Being able to manipulate the access card systems means the logs will actually show I got in at 8.20a.m, much to the annoyance of the IT manager who's already started yapping on, thinking he's caught me only just getting into the office. I told him to go check the logs with security if he doesn't believe me, and explained I'd being doing some maintenance on the finance server to ensure the root cause of yesterday's failure had been eliminated.

It's been a while since I messed around with the elevator controls. That could be today's task. When the maintenance guys were in a couple of months ago it looked suspiciously like they were changing the pin codes for the admin menus. Naughty naughty. Still, I do like a challenge.

No prizes for guessing who's likely to get stuck in it.

Maybe he enjoyed his first day...

2006-03-27T17:22:00.000+01:00

So the intern has been making friends on the helldesk. I assumed they tech would have ran a memtest off the bat since that's what most of them do regardless of the problem being presented. Turns it he poked around for an hour an a half before taking the machine back to the workshop.

Off the intern wanders, apparently being collared to help-out his beancounter cousin. Mysteriously, the finance server went down 10 minutes later and still has come back on-line.

I'm hoping by tomorrow afternoon people will start muttering how systems fail whenever he goes near them. There's an angle in that somewhere - am sure slipping a few ideas in the IT manager's head along the lines of sabotage would do the trick.

Fresh faces

2006-03-27T12:01:00.000+01:00

Word is the beancounter’s cousin is around. Suppose it’s good he didn’t start last week – would have been too obvious if he’d had a peaceful week and then bad stuff starts happening to him now that I’m back. Anyway. I’ve got a couple of banks of RAM that I know are well dodgy, so just waiting for the kid to toddle off for lunch before switching them around in his machine. The old classics always work best - break him in gently kinda thing.

Last week's fun + games

2006-03-27T08:59:00.000+01:00

Quiet last week, eh?! Turns out I managed to blag a junket for the whole week at some mountain retreat to build team leadership. You’re probably wondering why I’d go for such a thing given my inherit hatred of all things management. Easy – food + drink were free all evening, and since you got to pick + choose which seminars you went to, it was oh too easy to simply claim you were in another session as opposed to being laid out in bed from too much free beer the night before.

Ending the week with a paintballing shoot-out, literally, was an incentive not to be missed – you should have heard the team leaders squeal like little piggies. Was even more amusing when you shot them in the back of head, knowing they would still be the in the game but with one hell of a headache. Funny how they didn’t cotton on to the fact the opposing team was ahead of them yet they were getting shot from behind…

Decisions decisions

2006-03-16T11:22:00.000+01:00

I’m in two minds today. Our possible-intern is due to visit us at some point this afternoon, with his beancounter cousin showing him around the place. I’m trying to decide whether to scare the crap out of the pair of them by trapping them in a lift or locking them in a stairwell with the fire exits bolted before setting off the fire alarms and really frighten the kid away, or be all friendly + polite to lull him into a false sense of security. Being all smiley would probably lead to a prolonged period of misery I could potentially cause next month, it’s just whether I can lower myself to such a persona. I mean, what if other members of staff saw me and got the wrong impression of me?

Maybe there will be some fresh blood after all

2006-03-15T16:04:00.000+01:00

I overheard in the canteen that this intern that bailed on us had claimed it was because of a “threatening and intimidating working environment”. One of the beancounters is related to the kid somehow and was proudly telling everyone. Went quiet when I walked past carrying a steak knife (which was genuinely for my lunch and nothing else) so I’m guessing this criticism (?) is somehow aimed at me.

The beancounter had gone on to say he was going to try encouraging the intern to change his mind and join as he believed it “held good opportunities” (meaning if you kiss the ass of every boss in the building, you’ll get promoted regardless of ability). You know what, I hope he does change his mind. We could do with fresh, enthusiastic faces around here. Preferably they should be female, blonde, and well toned, but interns are just too easy to wind-up and I could do with one around here again…

Scaring people off before even meeting them

2006-03-15T12:15:00.000+01:00

Some intern that was due to start with us next month has decided against it. Seems he’d been back to see his careers advisor from whatever waste of time college course he’d barely scraped a pass on, who had advised against it. Am guessing this was someone from our local adult training college, as we had a couple of their students out on work placement for a month a while back that only lasted a week. They claimed it wasn’t a very nice work environment and they were unsure whether or not to pursue a career in IT.

If you can’t stand the heat (or me throwing a rail-mounting kit for a 5U server at you), get out the server room…

Fun way to start the morning

2006-03-15T09:58:00.000+01:00

Sure enough, one of the grunts (literally – you should see this ‘lady’…) kicked up a fuss about the heating problems. Bitching + complaining, it seems, is a method she believes will improve things. God help her if she tries it on with the workmen - they’ve been out here before and I’ve never seen the air turn as blue as when someone questioned if they could possibly work a bit faster! I mean, isn’t it obvious you need at least a 15-20 minute tea break every hour?

Anyway, she’s been trying to secure one of the interview rooms to work in today thinking they’ll be warmer than her department. Funnily enough, all interview rooms, conference rooms and meeting rooms have been mysteriously booked out for the rest of the week.

To make my mood even better, had another grunt (again, only barely permissible as female) wanting me to set up a projector in the conference room. How the hell she got my mobile number is a matter to be investigated later, but I directed her back to the helldesk for such things, since there’s already a system setup to request such support. Won’t matter, there’s no network down there this morning…

Crashed computer? Wait until tomorrow...

2006-03-14T15:31:00.000+01:00

I’ve just had a call transferred through from the helldesk supervisor. Some head of department bitching + moaning and only willing to deal with me. Pleased with having something to do I suppose, I casually answer, before being snowed under with a barrage of abuse. The computer was stuck whilst loading the login screen - nothing warranting an “emergency”, really.

Step 1 – reboot the computer. Except she wasn’t having any of it. Claimed she’d already tried that and the helpdesk had already tried fobbing her off with such a suggestion. I explained this will solve it 99% of the time, but no, she wanted someone to come and look at it. Not excepting me sending down one of the techies as “I don’t trust those incompetent fools to fix it” (a fair comment, I suppose), she insisted I went to look at it. Me, going to look over a crashed machine? Whatever next!

Anyway, sure enough, rebooting the machine fixed it. I then explained to her the value of my time and the number of other systems I have to manage, hence the reason we have the helpdesk setup to assist with such trivial matters. Have stuck a black mark next to her name and set her machine to re-build off an old Win98 image this evening.

Smugly enjoying other's McAfee disasters

2006-03-14T12:50:00.000+01:00

Just had a nice long chat with another network manager (who shall remain nameless) in a blind panic as they’ve spent the last 3 days trying to recover from the mess McAfee caused with their faulty virus updates provided on Friday. He asked if we had experienced any problems. I told him we used proper virus scanning software.

I’d like the shake the programmer’s hand that created such a terrible bit of code. Seriously, you couldn’t script that if you tried. Well, you could – in fact, I have from time to time. But I don’t think I’ve ever done it accidentally.

At least they have a decent backup system in operation – I doubt our backup operator for this week has even changed the tapes from the weekend. I should go check the rota and see if we need a little chat like a week or two ago…

Slow mornings require creating your own mischief

2006-03-14T11:12:00.000+01:00

Trawling the Internet logs isn’t finding anything interesting and even sitting watching my favourite office-gossipers on the mail queues doesn’t bring anything juicy. I did go in and change a few lines of code on our helpdesk system so that the helldesk geeks keep getting pop-ups every 5 seconds if there are calls in the queue waiting to be handled. That’s keeping them on their toes – rather than simply figure out what’s causing the problem with the helpdesk, they’re actually trying to resolve all outstanding problems! Probably because the constant pop-ups are stopping them drooling over some photos of whatever B-list celebrity has been caught with her pants down (literally) and has been plastered all over the web overnight.

Not even a sniff of severe snow storms

2006-03-14T09:47:00.000+01:00

Surprise surprise, no more snow than normal last night, so everyone's complaining about how the weather reporters never get it right. They actually got it spot on, but being a weather reporter is about as thankless a job as being in IT support.

Apparently there are parts of the heating systems playing up and maintenance are claiming it's a big job. That's nothing new though - the 2nd floor restrooms had a leaky sink for 5 weeks and they claimed they were waiting on a new washer for it. I admire them really - their dedication to the fine art of work dodging and excuse generating really is top notch! But, am sure some low-level receptionist will kick up a fuss and start sprouting union regulations about minimum working temperatures and crap like that. Again, as much as their high-pitched, hormone induced complaining annoys me, their persistence in trying to blag an early finish is commendable!

Still, am expecting a call from one of our regular sales guys today. He only lives a few blocks away and he flashed his lights and waved as I past him on the way home last night. Usually he then calls the next day trying to sell something outrageously overpriced and that we really don't need. Hence the reason I try to step in between him and the IT manager - at least this way I know what crap we're gonna get stuck with.

Chinese whispers and a complete lack of facts

2006-03-13T16:56:00.000+01:00

Everyone seems to be getting wound up about the weather and nickin' off early for fear of being snowed in. I mean seriously, we get this all the time and you just get on with it. Plus, the severe weather warnings are for about 200 miles west of here but everyone has been told by someone else (that hasn't even seen the news) that it's due to hit here. If worse comes to worse, we can always start a fire with some of our old machines we have lying around. Since it's now technically illegal to throw old equipment into the skip, a plethora of companies have sprung up all making easy money by carting them off for recycling - I'd like to know how much actually gets recycled. Of course, I still prefer to take a 6" nail and hammer it straight through the hard drive to ensure successful data protection!

But, if everyone is buggerin' off early...

Why add to your problems?

2006-03-13T14:43:00.000+01:00

A prefect way to heap more problems onto yourself has just been illustrated.

Having logged a call on Friday with regards to a printer not working, the user has now called me directly complaining because it hasn't been resolved yet. Now, far be it from me to explain that the helldesk do bugger all to speed up the processing of support problems, especially on a Friday, and that the problem seems to have occured since there was a power cut on the 2nd floor south block which I caused as I was bored, but I'm sure I can now find (or rather create) other things that won't work on her machine, such as her data logging tools, or maybe her Yahoo! account.

Nah, scrap that - is more fun to filter her Yahoo! messages to see what saucy stuff she keeps sending to her fella...

Tapping in to the security cameras

2006-03-13T12:51:00.000+01:00

I've been casually checking out some of our new security cameras that have (very slowly with these engineers...) been installed over the last week or so. They're all high-resolution, colour cameras, and the quality really is quite impressive. Of course, since our IT Manager likes buzzwords, they're all IP enabled. This is quite fun, as they asked me whether we had any certified installers to help run the cabling back. Seriously, our techies certified in anything other than slacking off and porn-browsing? In the end, they had to bring one of their own guys. I did kinda raise the fact that since they were being paid to install this equipment, they should have their own engineers anyway. Was more along the lines of asking how they have such incompetent fools installing the equipment and charging an extortianate amount for something we'll need half a dozen call-outs to fix in the first month.

But, all this means that I can now pull in feeds from all the cameras. This has already proven useful as I can spot people approaching my office and make a fast exit down the side stairwell. The main reason it's useful is for blackmailing people - you'd be amazed how easy it is to blend in different video clips, add bits here, take bits out there. All of sudden, a handbag can become one of the projector bags with the new ÃÂ£900 Toshiba projectors safely padded inside...

Could have a fun afternoon. Especially if I start switching feeds to see if security are paying attention to what's on screen.

A little ray of sunshine

2006-03-13T11:05:00.000+01:00

Given the fact that it's Monday morning, I'm actually in quite a good mood. This is also surprising since, and keep this quiet, it's my birthday. People around here aren't stupid enough to try anything, they learnt a few years ago it's simply not worth it. Of course, this fear also means I miss out on the usual presents, though people generally buy me drinks down the pub anyways. Funny that. You'd think they were all trying to keep in my good books. I must admit, I don't mind being bribed with alcohol at all though, so I'm not complaining.

Anyway, this otherwise dull and boring Monday has been brightened up by the appearance of four new temps. I've only seen three of them loitering around, but I must admit a little bit of eye candy always brightens the place up. One of them has also been posted to help within the training department, which conveniently is just outside my office, meaning I get the pleasure of seeing her on a regular basis.

Could be a good few weeks - I think they're here on 2 month placements. So long as it doesn't make me go soft on people. I have a reputation to keep. And on that note, think I'll make a start trawling the Internet logs.

Reckon it's time for an early finish

2006-03-10T15:22:00.000+01:00

Decided I didn't fancy the idea of a call-out over the weekend, although I do see them as a nice little earner on the paycheck now and again, so made sure the helldesk stopped away from all networking equipment this afternoon. Didn't cause any trouble myself either. Think I expended all my bastardly-energy this morning. I did, however, remind one of the new interns in whatever department he was telling me about that never interests me, how easy it is for new entries to appear in Internet log files and for graphic images to accidentally get copied into home drives, co-inciding with a report to their supervisor for abuse of the computer systems. He was annoying me claiming he could hack into our network easy 'cos he saw me installing new wireless gear yesterday.

Will have to keep an eye on that one. I never like smart-Alecs, especially those that might actually know a little bit about computers.

Some people just make things difficult for themselves

2006-03-10T10:52:00.000+01:00

I've been in shit-kicking mode all morning. First, our support tech for the SQL servers turned up at 8.30a.m supposedly to fix a couple of problems. Except their new policy is to take backups away and work on them off-site, then supply a patch to be applied against the database. I asked whether this is part of their new 7 awards for excellence they're bragging about on their website. I left him sitting with the helldesk geeks for an hour before I copied the SQL-pair to tape for him.

Then, we've had an interactive whiteboard in one our training rooms on the blink for a week, which the helldesk assured me they had logged a call back with the supplier for a replacement cable. Sure enough, for once, they had, so a further phone calling including some choice words about sticking the faulty cable where the sun doesn't shine followed. The new cable should be with me first thing Monday morning.

Now, am trying to chase up an order for a load of workstations which have been AWOL for the last 3 weeks. Well, it's only £12,000 worth of gear, so why should I get annoyed with the sales monkey who doesn't know his arse from his elbow? Just wait till he leaves his shiny BMW in the carpark next time he comes a knocking trying to flog me a load of crap...

A quick round-up before I head down the pub

2006-03-09T15:30:00.000+01:00

Well, I decided to leave the admin assistant's mobile phone in the fridge. It's still there and has already turned itself off, so am guessing the slightly chilly environment is having some effect. I was too lazy to leave my office this afternoon so couldn't be bothered to cause her too many problems.

Miss Laptop from marketing got one of her lackies to bring her laptop to me. She actually spoke to me this morning asking when I was going to fix it. Planning on leaving it in a cupboard for a week or so, then re-enable the DVD drive and virtual memory, claiming it was a big job.

And no, I haven't forgotten about the HR wench. The helldesk geek seemed to figure out what was causing the endless reboots and a little smile has been brought to my face watching the amount of inbound e-mails going to her inbox after the outbursts seemingly sent from her account this morning...

A nice twist to procedings

2006-03-09T13:09:00.000+01:00

Haven't decided what to do just yet, but the admin assistant has jumped to the IT Boss complaining because I'm refusing to help her with accessing the e-mail systems. Not a way to get into my good books, as anything coming from the IT Boss gets a +5 annoyance modifier meaning her problem gets dropped further down my list of things to do. Am thinking I should do more than simply leave her mobile phone to freeze itself to death.

Time for a quick experiment

2006-03-09T12:40:00.000+01:00

There's an administrative assistant (which means she wanders around doing nothing all day) that constantly comes directly to me incase I have a couple of minute spare to show her how to use her e-mail and the like, and she's one of these clingy "I'm your best-buddy" kinda person. It's annoying as hell. Her mobile phone is usually left in one of the little break-rooms throughout the building, and it always plays an insanely annoying ringtone. Why it's left lying around for someone to half-inch and left turned on I don't know. Sure enough, half-way through lunch it starting ringing "Who let the dogs out". As an experiment, purely scientific you understand, it's now on the top shelf of the fridge with the temperature dropped about as low it will go to see what effect it has on the electrical components within the phone. I'll keep you updated.

Need a coffee

2006-03-09T08:41:00.000+01:00

Just checked our call tracking system, and it doesn't look like the helldesk geek figured out the problem down in HR. Shame. On a better day, I would have quietly removed the startup script and let it be a lesson to her, but since she was waiting for me last night as I walked out across the car park and confronted me about it, I'm just going to leave it.

Might go forge some e-mails too so that when her computer is finally back up and running (I do have some faith in the little geek), there'll be some rather choice e-mails sat for her to read in response to some of things sent out to her colleagues...

Is amazing how quickly news travels

2006-03-08T15:03:00.000+01:00

I've taken to wandering around with one of those dual-purpose power tools where they're either a hammer drill or powered screwdriver. I have a drill bit on. Haven't really been carrying it for any particular purpose, although I am installing some new wireless equipment throughout the building to give better coverage. The news of this spread quickly and bizarrely my mobile hasn't gone off once. Could be down to the factthat I made sure my desk phone isn't forwarding calls.

Technically, the exta wireless equipment is so 'mobile workers' (or 'slackers' as they're more commonly referred to) don't need a static network connection which would mean a costly desk, thus losing office space. But it's mainly because I charge people a modest fee to allow them to pipe their laptops or Palm through the wireless system, claiming it gets past the Internet filtering at work. Technically, yes, but it's also so I can pull up more porn + mp3 logs than I can handle and snag a copy of the good stuff for myself. Never know when you might need some evidence of dodgy Internet usage as a form of blackmail too.

One down, one to go

2006-03-08T11:24:00.000+01:00

So, I went and let the little grot out of the server room. I think he's learnt his lesson. Spoilt the fun I had planned for this morning though in terms of getting back at the HR wench. Reckon it's about time I dropped my favourite reboot batch script onto her machine under the 'Startup' folder. Then, just take a walk down to the 2nd floor wiring closet and pull out her Cat5e cable for a few minutes - the helldesk always get people to logoff and then login back in again as their initial response. Works like a charm. Endless reboots here we come.
This way, I get a two-sie - the HR madam gets fed up because she won't be able to chat with her twunt of a boyfriend via MSN for a couple of hours, and the helldesk geek gets to scuttle around for a while trying to figure it out.

Nearly lunch time too. Wonder who's round it is...

If only people would learn to share

2006-03-08T08:44:00.000+01:00

I had to wander down to where the junior techs lurk when they're not out screwing things up this morning. That really confused them, as it wasn't even 8.30a.m. I like to keep them on their toes, and sometimes it's worth getting into work at least around about on time just to put the fear of God into them. Asking to see the rota to check who is responsible for backups this week, one of the little weedlings started shuffling for the door. I already knew who was meant to be taking care of such a vital task considering the amount of times I power-cycle servers when I'm annoyed with people or erase their home directory purely to give the junior techs a chance to riffle through their notes trying to remember the restore procedures, as I'd seen him trying to carry seven AIT2 tapes without much luck and bouncing them all down the east-wing stairwell on Monday morning.

Deciding it was time for a refresher in backup procedures, I asked him to meet me in our main server room. I could swear one of the other techs recited a short prayer for him. As if that would help much. After a short pop-quiz starting out by asking how long 36.7Gb would take to backup onto an AIT3 tape just to flumox him completely, I moved onto the English part of the quiz.

"Now, tell me what day is written on that backup tape please".

"monday" came the reply.

Moving on, "Okay, how about this one, one of our core financial database servers?"

"monday" starting to sweat a bit.

"Just to make numbers up, let's pick one more... This one?"

"mond..." starting to trail off realising it was like trying ice-skate up a hill.

I nearly let him off when he explained it was because they had all been busy playing Rainbow Six 4: LockDown in one of the training rooms after someone brought their X-box in and hooked it up to the projectors and surround-sound system. He could have avoided being locked in the server room for the next hour or so if only they'd invited me to join in.

Gives me something to do for the rest of the afternoon...

2006-03-07T14:43:00.000+01:00

That was plain naughty. Just had a call routed through from reception meaning it couldn't be subjected to my usual rigorous screening process, having explained many times that under no circumstances are calls to be transferred like that. Spoils the fun, letting salesmen get straight through without a fight. The guy asked to speak to the ICT co-ordinator, a posh title I thought, and as soon as I gave my name he said "Okay, we'll send out some details and then call you back." No you won't sunshine. Not sure I phrased it quite as politely as that though. I wasn't in the best of moods with Deputy Dawg wandering around all afternoon (not sure what section he's deputy of, but I'm guessing slacking off) and I also heard (from reading stuff in the e-mail queue) that a certain someone in HR has been spreading stories about my drunken escapades from a year ago with someone from the science section. Not sure why she's spreading it around now, but things like that don't please me much. I now have to focus my attentions on that little madam, plus remind the receptionist about the protocol for dealing with phone calls to the IT department, i.e. hacking her Hotmail account and spewing out shit to everyone in her address book then removing her MSN access for a couple of days.

Can't a guy take a 1 hour 15 minute lunch break in peace?

2006-03-07T12:59:00.000+01:00

I reckon there's some inner-circle of salesmen, where once a month they all get together, dressed in black robes, and share telephone numbers and e-mail addresses of those they managed to get to answer the phone. Thankfully, my incoming line as nifty caller-id enabled. Any number I don't recognise, and some that I do, get forwarded to an 0906 number. Not quite the answer the salesman is likely to expect, Busty Barbara asking if you've been a naughty, naughty boy. I really wish I could setup a quick message to be played before transfering them - something like "I'm trying to stuff my face with sandwiches whilst checking the Internet logs for any decent porn activity, leave me alone".

Shaping up to be a good day

2006-03-07T09:02:00.000+01:00

I already have my first blacklisted-user today. A blacklisted-user is anyone that calls before 8.30a.m. I usually get into the office around 8.15a.m depending on whether I can be bothered to get out of bed on time, but people should know not to call before, say, 10ish. The brighter ones have realised that their laptop restarting in the middle of a presentation, or being redirected to porn sites with every web address they type in isn't just coincidence.

Right now, I'm waiting for Miss S to bring her laptop to me. She doesn't talk to me anymore, tries to go through it IT Manager (a clueless fool like at IT Managers) instead, which just makes it funnier. It's like a bizarre game of Chinese-whispers with management buzz-words thrown in for good measure by time the problem gets back to me. He does like his buzz-words. Last time Miss S brought her laptop in, I stuck the recovery DVD in and wiped the lot. Silly girl had added an admin account for her friend, turned off Windows Update + AV updates, then wondered why it was slow. Couldn't be bothered to clean it properly - it was the middle of the summer and I wanted to be down the pub. They'd just opened their new beer garden and got a tap of Carling Extra Cold installed. Losing her cat photos made her cry in the canteen apparently. That was a bonus, I wasn't trying to do that. I had disabled the DVD drive within device manager too, just for the hell of it, meaning she couldn't re-install any software, and knocked virtual memory off, explaining why she also complains it's running like a bitch. This way, I get to fix it in 2 minutes, claim it took all afternoon, and bugger off to the pub early.

That's if her makeup can be cracked into something resembling a smile in order to talk to me...