Oh, For the Love of...

[Geek King]

Little background: The place I'm doing IT for now uses a specialized program that is used only by places that do a particular thing. This program has its problems, but is better than the other choices at this point, according to my superiors. One of the problems is a "memory leak" that caused the server it is on to lock up, and not allow users to log on until it is rebooted. This happens about once a week.

Now, as we don't have the network power to do roaming desktops, I have to set up users on every computer they need access on, and we have offices spread out all over town that some users rotate to from day to day. Kind of annoying, but not bad, all-in-all.

Yesterday, I needed to set up a user in an office that is new to her rotation, so I did so. Later that day, the special program we use required the server be rebooted. We were notified of the problem by several users, but the one I set up that morning took the cake. She wrote an extensive letter to everyone in the IT department (that includes me), that basically blamed me for the program going down organization-wide because I had been working on her computer earlier. This is much like blaming your auto mechanic for potholes on the highway.

I swear, I think these people think computers work using pixies and elves, with the IT department being the magicians that wave our magic wands over it all to get them to work.

[Crossbow]

I swear, I think these people think computers work using pixies and elves, with the IT department being the magicians that wave our magic wands over it all to get them to work.

Yes, they do. Even at my current job (at a software programming company) my co-workers frequently think IS can just wave their hands and all is well again. And these are peopel that should know better.

Luckily I don't have to deal with the people that actually BUY our code....

[lordlundar]

Bet they think computers uses FM technology.

IE F***ing Magic.

[Pedersen]

/me promises to stop wearing the Gandalf costume to work, and to stop waving wands around while chanting backwards Latin while fixing computers.

Sorry about that

[CorDarei]

can you post the letter so we can all have a good laugh at her?

[Geek King]

can you post the letter so we can all have a good laugh at her?

Sorry, it has already been relegated to the delete file. I like to keep my email tidy, and system down emails don't need to be saved for CYA purposes.

I'll try to pass some others along as I see them. Today's problem (yes, she's one of those users. ) had her exporting a file to an Excel document, then calling me about it opening with wierd formatting...in Word.

She calls me at least 2-3 times a week, and its almost always something ridiculous. Once she wanted me to fix her computer because it wasn't printing to the right printer. It turns out she didn't want to change the default printer, because the computer should know which one is closer.

[vman]

Stupid question (software guy myself) but why can't you (or someone) just schedule reboots of the server at like 2:30 am or something? Just do it once or twice a week when no-one should be messing with the system, and let everyone know that it's scheduled downtime "for maintenance".

And yes, long "system down" letters blaming you for stuff you have no control over (and it's a frequent occurence at my job) is "lots of fun".

[lordlundar]

It's probably not a 24 hour operation, so I don't think they want to be there at that hour.

[Crossbow]

It's probably not a 24 hour operation, so I don't think they want to be there at that hour.

Depending on the server OS, you should be able to schedule the reboot automatically. Nobody has to be there physically, and IT/IS won't even hear a peep about the reboot unless it doesn't come back up.

[Broomjockey]

Sounds like a decent idea, but I'd be willing to be that it's a random occurance, meaning that it could theoretically require a reboot shortly after the reboot, depending on circumstances. Which makes scheduling preventative maintenence an exercise in futility. *headdesk*

[Chanlin]

I swear, I think these people think computers work using pixies and elves, with the IT department being the magicians that wave our magic wands over it all to get them to work.

If you ever open it up be sure that you don't accidentally let all the magic smoke out

[technical.angel]

She calls me at least 2-3 times a week, and its almost always something ridiculous.

Our main luser has a regular schedule for calls. For about a month, we'll get email and email after email from her, then she'll stop for a few months, then start up again.

Despite being told time and time again, she couldn't quite fathom NOT emailing each of her problems to IT_Staff, which is, as it sounds, the mail distribution group for IT. Meaning everyone in IT would get a copy of her stupid problem. Which meant the dept head would send an email to IT saying not to respond to the email or do anything about the work order within until it was received properly at the Helpdesk. Then dept head would send out a nast-o-gram to the person, and later, the person and the person's manager about the proper way to submit work orders.

We finally had to take away the right of anyone but people in the group to send email to the group. BECAUSE OF ONE PERSON.

Well, this person was also very hard on computers, because it was was something cute that disguised spyware, she had to have it. Her machine was filthy, and I was the one who constanly tried to clean it. I ended up refusing to go over to her office by myself, because she's the kind of person who thinks it's cute to say stuff like "Don't you just hate me?" "Aren't I so stupid?". When all I want to do is yell "YES! YES, I DO! DIE! DIE DIE!"

So, long story short, we don't replace her computer. Then she's the one chosen to work on her dept's portion of the website. So, we have to install Adobe Contribute on her machine. It really really didn't like it. So, we finally got her a new(er) one. Around that same time, I find she has all of one gb free on her computer in the other dept she works for. As far as I can tell, it's passed through at least 2 people's hands without a reformat, so we take it and reformat it.

Part of her job in this other dept is to fill in for two other people when they're out. So, of course, she wanted Contribute installed on both of THOSE machines. One person almost started yelling at me when I went to install it, because the person in question(PIQ) had already screwed up her machine, and she was tired of having more stuff installed on it. (The person in question, of course, had taken the title of Worst Spyware Infester from this person when she started, so... eh.)

So, after having half of the computers that she works on reformatted, she decided to go for broke, and gave us a call from the office of the other person, claiming the computer just wouldn't do ANYTHING. The other person at the Helpdesk took the call, and got fooled by PIQ, and told her we might have to reformat. PIQ then took it upon herself to email the regular person at that position and tell her to get her stuff backed up because we were going to reformat it. Then, to be safe, sent in an email to Helpdesk to make sure a work order went it to reformat it.

I saw it, and NUH UH! I had been over to that office a few weeks ago, and the regular person was having NO problems with the machine. No way are we going to reformat a computer because a temp in that position said so. We contacted the regular person and, while VERY ANGRY, said that she hasn't had ANY problems with the machine. Since we were still working on PIQ's second computer at the time, my manager went to set up her email, and we saw a preview of the response from regular person to PIQ. NOT HAPPY.

Then, most of the next day, we had to deal with PIQ's long drawn out emails of apology.

[Crossbow]

If you ever open it up be sure that you don't accidentally let all the magic smoke out

Which kind of smoke, Chanlin? Macs run on the magic BLUE smoke. PC's use magic GREEN smoke.

Sorry. I had a boss actually use that line on some idiot that wanted help with her Mac that had blue smoke pouring out of it.

[vman]

Actually, I *did* mean to schedule the reboot so you don't need to be there.

Even better:
If it is going to require a reboot when memory is low, and it's a random occurrence (but as a memory leak, it shouldn't be, those normally take some time to build up), then you could (at least I know how to do this on windows) run a memory detection algorithm that reboots the system if it's below, oh, 10% of total resources (that would be configurable of course, so if you wanted it to be 1%, it could be).

That's way more complicated. I know that IIS used to have some memory leaks, and we had a scheduled automatic reboot once a week for just that purpose.

[Cyphr]

I wave my wand to fix things. hwoever this isnt the lil stick with the star on the end this is a large 4 foot 4-6 inch think rod with a large chunk of steel on the end works a majority of the time fixes the problem by disingerating the source :Angel: