Oh yeah, they’re in top form!

So today, our system monitoring package took a dump. Why did it do this? Well, because someone didn’t pay the monthly bill on it. That’s right! Someone didn’t send a check to this company, and thus our product key was rendered invalid.

“But Uncle Bob,” you ask,”why don’t you use Nagios? It’s free, extensible, robust, and the industry standard.”

That’s a great question! I’ve asked this on *many* occasions. So has our Unix/Linux admin. Actually, he’s already got an instance of Nagios up because our current monitoring package doesn’t interact well with Unix/Linux variants.

But no! See, here at the offices of FCGenius, we’re afraid of the non-M$ world. We can’t handle anything that has installation procedures more intense than “Next Next Next Next Finish”. Oh, and we don’t like anything that’s (said with great disdain) “Open Source”.

See, if you buy food and they hand you the recipe and cooking instructions, there’s obviously something wrong with the food, right? I mean, what possible benevolent reason could they have for such openness and honesty? The mind does boggle!

I can understand just saying “I don’t know enough about this product to recommend its use.” Perfectly understandable, and it even opens the implication that with education, this stance could change. But that’s not what we’re getting. We’re getting people making ignorant claims about it because they haven’t the foggiest clue. You know would have made me flush with pride? Hearing them say something like, “You know, I looked at the product over the weekend and don’t like it for reasons 1) 2) c) 4).”

All of the gripes on this blog are showing that we don’t just have idiot managers. We have people with fundamental misunderstandings and misconceptions about the very industry they’re supposed to be a part of. And *that* is so much more dangerous than a run of the mill reject from HeeHaw who “knows ‘puters” because they can use more of the Office Suite than just Word.

I’m thinking about lighting a candle instead of cursing the darkness (when I’d much rather light a flame-thrower), and trying to sneak in a Nagios implementation under the radar so I can go, “Hey, why don’t we use Nagios? We’ve already got it up and running,” and then show them the nice dashboard.

Ok, not all bad news

So I figure I’ll tell good news as well as bad. I can relate things in a snide manner, so I’m still sticking to the spirit of the blog.

Here’s a conversation I had with a Business Systems Analyst today:

Analyst: “Hi $REALNAME, I have 4 shares that I need users to have access to. I was thinking that setting the permissions for each user on the share would be a bad idea, so I was thinking we may just want to build a group and put everyone in it. That way if we need to make any changes we can just modify the one group.”

Me: *speechless*

Why is this noteworthy? Well, this is a system administration methodology that we’ve been fighting for literally years to get this particular client to understand and implement. This is a client that will have nested shares, with different permissions all set at the user level, and have things like “everyone” set to full access at the root of the drive, thus eliminating any of the security.

“But Uncle Bob,” you say. “Isn’t that absolutely retarded?”

Yes. You are correct. It’s heinously retarded. But it’s what we inherited and have been struggling to correct. Cleaning up this mess is chore enough, but when you add to it the fact that we have to explain why it’s a good idea to use groups instead of individuals to high level IT people at this organization.

And this came from a BSA who just thought “it would make more sense.” If this was only infectious… especially to people in the IT division.

*stab* …. *stab*

The last few days have seen the influx of a number of issues that can only be catagorized as FUCKING RETARDED… But… im going to forgo a few of those and give the brief window into my most recent. That being a phone conversation i just had with an application analyst. This particular application is used in hospitals… Thats right… sometimes peoples lives depend on people like this. I am of course paraphrasing…

 analyst: um. our application is slow… its a network issue. can you help me?

me: uh…. (ponders appropriate work response that isnt filled with outright laughter at sheer absurdity) can you be more specific? What is it that leads you to believe that this is a network issue.

analyst: well… i have calls from 3 different hospitals saying that machine 1 is slow, machine 2, is slow for these people. there is a lot of lag time coming from our application on these machines… can you look at them and fix it?

me: ok… so… you have a few servers running this application that are slow… are there any other applications that are running slow?

analyst: no

me: email? browsing? file servers? other applications that are not your application? widespread complaints? issues communicating with machines that are not running your application?

analyst: no.

me: well… here is the thing… there dont appear to be any other issues throughout the network that would lead me or you to believe this is a network issue… furthermore, we cant really just hop on a server and do lots of shotgun troubleshooting, kill processes, delete files, whatever. we cant do that till we have the issue narrowed down a bit. SO! what i suggest is you call your vendor, have them walk you through what your issue is on these servers. Because if you havent picked it up yet. the common deliniating factor in all this is…. your application… try not to pass us all of your bullshit work just because you are too FUCKING LAZY TO DO YOUR OWN GODDAMN TROUBLESHOOTING YOU WHORE!!! STUPID FILTHY LYING WHORE!!!!

 ….. maybe i didnt really say that last bit…. but she deserved it…

The Infamous Level V

The company I work for uses levels to denote seniority (and one would think skill level, but I digress), level 1 for junior and level 5 for senior. This sounds good in theory but in reality it is just another mechanism to piss me off. You would think that if you talk to a level 5 you would be talking to someone that had an above average intelligence and an “expert” in a particular field, say UNIX or Active Directory. Unfortunately, at our great establishment this is not the case. Here is a conversation I had with a level 5.

Level 5 Person: “Hey, I just received an alert that the power supply is going out on serverX.”

Theavidreader: “Does this server have redundant power supplies?

Level 5 Person: “Uh, how do I know if the servers have redundant power supplies?:

Theavidreader: “Look at the back of the server and if you see more than one power supply then the server has redundant power supplies.”

Level 5 Person: “Hmmm, I am looking at the back of the server and how can I tell where the power supplies are?”

Theavidreader: “Look for the thing that has a big black cord running from it to the wall. If you count more than one then you have redundant power supplies.”

Level 5 Person: Ok, I see it. Wow, that was easy!”

Yes, ladies and gentleman, this is the truth. I can’t make stuff like this up.

The worst part is that level 5 salary range is really good and I work with a guy that is a level 2 and probably one of the smartest people I know. He should be a level 3 at a minimum really more like a level 4. It makes my blood boil. We have people with the IQ of a brick sporting a level 5 while the smart ones stay at level 2 and 3. Hopefully, that level 5 will give them +5 on their saving throw versus Stupid.

Only in corporate America…..

Hot Swappable Drives

Remember when hot-swap devices were new and could sometimes cause shorts, crashes, and other catastrophic hardware events? Yeah, I remember 1994 too.

But it seems our leadership isn’t aware that enterprise level hot swap SCSI devices are designed to be, well, you know… hot swap.

“But can you guarantee with 100% certainty that it won’t cause the machine to go down?”

You know what, jackass, I can’t guarantee with 100% certainty that a truck won’t crash into the building, a plan crashes into the building, or that I won’t reach across the table and pull your tongue out of your ass. The world is full of uncertainty.

I had to deliver a PowerPoint presentation to these chowder heads explaining the pains that IEEE has gone through to make sure that the power connections don’t throw sparks like an arc welder. You know, things that anyone in the IT field (who hasn’t been in a coma or suffered some head trauma) should be aware of.

Yeah, this blog is gonna be 20 TB by Christmas.

..and thus it was born

It’s a sad day when you have to devote a blog to complaining about your workplace. The good news is that some of the idiocy we encounter on a daily basis is some of the funniest examples of how stupid people can get.

Feel free to post quotes, stories, rants, or whatever.