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…

..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.