I\'m still a bastard....

[opiesilver]

I'll let you borrow the second book if you want.  Besides, we wouldn't really do anything like I've described above :evil except for in story form.  Right?!

[ZWarrior]

Yep yep.

Latest stories from Simon:
http://www.theregus.com/content/30/25434.html
http://www.theregus.com/content/30/25539.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/30/26285.html

I think that the one released on 6-29 is high on my list.


edit: Heh, silly software through a line break and a space in there!  Got it now though.

[Edited on 7-24-2002 by ZWarrior]

[opiesilver]

The first two were good, but the last would not load.

[Morpheus]

If you look at the url you will see why the third one didn't load try deleting the http://<br%20/>

I would have to say that I'm a BUFH (Bastard User From Hell)  I know just enough to give BOFH serious trouble!  But not enough to be a BOFH.

Since I've either taught myself, or learned from a BOFH, I know a little about a lot.  At times I know what to do to fix a problem before the BOFH does, and have to educate them (kind of like RTFM).  Of course when it's me who calls the helldesk, they send a PFY.  I definitely know more than they do, and usually hear things like; "How did you get access to that, you don't have rights to it.  Blah Blah Blah,  I'll have to tell my manager and get the password changed"
as if that would stop me, his manager is the one who gave me the password because he got tired of me calling him twice a day to get access.  He prefers to play UT.

The latest incident

Last week I finally got tired of my laptop running so slow (it's a PII 300 with 128mb ram).  I "procured" a PIII 1000.   Only problem was that I only had 128mb of ram.  So I found an extra 128mb module and slapped that sucker in, booted up and started installing the software the way I want it installed.  Along comes Mr. LAN "Where did you get that hard drive?" he demands.

"It was in the black box (it's a dell) the whole time.  They usually come with hard dirves you know." I respond intelligently.

"No, I mean where did you get the computer?"  he reiterates as he realizes he's not dealing with a luser.

"Oh, the computer?  I was on a desk, collecting dust."

"Who authorized you to have that machine?"

"My boss." (I had informed her that I was going to get a new computer, she thought it was a great idea)

"Oh, why didn't have us set it up?"

"I didn't want to waste your time, I've got to run to a meeting, I'm late."  (because I'm a BUFH sent here to annoy you, but don't want to talk to you anymore so am pretending that I have some important meeting to go to.

[ZWarrior]

LOL, showed THAT PFY!

I find it's best to go for vague when answering questions regardin hardware that has been procured.

I did some work at a major company a while back, migrating them from Novell to Windows NT.
  The team of consultants that I stepped in and took over were culling through HUGE spreadsheets (10-15MB) and manually changing all the information by hand, (user homedir, etc.).  Then changing the rights by hand.

I needed a PC, and IT wasn't ready with mine yet. "It will be a few days until we are ready with it, sorry."
I asked the boss if I could look around and see what was lying around loose.  He had no problems. I found and snagged a 4x450 with 2GBRAM and 200GB RAID5 storage.  

When IT showed up to with my computer I had then install it under the desk, and told them that the other box was for some testing.

  But there was only one network jack in the cube.  Scammed a Cisco 24 port switch for the cube, and hooked everybody around me that wanted to game to it.  Loaded games on the newly delivered workstation and setup times after work to disconnect the switch from the network and everybody played locally on the switch.

Then I scammed an Apex digital KVM switch, to manage the boxes of course.

Then we grabbed 2 more systems to research OS interfaces.

All the while the IT guys were trying to inventory equipment that somehow kept moving around, and the boss is wondering how I ended up with the beefy box as a workstation.

Gosh I miss that box!  I eventually had to leave because the project was over.

[ZWarrior]

I used to work for a company that was contracted to support the Burger Kings in a 4 state region.

  Every night the managers would start software to poll each cash register, and get the data from them.  Then it would process all the figures, packages it up, and call the main office with it.  If anything went wrong, they called us.  This was done after close of the store each night, so you can imagine what time the calls would come in. The problem was, I lived in a dorm, and the phone was at the other end of the hallway.

  It never failed that you would be sleeping great, and about 2am, the pager would go off.  So I grab the pager, the tech support book, and shuffle down the hallway. I call the store in the middle of nowhere, ans ask the problem:

Me: "Hi, this is tech support, you paged me?"

Mgr:"Yeah, hi, about time you called.  I have been have having problems ALL NIGHT!"

Me: "Did you page us earlier with the problems?" (Checks the pager, no other pages.)

Mgr:"No, you're supposed to know these things!"

Me:"OK, what seems to be the problem?"

Mgr:"Well the software has locked up. It's stopped working after it did the poll."

Me: "Yeah, there is a bug in the software that will do that.  Let's see what we can do to get it working."

Mgr: "Whatta ya mean a bug?  I want it fixed right now!"

Me: (Counts to 10 first) "Pardon me?  Let's get this running and then we can talk about that."

Mgr: "No, I want it fixed now!"

Me: "Look. With all due respect, I am sitting here in my pajamas, with no computer even near me, and you want me to upload a non-existant upgrade to you?  Let's get the system working first, OK?"

Mgr: "It's not my fault you aren't at your office, maybe you should go there first. Then you can send me the upgrade."

Me: "I'm sorry, I'm not going anywhere to upload anything that doesn't exist.  Now can we please return to the problem at hand?  What is on your screen right now?"

Mgr: "Well, the software is loaded and is sitting there saying it's 50% finished.  When is the upgrade due out?"

Me: "Doesn't matter, you aren't getting it tonight. Ok, hold down Control, Shift, and Escape keys all at the time.  This should bring up the task manager.  Let me know when it is up."

Mgr: "OK, that's up. Now what?"

Me:  "Now see where it says RegisterMan in the list? Click that and then click End Task"

Mgr: "OK, now it has another window up asking if I'm sure.  Why can't I have the upgrade tonight?"

Me: "Say yes to the window, and there is no upgrade at this time, that's why."

Mgr:"OK, the windows gone, and the software is gone too.  When will there be an upgrade?"

Me:" Great!  Now click on the Start button, click on shutdown, and then choose shutdown from the list. Click OK after that."

Mgr: "OK.  SO when will there be an upgrade?"

Me: "What does your screen say now?"

Mgr:"It's now safe to turn off your computer."

Me:"Go ahead and turn off your computer and then wait 60 seconds, then turn it on again.  I'll be right back."  (Drops the phone, goes into the hallway and stretches, cursing stupid managers the world over.)

Me: "OK, what does your screen say?"

Mgr:"It's now safe to turn off your computer."

Me: (Silent sigh)"OK, now I need you turn off the computer instead of the monitor.  The computer is the box that the monitor, the thing you look at, is connected to. There are 2 cables attached to the monitor trace them. One leads to a box that has 4 cables plugged into it, that is the UPS.  We don't want that one, we want the other cable. Trace it to the computer," (which is sitting right next to the monitor usually), "and then push the button that is labeled with a 1 and a 0. Leave it off for 60 seconds then turn it back on, I'll be right back" (finds something to do for 2 minutes)

Me:"OK, what does your screen say now?"

Mgr:"Invalid system disk, replace disk and press any key to continue."

Me: "Do you have a floppy disk in the drive?  It's the slot right by the power button. Is there a button sticking out RIGHT below the slot?"

Mgr:"Umm, yeah why?"

Me:"Push the button that is sticking out then hit the spacebar."

Mgr: "Hey look at that it says that windows is loading!"

Me: "Yeah, imagine that!"

Mgr: "OK, I am logging into the computer."

Mgr: "OK, the software is running now.  So when will the upgrade be ready?"

Me: "Call your main office in the morning and ask them.  We don't write it, we just support it.  Good night." *Click*

True story.  Things like this happend ALL the time, and usually around 2AM.  Sometimes the IT manager for the Owner/Operator would shut off their modem bank to see how fast we would respond.  That meant that we started getting calls at about 1 and it would continue until around 3 or later.  After a while, we started paging him if we were getting flooded with calls, so he quit answering the pager. So we would quit answering ours.  It was an interesting life.


Sorry it's so long, but I thought you might enjoy that.

[Morpheus]

Your Way Right Away!

Could I get Fries with that tech support?

[opiesilver]

You were way to nice to that (L)user.

[ZWarrior]

I toned it down a bit, because I had already been talked to about my attitude when dealing with the managers.

[opiesilver]

I ran into an old PFY I trained a long, LONG, time ago.  He's become quite the BOFH himself.  Things he does to his users almost brings tears to my eyes.  **sniff** He has now become the lead SA for the US Geological Survey in South Dakota.  

My reputation has spread before me.  I'm known on two continents now.  To make matters worse, my old PFY has passed on to his boss, as a way of sucking up, all of my dirty tricks and bastardly ways.  Or so he thought.  :evil

His boss, the PHB type, now thinks that I'm a genius.  He's right, but I didn't tell him that.  The PHB calls me up to their site today and wants to review all of their storage systems and optimize their SAN's and NAS setups.  It had apparently been running a bit slow since they added another 300 users last week.  The PFY was pushing for a major gigabit network upgrade, not my equipment , to help relieve some of the network overload problems.  The PHB had another idea.  Since he had heard of my abilities, he was willing to pay the $400.00 per hour consultation fee to have me onsite.

In about 15 minutes I had the problem solved, but not "resolved".  You see, I had to find a believeable explanation why the was a server with a bad ATM card marked 666 was plugged into the network and a desktop was running a script that made 1000 arp requests per minute.  Ohhh, sloppy PFY.  

I confronted my old PFY and he suggested that we talk about it over dinner.  This is the point where all good BOFHs bribe their way out of a bad situation.  What can I say?  The lobster was good.

So three hours later, I was explaining to the PHB that one of the Cisco Cats had a bad blade and that he really needed to upgrade the network ASAP.

I did leave my old PFY one present on my way out.  I set a crontab job to run a script every 24hrs that will change his .cshrc and .profile so that every time he types any command from any shell it will echo on the command line and in the console "System Error: 0x8000034:a004   Asshole on Keyboard"

[opiesilver]

WOOOHOOOO!!!   500 posts!

[ZWarrior]

Ewwww, now that's just plain nasty!