ID 10 T Errors (Amusing mistakes clients have made)

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Dynamic

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#150014 8-Jul-2014 16:05

I come across funny or groan-worthy work-related stories from time to time and there is one that I would like to share today... others are welcome to add theirs to this thread.

- - -

Adobe's Business Catalyst reseller web hosting platform is slightly unusual in that with email accounts are generated without a password. Instead a 'welcome please create your own password' is sent to a predefined 'password reset email address' that is entered when the mailbox is created. The site prevents you doing something dumb like creating user@domain.co.nz and having the 'password reset email address' also set to user@domain.co.nz.

I had a web developer call us yesterday struggling to help a client set up their email after moving an existing domain to the new platform. The client's email address was user@domain.co.nz, but because the platform would not let the web guy set the 'password recovery email address to user@domain.co.nz he used his head and instead typed in User@domain.co.nz. The site dutifully generated the 'welcome to your new email account, please click here to create a password' message and sent it to the email box to which we don't yet have a password.

It took a call to the Business Catalyst team to have these recovery email addresses changed as this could not be done from the control panel. The web guy's client had been without email for their 5 staff for 9 days and were just a little peeved...

“Don't believe anything you read on the net. Except this. Well, including this, I suppose.” Douglas Adams

insane

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#1084214 8-Jul-2014 16:12

^^ that's awesome, I could add many many examples myself, however our clients are probably geekzone users so it might not go down well :)

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#1084317 8-Jul-2014 19:30

Some good ones here: http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/2a24xy/rsysadmin_what_are_your_most_cringe_worthy/

freitasm

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#1084331 8-Jul-2014 19:42

Clients from Hell...

You're welcome.

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#1084332 8-Jul-2014 19:47

Noodles: Some good ones here: http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/2a24xy/rsysadmin_what_are_your_most_cringe_worthy/

Wow some of those are brilliant, and I thought I had to deal with a few odd things here and there.

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#1084438 8-Jul-2014 21:44

1) The client who infected the company terminal server with malware. Claimed he typed dicks into google in search of DSE's website

2) The same client who set all their passwords the same so that if a staffmember was away one day, anyone else could log in and do their work. This backfired when a disgruntled staffmember left and guessed the assistant managers password, logged on from an open wifi network and deleted everything he could off the server. Next day we found the receptionist had not changed the backup hard drives for a few weeks.

3) The client who wanted a timer installed on his modem/router so that at 10pm the wifi would not be able to radiate around his house and give his young kids cancer. A second router kicked in at 10:01pm until 6:59am which did not have wifi capability so he could still use his computer to surf. This despite having a bunch of long range cordless phones around the house, and a couple of pairs of 2.4ghz and 5.8ghz AV senders.
He rang up and was rather upset that wifi was still in his house after a couple of nights - turned out to be his neighbours networks. Our tech was at fault because he was not told that other networks would still be radiating throughout the house and we must find a way to turn those off too. His suggestion was to find some sort of device like a cell phone jammer that worked for wifi.

4) About once a year I would get a call from a signwriter whose laptop would be smashed into pieces on the carpark below his office - the window glazier always seemed to get there faster than I did.
He used to get rather upset with his laptop and throw it through the window. Usually after a heated argument with his receptionist wife.

5) The business manager (glorified receptionist) for a company that provides health services and has multiple branches around town loved the idea of backing up their servers overnight across their WAN (50gb per evening) as they had free inter-branch data. I set it up and then two days later she signs up for a unison fibre plan without telling me - supplied by an ISP that does not offer free inter-branch data, but adid have a huge 10gb data cap, causing them to endure an $1200 excess data bill before she saw the 80% warning email.

6) The signwriter whose company policy was that if staff look at "nudy ladies" on the company computers, its during your lunch hour only and if a staffmember happens to find anything good, you must send the boss a copy. Their terminal server was eventually cut off from having internet access because I was getting called out too often.
The policy was modified to being that "nudy ladies" were only allowed on the local computers and not the servers, by order of the sign on the notice board in the lunchrooms.

7) 60 y/o soccer coach who does that couch surfing tourism thing. He advertises on couch surfing websites and facebook groups that groups of 18-28 y/o girls who are backpacking through our town may sleep on his couch and he will pick them up from the bus stop / show them the local sights for free. He kept picking up viruses on facebook and is one of those people that will happily chat to the nigerian prince who is emailing him, no matter how many times we tell him to stop.

After getting sick of cleaning up his computer, I decided two things for him
A) He was to purchase a white panel van, get some candy and catch them the old fashioned way because he couldnt use a computer B) Steady state was to be installed on his computer and it was not to be updated to windows 7 because steady state was discontinued.

8) I had a client for a number of years (still do) who wont use an automated offsite backup because he thinks the russians and FBI are trying to steal his trade secrets. He can list coincidences and give a half hour lecture informing you of the proof he is being watched. Clicks in his phone line where his calls were being bugged (causing him to switch to a cellphone only, and getting clients who call him in the office to hang up and he call them back from this cell number with caller id blocked) Anyhow the clicks were just a bad joint in the telephone wire found when the DSL then a bit dicky and I had chorus out to fix it one day

9) The woman who runs a trailer building company with website that the developer charges $60 a month for and only gives a 500mb bandwidth allowance. To upgrade to a 1gb bandwidth allowance would require a $100 a month plan. The web developer had uploaded all the graphics at full resolution even though they are only thumbnail size (3 megabytes for each photo) meaning only 20 visitors to the website having a browse around would use up all the data.
Took me two weeks of him avoiding my calls for me to get the password to get into the CMS so i could upload smaller resolutions of the photos.
The trailer woman wouldnt take my suggestion of moving away from the developer because "He knows what she is doing"

10) The guy who bought his laptop for a screen repair in after the jack russell dog had got onto the kitchen table and knocked it off. His job position was "Meat Packer" at the mad butcher. I ended up dating him for 3 months which is what makes his job title funny.

Ray Taylor

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charsleysa

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#1084460 8-Jul-2014 22:19

freitasm: Clients from Hell...

You're welcome.

Wow... Just wow.

Regards
Stefan Andres Charsley

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raytaylor

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#1084490 8-Jul-2014 23:22

Oh i have one more from a few weeks ago.

I present "The case of the Messed Up Antivirus"

If anyone doesnt know me, I quit my day job doing small to medium business networking about a year ago and now run a rural broadband company.

Here is the picture from our network monitoring system.
It monitors the status of the dish on Customer X's roof to tell us when it is connected to our network or not

The 7th PM(according to his email inbox for when emails stopped arriving)
A popular free antivirus program that includes a firewall corrupted itself on the customers desktop computer.
It started blocking all network traffic. It could not even get a dhcp request out to obtain an ip address when it booted up.

He thought "It must be the internet that has gone down - Its raining and I bet that tree in my front yard has been growing in the signal path"
So he got out the ladder, climbed up on his roof and moved the antenna mast and the antenna itself to another position a few metres away. I have no idea what he was thinking with regard to keeping his roof watertight.

When he installed the antenna in the new position, he did two things wrong
- Faced it the wrong way. He aimed it at some random tank upon a hill that wasnt even our transmitter site (ours look like black spots on hilltops)
- Installed it upside down. The cable normally enters through a hole in the bottom of the antenna - it was now going in from the top.

So as you can see, the radio went offline for about 15 minutes on the 7th, then came back on when he plugged it back in. They have a 60 degree beamwidth so it was able to still talk to the transmitter site, with a very low signal level.

At no point did he bother to listen to his daughter who told him multiple times that the internet was still working on her ipad.

Our rooftop radios are quite smart - they have the router and a little computer inside them.
On the 11th, the radio finally filled up with water from the rain, and stopped working.

I think it was the daughter that made contact with me on the 12th after her wifi stopped working to go out and have a look. She said her father had been fiddling with the antenna on the roof a few days before.

Looked up there, compared it with the photos of when I originally installed the antenna and politely informed him he just let a $400 radio fill up with water, even after he signed a form agreeing to the terms and conditions that while they rent one of our radios as part of his monthly service charge, he was not to move or alter the antenna or cabling

I told him I was not getting up there when it was raining and he would have to wait a few days.
Thankfully he offered to pay the replacement cost as I dont like informing people of that kind of bad news - which he was going to pay for anyway.

When I came back to put up the new radio antenna, I ran a repair install on his avast antivirus and he was away again.

The radio is now back in its normal location, aimed at the actual transmitter and there was no line-of-sight obstruction from the tree in the first place.

Ray Taylor

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freitasm

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#1084492 8-Jul-2014 23:35

Right. This one deserves a beer.

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#1084495 8-Jul-2014 23:47

I left my day job fixing computers and networking to avoid that sort of crap.
I think no matter what I do, its still just dealing with crap from different people who just wont ask for my free opinion at no cost before they do stupid stuff.

Ray Taylor

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xpd

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#1084544 9-Jul-2014 08:33

Search for "hot mexican" food lead to Cryptowall infection.....

XPD / Gavin

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