"Fun with the IT guys.", or.....

[Brian C.]

...."Is this what rickm does all day???"

I've had the good fortune....some might say....to be able to get my desk out of a common area and into a medium sized room that I will actually be able to call MY OFFICE. With a door and all. That means that I've spent various parts of the past week cleaning out all the assorted crap that we all tend to accumulate in files, drawers, and on my desktops......virtual and physical. So I've fairly well copied any files I need on my hard drive to CD to transfer to my new PC....if it ever shows up, another story....and today the IT guys from the "No Help Desk" show up to do their thing. It was like something out of a bad Apple commercial.

First of all, they work in a completely different division than me so they don't really care who's watching them. Secondly, there was no "brass" around today so only us worker bees for spectators. So they come in and tell us....there's three situations like me going on at once...."First we gotta de-frag your hard drives." OK, sounds plausible.

So three of them go to the first PC, go to the de-fragmentation utility and get it ready to go. Now the Einsteins start to make bets among themselves on who will get the most sectors. (huh???) Then one of them pulls out a big bag of pretzel stix...I **** you not...and divides them up. When the defrag screen appears with all it's little colored lines and jumbled areas, they start to bet pretzel stix on who can predict exactly which bad file or sector or whatever will move next, and where it will move to. (!!!) It sounded something like this........

"Bro....watch that greenie over there. Three stix says it'll gang up with this bunch right here." "No way Fag. I'll double you that the blues will march first." "I don't THINK SO dude, greens rule."

And it went on like that for about 3 hours. And they only got two PCs done before they broke for smoothies. I guess one more tomorrow. It truly was something that should have been videoed for the Smithsonian. The only thing more absurd I can imagine would be to watch ryan change his tire. (JUST A JOKE!!) Honestly, I have seen some geeks in my days as a civil servent, but these guys take the prize. We walked around and marveled at how into what they were doing they were. The funniest part was that one of my clerks has had a fried PC for about 5 weeks now and has had a call in to the "No Help Desk" to come and repair it but they have been too busy. Eating pretzel stix I guess. She wanted to kill them. Maybe tomorrow I will set up my camera and do some mpegs of the fun.

Unbelievable.
Anyone else have funny "No Help Desk" guy stories?

Brian C.

[632 Regal]

Hilarious!

[Shaun]

Funny stuff.

I'm in the "No Help Desk" category myself. Although we're a little less annoying than that. We generally keep our geek-ness to ourselves, since it takes about half a second for peoples eyes to glaze over when we start on a subject.

I think your three IT folk qualify as "nerds". ;-) I've never in my entire time as a Tech Guy seen or heard of something like that, unless it involved lots of beer. Most of us have much better (read: nefarious) things to be doing with our time: Randomly closing applications on your computer, ignoring your pleas for help, deciding which "patch" to install next. You can see how busy one might be as a Tech Guy ;-)

All joking aside; that's a funny story. And I'll be sure to pass it on to my coworkers, who'll probably say I'm lying. It's that funny. :)

[rickm]

They sound like the guys the DOD has from EDS. Takes a team of two to replace a hard drive.

While I was enjoying lovely surf and fine rum down in Avon Hurrican Ivan rolled through town. Our facility lost power for about 8 hours, when it returned we had partial power (we dropped a phase). Some folks had full power, others had lights and no outlets, others had outlets but no lights. Keep that in mind....we dropped a phase.

I roll in on Monday and find out we are semi powerless. I talk to our maintenance supervisor, he says "something is wrong". I tell him we've dropped a phase. He doesn't believe me until the power co truck rolls up and confirms ok (ok, I designed switchboards and high voltage systems for 12 years). The main supv buys me a Coke for calling that one.

On Tuesday I'm chatting it up with the new office cutie when I'm paged. I walk up front and one of my buddies from the telco is standing there. We chat a bit, our business officer tells me he was called because a lot of people who had power couldn't connect to the network. We're already getting charged for this because the telco rolled the truck for us....they tell me he'll help me get it working. Telco boy is grinning his ass off as our CIO says "this is happening in the buildings that don't have all of their power". I grin, my boss looks at me wondering WTF I'm smiling for. The business officer is smiling nervously. I look at the CIO (who won't be for much longer) and ask him if he called the ticket in. Yes, he did. I ask him what's going on, he tells me the data lines are down. I ask him to think about our topology for a few minutes..I can see the synapses firing but nothing happening. Telco boy is doing all he can not to freaking bust out laughing. I look at my boss, she can see it coming.

"We're all ethernet here, a mix of cat5 and fiber. The fiber switch is fed from here, the fiber switch feeds the outlying buildings, right?" He nods. "If the switches don't have power, what's going to happen?" He looks at me, my boss is now looking at the floor, the business manager is looking unhappy. "Nothing. If they don't have power, nothing is going to work. This isn't a telco issue, it's due to the power being selectively out." He starts to say that the buildings have partial power, I ask him to check each location...since they're all mounted in the overhead, if the area is w/o lights then the area also has no power running feeding the switches". He nods, my boss asks him if he understands what I just told him. Telco boy is looking the other way taking notes while he laughs. :P The business officer says "what does this mean?". I tell him that it means we just pissed away 150.00 on a service call that was nonsense, like 3 weeks ago when the voicemail died and the CIO didn't want to turn the PBX off for 10 min and reset it to clear the problem because he thought he'd get shocked (ok, it says so on the panel, but the switch is ok).

And my boss wonders why I spend most of my off hours sipping Ron Barrilito rum (3 star).

[RobPatt]

...'cause it sure sounds like you're describing where I work... and yeah, we're still recovering from Ivan up in the FL panhandle... was out at FEMA HQ yesterday. Quite a CF operation.....
cheers, Rob.
(got my BMA parts today :-) dog bones/motor&tranny mounts, waiting on Bruno's stuff....)


They sound like the guys the DOD has from EDS. Takes a team of two to replace a hard drive.

While I was enjoying lovely surf and fine rum down in Avon Hurrican Ivan rolled through town. Our facility lost power for about 8 hours, when it returned we had partial power (we dropped a phase). Some folks had full power, others had lights and no outlets, others had outlets but no lights. Keep that in mind....we dropped a phase.

I roll in on Monday and find out we are semi powerless. I talk to our maintenance supervisor, he says "something is wrong". I tell him we've dropped a phase. He doesn't believe me until the power co truck rolls up and confirms ok (ok, I designed switchboards and high voltage systems for 12 years). The main supv buys me a Coke for calling that one.

On Tuesday I'm chatting it up with the new office cutie when I'm paged. I walk up front and one of my buddies from the telco is standing there. We chat a bit, our business officer tells me he was called because a lot of people who had power couldn't connect to the network. We're already getting charged for this because the telco rolled the truck for us....they tell me he'll help me get it working. Telco boy is grinning his ass off as our CIO says "this is happening in the buildings that don't have all of their power". I grin, my boss looks at me wondering WTF I'm smiling for. The business officer is smiling nervously. I look at the CIO (who won't be for much longer) and ask him if he called the ticket in. Yes, he did. I ask him what's going on, he tells me the data lines are down. I ask him to think about our topology for a few minutes..I can see the synapses firing but nothing happening. Telco boy is doing all he can not to freaking bust out laughing. I look at my boss, she can see it coming.

"We're all ethernet here, a mix of cat5 and fiber. The fiber switch is fed from here, the fiber switch feeds the outlying buildings, right?" He nods. "If the switches don't have power, what's going to happen?" He looks at me, my boss is now looking at the floor, the business manager is looking unhappy. "Nothing. If they don't have power, nothing is going to work. This isn't a telco issue, it's due to the power being selectively out." He starts to say that the buildings have partial power, I ask him to check each location...since they're all mounted in the overhead, if the area is w/o lights then the area also has no power running feeding the switches". He nods, my boss asks him if he understands what I just told him. Telco boy is looking the other way taking notes while he laughs. :P The business officer says "what does this mean?". I tell him that it means we just pissed away 150.00 on a service call that was nonsense, like 3 weeks ago when the voicemail died and the CIO didn't want to turn the PBX off for 10 min and reset it to clear the problem because he thought he'd get shocked (ok, it says so on the panel, but the switch is ok).

And my boss wonders why I spend most of my off hours sipping Ron Barrilito rum (3 star).

[Brian C.]

Ivan sure did a number on your area. I hope FtWB/Pensacola can get back to normal asap! We're keeping our eye on Jeanne now! Is this ever gonna end?

And whoever reads this.....PLEASE GIVE TO THE AMERICAN RED CROSS. A lot of people need help now.

Brian C.

[ryan roopnarine]

i almost didn't believe you until you said one of them said the obligatory "fag" response.

[rickm]

Brian, I gave a pint of the red stuff yesterday and part of what I bill a client today for fixing their screwups will go to the Red Cross.

Rob, I think you're right. My time here is limited at best, I'm being moved up 2 divisions and will oversee this place. Then the stupidity will end or I'll cut IT funding. It's so freaking annoying. :P