IT Department

[squishles10]

/rant warning/

I'm sure out there somewhere, there are some great IT guys. I have never worked with them. I understand their frustration with someone who's mouse doesn't work because they unplugged it :true: but after I have come to you a few times with problems that you have trouble solving, give me the benefit of "I already restarted and that didn't fix it" or "no the backup is corrupt too".

Oh no, not at this company. We have one idiot running his own department, who loves for everyone to know he is Microsoft certified. (As we often say, he's probably both "micro" and "soft" and most definitely "certifiable" so maybe this is where he gets this idea?)

So the reason for my mad typing right now. He got an email from a software company in January that there was an update that needed to be installed. So I'm working away, wasting 2 whole days, because of this bug that should have been fixed. I email the software company, who says "Hey we told you about that". F-ing great. So I go track him down, but because it's after 3:59, he's long gone. I show up this morning to him on my computer deleting the ENTIRE program, and reinstalling it. It's called an UPDATE for a reason jackass.

Then, as he does this, he manages to delete my Outlook Address Book, and when I ask him to reinstall it, he makes it so my emails won't send, including the one to software guy from above. I said I have to get this done I'll just use my gmail til you get to it so what does he do? HE BLOCKS GMAIL. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? So I sent it out with my Yahoo account instead, but MY GOD. How is this guy still around?

/end rant/

 

[Katiebug]

My company contracts out our computer-related stuff. Abject hatred of CSC has become something of a sport around the office. Any time I have to call the Help Desk, I prepare to be confronted by sheer idiocy. My stock answer to anything is, "Bump me up to a Level Two". The Level One helpdesk techs are useless - I know more than they do.

To get admin rights, you have to call, and beg, and they give it to you for 24 hours. If you don't call them back within the 24 hours to cancel admin, it will do Bad Things to your laptop.

They get something like $115/month per laptop they maintain, and around that much for desktops, so they have a tendency to slap an asset tag on any computer they see, even if it has a sticker saying "[Company Name] Owned Equipment - CSC Does Not Maintain". Some of our DAS computers are company owned, not CSC owned, but they still do their damndest to collect a fee for "maintaining" them!

We have those RSA tokens so that we can log in to the VPN away from the office. Anyways, I hadn't used my token in a few months and needed to travel, so I tried to log in and it didn't like my token code. I called and was informed that my token was no longer associated with my user name.

CSC guy: "So you have to fill out a form, get it approved, and get a new token shipped to you."

Me: "But I have a token. Right here in my hand. It works fine, it just needs to be associated with my user name. Re-associate it."

CSC guy: "I can't do that. You have to fill out the form and get approval for a whole new token."

Me: "Let me get this straight - if I lost my token or if it was broken, you would be the one to send me a new one AND associate the new token with my user name, right?"

CSC guy: "Yes."

Me: "So why can't you just associate my old token with my user name?"

CSC guy: "I don't know."

Fortunately I managed to convince my manager to sign off on the form in a timely fashion. If he'd been out of the office, I'd have been screwed. My new token arrived the next afternoon via next-day air.

 

[FusionWhite]

Katiebug, a good friend of mine works for CSC. He works in the defense division maintaining training systems for the DoD and he says that company is completely screwy. Its so gigantic and sprawling across so many divisions that the left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing. You should hear the process he has to go through to order new parts for the systems he maintains, its one step short of an act of Congress.

So far Ive managed to avoid any IT horror stories. To support myself while in college I worked for 5 years at a small mom and pop computer repair shop that did contract IT work for small businesses. Some of the nightmares I could tell you from the IT persons perspective would blow your mind (until you've opened a computer and found a dead rat, you havent seen anything).

 

[FusionWhite]

Katiebug, a good friend of mine works for CSC. He works in the defense division maintaining training systems for the DoD and he says that company is completely screwy. Its so gigantic and sprawling across so many divisions that the left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing. You should hear the process he has to go through to order new parts for the systems he maintains, its one step short of an act of Congress.

So far Ive managed to avoid any IT horror stories. To support myself while in college I worked for 5 years at a small mom and pop computer repair shop that did contract IT work for small businesses. Some of the nightmares I could tell you from the IT persons perspective would blow your mind (until you've opened a computer and found a dead rat, you havent seen anything).

 

[FLBuff PE]

Katiebug, a good friend of mine works for CSC. He works in the defense division maintaining training systems for the DoD and he says that company is completely screwy. Its so gigantic and sprawling across so many divisions that the left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing. You should hear the process he has to go through to order new parts for the systems he maintains, its one step short of an act of Congress.
So far Ive managed to avoid any IT horror stories. To support myself while in college I worked for 5 years at a small mom and pop computer repair shop that did contract IT work for small businesses. Some of the nightmares I could tell you from the IT persons perspective would blow your mind (until you've opened a computer and found a dead rat, you havent seen anything).

Now THERE'S a good way to handle a dead rat!

 

[squishles10]

Now THERE'S a good way to handle a dead rat!

someone wanna tell JR?

 

[Guest]

someone wanna tell JR?

*Intently taking notes*

JR