Out of control IT

[SSmith]

One of the great privileges of working for the federal government is an unprecedented amount of oversite on every action/decision its employees take. Of course this includes internet use as well. Today it hit a new low though. I went to the retirement account website to see what the days markets looked like. And on top where there used to be Google AdSense ads, now showed the grey box with "Access Denied" across it.

I laughed and thought it was a mistake. Some 1s and 0s got mixed up in the router that ended up with it being blocked. So I went to check my blog which also has Google Adsense ads on it. Sure enough, they all had the same "Access Denied" message in the box where the ads were.

Later in the morning I cross the IT guy in the hallway and mention that Ive seen some odds things on Google Adsense ads today. He perks an eyebrow and comments, "Youve seen something on Adsense today? We blocked those yesterday evening. We got directed that they weren't mission critical." I must have done a double take, smiled, and walked away.

Its good to know that in a operating environment where our network drives are up only around 50% of the time (and they still insist we use them for primary file storage), forced XP updates locking everyone out of their computer, and the threat of thumb drives eliminated--we are now safe from the danger posed by Google Adsense. If we have Google Adsense on office computers, the terrorists win. And even better is the time that was wasted developing that solution that could have been focused working on other IT issues that affect office workflow.

(I dont really care that it was Adsense blocked. It just bothers me that THATS what they are allocating their resources to resolve.)

Anyone else got any good IT stories?

/rant

 

[kevo_55]

In my last job, one of the IT guys would play starcraft all day on his computer.

One day, I asked if I could install something and play it during lunch and he said that nothing was tracked at all.

That was one fun year at my work until I found my current job. (Where I just spam EB an hour a day.)

 

[Dleg]

Our ridiculously small little agency now has 2 IT guys, and apparently downloading DVDs all day isn't enough for them and they have now started blocking just about everything. I get mostly red x's on this site now, including the EB logo and many of the icons on the menus.

These guys should be made to walk the plank. They don't belong on my ship with attitudes like that!

 

[Desert Engineer]

There is guy at work that recently retired after 35 yrs. He was well known around the office for surfing the web and purchasing stuff on eBay all day (to the point that the agency rewrote the employee handbook to give the agency cause to reprimand/fire a person for goofing off, which he was proud of). After he retired, he started coming back as a contract, hourly employee a few days a month. Well I guess the management thought it would be a good time to have IT remove his internet access. Apparently he didn’t take it to well; he had the balls to complain about the lack of internet. I’m not sure what he expected, his whole retirement party was joking around about how much time he wasted on the internet.

 

[bigray76]

I had a similar situation to SSmith when I was on a field assigment on a project we were joint venturing on.

Here, they used to block everything, one day I walked in on the IT guy looking at porn. I said to fat Sal 'whatcha lookin' at'... he scrambled, clicked it off the screen, and said that he was 'checking the integrity of that website since someone tried looking at it'... the wb address pretty much gave it away, but fat Sal loves his porn at work!

Now he sits in a glass office and you can pretty much see what he is doing all day.

 

[Guest]

The IT folks at my job have our networks set up to where they can pop in and out undetected based on some of the more advanced Win XP Administrator tools.

Yesterday, one of those IT folks provided me with a courtesy call prior to taking over my computer in order to uninstall Google Earth and replace it with another ESRI product that has the same interface and GUI as Google Earth. Since I don't have administrator rights - she had to commandeer the computer to do the dirty work.

It was weird watching her flipping through my Internet searches and program searches. For me, my single guilty pleasure is EB.com - I really don't go anywhere else that would seem 'gratuitous'. I guess there has been lots of problems with music/video downloads, internet chat, internet poker, eBay and other internet auction sites, etc. - I have not and never have done any of that, so I guess I am relatively squeeky clean.

I will say though that I got the third degree about some of the software loaded on my machine. What is ALOHA - sounds like a vacation package! Ummm ... yeah, right.

I guess when you work for the gubment ... you gotta take what little scraps they hand out!

JR

 

[Desert Engineer]

^^^^ My IT guy (I carpool with him) remotely took over my computer and played a program that yells "hey everybody I'm looking at gay porn" repeatedly in a "gay voice" while showing guys kissing. My supervisor was walking by and heard it. Since IT guy had remote control of my computer, I couldn't exit the program. I freaked out and used the power button to turn off the computer before my supervisor walked in. My supervisor walked by and asked what that was, I kind of joked with him about a virus or something. That was very embarrassing.

 

[Brian]

Speaking of blocked... finally got this site unblocked, using justification that valuable engineering information is gathered from here. Which, of course, is true.

Everything here is blocked by SurfControl, yet all the IT people have access to nearly anything, and our IT guy doesn't too much other than write endless amounts of access databases.

Brian

 

[MA_PE]

DW:

that's hilarious (of course it wasn't me in the hot seat.)

Similarly, way back when Win95/Windows was new an unfamiliar to a lot of people. A "friend" sent me an e-mail with an executable file. Of course, you open it. I brought up a dialog box that said simply "You've been beavered" or something to that effect. When you closed the dialog box it replaced your wallpaper with a close-up full-on color photo if you get my drift.

Luckily, I knew how to set my own wallpaper, but there were enough people around that would've needed outside assistance to make the image go away, because rebooting wouldn't do it.

 

[FLBuff PE]

DW:that's hilarious (of course it wasn't me in the hot seat.)

Similarly, way back when Win95/Windows was new an unfamiliar to a lot of people. A "friend" sent me an e-mail with an executable file. Of course, you open it. I brought up a dialog box that said simply "You've been beavered" or something to that effect. When you closed the dialog box it replaced your wallpaper with a close-up full-on color photo if you get my drift.

Luckily, I knew how to set my own wallpaper, but there were enough people around that would've needed outside assistance to make the image go away, because rebooting wouldn't do it.

You've been beavered!

 

[Capt Worley PE]

Our IT guys blocked Google. That lasted about 15 minutes.

 

[EM_PS]

^^^^ My IT guy (I carpool with him) remotely took over my computer and played a program that yells "hey everybody I'm looking at gay porn" repeatedly in a "gay voice" while showing guys kissing. My supervisor was walking by and heard it. Since IT guy had remote control of my computer, I couldn't exit the program. I freaked out and used the power button to turn off the computer before my supervisor walked in. My supervisor walked by and asked what that was, I kind of joked with him about a virus or something. That was very embarrassing.

:Locolaugh: :Locolaugh:

Hil-freak'n-larious!!! See now if i was an IT schlub, thats likely what i'd be doing (though maybe not to fellow carpooler)