Happy Sys Admin Day!

Getting the most from your IT department

1. When you call us to have your computer moved or fixed, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals, dried flowers, bowling trophies and children’s art. We don’t have a life, and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.

2. Don’t write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages from here.

3. When an IT person says he’s coming right over, go for coffee. That way you won’t be there when we need your password. It’s nothing for us to remember 300 user passwords.

4. When you call the help desk, state what you want, not what’s keeping you from getting it. We don’t need to know that you can’t get into your mail because your computer won’t power on at all.

6. When IT support sends you an e-mail with high importance, delete it at once. We’re just testing.

7. When an IT person is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and spill your guts right out. We exist only to serve.

8. Send urgent email all in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery.

9. When the photocopier doesn’t work, call computer support. There’s electronics in it. Ditto for the microwave, timeclock, and coffee maker. Hell, if it plugs in, we’re probably in charge of it anyway.

10. When you’re getting a NO DIAL TONE message at home, call computer support. We can fix your telephone line from here.

11. When you have a dozen old computer screens to get rid of, call computer support. We’re collectors.

12. When something’s wrong with your home PC, dump it on an IT person’s chair with no name, no phone number and no description of the problem. We love a puzzle.

13. When an IT person tells you that computer screens don’t have cartridges in them, argue. We love a good argument.

14. When an IT person tells you that he’ll be there shortly, reply in a scathing tone of voice: “And just how many weeks do you mean by shortly?”. That motivates us.

15. When the printer won’t print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print jobs frequently get sucked into black holes.

16. When the printer still won’t print after 20 tries, send the job to all 68 printers in the company. One of them is bound to work.

17. Don’t learn the proper name for anything technical. We know exactly what you mean by “my thingy blew up”.

18. Don’t use on-line help. On-line help is for wimps.

19. If the mouse cable keeps knocking down the framed picture of your dog, lift the computer and stuff the cable under it. Mouse cables were designed to have 40lb of computer sitting on top of them.

20. If the space bar on your keyboard doesn’t work, blame it on the mail upgrade. Keyboards are actually very happy with half a pound of muffin crumbs and nail clippings in them.

21. When you get a message saying “Are you sure?” click on that Yes button as fast as you can. Hell, if you weren’t sure, you wouldn’t be doing it, would you?

22. When you find an IT person on the phone with his bank, sit uninvited on the corner of his desk and stare at him until he hangs up. We don’t have any money to speak of anyway.

23. Feel perfectly free to say things like “I don’t know nothing about that computer crap”. We don’t mind at all hearing our area of professional expertise referred to as crap.

24. When you need to change the toner cartridge in a printer, call IT support. Changing a toner cartridge is an extremely complex task, and Hewlett-Packard recommends that it be performed only by a professional engineer with a master’s degree in nuclear physics.

25. When you can’t find someone in the government directory, call IT Support.

26. When you have a lock to pick on an old file cabinet, call IT Support. We love to hack.

27. When something’s the matter with your computer, ask your secretary to call the help desk. We enjoy the challenge of having to deal with a third party who doesn’t know anything about the problem.

28. When you receive a 50MB movie file, send it to everyone as a mail attachment. We’ve got lots of disk space on that mail server.

29. Don’t even think of breaking large print jobs down into smaller chunks. Somebody else might get a chance to squeeze a memo into the queue.

30. When an IT person gets on the elevator pushing $100,000 worth of computer equipment on a cart, ask in a very loud voice: “Good grief, you take the elevator to go DOWN one floor?!?” That’s another one that cracks us up no end.

31. When you lose your car keys or go to lunch, send an email to the entire company. People down in Las Vegas like to keep abreast of what’s going on.

32. When you bump into an IT person at the grocery store on a Saturday, ask a computer question. We do weekends.

33. Don’t bother to tell us when you move computers around on your own. Computer names are just a cosmetic feature.

34. When you bring your own personal home PC for repair at the office, leave the documentation at home. We’ll find all the settings and drivers somewhere.

35. In no way do we believe that end-users are ungrateful. It hurts our feelings that one could even think such a thing on the basis of the above statements. In truth we wish to express our deepest gratitude to the hundreds of wonderful end-users portrayed herein, without whom none of this would have been remotely possible.

We truly love you, end-users, you spice up our lives no end.

Happy System Admin Day!

So what did everyone get me?!?!

Going Out.

Welcome everyone.

It hasn’t been too long since I last updated and as usually not much has really happened.

Currently I’m sitting here at StarFucks drinking, yes.. I admit, I broke down and bought a coffee. Because Diedrichs was closed. 🙁 Either way, I’m sitting here drinking my coffee waiting for JonJon to get off work and for Nikki to get here so that we can all go out to TigerHeat. That should be tons of fun, though we’ll get back about 3am which will leave me with enough time to shower and maybe take a nap. We’ll have to see how I feel about that time. I got a double shot mocha so hopefuly I won’t be tired by that point.

I can’t wait to get back to my normal schedule again so that I’m not as grumpy/etc. all the time.

Today I really snapped at Ty, about a couple of things and I feel bad, but I also think that it was about time that someone snapped at him about it. He was just being so fucking annoying about a ton of shit. Mostly I snapped at him about my computer. I was getting ready to put it away when he grabs it and goes, ‘WHY ARE THERE SO MANY PORTS!”

Now, if you’ve ever SEEN a powerbook you know that there’s 10 ports on the one side of the machine. There’s the OBVIOUSLY needed power port, along with a modem, ethernet, firewire, (2) USB, Monitor, mic in, audio out and then the lock port.

He goes, “My laptop doesn’t have NEAR that many ports” and it’s like, have you sat DOWN and counted how many ports your stupid compute has? Grrr. He’s so annoying. And then he gets into it with me about how Apples such, when the stupid whore hasn’t even used one since like System 7 or something.

THEN he gets into it with me about the iPod because he’s like, “I heard that have shit ass sound quality” and it’s like, “WHERE THE HELL DID YOU HEAR THAT FROM”… iPods have ALWAYS been known for their superior sound quality. God he’s so stupid.

THEN earlier I asked a VERY SIMPLE question about this stupid Star Trek which he is CONSTANTLY watching, and the answer was….”He hasn’t been designed yet” but do you think Ty could leave it at that? No he had to be all derogatory and try giving like a 10 fucking minute explanation. Then I was like, “Did I ask?” And he was like, “No but I’m going to tell you anyways, so which I responded, ‘Shut up, I didn’t ask and I don’t care.”

god I was just SO ANNOYED with him tonight.

In other news, work is goinng really well. I got all the validation done for the timesheet program and got volunteered today to write a new web/db application for change request forms. Because right now when someone needs to do an upgrade to a production server, we (the HD) sent out a form to them, they send it back, we enter it into pivotal (which is a HELLISH system devised by pfizer and is ungodly slow) and then we run reports, etc off that.

Then when there’s a change, (IE approval or denial of the ability to do the upgrade, or when it’s completed/failed/etc) we get an e-mail then have to go in and update the pivotal ticket,e tc. Basically it’s just a TON of work for the HD. So I get to write a new web based system so that SA’s can enter everything themselves and all the HD has to do it run the reports and notify people of the planned changes. So it should be good, and easier to do then the timesheet program because there won’t be so much redundancy in the fields.

We also got yelled at today because one of our clients is on a war path with us. Basically she sent in a request to have some work done a couple weeks ago and because Mike is so fucking slow, it didn’t get done. So we all get yelled at. Thankfully _I_ took the initiative to have it done just the other day. So that’s good.

Another thing is that Mike at work is SO SLOW! It took him 4 hours to do something this morning that usually only took me about 30 minutes to do. God it’s so annoying and then today during the HD meeting with Jill he complained that the HD was ‘swamped’ with calls. Hello, we’ve been getting 6 or 7 calls A DAY for the last two weeks or so. Nothing that is OVERLY stressful either. It’s just that he’s so slow when it comes to writing things up and doing shit. Grrr.

Anyways. Yeah.
So that’s my life

The other night Jon and I watched HellBoy, HORRIBLE movie. I reccoommend NEVER seeing it. Last night we watched 50 first dates. That was a pretty good movie considering who was in it.

Tonight like I said it’s off to tigerheat which should be tons of fun.

Well StarFucks is closing, so I’ve got to break. Laters all.

3500 Lines

Coming in at just under 3,500 lines of code. I am officially done with the HARD coding of this stupid timesheet project.

I estimate another 1,000 lines of code will be added. And once I get around to it, about 1,000 more will be cut.

So i think the final project will be right about what it’s at now, 3,500 lines.

Pretty good for me. I usually get sick of such things.

Last night was lots of fun, yesterday day was hellish.

I was horribly tired, but it was too loud for me to sleep. So I couldn’t. Went to some girls house and watched this crazy movie… Something about 9 dead gay guys… I slept through most of it.

I disapprove of some of the girls there… Something about driving around drunk, fleeing the scene, and stealing shit from people lawns. Yeah, not the type of people I associate myself with much.

But either way it was fun. CAme home about 10ish and slept tell 4 this morning when I got up and came to work. Now I should get to leave in another hour or two. Hopefully one hour, but I doubt that’ll happen.

Really looking forward to this weekend’s SD pride. I can’t wait! I just wish we were getting a hotel so that we won’t have to drive home late.

Also found a 15gb BRAND NEW iPod on sale for $200. I really want an iPod and I feel that $200 is a good price to pay for one, but it’s still 3rd Gen. I really want to get a 4th Gen, and I REALLY want a 40Gig. Because once I put all my music that I have on the 15Gb…. Well all my music won’t FIT on the 15gb.

I’ll have to think about it.

Also on the agenda to think about is having more money then I know what to do with. Honestly. I’ve gone from making about $800 a month, to making twice that every two weeks. I’ll break $7,000 grand in savings by mid-August. I’ve NEVER had that much saved in my life!

I’ve been thinking about getting a new car about my b-day time, while. I’d like to hold off tell b-day time next year, but my car has been acting up. So I’ll have to see about that.

Laters all.

The Xy.com Site

So today has been pretty amusing so far.

Start with last night, talked with Andrew for a good while about random stuff. We’ve been having good convos lately and it’s good to talk to him again, I mean REALLY talk to him. I was still talking to him when JonJon (Apparently I’ve been corrected, he wishes to be refered to by JonJon) arrived, so I had to end our convo early.

Once jonjon got there, we went and looked at his new car. He got a freaking ’99 Cougar. The car I wanted so badly when I was looking at my second car. The whore. And it’s sexy ass red with leather interior. It’s really nice.

After that we watched Simpsons, Good Eats then “The day the world stood still” which was a really good movie. After that we went out with his friends at Starbucks. They all made fun of me for my ethical convictions to not drink there. But I had a really good time hanging out with his friends. I’m very glad that I’ve made nice with him so far. 🙂

I can’t wait for Andrew to come back so that we can all hang out, it’ll be fun.

After that came to work and programmed all night. 400+ lines of code. Which is pretty good for me. Mostly it’s all selects and inserts. I now have the major functions of it done. You can Add/Edit/Delete users/tasks/projects and you can add your hours into the system now.

All I have to do now is get it to edit the user hours. Blah! Then it’s should be all done.

Then about 3am someone Imed me, who is working on the new XY.com and I helped them with the php coding of that. So next time you use the peeps search function, know that I helped with it. 😀

Laters all.