The grumpy thread

[GrumpiusMaximus]

8 hours ago, Dave_Q said:

No, but as per @cobblers the sentiment that there is some sort of malevolent force attempting to suppress or delete "Britishness" underpins a lot of these posts, TBF maybe it's someone from the Politics section's IRL name.

Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people.

[Floatylight]

2 hours ago, bunglebus said:

Fucking Yodel. A retarded chimp must have more intelligence than the entire bunch of fucktards combined.

Never bought anything through Vinted before, seems they prefer delivery to a local collection point rather than to your home address. Fine by me, plenty of parcel lockers, Co-Ops and Tesco Expresses locally.  Except what they've actually done is take it to a different town, and let me know they've done this "to ensure I get my delivery as soon as possible". 

Yes, I'm sure it's much quicker to venture up the A12 to an unfamiliar town and find wherever you've dumped it than walk 5 mins to the Co-Op down the road.

Absolute imbeciles. Now I've got days of trying to sort this shit out which I really do not have the time or inclination to do, I'd rather just cancel my order

On a similar note son had an amazon delivery yesterday, they sent him a pic of where they'd dumped it, a brown paper bag perched on tip of the half full, open waste cardboard bag. Who could of possibly predicted that MrsFL would add a load of cardboard to the bag, thankfully emptying all the cardboard back out revealed the unopened package at the bottom.....

[Pieman]

9 hours ago, Dave_Q said:

Post about a Santa float and where it will be going when. 70% of the comments are people moaning how disgusting it is the thing is not going to their house/street AGAIN this year, the evil bastards

• As a bonus, one of the organizers patiently replies to the thread saying they could go to more streets with more volunteers to help - 0 moaners volunteer.

When our local one of those came round last year, I think I annoyed them a bit cos I went outside to donate a bit of cash, and promptly ignored Santa and got talking to a couple of the organisers about the vehicle he was on - a Renault Master ambulance conversion.

Saw a post from the Rotary Club the other day saying when it'd be round again and I asked if the old Renault was still going - they will probably now avoid my street so they don't have to talk to the sad old nerd who likes old commercial vehicles! 

[Wack]

Tiktok guidelines 

the video I commented on showed an edited version of a woman who was being asked to sit down  because the fasten seat belts sign was on so she decided to take a shit in the aisle 

[loserone]

3 hours ago, bunglebus said:

Never bought anything through Vinted

I have started this in the last few weeks.  The default option is a collect in store affair but delivery to the house is often cheaper and always available.

[loserone]

3 hours ago, bunglebus said:

Never bought anything through Vinted

I have started this in the last few weeks.  The default option is a collect in store affair but delivery to the house is often cheaper and always available.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

Had one at work yesterday and into today.  In essence, a company has had issues with their multi-factor authentication all day after (presumably) Microsoft do some manner of change to the policy without telling anybody.  The director (let's called him Humphrey) does the following:

i) Humphrey emails one of our 3rd line engineers.  Who lives in New Zealand.  Rather than emailing support.  So he doesn't get a reply because the 3rd line is asleep.
ii) Support then get a very cut email a few hours later that basically tells us to turn MFA off for the whole organisation from Humphrey.  But reporting that a specific user was having issues.  That user hasn't called us about the problem.
iii)  Issue is passed to me from a 1st Line engineer.  I think about it and am slighly flabbergasted and mentally file it as a 'tomorrow' problem as we got the email at 1430 and our response SLA is 4 working hours.  Bear in mind at this point, I'm on a train returning from a customer site in London.
iv) I get frustrated and later in the evening email Humphrey, saying that turning MFA off is a terrible idea, that it leaves his business wide open to attack and jeopardises the safety of third parties in the (much more likely) event of an account compromise occurring due to the phishing stream that will be sent out from a compromised account.
v) We get an email back at around 2100 from Humphrey basically telling me that I don't get to decide, it's up to him and if it's not turned off first thing in the morning, they're going to find another IT provider.
vi) My director (fortunately) intervenes and explains to Humphrey that actually I'm actually doing the right thing and that turning it off is a bad idea and I've said what I've said because I want to protect his business, our business and their customers.
vii) I get a email this morning from the manager of the original user experiencing problems with MFA without any contact details.
viii) We reply, get the contact details and then phone the user.  It's fixed within 5 minutes.

So.  Let's look at the stupid things that went wrong here:

i) User doesn't contact the support team and instead talks to her manager.
ii)  Her manager takes it up with the company director (Humphrey) rather than telling her to contact support.
iii) Humphrey emails a 3rd-line project engineer, not support.  Who happens to live in New Zealand and is in the Land of Nod.
iv) Humphrey doesn't understand what he's asking for.  But tries to sound like he does and gets up in arms when a security-conscious, fairly senior IT technician (me) politely refuses his request, with a well-worded explanation and also mentions that the user should have contacted support first.
v) User still hasn't contacted the support team.

What should have happened:

i) User notices an issue with their MFA application not working.  They call support.  Support fix it.  Total fix time?  5 minutes.

I have sympathy for you guys working in motor repairs.  I think I would have an aneurysm by now in your profession with the absolute roasters you have to deal with.

 

[dozeydustman]

Been here 3 hours. And the low loader can’t cope.

I’m cold

 

[Amelia]

*$!&!! *(!?$¢!@

(Insert whatever unladylike swearwords you see fit)

Work are putting my whole team on consultation, so by new year I'm likely to be out of a job and by February without a car (car stays for notice period). 

Ouch. Nice Xmas pressie. 

Car is shit anyway. 😅

 

[Amelia]

17 hours ago, Wack said:

Tiktok guidelines 

the video I commented on showed an edited version of a woman who was being asked to sit down  because the fasten seat belts sign was on so she decided to take a shit in the aisle 

Tiktok guidelines and moderation are toilet. 

Someone once asked me my sexual preference on my live stream (I'm lesbian) and because I said ' I don't like men' I got banned for a week! 🤦‍♀️ 

[Bren]

Visited my gym.

After battling through Widnes traffic ( it seems to have got worse in the last few months) I stopped for fuel on the way home at Bold Heath.

Petrol station was rammed - I parked with the filler away from the pump because I and many on here realise you can pull the pipe out!

A white juke was parked next to me - so far from the pump I opened my door and realised I would have to do the lambada to get out - I honestly thought osmosis was the only way I would get out of the car.

The Juke was replaced by a mini whose driver got the car much nearer to his pump.

[angle]

On 26/09/2023 at 21:25, angle said:

Enterprise. 

I have a big work meeting tomorrow. Its basically the end of two years worth of work, so I'm under strict instructions to wear a suit and tie, and get to Luton for 8am. I'm also in meetings until 10pm tonight to prepare for it. 

Now, my company has a policy where if we need to drive for work and its more than 100 miles or so, we rent a car through them. Current provider is Enterprise, and I get booked a 'Focus or similar'. In theory this is great - they're happy to drop off and pick up cars at the office or to your house at a specific time. The problem is, last time I asked for it to be dropped off at home at 6:30pm and eventually, at quarter to ten, someone dropped off a 1.0 base spec Fabia (59bhp!), with the service light on. 

So, this time I've got a 2 hour gap in meetings so I'll go and pick it up on the way to get the kids from school. I turn up, and the car park is pretty empty. I go in, give them my name and driving licence. 

'That's great, thanks very much. Um - would you mind waiting a second until my manager gets off the phone?'

Oh balls. 

Manager comes over. 'Hi angle! I was just wondering, where are you going?'

Luton.

'Oh, OK. Where's that?'

North of London.

'So...about 150 miles away?'

Yeah, that's about right. 

'Riiiiight. Its just that, we've only got one car left and its electric (she points to an e-Corsa outside). Its only half charged, so its only got about 70 miles of range. There's a rapid charger at the Shell on York Road (a couple of miles away), if you left it on charge for a couple of hours that should be enough to fill it up?'

OK, but if its half full with a range of 70 miles, then a full charge still won't get me to Luton? And I don't have time to charge it tonight and I'm already leaving at half five. 

'Yeah. Yeah, OK. Um - what about a van?' She gestures to a LWB high-top Movano outside. 

*uncomfortable silence*

'No, no, OK. Um, let me make some calls.'

Which is how I found myself waiting outside a backstreet garage in Hartcliffe for a Nissan Juke to be MOTed, with the Corsa lurking around the corner with the Enterprise manager inside, like one of those Clarkson-era Top Gear episodes where they get followed round Bolivia by a Marina or an AMC Gremlin or, um, a Nissan Juke or something in case their Porsche breaks down. 

tldr; I've got to drive to Luton in a Nissan Juke. With the service light on. Fuck my life. 

 

 

 

I went back. 

'Oh, hi angle! I recognise you from last time, sorry again about that. The good news is we've got two cars left this time,  if you're OK with an auto again there's a Subaru Forester or if you prefer a manual you can have a Vaux...'

Reader, I didn't let her finish the sentence. 

[dozeydustman]

Just got in after starting at 5am. 

These electric trucks have caused us no end of hassle since they arrived here

[High Jetter]

2 minutes ago, dozeydustman said:

Just got in after starting at 5am. 

These electric trucks have caused us no end of hassle since they arrived here

Failed or ran out of juice?

[dozeydustman]

Just now, High Jetter said:

Failed or ran out of juice?

Failed. We’ve only ran out of juice once. They have a 24 volt supply to power the ECU and whatever is left of the original chassis electrics. That conked out so no lights, hazards operate on one side only, and worst of all no brake compressor. They’re at the depot and struggling to get it off the low loader with hardly any air left in the system.
 

On both electric trucks the fails have been the non-motive systems. This is the second major failure for this one. The other electrical vehicle has had about 15.

[Wack]

20 minutes ago, dozeydustman said:

Failed. We’ve only ran out of juice once. They have a 24 volt supply to power the ECU and whatever is left of the original chassis electrics. That conked out so no lights, hazards operate on one side only, and worst of all no brake compressor. They’re at the depot and struggling to get it off the low loader with hardly any air left in the system.
 

On both electric trucks the fails have been the non-motive systems. This is the second major failure for this one. The other electrical vehicle has had about 15.

It's bad enough when it's a council vehicle but business needs reliability , if the big fleets  buy a couple and they're this unreliable they won't be buying any more 

[wuvvum]

1 hour ago, dozeydustman said:

Failed. We’ve only ran out of juice once. They have a 24 volt supply to power the ECU and whatever is left of the original chassis electrics. That conked out so no lights, hazards operate on one side only, and worst of all no brake compressor. They’re at the depot and struggling to get it off the low loader with hardly any air left in the system.  And then it caught fire.

FTFY

[Wack]

Facebook marketplace is fucked as a selling platform 

There are the first cars I saw for sale 

 

[Jazoli]

1 hour ago, Wack said:

Facebook marketplace is fucked as a selling platform 

There are the first cars I saw for sale 

 

It is completely fucked and a complete waste of time now, you can filter a lot of it out but the number of scamming cunts far outweighs the genuine sellers now.

[richardmorris]

7 hours ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

Had one at work yesterday and into today.  In essence, a company has had issues with their multi-factor authentication all day after (presumably) Microsoft do some manner of change to the policy without telling anybody.  The director (let's called him Humphrey) does the following:

i) Humphrey emails one of our 3rd line engineers.  Who lives in New Zealand.  Rather than emailing support.  So he doesn't get a reply because the 3rd line is asleep.
ii) Support then get a very cut email a few hours later that basically tells us to turn MFA off for the whole organisation from Humphrey.  But reporting that a specific user was having issues.  That user hasn't called us about the problem.
iii)  Issue is passed to me from a 1st Line engineer.  I think about it and am slighly flabbergasted and mentally file it as a 'tomorrow' problem as we got the email at 1430 and our response SLA is 4 working hours.  Bear in mind at this point, I'm on a train returning from a customer site in London.
iv) I get frustrated and later in the evening email Humphrey, saying that turning MFA off is a terrible idea, that it leaves his business wide open to attack and jeopardises the safety of third parties in the (much more likely) event of an account compromise occurring due to the phishing stream that will be sent out from a compromised account.
v) We get an email back at around 2100 from Humphrey basically telling me that I don't get to decide, it's up to him and if it's not turned off first thing in the morning, they're going to find another IT provider.
vi) My director (fortunately) intervenes and explains to Humphrey that actually I'm actually doing the right thing and that turning it off is a bad idea and I've said what I've said because I want to protect his business, our business and their customers.
vii) I get a email this morning from the manager of the original user experiencing problems with MFA without any contact details.
viii) We reply, get the contact details and then phone the user.  It's fixed within 5 minutes.

So.  Let's look at the stupid things that went wrong here:

i) User doesn't contact the support team and instead talks to her manager.
ii)  Her manager takes it up with the company director (Humphrey) rather than telling her to contact support.
iii) Humphrey emails a 3rd-line project engineer, not support.  Who happens to live in New Zealand and is in the Land of Nod.
iv) Humphrey doesn't understand what he's asking for.  But tries to sound like he does and gets up in arms when a security-conscious, fairly senior IT technician (me) politely refuses his request, with a well-worded explanation and also mentions that the user should have contacted support first.
v) User still hasn't contacted the support team.

What should have happened:

i) User notices an issue with their MFA application not working.  They call support.  Support fix it.  Total fix time?  5 minutes.

I have sympathy for you guys working in motor repairs.  I think I would have an aneurysm by now in your profession with the absolute roasters you have to deal with.

 

Is the problem with their in-house heirachy in which everything had to go through a manager snd not direct to support ( you)?

[GrumpiusMaximus]

20 minutes ago, richardmorris said:

Is the problem with their in-house heirachy in which everything had to go through a manager snd not direct to support ( you)?

I don't think so, it doesn't strike me as that sort of set up.

Reporting issues via their manager is one of the first things we talk about when we onboard new customers now.  We emphatically (but politely) request that they do not do this and that the affected user reports one problem with one ticket or email.  People putting multiple requests in one ticket, or reporting on behalf or doing both at the same time is a complete and utter pain in the arse to deal with and actually slows the service down considerably, especially the reporting on behalf.

Working a lot on our service delivery processes and user experience so think about this practically every day, tragically.

[Rust Collector]

1 minute ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

I don't think so, it doesn't strike me as that sort of set up.

I must admit, reporting issues via their manager is one of the first things we talk about when we onboard new customers now.  We emphatically (but politely) request that they do not do this and that the affected user reports one problem with one ticket or email.  People putting multiple requests in one ticket, or reporting on behalf or doing both at the same time is a complete and utter pain in the arse to deal with and actually slows the service down considerably, especially the reporting on behalf.

I work a lot on our service delivery processes and user experience so think about this practically every day, tragically.

As a manager, I emphatically encourage my team to contact our IT provider rather than bother me when their computer ‘doesn’t work’.

It interrupts me from posting on autoshite.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

5 minutes ago, Rust Collector said:

As a manager, I emphatically encourage my team to contact our IT provider rather than bother me when their computer ‘doesn’t work’.

It interrupts me from posting on autoshite.

I know people hate phoning IT but knowing the team as I do (and I also sometimes answer the phones) they're a nice bunch of people and the more experienced team members are happy to just have a chat whilst incidentally fixing the computer.  We're a quite approachable bunch and have good relationships with the vast majority of our customers.

The customers that have the 'report to manager' issue tend to be the ones that get the worst experience.  But that's only because every single support request is delayed by at least 20 minutes when our Line 1 has to go back to them and ask them for the contact details of the user with the original issue!  They also tend to be the least IT literate.  Work for us to do on the consultancy front there...

I have before had a manager on the phone asking me to reset a user's password.  I've just politely told them to pass over the affected user.  Once or twice it's been a case of 'well they're at home now, they left for the afternoon'.  At which point my head firmly hits the desk whilst I repeat that the user is much better off calling us directly.  I just do not fathom the mind that thinks that reporting on behalf is quicker, more efficient or more effective.  It's actually stupid.

[Rust Collector]

3 minutes ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

I just do not fathom the mind that thinks that reporting on behalf is quicker, more efficient or more effective.  It's actually stupid.

The reason I hate it is that I normally have more pressing things to sort, and so if it gets left to me to contact IT then it’ll get forgotten done later when I have a chance to sit on the phone. Meanwhile, my team member hasn’t been able to work efficiently/at all.

It’s a complete waste of time, much better if the affected person gets in touch.

Also, from a lazy employee POV: talking to IT is a doss… you look busy, but you’re really doing fuck all as it’s the IT person doing the work, you’re just explaining what’s wrong. Why wouldn’t you want to call them?!

[GrumpiusMaximus]

5 minutes ago, Rust Collector said:

The reason I hate it is that I normally have more pressing things to sort, and so if it gets left to me to contact IT then it’ll get forgotten done later when I have a chance to sit on the phone. Meanwhile, my team member hasn’t been able to work efficiently/at all.

It’s a complete waste of time, much better if the affected person gets in touch.

Also, from a lazy employee POV: talking to IT is a doss… you look busy, but you’re really doing fuck all as it’s the IT person doing the work, you’re just explaining what’s wrong. Why wouldn’t you want to call them?!

Because most outsourced IT providers are shit.  I like to think we're a bit less shit.  Actually, I tend to think we're pretty good...

[High Jetter]

4 hours ago, dozeydustman said:

Failed. We’ve only ran out of juice once. They have a 24 volt supply to power the ECU and whatever is left of the original chassis electrics. That conked out so no lights, hazards operate on one side only, and worst of all no brake compressor. They’re at the depot and struggling to get it off the low loader with hardly any air left in the system.
 

On both electric trucks the fails have been the non-motive systems. This is the second major failure for this one. The other electrical vehicle has had about 15.

Basically rubbish, then?

[GrumpiusMaximus]

4 minutes ago, Nyphur said:

So which one was it? Company has had issues all day due to Microsoft make a change to their policy, or one user has an issue?

As far as I can tell, a handful of them needed to re-authenticate and they may have had an older version of the app as as they weren't seeing the push prompt for the on-screen two-digit number.  They're on security basics as they haven't paid for conditional access.  All of them managed to sort it apart from this one user, who needed to have it reset.  But at the point we got the email, it was just the one user having the issue and we hadn't had any report of the wider issue, or if we had it had been sent to our 3rd line project engineer who was fast asleep.

Of course, Humphrey sees all of this as meaning that MFA is bad.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

They have their own tenants, we manage them through Partner Centre (GDAP, obvs) and GA and we resell licences in most instances, both Microsoft and for other SaaS products.  We usually do all of the management but we also offer co-managed services to some of our customers if they have an internal app support or IT team.

Conditional access is something we're keen on trying to bring in where we can but it's a bit of a hard sell, especially if a customer doesn't understand the implications of a breach.  We have had an instance of MFA being breached but only once in the time I've been with the company but that would have been stopped by conditional access...

This has at least led to a conversation between our MD and their director about improving the relationship and looking at their policy, etc.

[Wack]

1 hour ago, Jazoli said:

It is completely fucked and a complete waste of time now, you can filter a lot of it out but the number of scamming cunts far outweighs the genuine sellers now.

I once spent ½ an hour reporting about 15 of them 

All got the same bot response , doesn't breach guidelines , if you feel this isn't correct  resubmit for sn actual person to look at it 

A week later , we don't have time to look at it , useless 

[GrumpiusMaximus]

7 minutes ago, Nyphur said:

I don't miss working for an MSP 😂

I genuinely love it.  I was brought in as L2 support 18 months ago but given that we're a small team (fewer than a dozen in total) I get to put and implement ideas for improvement all over the shop.  We brought in HaloPSA back in May and I've developed our ticketing and support processes, user experience, etc.  Currently working on reporting and improving the alerting along with projects.  I get a lot of flexibility with my work and very light-touch management.  Huge contrast to my old job at a University.

If I was still doing just L2 support... Jesus....

My brother is a developer and there is a bit of envy as he's never had to deal with customers.  Bastard.