TGIF!!!

Some days it doesn’t pay to fall outta bed…

Left five minutes later than normal for work- Of course, traffic is an absolute bitch… Get there fifteen minutes late. Sigh…

Those who work for Uncle know about network and remote printing and remote servers, right?

Well, I’m beginning to think our IT system is on drugs…

I come in this morning and try to log in with my CAC, no joy. Now I know I haven’t forgotten those numbers in 12 hours… do it again, no joy (OBTW, if you lock yourself out by screwing up three times you kill not only your CAC but your system password; meaning you have to call for tech support, which can take up to three hours, plus three hours for the password reset to take effect).

Okay, lets try this from a cold boot- Power down, restart and third time’s a charm? YES, it actually worked! Let the office mates know that haven’t already locked themselves out…

Call IT and ask them what they did- The usual answer, nothing? No pushes last night? Uhh, maybe… Oh yeah, one little minor update.

Well, guy I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but your so called little update has about half the floor locked out and/or hung up in various modes. Oh yeah, De Nile is a river in Egypt, not in your office…

So I go into my email, and start answering the overnights from WESTPAC- One is pretty important, so that goes to the top of the pile- Draft the response, hit send and move on. About five minutes later, ding- email address not found!

WHAT? I just hit reply to an email I just got! How can it not be found???? Okay fine. There are other ways to do this… pull up the old address book- lookup, compose, send- ding- email address not found!

ARGHHH! Okay-type in [email protected] copy the text, send-
ding- email address not found!

So I call them- BWC is less than happy, but says, No- we’re working out here, email hasn’t changed, must be on your end… Sure I’ll send a test email.

Sure enough, there it is. Okay, this ol country boy is gonna outsmart em this morning…

Oh Mister Helpdesk…
Now what? – I’ve got an email address problem.
And? – It’s a known good email but it’s saying address not found.
Then it must be bad or down. – Nope and nope, I just confirmed it I can send you the test they just sent me.
Okay, do it.-
I’ll send them a test. – I’m listening for the ding- sure enough I hear it in the background.
Damn, mumble mumble mumble…
Hah, that email is blocked as a spammer! – What? I don’t $%^& think so.
Yep, according to the XXXXX it’s blocked as a spammer. – No, no, that is a major operational command, you can’t block them!
Not my problem, XXXXX has to clear the block. I can’t from here (he hangs up on me)

Oh well, I’ll spend $50 of taxpayer money to call them and break the good news, since I know they are expecting an answer…

Ah ha… finally a reference document I’ve been needing for a month… I’m gonna get something productive out of today yet…

I print the document to my so called local printer, which is about 30 feet away, except nothing shows up. So I print it again… still nothing. Hmmmm…

Okay, recheck the printer selection, go get the address off the printer, yep it matches.

Reboot the printer, send the document again. Nada…

I get back to my office, there is a phone message from someone two floors down on the opposite side of the building- Why are loading up our printer with your crap???

WTFO??? Soooo… I trudge down to that office, sure enough, all three copies of the document (which is not small). Plus I get an ass chewing from the secretary about how much that will cost “her” department, so I tell her to charge it to IT since it is their fault (hey, why not, I’m not the problem here).

So back to the office and call the ‘Help’ desk- yeah, right…

Do the usual back and forth:
Is your print queue set- yes
Did you address the correct printer- yes
Did you do a test print- yes
Did it go to the printer- no, it went to the printer on 8
It can’t- Well it DID!
We’ll send a tech- An hour later a tech shows up…

Same drill- He doesn’t believe it’s printing to 8; prints about 15 test sheets- Nada
The secretary on 8 calls, chewing on me, but I give the phone to the tech- Now she chews on him… hehehe

Off he goes, and I go to the next meeting. Three meetings later, I catch the guy in the hall. According to him, a printer problem at A DIFFERENT FACILITY across town has knocked our printer queues out…

Like I said, our IT system is on drugs…

TGIF!!!!!

Comments

TGIF!!! — 2 Comments

  1. Ah… so y’all are even more backward than we are… restores my faith in Uncle even more 🙂

    The ‘fun’ part of this is that in 2009 they are supposedly going to combine our current system (which we just got last month), with another system which it is totally incompatible with.

    We’ll be back to smoke signals and semaphore flags… sigh…