IT support/employee rant thread

[Dragonetti]

HAHA Intel Analyst are my worse customers, because they are so full of themselves. I hate them, and they are usually the dumbest user.

I had like 5 of them in a circle trying to use the remote.

[JesusHChrist]

You should try being IT support from 8000 miles and 14 time zones away for your 75 year old computer illiterate mother.

I'm 1000 miles away but in the same time zone for my 85 year old, computer illiterate father. The next time I'm down there, I'm going to ensure I can get him on a webex. Get it all set up with a bookmark in the browser.

You can get a free, 3 user webex account, but you probably know that already. At least then, you can see what is going on. Doesn't help at all with hardware problems, but useful for functional stuff.

[Dragonetti]

Ahh yes, I am trying to get away from the government services. I am tired of the Alpha Male syndrome.

[bladevalant546]

I had one call at one point when I tried to the customers account information. I was then accused of working for the anti-Christ and that number as an attempt to get her to have the mark of the beast. This went on for about 25 minutes. After the call I just put my phone on DnD and took a 5 minute breather. I was a Christian at that time.

[Dragonetti]

Computers = Magic.

The works of Satan!

[popeyespappy]

You should try being IT support from 8000 miles and 14 time zones away for your 75 year old computer illiterate mother.

I'm 1000 miles away but in the same time zone for my 85 year old, computer illiterate father. The next time I'm down there, I'm going to ensure I can get him on a webex. Get it all set up with a bookmark in the browser.

You can get a free, 3 user webex account, but you probably know that already. At least then, you can see what is going on. Doesn't help at all with hardware problems, but useful for functional stuff.

I had Log Me In setup on her old laptop, but it died a few weeks ago. We bought her a new one. Lots of memory (mom speak for a large hard drive) to store pictures. My sister went by and setup her Facebook account on it, but no way am I going to try to talk either one of them through setting up any kind of remote access form here. She's just going to have to wait until I get back next month.

[Jackalope]

Back in the client-server era (late 90s), I had a customer with the database on the US West coast, and another user population in Europe. Due to network latency, performance was predictably poor. Applications that generate lots and lots of SQL are not happy in high latency environments.

I explained to the CIO, latency was dependent on the speed of light and time spent in the routers/switchs. The absolute latency floor is of course the speed of light (actually a fraction of the speed of light since the signal was going through copper/fiber/whatever). A fundamental limit due to the hard physical laws.

The only way to reduce latency is bring the devices closer together. I explained all this, did the calc to show latency.

The response? Fix it! I think I actually laughed.

Hmmm... To me, the answer here is replication - though not necessarily practical, and not necessarily available in that timeframe.

The CIO sounds like a complete tool though.

[Jackalope]

Ahh yes, I am trying to get away from the government services. I am tired of the Alpha Male syndrome.

Consulting. Make money by the bucketful.

[JesusHChrist]

Hmmm... To me, the answer here is replication - though not necessarily practical, and not necessarily available in that timeframe.

The CIO sounds like a complete tool though.

Replication would have been a possibility, but at the time was not a robust technology yet and I don't think the product supported its use in any case.

Today of course, you just put the app servers near the database and access goes from the web to app server to db. This technology wasn't available for this product at the time.

Packaged software - so limited choices.

And the CIO was one of those "make it so" kinda guys. Damn reality getting in the way of what we want!

[Jackalope]

Hmmm... To me, the answer here is replication - though not necessarily practical, and not necessarily available in that timeframe.

The CIO sounds like a complete tool though.

Replication would have been a possibility, but at the time was not a robust technology yet and I don't think the product supported its use in any case.

Today of course, you just put the app servers near the database and access goes from the web to app server to db. This technology wasn't available for this product at the time.

Packaged software - so limited choices.

And the CIO was one of those "make it so" kinda guys. Damn reality getting in the way of what we want!

Well, in that case, you were pretty well boned.