IT BS thread

Fun times in IT today, doing a system upgrade and our vendor's "working" with us. First time we spent all the time getting all the VPNs, VMs setup but Avaya had just released a new version two days prior. Their engineer assumed the new version was compatible but after three hours of work and tinkering to get our VMs to take the file we learned it was not.

Take two is today and their new engineer is having issues with his microphone on our call........this meeting just started and we got another 4 hours!

 

I actually used Excel 4.0 on Monday

 

Getting a free home upgrade next month

 

Back when I was a hands on Sys Admin, I frequently used a phrase I learned while working in the Small Arms Repair shop at my Maintenance Battalion in the Army - "Get a bigger hammer. It if doesn't fit, force it. If it breaks, you needed to replace it anyway."

 

I had an exciting day on Wednesday this week at work.

I work for a large employer (50,000+ employees). I am in a specialized Major Incident Management group, where we handle very large scale issues that may impact an entire building, or a whole business division..... As with many people, the vast majority of our people have been working form home since early 2020, October 18th was the "Phase 1 Return to the Office" for certain business groups. So we have lots of people back in offices again, all around the country. Most have company laptops and connect to the company network via WiFi. So, all of a sudden, maybe 10 AM Central time on Wednesday, our Service Desk team started frantically chattering (in our shared Zoom chatroom) about receiving a shit ton of calls from users all over the country that they lost WiFi connectivity inside offices. This included our CEO and the executives in the st. Louis HQ building, so it got out full attention.

We started a Zoom call, got the Network support team on. After a short time, they found that in the Cisco ISE application, the entire database of all Wireless network devices for the entire company was empty. Thousands of devices... all gone. Poof! That's why every office building completely lost wireless connectivity (wired was not affected). So, while the Network team started the process of reloading from the latest backup, we got Cisco vendor tech support on the call. They ended up telling us that a bug in the version of ISE that we are running was just discovered last week, where if an admin goes into ISE, uses the filtering to select certain devices, and then perform any action on those selected devices, the bug causes ALL devices to be deleted. Not just those devices you had selected. Now if you just manually select a device - do NOT use the filtering, the bug does not trigger. They got the ISE device database restored in a couple hours, and Cisco is working on a new hotfix for this. That was a fun morning.....

 

The golf cart the IT people used at my school had this as a bumper sticker.

 

Went and took AWS cloud practitioner today, talk about a mile wide and an inch deep. I feel like a more accurate title would be AWS Sales Associate

 

We got rid of standalone printers over the past few years and just have a few big leased Konica MFPs in each building. Now that kids are back full time and remote learning is definitely not on the horizon teachers started buying their own printers and putting in tickets for us to connect them to the network. Nipped that in the bud real quick. Part of the reason we got rid of those was to minimize the support drain that printers are - bringing in a bunch of random consumer grade devices that also probably broadcast their own rogue SSIDs is even worse and that's not happening. Plus every kid has a device, and they were forced to teach with no paper for months while they were home or hybrid - how are they printing often enough where a classroom printer is a need?

 

Outlook and printers are the 2 biggest wastes of support hours. I’ve been working MITS for over a decade, big or small organizations, doesn’t matter, same bullshit. Email and printers, followed closely by people who can’t remember/reset their passwords.

Good times…

 

The only times I have to deal with the Konicas are when we get new ones - and at this point the dealer just pulls the config, users, and addresses from the old one and puts it on the new one so I just need to change the drivers on the print server.

I've been in "minimize support burden" mode a lot lately. We use GMail so all but three people use the web interface for that. All three are due for new desktops - we swapped one the other day and told the user we're not supporting that anymore, it's been 8 years since we moved off of Exchange and everyone else dropped Outlook in that time, time to move on. The others are on deck for that soon. Every single time they change their password, they put in a ticket about not being able to get to their email because the agent doesn't automatically prompt them to enter their new password, it just stalls. I'm done with that.

 

Question for you all. Do any of you regulars have Google Pixel phones? And/or use Google Fi?

If so, thoughts and opinions?

 

I have a Pixel 5. I like it a lot, no bloat and no redundant manufacturer apps (i.e. Samsung Messages and keyboard) is nice. Battery life is good, performance is fine - I mostly take pictures, do some web browsing, do general work email/calendar stuff, and use Android Auto. I don't game or anything that requires really high end hardware. For me it was a good mix, I save a few bucks by not getting a top of the line processor that I don't need, but I keep the other flagship features like water resistance and wireless charging. My girlfriend has a 4A and is happy with it as well.

The 6 is a bit disappointing only in that it's larger and I don't care for big phones. I'm hoping that they do a 6A that's closer to the size of the 5 and 4A, but include wireless charging this time.

Google Fi is a non-starter for me - I'm in a rural area and Sprint and T-Mobile coverage isn't great. AT&T is really my only good option - even Verizon never bothered covering the more remote areas around here, but Cingular did a long time ago so AT&T got that network in the merger.

 

iPhone user here since they came out but spent 3 years on the Pixel. Had a Pixel 1 -3 and absolutely loved all three of them. I only switched back because my entire family uses iMessage and I was tired of my pictures and videos of the kids looking like crap when I send them to everyone.

If I had to run another Android phone it would only be a Pixel because there is no bloat wear and it gets the updates as soon as Google releases them. You are almost guaranteed to get the latest Android OS for several years w/o having to buy a new phone. My biggest grip with the Android echo system was to upgrade the OS on almost all Android phones you needed to replace your phone.

If iMessage was ever released on Android I would strongly consider moving back to the Pixel line.

 

Thanks for your opinions guys!

 

I have a Pixel 5, love it. Great battery life, no bloatware or crappy manufacturer software. I've had Samsungs in the past and liked the hardware but hated their software. My wife just jumped from a 3 to a 6, she loves it except for the fingerprint identification -- they changed it from a pad on the back to using the screen, and it doesn't seem to work well for her. But, other than that, she sticks with the Pixel.

No personal experience with Google Fi, and frankly don't know anyone that has used it.

 

I'll admit it. I'm a luddite when it comes to phones. I use it for, um, phone calls. I also use it for Ring, texting and reading the news and some other apps, but nothing crazy. I had to trade up from my el-cheapo Samsung Galaxy J7 because it ran out of internal memory. Everything's an iOS or Android app these days so I needed something with more headroom. This summer I picked up a Pixel 4a and think it's a fine bit of technology. Its screen is sharp and scrolls smoothly. It connects to home wireless and 4G signals better than the previous phone. It has a good camera which is nice because, even though I prefer a real camera, you can't take pics if you don't have it with you. I also use an app called Network Manager to diagnose friends and family wifi issues, which works well on this phone. And as others have said, it doesn't have the Samsung crapware that can't be removed.

I've been happy enough with this phone that I'm seriously considering getting the wife a Pixel 5a for Xmas. I'd keep an eye on the Pixel 6 reviews to see if it has the same quality, otherwise you can get a 5a for $50 off at $399 from Google starting 11/18.

 

Funny, my girlfriend made the exact same switch. Her J7 was garbage - the camera wouldn't even properly focus on anything, it'd randomly reboot during phone calls, and it was pretty pathetically optioned for what she paid for it.

 

My last couple phones have been OnePlus. I feel like the experience is similar to the Pixel, some enhancements, but far from bloated.