Some experimental notes

Now unlocked, previous title: Maybe this will get me fired.
Signs point to yes .. but I'v quit first.

Admin note on a ticket I was working (note, this guy is the president, my boss' boss):

admin to admin, from [president] - 01/30/2009 20:51:02[view source] 24.x.y.z [Adric]
...what's up with the note about "no wiki"? Not every customer has a wiki page, and in fact, only the larger customers have a wiki page.

Figure it out. search tickets. I already know what the problem just from searching tickets - either way, just fix it NOW and keep your sarcastic comments out of admin notes. There is no place for that at [corp]. Should you accidentally not select admin to admin and say something smart, that would not be good at all.


I called my boss and yelled at him some, apologetically. I reminded him he should get a better job. My response in email (cc'd my boss) is thus:

Hi,

Your ironic note made me furious and in no way helped us help the customer.

Thanks,
[adric]

Helpful data point: the customers that have wiki pages have them for the most part because I wrote them or salvaged them. This customer has been here for three weeks and dozens of tickets.

After I had told the customer more useless things, my boss Jabbered in with a good clue and we got it fixed for now. I thanked him.

( the thrilling conclusion? )

customer actually wrote:

Please look for access into ct/ and /ept from i.p.s outside spain for last 3 weeks.

And I started to write:

In short it doesn't really work that way. For one thing, everyone using the sites might access the ct or ept folders, and from a quick search it looks like some legitimate users might POST to them as well, so that is going to be pretty hard to search. More difficult is this nebulous idea of IPs not from Spain ... that's

And stopped short of typing: "not a finite set".

Bonus humour: coworker, upon reading this, asked: "What's whith all the acronyms? What's an IPS?"

Now back to finding something to get this guy off my back so I can finish watching オアヂシオん ...

ETA: Holy hell that movie is cracked. And the trailers on the disc are for four(?) more cracked Asian horror flicks (Infection, Eye 2, Ju On ...), the collectors remastered box set of American Psycho and some movie about waiters. Special features include a creepy photo gallery and clips of Rob Zombie saying this movie creeped him the f-- out. Yay!

Had a nice date last night, and a fun night of Nihon-no-doruku Monday. Freelance gig called to say come in, fix niggles and get paid. And they are buying lunch :) I dragged my carcass out of bed an hour later and wound cords and off I went. Other news about the final defeat of alien invaders would make sense to very few of you, but there are signs that it is emminent and this fill me with giggles and probably ensures more freelance work.

Beloved Ifni, blessed Eris, stay away from me, and no presidential politics please. I am having a good week.

あんたのおかねタベルにあります。

ETA: Three hours after double-checking the revert, I triple checked and saw the error messsage. fixed in seconds and victory was ours. Hail Eris! I had not remembered the debate was tonight when I composed this in sleep brain this am, really.. *facepalm*

Some discussion with coworker yesterday provoked this tonight while I was riding a crowded train into work. I welcome your input. I expect that anyone on our team at work would be able to 'pass' this quiz and that a few would do better than I. The Linux section is almost complete and the Windows section is stubbed. It's wiki of course and I've tried to make the HTML work... Cut for length and horror factor.( Web Security quiz, comments appreciated )

Once more I am the** the guy taking phone calls for a major problem that I didn't cause and can't fix, speaking politely and jovially to our customers, missing calls because I'm already on the phone.

The ephiph--adrenaline is already starting to upset my stomach, and it's just started. *twitch* *ring* *drops tea bag to answer phone*

I really don't like this. I really don't like having responsibility for things I can't fix. It's one of my biggest problems with this crappy industry... it's what makes me crazier, and it's no good for my digestion either.

So, since you didn't ask: The nameservers went missing, we know about it, and they know about it, are ostensibly working on it already and I don't have an ETA.

** this time there is one (!) other guy, but he's not here in the NOC having gone over to try and be ready to help

0:30And we're back up. Phone calls continue, and the recriminations have started. About that tea...

It seems I have been sniping qute a bit on one of mangosteen's threads again and for some reason I'm going to paste all of them into this post.

( My comments in display order )
---
I think that's all of it. Maybe one of my okcupid adjectives should be 'bitter'.

Oh, here's one from a mail thread with my boss (not to be confused with The Boss who I decline to contact without great need):

I can ask, but I doubt it will happen anytime soon.

Mm hmm, me too. This is the avenue of communication I have. I don't like that
it often comes out as a list of complaints. (the same could be said of my
vocalizations). sometimes I can word stuff as helpful suggestions. I certainly try to do so.

Herein An unredacted SQL schema I just encountered on a customer's site. His complaint: "I added a record about one hour agao, but it seems I am not able to add in new enteries."

mysql> describe rs_sites;
+-----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field           | Type         | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+-----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| siteid          | tinyint(9)   | NO   | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment | 
| siteName        | varchar(255) | NO   |     |         |                | 
| siteSlug        | varchar(255) | NO   |     |         |                | 
| siteKeyword     | varchar(255) | NO   |     |         |                | 
| siteDescription | longtext     | NO   |     |         |                | 
| siteThumb       | varchar(255) | NO   |     |         |                | 
| siteAffUrl      | varchar(255) | NO   |     |         |                | 
+-----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
7 rows in set (0.00 sec)

( My hotfix... and some explanation  )

[Poll #1144590]

Boss: Stay after a bit Monday and we'll get your review in.

Me: Wow, um, okay. I should be done by 9, so I'll ping you if I haven't heard from you by then?

Boss: I usually get in about 11.

Me: Wow. I'll be really tired, but I appreciate that you are trying to fit me in so I'm willing to try.

No response since Friday night. So ... I'll be here past noon it seems *headdesk*

... but man what a shitty day that was. At midnight, a customer's minion presents a crazy plan, which I try to implement and inevitably fuck up slightly in the trying, and I manage to aggravate a bug in own of our more important and shoddily constructed systems, which I don't have access to fix. I mail for help. Some hours later the ticket gets assigned urgency by the minion (4ish?), but the task is made no more clear or possible. I call for help, no answer. I scratch forward a little but make no real progress, waiting for Help to repair some of the damage wrought in our crappy old software before I push forward. A few more hours pass. The customer (business owner? exec anyway) calls (5:30?) and clarifies the task and the goal, and I start in on the now possible and fairly simple (but still crazy) task, but am hampered still by the effect of my previous mistake on one of our crappy systems. And my nerves were jangled from that state of things.

Time rolls around for me to be moseying (past 8) and the shit is still busted. I call again since dayshift is awake (8) and this time get some help (past 8:30?). Dayshift helps me tech the crap I forget after things went crazy, and all but one site was fine before I left the office at 9:30 (and the last was fixed just now by dayshift at 10 when I called to check on it, I missed a couple things on that one too :(

My epitaph may well read: "His silly stupid little mistakes were compounded by long-standing gaping architectural flaws, but at least he didn't call maxiez."

So today: I walk in to two dead machines, and while my teammate is working on those I get called by the owners of the corp from yesterday, who want to change it all back. The guy I was working with is on a plane, and they are not on the access list, so everybody gets called, including the owner of our company, and yes, I called maxie. And he fixed it all with his magical powers.