Things you learn in IT ..

[Inoue Katsu]

Because we're in the middle of major server room renovations I figured I'd have plenty of material to start off a thread like this, lets see how far we can go with the few techies we have around :-)

1. When pulling on a network cable, it always gets entangled behind something else.

2. Said something is usually a power cable.

3. Power cables are not as securely attached as you'd like to think.

4. It is usually a good idea to buy servers which have a redundant power supply.

5. A power outage always takes 2 minutes longer then the runtime capacity of your UPS.

6. Never put fiber-optic transmitters at eye height.

7. Especially not the long haul transmitters.

8. Telling people long haul fiber-optic lasers mean instant-blindness when looked directly into will make said people scared of any closet containing fiber.

9. Holding a partially unplugged fiber cable in your hands is a good way to keep before-mentioned people at a distance.

10. Explaining how using $2000 worth of fiber instead of $50 in copper between your access switches and your core backbone will mean the difference between $500.000 or $5.000 in damage when lightning strikes part of the building is usually a good way to convince managers that you really need those 'dangerous' lasers.

11. You can try to explain to management the dangers from lightning / fire / overheating / data loss but you wont get funding till something actually goes wrong.

12. Nobody from management remembers you telling them about the dangers after something went wrong.

13. Management does not like it when it turns out you have everything in writing.

14. The cost of reconstruction / disaster recovery is always at least twice the cost of what it would have cost you to guard against it.

15. Disaster recovery can take a long time.

16. Fiber cable should not be bended too far.

17. There is always someone who bends the fiber cable too far.

18. People get offended and confused when you get angry at them after they bend a fiber cable too far.

19. Managers do not get this either.

20. Taking the afternoon off and disabling your phone for a few hours is a good idea when you see the link light go out after someone bent a fiber cable.

21. Managers will officially restrict who is allowed to touch fiber cables after things stopped working for a few hours.

22. Everyone will call the IT department at once when the network dies.

23. Introducing Voip is a good way to prevent point 22.

24. People walk over and demand somebody look at *their* computer even when the whole network is down.

25. Trying to explain how it isn't their computer but the whole network is like talking to a brick wall.

26. Management does not like it when you lock the door to the IT department during a network wide issue so you can focus on fixing it instead of fending off people.

27. People do not get it why you don't want to talk to them during an outage.

28. Telling people 'That depends on how long you intend to keep me from working by standing here and talking to me' is a good way of making people see the error of their ways.

29. When somebody complains about their keyboard not working,it is never a good idea to tilt it as it is probably full of coffee.

30. Nobody ever mentions they spilled a full cup of coffee into their keyboard.

31. Half the time they don't even know where the coffee came from even though their cup of coffee has coffee all down the outside of it.

32. Sugar will catch those who spilled into it and refrained from calling IT eventually.

33. People will expect you to drop what you're doing on the spot to help them.

34. Even when you're carrying a 60Kg server.

35. People get confused when you refuse to help them while on route to another issue and tell them to call the help desk.

36. People bug you during your lunch break about (private) issues.

37. People call you about an issue and explain how you can fix it right away because they're going on lunch break anyways.

38. People save up issues till just before lunch time.

39. People think IT just 'sits there and slacks off on the Internet'

40. Telling the corporate gossip person that the small microphone hole in the monitor is actually a webcam so IT / Management can see if you're actually working will lead to a shortage of post-it notes within a week.

41. Asking people 'why they have a post-it note on their monitor' will lead to evasive answers.

42. Calling someone who you know has a post it note in front of the small hole will lead to an increase in paranoia.

43. Supplies gets angry once they figure out you started a rumor about webcams in the monitors.

44. Management eventually asks (very carefully/sneakily) if they can get access to 'some hidden webcam system in the building'

45. You can never have 100% e-mail anti- spam/virus protection

46. Nobody ever expects an e-mail from Hallmark to be a virus .. even when the attached zip contains a file called 'Injector.exe'

47. People always click the attached virus multiple times because they REALLY want to see that e-card that was sent to them.

48. People tend to open viruses right before quitting time.

49. People tend to shrug off when they clicked a virus even though it cost you 3 hours to fix it.

50. Anything that has any form of electronics in it must belong to IT

51. The time between something that stopped working and somebody calling IT can be between 1 minute and 5 days.

52. Everybody always expects somebody else to call about a problem.

53. The correct way of reporting something broken is to complain about it to management.

54. Management is not capable of relaying technical problems.

55. It takes some effort to convince Management that the problem they're trying to relay has never been reported to IT.

56. Telling users that they should stop going through management to report IT problems does not work.

57. Telling Management that people are just using IT problems as an excuse to not work/finish in time by not actually calling IT does work however.

58. There are 3 kinds of users, those who kinda know how things work, those who *think* they know how things work and those who don't want to know.

59. Those who *think* they know how it works are dangerous.

60. Those who don't want to know are annoying.

61. Not everyone thinks 'the position of the moon' or 'radiation from orbiting satellites' is a good reason when they ask you 'why doesn't it work' without being more specific.

62. People don't read error messages.

63. People expect you to have psychic powers that can tell that they're pressing the wrong buttons.

64. When trying to explain to somebody that when a printer stops working and shows 'paper jam' means the paper is jammed and they should fix it themselves, the answer is usually that 'they're not technical and could not have known it was a paper jam ..'

65. Same goes for 'load paper'

66. 'I'm not technical like you computer people' is in the #5 of excuses when somebody does something obviously stupid.

67. Learning how to make somebody know they did something overly stupid in such a way that they can't complain to anyone about you calling them stupid is an art.

68. It takes a few years to master the art of making people feel stupid.

69. Errors usually can't be reproduced when you're standing behind the person.

70. It takes a few months for people to figure out what the acronym P.E.B.K.A.C. stands for.

71. Reading the BOFH chronicles gives good inspiration on how to deal with (l)users.

72. Asking if something is D.A.E.H.T.I.H.S. compatible really works on IT conventions to make salespeople panic.

73. Real techies do know how to read shit head in every direction including at least 1 foreign language.

74. Creating an account resembling local management and putting on peoples facebook / other social crap sites how they should get back to work and stop slacking off when said person spends too much time on there during work time, leads to much fun.

75. Pulling out a disk to demonstrate to management how the servers are in 'Protected RAID' is usually the time you find out that RAID takes a lot of resources to reconstruct, the pulled disk was actually not in RAID or the RAID card has issues with rebuilding its array while the OS is powered on.

76. Never test anything failover during office hours unless its been tested successfully before.

77. Fail over servers don't fail over when you test the fail over mechanism during office hours.

78. It is very hard to explain how half the building listening to Internet radio is preventing their e-mail from coming through.

79. Blocking Internet radio will not make you one of the favorite people.

80. Adding a shoutcast relay afterwards to cut down bandwidth usage does however.

81. Peoples computers always break when a shipment of new computers arrives.

82. People go to extreme lengths to try and get a new computer.

83. People can magically keep working with their old 'broken' computer when you offer to replace it with an older properly functioning one because the new computers have not been configured yet.

.. and all of that from 10 years of personal experience D:

[Williamca Zenovka]

That was really fun and interesting to read, P:

Does that make me a nerd?

[Inoue Katsu]

here's something i learned today:

84. Broadcast storms and STP loops are not a myth.

85. No Internet makes more people complain then when a core application is not working.

And yes William .. probably =p

[Williamca Zenovka]

I can honestly say I believe number 85.

[Tsukiyomi Yuhara]

70. It takes a few months for people to figure out what the acronym P.E.B.K.A.C. stands for.

Name of my brothers desktop xD.

Oddly there is something always wrong with it, the Irony.

[Zerowinged Vasiliev]

18. People get offended and confused when you get angry at them after they bend a fiber cable too far.

Well, I mean. . . It would be ok if they actually knew beforehand that the ENTIRE DAMN LINE NEEDED TO BE REPLACED DX< . . . Either that or you can use a kit to fix the line if you know where the break is. . . Either way, the costs are retarded.

25. Trying to explain how it isn't their computer but the whole network is like talking to a brick wall.

I pray for you. . .

72. Asking if something is D.A.E.H.T.I.H.S. compatible really works on IT conventions to make salespeople panic.

Never thought of it that way, going to try this. . .

[RazorFox]

40. Telling the corporate gossip person that the small microphone hole in the monitor is actually a webcam so IT / Management can see if you're actually working will lead to a shortage of post-it notes within a week.

41. Asking people 'why they have a post-it note on their monitor' will lead to evasive answers.

42. Calling someone who you know has a post it note in front of the small hole will lead to an increase in paranoia.

43. Supplies gets angry once they figure out you started a rumor about webcams in the monitors.

44. Management eventually asks (very carefully/sneakily) if they can get access to 'some hidden webcam system in the building'

This sounds like a scenario for a series of Dilbert strips.

[Jester Spearmann]

86. Someone will ALWAYS ask 'Where is the any key'