Bits & bobs, more to follow (sorryyyyyy appparently I am Spamlex at the moment)

[kaberett]

1. wyrdatlast has started writing a series about about coming to terms with diagnosis of chronic illnesses, viewed in a framing of grief, which I suspect a bunch of you will be interested in, and for which I personally am v grateful because it means I don't gotta get around to writing the wretched things. ;)

2. BECAUSE OF REASONS (do my housemate a favour by doing me a favour, folk?) if those of you in the tech/computer science industry felt like writing a couplefew paragraphs about what your job is actually like for someone with a very strong CS background but no industry experience, I'd be super grateful. Comments here or e-mail are great. Cheerssss xx

Comments

[azurelunatic]

I am Erstwhile Tech Support working in an allegedly non-technical role. In practice, since I also notice patterns and it drives me spare if Things Are Wrong, a non-zero portion of my day goes like:

Teammate tells me what sort of laptop he would like to replace his current laptop which is dying. Attempt to use the helpdesk system to file this request with the hardware folks. Realize that X portion of the helpdesk system is Wrong. Make a note of it, and continue filing ticket for hardware.
Finish filing ticket for hardware. Log a note in daily journal file that ticket for hardware has been filed, in order to account for time. Send email with ticket number to teammate to confirm that ticket has been filed.
Open helpdesk system to file a ticket against said helpdesk system, because it is *Wrong*. Log the time accordingly.
Attempt to IM colleague on another team to complain about the helpdesk system.
Realize IM is down.
Use another IM system, which is still up. Complain about the helpdesk system and the busted IM system. Realize that the IM thing is not just you.
Call to file a help ticket for the busted IM system. (Call, because outages are supposed to be reported via phone, because the help ticketing system will take days, even though it's not supposed to.) Argue with the tech support guy about whether he should include your phone number when passing along the message to the team responsible for fixing. He includes your number. Comment to say that email is preferred, and phone is the worst way. Head to not!Facebook (the internal social network) to complain about the poor service.
Call helpdesk to check back on ticket for busted IM system, because it's a day later and IM still isn't working for everyone. Some people have it, some don't. You disconnect at your peril. Complain to same co-worker, who has found a document enumerating some helpful troubleshooting steps, including the host names of the expected two IM servers. Try pinging the two IM servers. Discover that one is up and one is down. Include this information in the ticket.
Teammate says that the model laptop that Procurement has sent to him for approval is not the correct model laptop. Nod grimly, as this is the thing that happened last time that you did not catch, and the guy that left last Friday got the wrong model laptop. (Someone else has already called dibs on it, or you could give the teammate that one and tell him tough luck about the model.) Happily he has got a quote for the correct model. Test and see whether you can upload the .pdf to the ticket. You can't, but that's okay -- because you have read the wiki for the system that the helpdesk software is based on, you know how to create an email which will attach itself to the ticket as a comment, and adding the .pdf as an attachment to the email will attach the .pdf as an upload even though you shouldn't have the ability to attach things as it's currently configured. You are a fucking superhero.
Come in to discover that your IM client has reconnected to the working server. Rejoice! Discover that your colleague is still not connected. Stop rejoicing.
Return to desk to find an email from the folks who may or may not be responsible for the IM system which is busted. They claim your personal account is working fine, and that you should email them a screenshot of the error you are experiencing. Swear (to yourself). Compose a message with perhaps unnecessarily detailed steps of what you have done so far, omitting any cursing. Request that they confirm that server #2 still exists and is powered on, just to rule out any data center events, like the migration you got a notification for, which said that any virtual machines without owner info listed would be powered off post-move.
Make a bet with your colleague: you say it was the data center migration, and you bet that there was no owner listed. He says that some other VM cloned its IP and MAC address by accident, and this is why some people get through and some don't. Both of you discount the conspiracy theory that this is being done on purpose to test who still uses the old IM server instead of the new one which only works reliably on Windows. The terms of the bet are two (2) chocolate-covered espresso beans. You are pretty sure you will win; you are pretty sure that when this happens, your colleague will snaffle two of them from your candy dish and present them to you as his payment.

[azurelunatic]

(This helpdesk system is the dystopia of helpdesk systems. I have been at war with it for going on 10 months. The new executive in charge of internal IT claims that the non-Windows users' problems with the new IM system are because they are whiners who will never be satisfied. I say that this new executive needs to get gone.)