While you're here, could you go out of your way to do an impossible job?

Each Friday The Register offers a fresh installment of On Call, the reader-contributed column that celebrates the fine art of tech support. This week, a slight variation as we meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Finn," who shared a story of a sales call. "I was working for the European branch of a large US-based engineering …

[Korev]

"I was working for the European branch of a large US-based engineering company, mainly providing development consultancy, though we had a few products we sold on the side," Finn told On Call.

I guess Finn was in Scandinavia

[jake]

Just for your edification, Finland is not part of Scandinavia. Nordic, yes. Scandinavian, not so much.

[Korev]

Ta

[STOP_FORTH]

Well it's slightly more complicated than that! Most European boundaries have changed over time, some more than others. I believe at least part of what we now call Finland used to be part of what the old definition of Scandinavia was.

Still many Finns like to think of themselves as Scandinavian, even though they are not.

Let's ask Linus.

[Hile]

No need to bother Linus. Another finn here can say a strict NO, we absolutely do not count ourselves as Scandinavian.

Basically finnish language always uses word "pohjoismaat", "nordic countries". We do have the work "skandinavia" which is exact translation. It's never used in normal life and refers explicitly to the same language region and never includes Finland.

There ARE people who here thing that Scandinavia includes Finland, they just don't know what it means. As noted above this does not matter because the word is not used commonly used.

[tiggity]

.. and complicated by FennoSkandia - which is geography based & does Include Finland along with Norway & Sweden (& some Russian bits) - I think a lot of people (outside of the Nordic countries) think of the FennoSkandia region when they hear / see the word Scandinavia

[Evil Auditor]

That is a bold statement ;-)

No doubt, Norway and Sweden are part of it, and so is Denmark. If you consider the Scandinavian Peninsula, parts of Finland belongs to that as well; Denmark doesn't. And sometimes Iceland and, I believe, Faroe Islands are also considered Scandinavian... So, let's fight over what is Scandinavian and what isn't!

Mind you, I do not disagree with your statement.

[Sengir]

it's a language,not geographical seperation.

Key Differences:

Nordic Countries (Norden): Includes Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland, plus autonomous areas like Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

Scandinavian Countries: Refers strictly to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

Language & Culture: Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian, Swedish) are mutually intelligible, whereas Finnish belongs to a different language family.

[Philo T Farnsworth]

The distinction was probably lost on an Irish monk towards the end of the 8th century.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where does the Swedish-speaking part of Finland fit ?

[Michael Strorm]

Heedraulic Press Channel

> "Finnish belongs to a different language family"

Yes, if you actually look at Finnish, it has a very obviously different style and quite distinct appearance of its own.

I don't speak or understand it at all, but I can often identify a chunk or text or name as Finnish.

One thing I'll say- they certainly like their pairs of dots above vowels!

(Like umlauts, but I assume they're not called that in Finnish and probably do something different. As I said, I don't actually understand the language...!)

[FeRDNYC]

Re: Heedraulic Press Channel

"Diaeresis" is the generic term for a vowel sound separated into two sounds (i.e. doubled) — which, in written languages, is indicated by placing what the Germans call an umlaut over the vowel in question.

Interestingly, the symbol means the same thing in any written language that uses it.

And even more interestingly, it's only vowel sounds — which is why, although their name was partly a dig at Blue Öyster Cult, it was arguably far more clever to name a band Spin̈al Tap. While the "Ö" in "Blue Öyster Cult" is pretentious and gratuitous, it's at least a valid modifier. Not so, the "n̈" in "Spin̈al Tap", because there is no language in which diaeresis of a consonant is valid. Until the advent of Unicode's combining modifiers (which let you stick basically any flourish you like over any glyph you please) there was no way to type an "n̈" on any keyboard, no typeface included that symbol, and all of the band's logos and promotional materials had to be custom-typeset to feature an impossible letter.

I like to say that the "n̈" is typographically going to 11.

[Michael Strorm]

Umlaut, diaeresis and two-dot diacritic not the same thing

> "the symbol means the same thing in any written language that uses it."

I don't think that's correct. I'm aware it works that way in French (i.e. noël), but in my limited understanding of German, the umlaut modified the vowel sound (e.g. möchten) without doubling it. (*)

Wikipedia has an article covering the "two dots" diacritic which lists the umlaut separately from the diaeresis and mentions that it has different uses in different languages:-

Two_dots_(diacritic)

As far as I can tell, diaeresis is the *name* of the double-dot symbol and *only* for cases where it serves that specific vowel-doubling purpose.

(*) I think this makes Motörhead's usage of it sort-of correct (in the sense that if it *was* a German word, the modifier would- I think- make the second 'o' sound roughly like the 'uh' of 'motor' in English).

[Bob Royal]

Umlaut, umlaut, stick it up

Dunno what you guys are seeing, but n̈ is displayed on this rig with the double dots shifted to the right.

Consequently the trailing dot is obscured by the closing double quote: "n̈"

and the following space(s) suppressed.

Luckily the UTF8 works fine for me with Thai: ภูมิพลอดุลยเดช for example.

Note upper and lower modifiers (as I said, dunno what you guys are seeing.)

[C R Mudgeon]

Re: Umlaut, umlaut, stick it up

We're seeing the pair of dots centered over the "n" -- including in your own comment.

So it seems your machine can generate n-umlaut [1], but not render it properly. Can it handle more traditional two-dotted characters: ä ë ï ö ü?

[1] The phone on which I'm typing this has the opposite issue -- renders it OK but the on-screen keyboard doesn't offer it -- which is why I spelled it out.

[wolfetone]

I heard FInland's navy all have barcodes on them.

That's how it Scandinavian...

[Flightmode]

Sigh.

[Gene Cash]

Dude. My eyes are watering.

[Michael Strorm]

People often confuse the various Scandinavian and Nordic countries.

For example, they'll tell you that Magnus Magnusson was Icelandic. But he'd started, so he was Finnish.

[Flightmode]

Funnily enough; the name "Finn" is a more common in Denmark, Norway and Sweden than it is in Finland.

[Anonymous Coward]

That must explain why I've not met a Londoner who's first name is Cockney Wanker

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the same as Fleming being a more common surname in England than in Flanders.

[imanidiot]

Goes to show even the Finns don't want to live in Finland

[disgruntled yank]

Yes, but

Here I was thinking of Finn MacCool. Admittedly, the Irish have at times had a complicated relationship with Scandinavia.

[MOH]

Re: Yes, but

It's Fionn, completely different name

[HandleBaz]

Finn is a common Norwegian name, and likely an uncommon Danish and Swedish name.

I don't even think it has anything to do with the Finns.

[that one in the corner]

Sometimes these regonimised names seem suspicious; was there a hidden reason for the choice?

Today, Finn sounds very fishy to me.

[EnviableOne]

Fish, that's a Norwegian thing

[ssharwood]

FYI, nope.

When writing On Call, I look for a relationship between the contributor's name and whatever Regomized name I pick. In this case it is very obscure rhyming slang regarding their surname.

Simon

[big_D]

Or the UK, or Germany... I went to college with a guy called Finn in the UK and a niece, here in Germany, is engaged to another Finn, who is German...

[andy the pessimist]

it happens within companies too

I used to work for a large south korean company.

My boss had to visit hq. He took his company supplied laptop. He was not allowed to take it onsite. A package designer knew of there habit and took his presentation on paper/acetate.

The security was airport style.

[BartyFartsLast]

Re: it happens within companies too

As lax as that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: it happens within companies too

I remember the days when I worked at a major airport hub. We used to drive across (well, more under) the airport using the multiple rabbit-warrens that existed. Until security go SO BAD that it was easier to drive around the airport perimeter than it was to drive in a straight(ish) line across the airport.

[ShameElevator]

Re: it happens within companies too

I have a friend working as an aircraft mechanic. They have to move in and out of a (the?) secure area with tools in pockets, parts for the planes, and boxes with tools, screws and what not. They get scanned with a metal detector each time they enter.

[Malcolm Weir]

Re: it happens within companies too

Don't forget the US National Guardsmen having to send their metallic items through the X-ray to make sure the rifle-shaped thing was... errr... a weapon?

[PRR]

Re: it happens within companies too

> X-ray to make sure the rifle-shaped thing was... errr... a weapon?

I fooled them. On X-ray it looked like a shortened shotgun. I had to unpack the bag to show tubular wind-chimes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: it happens within companies too

I took a thermometer/barometer/hygrometer on a board for wall mounting through the Frankfurt airport. When my bag reached the x-ray machine, the hum of the lights in the baggage check area subtly changed, along with the facial expressions of the staff and the nice soldiers with their H&K's.

I win.

[Sherrie Ludwig]

Re: it happens within companies too

US National Guardsmen having to send their metallic items through the X-ray to make sure the rifle-shaped thing was...

AFAIK except for Air Marshals, the no firearms allowed in the cabin would mean that rifles would go checked baggage in the cargo hold. Yes, checked baggage does get scanned, but they wouldn't be carried through the TSA line.

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: it happens within companies too

I can top that.

My son is in the US Army. Many years ago, when he was deployed to Iraq, his unit, and all their gear, including weapons (but not ammo), went through the standard TSA process, scanning all their gear (including weapons) before boarding the chartered aircraft that was to take them overseas. To a war zone.

Note that I said "chartered"...the only passengers on that plane were soldiers. He said it was surreal having to place his weapon on the X-ray belt.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: it happens within companies too

There were stories of troops having their personal multitools/penknives confiscated under this system, while being allowed to take their weapons, bayonets and official issued knives on board.

Quote from one "I'm supposed to hijack a plane with 200 marines on board with a Swiss Army Knife?"

[that one in the corner]

Re: it happens within companies too

> "I'm supposed to hijack a plane with 200 marines on board with a Swiss Army Knife?"

There is a specialised tool for that, but it requires a custom order: it goes in place of that spike for getting boy scouts out of the hooves of horses.

[jake]

Re: it happens within companies too

That spike, properly called a marlin spike, is for whipping and splicing rope. The pick for getting boyscouts out of the hooves is called a hoof pick, and is curved to fit the job's requirements.

Hint from the trenches: Using a Victorinox hoof pick for it's intended purpose will cause your pocket knife to rot/rust out before it's time. Horse piss has that effect on metals.

[Terry 6]

Re: it happens within companies too

Hint from the trenches: Using a Victorinox hoof pick for it's intended purpose will cause your pocket knife to rot/rust out before it's time

That;s where Victorinox' lifetime warranty comes in.

£5 plus outward postage for a simple service. £10 for anything more.

Used to be the UK distributors, nice little firm. Now it's Victorinox own service dept. that receives them.They used to send them to Switzerland. Don't know if they still do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: it happens within companies too

That special tool is called a pair of nail clippers.

In case you hadn't guessed I had a 30mm long pair of nail clippers confiscated by an over zealous pillock when trying to board a RuinAir flight.

[BartyFartsLast]

Re: it happens within companies too

Obviously not special forces material then.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: it happens within companies too

Shortly after 9/11, airport security confiscated my cousin’s nail clippers.

He was the pilot.

[Noram]

Re: it happens within companies too

To be fair, given most Aircraft crashes have historically involved a pilot at some point, it's only fair they should be viewed with suspicion.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: it happens within companies too

A mate of mine worked as a manager at a firm selling office supplies and was going to do a presentation to a client company. They were very keen on security being an overriding factor in company business and it showed. He said if you visited the firms offices you couldn’t just take in electronics, they had rules about that. So your laptop, phone etc. would be put into a locked faraday bag/box each and you were then allowed to take them in. If you had a presentation you loaded it onto CD-R or DVD-R only (not the RW versions) and they had standalone computers in their (what he suspected were faraday caged) meeting rooms. These PC’s were not networked (no internet) and heavily locked down with the ability to only run viewer versions of the office suite, pdfs and videos in certain formats.

Knowing this my mate said he’d booked a meeting room at a nearby hotel and therefore would avoid these security issues. He needed to show them the latest version of the online ordering system and some key updates. He could use his own equipment at the hotel and most importantly connect to the Internet. He’d not be bothered by faraday cage anything or locked down PCs, the company had other ideas. They said that a security officer would like to inspect the room beforehand and bring equipment with them. He said the security officer turned up and had immediate concerns that the room had no soundproofing, there was a foldable wall for combining that room with the one next door which was very bad news etc.

So he said the clients hired out the next room as well and have the security officer sitting outside whilst the presentation is happening. Afterwards sitting in the hotel bar having a drink the client staff explained that they do government work and hence the security. My mate said that they sold office supplies/furniture, there wasn’t anything secret about it and gave the same demo to everyone.

[agurney]

Re: it happens within companies too

Similarly, I was due to give a presentation to a national telecoms company in Saudi that included a demo using live data from a database back in blighty.

During the on-site preparation it became obvious that the Saudi national firewall wouldn't let me connect, so after a bit of head scratching I invited the class back my hotel and used the hotel's satellite link to bypass the restrictions ... I've never felt so nervous that I might be getting into serious trouble.

[jake]

Re: it happens within companies too

Yes. Security theater is just that.

I wore the PGP-in-perl T-shirt out of and back into the USA on maybe a dozen flights from '91 to '93 without anybody even blinking at me funny. Later, I occasionally carried a copy of Bruce Schneier's "Applied Cryptography" book containing source examples in the text (which did not fall under the export restrictions) and the disk containing the very same source, which was bound into the cover (and very definitely did fall under those restrictions).

This kind of security theater may be worth the paper it is printed on, but not much more.

I stopped trying to get arrested on principle when I grew up after having a kid of my own to take care of. Priorities & all that. Today, she tells me I shouldn't have wimped out ... but she did wear the shirt and took the book into "show and tell" occasionally, as examples of governmental stupidity.

My Grand daughter (not quite 11 yet at the time) wanted to do the same show and tell, with the same shirt and book ... and then snip off a corner of the shirt to turn into gun cotton to demonstrate how easy real munitions are to make. I nixed cutting up the shirt (too many memories), and recommended snipping a bit off of another T-shirt instead. Her school nixed that option[1], because children aren't supposed to know such things, and IT WOULD BE DANGEROUS!!! (the school's CAPS and punctuation). Model rocketry has been banned for the same reason, much to her deep dismay.

At just ten years old she was already on the "watch list" for her school district because she knows too much. What kind of useless milquetoasts are her generation going to become, anyway?

_{[0] That CD is still bound into the cover; I never bothered to take it out because it is available for the download online.}

_{[1] Surprisingly, the hand-wringers & namby-pambys didn't try to have her arrested for trying to bring weapons to class.}

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: it happens within companies too

Decades ago, in high school AP Chemistry class, we made gun cotton as an assignment. Then at lunch a few of us set off a large ball of it in the cafeteria, with the result of a large harmless fireball. The administration never did figure out what happened.

(AP: Advanced Placement, roughly equivalent of universiry Chem 1 and 2.)

[jake]

It's a reflex now ...

"While you're here ... "

"No."

I don't even let them finish the thought. I'm there for what's on the contract. Nothing else. I'm far too old to be playing that kind of no-win game.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It's a reflex now ...

For me it depends on the request and the time available. But it always involves more money.

A bit of adaptability helps keep the client happy, which keeps the work flowing in.

Of course if they're an arsehole of a client, I'll have somewhere else I need to be so "sorry, I haven't got the time right now. Book it in and we'll do it another time"

[jake]

Re: It's a reflex now ...

My point was that working without an actual contract is a mug's game. Not recommended.

[Mishak]

"Security" bags

Went to one place where you were allowed to keep your phone, but it had to be put in a sealed bag that blocked the cameras but otherwise allowed it to be used.

Trouble was, there was only one bag size and most phones were small enough that they moved about inside so that the shield (aka, bit with a black band on it) didn't block anything.

Still, security were happy, people were sensible, and work got done.

[Evil Auditor]

Re: "Security" bags

I do see an effective side of this security theater: those ineffective camera-blocking bags make sure to keep you aware that you're not supposed to take pictures. Unless they strip you naked and search for any hidden cameras, it wouldn't prevent stealing information with malicious intent anyway.

[Return To Sender]

Re: "Security" bags

"Unless they strip you naked and search for any hidden cameras"

Would they be checking the safe pocket, d'you think?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Security" bags

The high ones, or the lower ones? They each have different capacity limits.

[NetMage]

Re: "Security" bags

Except if you aren’t taking pictures with malicious intent, why is stopping you worthwhile?

[Dave314159ggggdffsdds]

Re: "Security" bags

Because inadvertent security breaches are potentially more serious, definitely more likely. Bob the Idiot takes a seemingly innocent selfie, posts it on the internet, and gives away information that allows a social engineering attack to succeed, or provides building layout details, or has a list of employee names stuck to the wall in the background, or shows someone identifiable whose presence indicates the activity being carried out, or...

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: "Security" bags

"or has a list of employee names stuck to the wall in the background"

More likely a list of passwords.

[Terry 6]

Re: "Security" bags

Or those people who can't go for a runeven while on duty in a secret location, without recording where they are in an App connected to social media.

[Blue Pumpkin]

Re: "Security" bags

Though in the last case it is pretty big and visible from space if you were really serious about finding it .....

[Robert Carnegie]

Re: "Security" bags

A limited set of people do photography from space, though.

[Korev]

Re: "Security" bags

I can't be anyone would be that silly

[bemusedHorseman]

Re: "Security" bags

Didn't even need to click to know that was gonna be a news article about Strava...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Security" bags

Or a picture of his partner in a bikini.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked on *secure* sites, not quite so secure sites and sites where they'd heard of security but didn't think it was something they'd like.

One of the worst would lock out a PC if you plugged in as much as a USB keyboard that wasn't in the security whitelist, that caused merry havoc when the keyboard vendor revised firmware because the new versions were indistinguishable from the old ones and had to be torn apart by a security team, assessed and approved before we could use them.

(No, I don't know what software they were using to implement that level of security, yes it was always amusing to have to phone the security team to have a PC unlocked because someone on the cleaning staff had plugged in their phone to charge, no idea why they were allowed phones on site)

[Anonymous Coward]

The security restriction was to stop you exfiltrating any information either by photograph, or by USB flash (or similar device).

Fairly basic level security - I've experienced much stricter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh goodness, do you think so? I'd never have realised data could be stolen that way...

It was one of most irritating precautions on that site, but far from the most severe.

[Evil Auditor]

"...heard of security but didn't think it was something they'd like."

One of the worst ones of those was a client that had it's "backup computer systems" in a storage room [*] underneath a barn, which they used to load/unload lorries. This room wasn't locked (couldn't be) and was freely accessible from the outside. Its only "security" was that the barn was located on the client's compound, loosely/lousily protected with a large gate that was mostly closed during night time.

_{[*] storage as in store any low-value item that one time might be useful again, such as a snow shovel, and not storage as in data storage.}

[Anonymous Coward]

someone on the cleaning staff had plugged in their phone to charge

IF connected_device == unregistered_phone THEN

set voltage = 5kv

ENDIF

[Chris 15]

fun!

Where can I get a motherboard that can put out 5kv via usb, asking for a friend of course!

[Anonymous Coward]

My former worksite configured the computers to refuse to talk to USB thumb drives. Plug one in and nothing happened; it wouldn't allow access to it, whether read or write. Probably did so by identifying device type or some such.

But somehow they missed blocking the use of USB external hard drives!

[adrianww]

Can you just…

Many (very many!) moons ago, I flew from the UK to the US (Texas, specifically) to babysit a machine that kept suffering an intermittent fault once in a blue moon. Towards the end of my couple of weeks there, my boss called to ask if I could call in to another customer site on the way back. In Korea.

No, that’s not some randomly named town somewhere in the US, but the actual country.

I was fairly recently married at the time and seem to recall my answer being something like “I said I wanted a career, not to go to Korea!”

He was a decent guy so understood and one of my colleagues ended up effectively doing a round-the-world trip on the company (UK - Korea - US - UK). A very small part of me almost wishes I’d said yes, if only for the air miles…

[STOP_FORTH]

Old joke

What do you get the day after you receive your Gold Card?

A letter from your wife's solicitor.

[beaker633]

That brought up a memory....

Used to work for a large US computer company with a H and a P in their name. Based in UK, flew to visit customer in Massachusetts. for two days. Whilst there asked to fly to Japan to visit another partner, No money.. no credit card .. can't do it. No problem they said - drive to Andover (in MA) and pick up some money. Arrived to be presented with a US cheque!!! They assumed that I could cash it somehow.

I forget how it got sorted out. I think someone in Japan got me cash to pay for hotel.

Still remember that trip ... worst jetlag I ever had. Along with snow in Chicago and no money and a overnight set of clothes. Fun times.....

[jake]

Re: That brought up a memory....

We had a high-profile customer making a transition from their own internal world-wide network to a more commercial T-carrier based system. The company I worked for supplied the necessary gear to interface between $TELCO and their own equipment. This wasn't pre-Internet, but it was before the general use of the Internet for routing internal traffic around the world, so all their WAN links were supplied by one $TELCO or another. Call it mid 1980s.

Our customer service got a phone call from the customer allowing as to how one of their offices in Sydney, Australia refused to see the rest of the world. Customer service called me (the primary TAC Engineer for the customer), and I eyeballed it. Digging into the network, I could see that a loopback switch in the Sydney office was thrown, it would need to be flipped back to connect their LAN to their WAN. I informed customer service, and figured that was the end of it. Until about two hours later when my Boss wandered in and asked what I knew about Sydney being down. I blinked three or four times to reboot (kernel hacking again, probably) and told him I had located the cause and informed our guys as to the fix, and then got on with putting out fires elsewhere.

He replied that apparently the dude in charge of the Sydney office didn't like the answer, had called his Boss, who called his Boss, who called the director of the Australian branch, who called the owner of our company, who was informed by our CS guys that I was responsible, and so now my Boss had been put in charge of fixing it. He wasn't happy. So using my TAC access, I showed him the "fault". He expressed disbelief. And called the owner down to my office. The owner (the engineer who founded the company, and a real tech, not just a suit) also expressed disbelief. I believe his actual words were "What the fuck are those useless fucks doing?" ...

ANYway, he called the director of the Australian branch (just a suit, apparently), who got all shouty and demanded an immediate fix, now, or we'd lose the entire contract if he had anything to say about it. Our owner tried to calm him down, but the dude wasn't having any of it ... so to make a long(er) story short(er), he promised to "put his best man on it" ... and I got sent to Sydney on the next flight. Out of San Francisco. First Class. At very short notice. To flip a switch. With invoice in hand, to be presented personally to the Director in Oz. I honestly thought he was going to take a swing at me when he read it ... it was a tick over $20,000 ... in mid-1980s dollars. Broken down in glorious detail. To flip a switch.

But wait ... it gets better! When I was at the airport heading home (having been in Australia for maybe 2 hours total), I got called to the proverbial White Courtesy Phone[0]. Seems a different branch of the very same company had a similar problem, this time in a satellite office outside Boca Raton, Florida. I called my Boss and asked something like "WTF‽‽‽". He tiredly allowed as to how he personally had checked, and indeed it was the exact same issue. Our owner had asked if I wouldn't mind doing the hono(u)rs ... a completely different Director had called and threatened him in a similar manner to the first. So instead of taking the long east-bound flight home six hours later, I had to take an immediate West-bound flight, changing planes in Jakarta and London, to Florida. Arriving somewhat cranky & disheveled in Boca, I was rather pleased with the similar result (one switch, and out), except I didn't feel physically threatened after the Director read the invoice. This one just went white and slumped in his chair. I excused myself.

Back to the airport, and home to California. Still First Class. Four+ days on the road, literally once around the world, no hotel rooms, not a single proper meal, showering in airports, just to flip two switches. Such was the life of a field engineer. Tell that to kids these days ...

_{[0] If you don't know a white courtesy phone is, ask yer Gran. This was in the halcyon days before ubiquitous cell phones, and I had left my DynaTAC at home ... it not only wouldn't have worked in Oz, it probably would have been confiscated at the airport.}

[RichardBarrell]

Re: That brought up a memory....

Hell's teeth, that's a lot. I'd have vomited somewhere and passed out halfway through that because I am entirely incapable of sleeping on planes.

[richardcox13]

Re: That brought up a memory....

It is said

Multiple exclamation marks,' he went on, shaking his head, 'are a sure sign of a diseased mind.'

So what does three interrobangs indicate? :-)

[jake]

Re: That brought up a memory....

"So what does three interrobangs indicate?"

Incredulousness. As in "Trump did what‽‽‽".

[NITS]

Re: That brought up a memory....

I once worked for an American company that provided totalisator systems to racetracks, for the convenience of punters who wished to invest in equine performance futures. Expense advances on the road were never a problem; just ask the company's system operator for a check, and take it to the money room next door!

[Sam not the Viking]

In the area....

Big trouble on an important site..... Customer very angry, demanding action: Sort it in the next week or else it will become very expensive.

As the senior engineer, and most able to withstand a bullying customer, I was tasked to investigate and do whatever was necessary to get things operational again.

I need to buy a specialist analyser to view this problem: expensive and I only knew of two likely suppliers. This was on a Wednesday, so I phoned the vendors and outlined the problem and instrument I needed and most importantly, the urgency. Both were very enthusiastic. One supplier was a couple of hours away, the other a lot further and travel would involve a flight.

Vendor 1 said they would get back to me.

Vendor 2 'had someone in the area' which turned out to be several hours away but nevertheless he arrived late on Wednesday afternoon and demonstrated the kit. Recognising our situation, he said that if we placed the order with him, he would set up his demo-device there and then, we could use it on site until the new instrument arrived. A few hours later we were in possession of a device I needed to get to grips with the problem and I travelled to site Thursday to get started. Our customer was impressed (but that was easily done), tempers eased as the system came back to 'normal' operation. It was several weeks before the plant could be handed over and we needed to re-visit once or twice weekly to run our surveys and report.

Vendor 1 called me on the Friday afternoon to say they had someone available 'in the area, next week' to discuss our requirements. They were shocked to find that we had ordered and installed the instrument before they even had time to make an offer.

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: In the area....

I always had good relations with our equipment vendors. That story is why.

Of course, now, you no longer buy test equipment direct, it comes through distributors. HP (well, Agilent, or Keysight, or whatever they're calling themselves now) and Tektronix are shells of their former selves. No hope there any more. When we called Tektronix and asked if we could swap the scope with a 3.5" floppy drive on the front for the same model with a USB slot, the answer was that we'd need to buy a new one. Gee, thanks, guys.

[midgepad]

speed of response

A colleague once wanted to buy an X-ray department (having been asked to set up a health service) and rang a supplier in England to enquire. They indicated they could arrange to discuss requirements in a week or two.

He rang an American supplier, "my VP is on the way to the airport".

Enthusiasm can be overdone, but also underdone.

Nice place, I gather, never been there.

[J.G.Harston]

"in the same region"

As in the same DVD region?

I had a similar story. A project doing IT refresh across a local council's IT estate. "Top Level" had mandated all USB ports be disabled at the system level. When we got to the vehicle testing centre, with all their test equipment connected via USB, on track to completely destroy their entire operating processes, they weren't pleased.

[ChrisC]

When outwardly sensible cybersecurity policies, set by IT managers in their ivory towers far from the coalface, who genuinely don't understand (or even worse, don't care about) all the myriad of use-cases employees across the company have for IT kit, clash head-first with the realities of everyday working of those employees for whom their PCs are less of a glorified typewriter and more of an essential part of their daily toolkit...

I work in a R&D team, so if a day goes by when my PC isn't being connected to some random bit of hardware, or having device drivers updated/tweaked, or having some random application installed, it usually means I've either been stuck in meetings all day long and haven't had the chance to do any real work, or it's a holiday/weekend. Which means I'm painfully aware of just how annoying it can be when some distant suit decides to impose new policies which cause us significant difficulties/delays in how we do our work. Fortunately our local IT team *does* understand how we use our PCs, and does their best to shield us from/advocate on our behalf against the excesses of corporate policies, but even their hands are tied to some extent, which means every so often some new level of misery ends up percolating down to us, and we just have to adopt and adapt as best we can. Corporate IT get to tick off another success in their annual objectives, whilst everyone else struggles to meet theirs.

[Antron Argaiv]

Same here. Our local IT guys were great and completely understood our situation. When we got bought by a multinational megacorp, their powers were slowly stripped from them, all in the name of "zero trust" (which is a wonderful way to tell your engineering employees that they're valued contributors), and Corporate IT responded to your tickets with a multi-hour delay, as they were literally multiple time zones away.

We were actually supposed to request permission to install non-approved software on our PCs. The process was glacial (I tested it), subject to false positives when testing for malware (they used some online scanner) and basically a PITA. I decided to risk summary termination and installed whatever I needed to do my job (as did the other engineers). In spite of all the scanning, inventorying, etc, nothing was ever said to me.

[GlenP]

When Sarbanes Oxley came in the US Mega Corp I worked for insisted it had to apply to all subsidiary companies, however large or small (a clue, it probably didn't).

Our Dutch colleagues somehow seemed to acquire control over our IT and started making demands in the name of SOX, such as not permitting any generic usernames to be used and that every user must log out and in every time - try doing that in a warehouse with 10 operators per shift making bookings every few minutes on a single terminal.

This was the same Dutch IT department that retained a hand-written list of all their individual users' passwords "just in case" and wouldn't hesitate to log on to accounts and carry out transactions with no audit trail. The one time I reluctantly gave them my password to check something I warned them it was being changed before and after which they weren't happy about.

[Sparkypatrick]

1. SOX absolutely will apply to all subsidiaries anywhere of American companies it applies to.

2. SOX relates to financial controls, so how warehouse employees log in is unlikely to be in scope.

3. If that password list contained the credentials of anyone with access to financial data, it was almost certainly a violation.

[bemusedHorseman]

Can relate, my entire first month in a corporate role at Amazon (robot testing QA), I was literally paid to play on my Switch all shift because our manager was having so much trouble getting permission for us to have Local Admin on our work laptops (a requirement to be able to flash software to the bots), and we genuinely could not do shit without local sudo access.

I made so much progress on my island...

[adrianww]

The same company that tried to send me home from the US via Korea was eventually bought out by a large American outfit (sadly no longer in existence).

They were OK to work for, but their UK arm only consisted of manufacturing, sales and front line support until we came along. Then we arrived with a few dozen hardware and software engineers, our own support teams and our own manufacturing plant. Suddenly, the US company had full-on R&D and design/development work happening over here.

Obviously, those of us on the R&D/back-line support teams needed administrative access to our local servers and workstations in order to do our jobs. But the UK corporate IT support function said we weren’t allowed that. I think it took one of us all of an hour to work out the necessary incantations to circumvent their restrictions, give us all whatever access we needed and lock them out of our systems.

They complained. We explained the situation to our counterparts and some higher-ups in the US. Local IT support was promptly told to leave us alone on the basis that most of us knew this stuff better than they did.

As I said, it wasn’t such a bad company to work for. I’ve heard of enough other places where we’d have been given a right bollocking or even handed our marching orders for doing that.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Could be worse. My company's IT department evidently has a guy with a Masters in Disk Allocation Workload Balancing. Every few weeks he adjusts the workloads by moving software. Problem is, he doesn't tell anyone where he's moving stuff. Every few weeks we have to go find the test system, go find the equipment manuals, ect. Sometimes he leaves the systems but moves how the equipment accesses it, so we'll go months with missing nodes only to have then magically appear again. If I ever find out who it is... But, I probably never will. IT is in India.

[blu3b3rry]

At one point the dynamic duo that forms our IT team were instructed to change the IT induction to make it clear USB drives were banned from site, and the only way they could be connected to any company equipment was under full supervision of someone from IT.

I understand our CFO at the time had decreed this, presumably after watching too many crappy spy thriller films on Netflix.

It was gently pointed out that some product reprogramming was done using USB drives on a world-wide basis, and an enquiry made how two IT staff were supposed to monitor USB drive usage in a building of about 100 engineering, R&D, and service staff. Notwithstanding anyone in field service doing the same. I believe the rule was quietly rescinded not long after.

[Doctor Syntax]

The best way to deal with that is not to argue with the jobsworth but to escalate up the affected department's chain to a level several tiers (not usually difficult) above the jobsworth so it comes down his own line onto him from above.

[Richard Tobin]

Another kind of problem

It can be difficult to get stuff out as well as in. I received a USB disk full of data - nothing confidential - from Los Alamos labs. It required forms in triplicate confirming that it contained no radioactive materials.

[Steve Hersey]

Re: Another kind of problem

Strange, you'd think they'd never heard of a radiation survey meter. I still have two from my days doing space instruments that used radiation sources for aliveness testing, not to mention the one I gave to a local watch-repair shop so they can ID hazardous radium dials in old watches.

Our radiation safety officer used to say that radioactive contamination weas easy to detect (and will decay to harmlessness in a century or two), but arsenic is forever.,

[StewartWhite]

Just how dangerous is this electricity stuff anyway?

At a previous employer, a customer asked me for "just one more thing": that I inserted a data logger measuring electricity usage into a working electricity substation on their site.

When I pointed out that a) I work in IT and b) I don't mess around with electricity much beyond wiring a plug they still couldn't see the problem as "it would save us some time and money".

A hard Paddington stare and a firm "No" later they left me to do the work I was actually there to do.

[Mishak]

Wise decision

I guess they looked at the H&S paperwork that would be needed before the job could be done and decided to try and find "an alternative"!

It's not difficult to add said logger, but it's also very easy to cause a nasty arc explosion if a mistake is made.

[DS999]

Re: Just how dangerous is this electricity stuff anyway?

I once had a three month contract consulting for a client who had strict union regulations. When a new server rack was installed, you had to get one of the on call electricians to plug it in. If you MOVED a rack, you could unplug and replug it yourself. Not sure whether they had to unplug it when a rack was decommissioned, I didn't see that happen while I was there.

Typically he was available quickly, but one time there was some time critical servers going on line and all the on site electricians were engaged with other stuff and it took until the end of the day before one turned up to plug stuff in. We used the time we would have used to start loading software to set up the other racks and still eventually made deadline, but the project manager was shitting bricks that whole day because it took us off his project plan / flowchart (whatever you call those MS Project time series graphs)

[Mishak]

"whatever you call those MS Project time series graphs"

I generally call them "unachievable" as they are normally put together by a PM who thinks that shrinking the "time taken" for various tasks is a legitimate way of showing how an unrealistic delivery date can be achieved.

[billdehaan]

Sure, just let me check with security here first. Oh, suddenly it's not an issue.

I worked for Canadian defence contractors back in the 1980s. Although my security clearances would get me where I needed to be in Canada without too much trouble, we also did work for NATO countries, where security considerations were often more... strict.

When you're used to security procedures at Canadian NDHQ in Ottawa (known as the "Cowering Inferno" for a reason), the more strict security can be a bit of a surprise, and make your visits "unnecessarily exciting", as one co-worker put it.

These are buildings you're asked "sir do you have a pacemaker or any other medical condition?" in the lobby, and you later find out that night at the hotel that your credit cards are all blanked. That's because you walked though a hallway with magnets in the walls that were strong enough to erase them, or any other magnetic media you were trying to sneak in, or out, of the building without authorization. That's why you realize why they asked that silly question about pacemakers.

Fortunately, I when I stated my business, which was to demonstrate a proposed [redacted], I handed all of my presentation media to the humourless security guard. He said he'd see that it got to where it needed to be, and it was. When I got to the meeting room to make the presentation, my stuff was there waiting for me (as was a guard). For all the cloak and dagger, it was basically one floppy disk with a mockup of a proposed user interface we wanted to show off and get approval for, and three floppy disks filled with clipart and flowcharts. However, as far as security was concerned, I was bringing Stuxnet and/or C4 into their secure site, and they weren't happy about it.

When a less savvy co-worker (call him Jim) had to make a followup presentation, he neglected to mention the floppy disks in his suit pocket to security. His presentation was cut short as he pulled a floppy out of his suit, put it in the provided PC with the projector, and discovered it was no longer formatted. Although his presentation was short, he spent a lot of time with security as they explained to him just which security regulations he'd just violated.

The good news was, they believed it was human error and he'd just made a mistake. The bad news was that because of that, management decided that since I could follow orders, I was obviously the guy to keep sending, so I was "promoted" to be the guy to send to secure sites. Yaaay. Looking back, Jim's "accidental" mistake may have been a crazy like a fox, as it spared him years of security craziness by foisting it onto me.

Having gone through all that, while on site, I would routinely get phone calls from management that started off with "hey since you're already there, could you...". My answer was always to say I was going to check with security, and management would always respond with "oh, never mind then".

[Tim99]

Re: Sure, just let me check with security here first. Oh, suddenly it's not an issue.

I called it the OBTY problem. It usually happened when I had "finished" on a customer's site, packed up, and was just about to leave: "Oh, by the way...". If they were valuable customers, 3 hours later...

One of them was back in the days of Windows 3.11 and fax modems - our software allowed the user to click on a fax number in a database that would then create and send an associated document as a fax. Just as I was leaving, a Director at a customer's site had asked his secretary to "oh by the way, find out why faxing wasn't working". I unpacked the portable, connected my fax modem to their line and checked that everything was working, then reconnected her desktop and used it to send a fax to another department. Everything seemed to be OK, and after about 10 minutes or so, she asked me why I was looking at her computer, and not her office fax machine/copier. I said that wasn't really anything to do with me - she said "it's technical, you should fix it". In the end, I said that the fax probably needed a part; and if I could get it, I might be able to come back and fix it, BUT it would need another purchase order, probably take me several days to get the part, and I was probably going to charge them more than the proper engineer, who could probably fix it tomorrow...

That's when I realised that being an IT contractor meant that for most people "If it has an electric plug, and isn't a kettle, the IT guy should fix it".

[billdehaan]

Re: Sure, just let me check with security here first. Oh, suddenly it's not an issue.

Not just IT contractors.

I once ran a company which did commercial web hosting. One company hired us to build and host their site, and on the live date, we started getting calls from them that the web site didn't work. The phoned us because their email wasn't working, either. This was 2000, when at most companies, unless someone was running Napster on the side, the internet was just email and the web.

When I explained that our web hosting company didn't have anything to do with email, and they'd have to call their ISP about that, they asked what an ISP was. They're they company that handles your internet connection, I explained. They'd emailed us, and reviewed the sample web sites we'd shown them, so we knew they had connectivity. They still didn't understand, so I figured I'd just contact the ISP directly.

This was in Toronto, which had lots of ISPs, but for tech illiterates, it was likely Bell or Rogers. So I asked them if they had a Rogers or Bell account. "Oh, we did, but we cancelled that last week, because we switched to you for our web site starting today".

As far as they were concerned, they had switched "internet companies", and thought that our web hosting included ISP for their company. They were quite shocked, and offended, to discover those are two different things, and they had to pay both.

[Excused Boots]

Re: Sure, just let me check with security here first. Oh, suddenly it's not an issue.

""If it has an electric plug, and isn't a kettle, the IT guy should fix it”.”

Oh no; I’ll suggest that it so much as has a movable hinge on it, then it is somehow an IT issue.

[myootnt]

Congratulations, you have Finnished this thread.

[Boris the Cockroach]

Another been there

done that and could you just do that too

Mine was sorting some RS232 comm problems, managed to diagnose the problem (broken wire in the cable, god I hate people who pour solder up the wire and under the insulation)

Got it running again, and heard the immortal words "while you are here, could you just have a peek at this....." ...... which takes 3 times as long to sort out and I'm only doing the first job as a favour anyway

[Doctor Syntax]

What surprises me is that Finn worked in sales and didn't just set up the demo over the road in the pub. Most sales people would do anything to band the ear of a sales prospect.

[Anonymous Coward]

And by 'sales prospect' I presume you mean whomever is next to them at that bar across the street?

[Will Godfrey]

"while you're here"

Dozens and dozens of times.

This is when I frequently had a full list of calls - and they get really arsey when you tell them you're not permitted to work on unbooked jobs.

[Already?]

While you're here…

The complete opposite of all this high security tosh, but on our semi-regular Sunday visits to my parents (an hour or so away from where we lived then) my dad would invariably decide to ask ‘while you’re here could you just…' inevitably followed by some obscure problem with his PC that he needed me to look at, just as we’d scooped the kids up and started to make our move to leave. Bless him, it’s 7 years since we lost him and I'm glad I never said no. And full marks to the old boy for the time he gingerly asked how to delete a browser history. Well played sir.

[Lazlo Woodbine]

Back in the early 00's I was working in the service department of a PC assembler.

One day we got 100 PCs returned as the customer, in a fit of security consciousness, had decided to secure all the PCs on his site by way of filling the USB ports using a hot glue gun.

With that done, he then realised there was no way to attach these PCs to printers and the likes, so he shipped them all back, and we charged him for 100 new motherboards.

I'm almost 100% sure my boss then got a few staff to melt the glue out of the USB ports and put the motherboards back on the production line...

[Steve Hersey]

Several companies ago, the place I worked for used commodity PCs to test portable instruments that also had AC adapters. On occasion, the AC line and neutral/frame ground got swapped (yeah, I know, scary bad mistake) and it would fry the comm port of the PC motherboard. Cue replacement of the mobo, which I would retrieve from the trash, fix by replacing the comms chip, and use. IT never wanted to repair to that level, and Production refused to put a protective device on their test PCs.

[Marty McFly]

Stupid customer

It is their security requirements. They should have provided a proper meeting space, isolated from their infrastructure with only basic Internet access. Get the local ISP to put a separate consumer grade network router in. No wired or wireless access to their internal secure network. Soundproof the room as they see fit. Then who gives a crap what the vendor brings in?

It is nonsensical some of this extreme security that is put on display. It is like they want to impress vendors with how elaborate they can be. Especially when 9 times out of 10, the content of the presentation has no need to be made within the customer's security perimeter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Working for a large pharmaceutical company a long way from home (about 16 hours travel time each way including a twice daily ferry) and spending a couple of days on site with their team, partly going through a risk assessment with them and partly doing some training for their senior management team.

Two of the delegates don't turn up on the day in question but the other 18 are all there.

Towards the end (about 3pm) of the third and final day on site (a Friday as it happened) I am approached by the Managing Director's PA saying that the MD and his sidekick have been unavoidably delayed (the two missing delegates) and that they, plus two other directors from another site really feel the need for this training ASAP so would I be able to present the course on Monday?

No problem, I said, but I would require a Purchase Order to cover two more nights at the hotel (£500), subsistence (£100), cost of another ferry trip as it was too late to cancel (£400), plus another 2 days consultancy to cover the additional time away from home, and I would also need to purchase a change of clothes.

Unless I got confirmation that my costs would be covered then I would be heading for home at 4.30.

A PO was not immediately forthcoming as it would require authorisation from the finance director, who oddly was one of the people who wanted to be on the course.

Literally five minutes before I was due to depart the MD's PA ran in to tell me that my PO had been authorised.

Hence I got a fairly pleasant weekend in a nice hotel and a new pair of jeans and a couple of T-shirts out of it.

We also got a 12 month contract to provide further services.