Posts by GordonScally

'We're changing shift, and no one can log on!' It was at this moment our hero knew server-lugging chap had screwed up

Moved kit

We had something like this happen at an organisation (UK gov) where I worked on their service desk. Saturday morning on call and started getting calls that no one could get onto the network via vpn. After a few enquiries it was found that a project team were moving the 3G concentrator from a location near Heathrow to HQ in Central London. 2 identical boxes! Yep they had disconnected the VPN concentrator! It was rushed back to Heathrow in a hurry before they closed up access to the location and I believe some labelling was applied

UK.gov sits down with mobile big four to formalise plans for rural shared 4G network

I live in a small town 16 miles outside of Glasgow. The 4G signal goes up and down like a yoyo often nothing. Nhs mobile workers rely on 4g for working away from the office! EE of course claim there is full coverage. It's not like we are actually in the Highlands.

When customers see red, sometimes the obvious solution will only fan the flames

Unsupported issues

At a previous job I had someone raise a ticket that other users were not getting out of office messages from the users previous (temporary placement) employer. Needless to say we couldn't legitimately raise a ticket with other organisation. User (VIP) would not let us close the ticket as would not accept our explanation and they could not do this as no longer working for them. Issue fixed by a careful bit of cross organisation cooperation (I knew who ran the other organisations Servicedesk). Intentionally a bit vague as this was UK gov help desks!

Never let something so flimsy as a locked door to the computer room stand in the way of an auditor on the warpath

Something about the size of a Shovel worker at a university I was employed at!

Are you sure you've got a floppy disk stuck in the drive? Or is it 100 lodged in the chassis?

Re: Reliability

Yes I remember using one also in the late 70's at our local college. As I recall a memory upgrade to 64k burnt a large hole in their budget!

White House and FCC announce big, broken solutions to America's pitiful broadband

Re: A modest proposal

I know its not a lot but in all areas that Virginmedia cover there is openreach access and therefore access to sky, talktalk and other fibre providers/resellers. Its providing incentives for companies to expand fibre access to rural exchanges thats the issue. If virgin or other companies that dont use openreach infrastructure want to expand their coverage they have to invest millions to install the cable/fibre and they provide connect speeds faster than openreach currently can. To use an analogy you cant build a toll road for company x use and then insist that everyone else can use it for free/no investment.

The monitor didn't work but the problem was between the user's ears

Worked on a helpdesk (currently looking for work in a new location) . It might sound like an old joke but been there and had that.

Try a remote worker with a laptop during a powercut- could not figure out that the ADSL router needed mains power to work and demanded that we remoted on and got her online. Swore blind that we had managed to do this before.

On that note we confused an office full of tech analysts when we carried on working when the LAN went dead due to a UPS fault. Our laptops failed over to WIFi that was connected to another part of the building that had power and our ADSL test router !

The one about not knowing the monitor is not the computer was also a regular. When we asked users to restart the computer we would regularly run a continuous ping to the PC or check remote logs to confirm they had done so and not just turned the monitor off and back on again.

Dixons Carphone to shut down 134 shops

I had that at Christmas, no stock of a TV on sale and could not tell me if it would be back in stock (no stock anywhere in Scotland) before the prices went up . I bought the same item online and delivered a week later and saved over £50 not including the saving on the £80 HDMI cable they claimed was required for UHD upscaling. I bought one for £5 from same online supplier and works fine.