Why I sigh...

[Lael.Oglethorpe]

Usually I do not learn article on phorums, but I wish to say that this write-up very forced me to check out and do so! Your writing style has been surprised me. Thanks, very nice article. best wishes

[clauded]

well at least we have bots that give us thing to read,

[Guts3d]

This thread has just come full circle; the person I dealt with in the very first post brought the computer to me. "ITunes just won't open!". "Hmmm... " sayest I, with a puzzled look. Before I can ask, I get a sarcastic "... And before you say it, I deleted ITunes and reloaded it twice. I made sure that I d/l the 64 bit version. No dice." I start up the dinosaur ( I mean ) computer, and everytime I click on ITunes, I get a flash of Quicktime trying to open and then nothing. I look in Task Manager and under Processes, and see that indeed Quicktime is hogging the show. I delete it, and lo and behold, ITunes works as planned. I ask if Quicktime is ever used, and I get an even snottier "NO!" than I thought was warranted. I make what I believe to be a totally needless admonishment NOT to reload Quicktime, and she quickly pays me and then bolts. 15 minutes later, I get the inevitable phone call with, you guessed it, ITunes isn't working again. "Just what the heck is wrong with this piece of %$#@!? " I sigh, deeply and purposefully, and ask the obvious. " Did you reload Quicktime?" A brief hesitation... Well, yes... But it worked before!!!

[Niclo Iste]

Almost forgot this thread existed.

Before I left my most recent position I had a fun why I sigh moment.

A week before my departure I notice an infector on the network. I have two options. Tell them and help, or not care and let them figure it out when they find it. I figured tell and help was better and wouldn't result in finger pointing. To make a long story short here are the bullet points.

1. It took 2 days for them to listen to my warning of computers all having errors and the same infector files on them.
2. The day they decided to listen it took 4 hours to set up an "emergency meeting of all the lead techs and IT managers"
3. They left me out of the discussion and listed to the advice of people not even involved with the site regarding the generic ideals of how to handle an unknown to them infector.
4. I spent the wasted time creating, documenting, and applying a fix on 2 test computers.
5. It took another 2 hours to get them to realize that the fix was needed and would work.
6. In the debriefing after it was all said and done ALL of the IT managers wanted to know why their Symantec corporate level AV was not capable of finding and stopping a newer infector regardless of being up to date on their DAT files.
7. After the debriefing the managers did not want to believe or understand that ALL antivirus products are not bulletproof and discredited my report.

And that, my friends, is an example of why I was leaving there in the first place.

[Guts3d]

Why is it the people who work the hardest, have the most talent, and come up with the elegant solutions are paid and heeded the least?


...ALL of the IT managers wanted to know why their Symantec corporate level AV was not capable of finding and stopping a newer infector regardless of being up to date on their DAT files. <-- that is the equivalent of someone saying " I put locks on my doors, now my house is 100% burglar proof!."

[Niclo Iste]

that is the equivalent of someone saying " I put locks on my doors, now my house is 100% burglar proof!."

As my old room mate used to say "Locks only keep out the honest thieves".

[Niclo Iste]

Why is it the people who work the hardest, have the most talent, and come up with the elegant solutions are paid and heeded the least?

So I was told recently by my last business that they are disappointed at the shape I left them in during my last week. I was a bit surprised they were telling me that since I trained a novice home hobbyist how to run the place, discovered a threat on the network, created a fix for it, and stayed to help deploy this fix.

[Niclo Iste]

Ha, I almost forgot this addition, this happened a few months back.

We're in a meeting about how to remove EVERY trace of SEP. Now if you've ever done an analysis on how many changes SEP does to a machine you know it's a daunting task of over 2000 registry keys. I had the resources from symantec to find these keys partially, so I had to do the analysis to find ALL keys and what changes were made or added. In our IT meeting of how to nuke it from current working installs that could not stand to be re-deployed I showed how I made a massive reg key and bat file utility to do the work for us in seconds.

The lead network security tech looks at my work and says "This won't work, it looks like it's missing commands and switches to revert the keys"
I look at it and say "I don't see where you are finding this"
The lead network security tech replies "I don't know I only know linux"

After that point I realized I had better things to do than to be on a phone meeting.

[MobilePCPhysician]

Jamaican bot-sled team.......

[Mayet]

sometimes guys I am glad I am semi retired .. can never retire all together in my blood an all..

I dont miss these people

[NooNoo]

I worry about places that "could not stand to be re-deployed". Where is the back up and disaster recovery?
Much quicker to do a bare metal recovery than altering 2000 reg keys.

[Niclo Iste]

I worry about places that "could not stand to be re-deployed". Where is the back up and disaster recovery?
Much quicker to do a bare metal recovery than altering 2000 reg keys.

Believe me there was much I was worried about there. People with degrees in things that I don't know the first thing about in IT but I'm the one who has the foresight and common sense to realize that a standardized image for the stand alone workstations is good business sense.

[slgrieb]

Logical disconnects in business are a way of life. In my last corporate job, the fact that I had three years of college (interrupted by the draft) counted against me getting an entry level job. I was used to hard work and physical labor, plus I was very persistent, so I made a go of it, and rose to mid-level management. But then I couldn't advance because all the upper pay grades needed a 4 year degree or a Masters, preferably an MBA.

So, I was stuck at a position where I was continually trying to explain to my bosses why their ideas wouldn't work, while having the same conversation with my peers who had no experience in the industry and explaining why all the stuff they thought was new and exciting had already failed.

Anyone who wants to know why American business is going through hard times doesn't need to blame the unions, they just need to focus on management that has no understanding of the business they are supposed to manage.