hello and welcome back to the kcc channel i'm rob and i hope you're having a wonderful day today
today we're gonna jump into some tales from tech support our first story today comes to us from
slice double you are too late all is done get your junk let's jump right in backstory i work
as an executive systems administrator in a large non-profit organization i'm pretty much the only
it guy in the whole organization and always pondered why the heck they made me executive
not important now but later anywho we got all kinds of business stirring and we buy this crazy
huge recycling center from our city who just wanted to get rid of it maybe they just don't
want to administrate it anymore our director and board instantly drop an offer to buy the
recycling business and offer goes through and deal is struck yay more work for me yeah so
deal is done at november 2019 and business will move into our lap at january 2020. i get a call
from my director that there's a meeting happening just before christmas about tech needed there okay
meeting is with our director office manager wages in hr accountant me and new manager from that
recycling center we talk about what they got now and what they are going to need some workstations
cashier systems cell phones tablets basic stuff then new manager asks about the internet well they
got a line from local operator and that line goes away soon business will transfer to us in january
and we need to have hours there by the end of february so two whole months to do the tech switch
i'm confident that this is pretty easy i get an amount of stuff we need and drop our order
to our tech supplier and ask that all the stuff is delivered straight to the recycling center
so i don't have to haul all that stuff from the other side of the city where our main office is
i only wanted the server hardware to my office so i could prep them there before christmas and no no
no they did not recycle new computers and printers i got for them that would have been hilarious i
have never visited that place and i have no idea about it i tell this new manager that i want to
drop by first thing in january to check the place and need to see the main network drawings he says
that there is no drawings the recycling center is in some kind of old factory or something
and also there are multiple other businesses there from small engine repair shops to lunch and
restaurant to metal ship and god knows what place is huge there are several hundred rooms there
place has been under renovations for decades and whenever someone rents some space from there and
wants new walls to be done or old down or whatever the owner of the building happily complies so now
i have a little concern january comes and right after my christmas vacation i head straight to
the recycling center that is now officially ours and behold it is huge just like our manager told
me the customer side is just humongous and the storage area is even bigger i head to a door that
says staff only as i assume it's the office it is and i look for the manager he thanks before the
new computers that arrive before christmas and are stored at the office storage and has many notes
that these are not for sale or recycling yeah they had incidents where two eager employees have sold
other employees personal items like bikes and stuff nice place i took my notebook a paper one
and a pen and asked for a tour i want to see the premises every office workspace and scout the lan
sockets first that i can write it all down then i want to see all network cross sections there is
well crap there is over a dozen cross sections all over the building and best part is that the labels
make no sense it's like there's been multiple networks in the past and that new ones have just
been dumped over the old ones i mean cable bundles that are thick as a grown man a literal mess but
i'm lucky as there is still all the tech that is property of our city i only need to look at
every cross-section cabinet that has city property routers and then look at the cable labels and
refer them to office network sockets easy peasy takes time but i should be done in a day or two
and i was right there were switches in four cabinets only and all the socket labels matched
so i took photos and write it all down and then i started to install our stuff first network i just
put out switches into cabinets along with city property as there was more than enough space there
then i routed our switches to the free network sockets at the offices next i called my contact
at the local isp and asked my options about the internet line he told me that there is already
fiber there so we can either get a line from the isp or we can contact the landlord who owns the
building and use their solution apparently the owner rents fiber connections to the resident
businesses there and it's 100 legal and fine well not rent but it's included to the rent of
the premises so i take the owner's solution as it might take too long for the isp to get the line
open i know that they can be a bit slow sometimes and i only got time until the end of next month
i want this to be done so i call the owner of the building and we get an agreement and i install our
router to their main cross-section cabinet that happens to be in the recycle center premises in an
hour after calling him just superb service i go to one of the offices pull my laptop hook it to the
free network socket and yes we got internet and connect to the router and start configuring it
after i'm done i tell the manager that i'll be back tomorrow and install the new workstations
they all got big desks so new workstations can be there parallel to the old ones that are going to
be taken away soon so it took two days to scout the place set up a network and new workstations
for all as servers were already prepped it took less than an hour to get ad up with file and print
server and i was about done i also set up a wi-fi that covers the whole area of the recycling center
all that was left was the cashier systems that was a little harder as everybody was almost arguing
what they want and what they need i decided to let them sort it out and contact me when they're done
as long as it's settled before the end of january so we have time to get everything
also i got an interesting call from a major computer brand that was supplying our city their
tech and this dude with nasal sound started the combo on the phone like this is this op
i was told that you were to be contacted regarding tech swap at the recycling center
i am soon starting to gather a team of experts to make the swap i just thought that for a moment in
my mind team of experts to haul four switches one router and four workstations away wtf okay
what time frame do you have in mind well the tech is needed to remove there by the end of february
but i'm not sure we can get the team together that soon so it might go to the end of march okay take
your time anything else no i just wanted to inform this to you thank you be in touch now this was in
the first week of january right after the new year i already set up our network installed new
workstations got the servers and employees are already using their new computers for work next
week i disconnect all the property of computer brand stuff and pile them into office storage
to free some space for the workers they don't need to have workstations on their desks anyway
so january goes by it's now february hell is frozen it's so cold here we're talking about minus
30 degrees celsius my car is like laugh out loud nope every morning and i'm so tired all the time
as i haven't seen the sun for a few months now i go to the office and call up a meeting regarding
the cashier systems at the recycling center well of course they have only been arguing about it
and did not come up with a conclusion so i take the control and say yeah you get izettle for
now we have to put up something and we use izettle here at our cafeteria and restaurant and it should
bend to your needs there's a few objections from recycle center cashiers but i keep my
stand behind this i order a couple of full sets of izettle stuff ipads stands for ipads card readers
receipt printers etc i make the needed accounts and we go through the items they need in there
took a week done now i disconnect the old cashier machines card readers etc and put them to another
pile to the office storage all goes fine and then it's business as usual february goes by and we
are in late march when i get the call hi my team is ready for the swap is next week okay for you
we should arrive on site about nine in the morning monday sure thing see you on monday okay then bye
i head to the recycling center on monday park my car and go inside i check the old junk is still at
the office storage and no one has sold them off to the recycling where stuff will be torn into pieces
and then sorted by materials nope all there clock is almost 10 when the experts arrive holy crap i
know that a team of experts is pretty overkill to get a few old computers and network switches but a
dozen guys half of them in suits i meet them up at the lobby they look around and ask me where can we
find op i can hear the nasal sound from his voice this is the same guy i talked to on the phone i
say i'm op okay they look at me but then shrug their shoulders i would like to point out that
i was nerdy looking fellow back in my days with a short clean haircut hoodies and blue jeans and
beige chinos and skate shoes now i got my golden long hair that reaches my shoulders a beard i
wear mostly skinny black jeans and in winter also old black combat boots that have seen better days
i have my leather biker jacket and under it thick wool shirt black one that has text doom written
in white on it so i don't look like your average executive systems administrator so they say we
thought there would be a professional here to meet us i tell them yeah i'm professional believe me
this way gents i take them to the office storage and point to the two piles of junk not literal
piles all were neatly put in place as we didn't want to break them there's your stuff you are
welcome do you need a card or something the suits and their entourage the tech experts possibly
went silent for a moment what is this we were supposed to make a tech swap and we're here to map
and plan to process why is our stuff here the guy in suit asks well we had to get our systems
operational before the end of february you know then city finally shuts down the internet here
and also shuts down the aed and everything so i put our stuff operational at the start of january
why wait so here we are now at the end of march is february before or after march i'll give you
a hint look to the floor where your stuff is this is completely unprofessional you had no authority
to disconnect and remove our stuff i will report this to your supervisor where is your manager
suit rance i had every given right by the way i'm like laugh out loud did he just say that yeah
my manager would be executive director manly name no i mean your manager not the head honcho yeah
that would be the head honcho director manly name he looks at me in disbelief oh these
corporate guys no wonder johnny silverhand hates them and you are he mumbles i am another manly
name executive systems administrator here you know what is truly unprofessional i ask dude is
still pissed i can see that from his face rest of his bunch are silent and just stare at the stuff
on the floor it's very unprofessional to spend almost three months to gather a team of experts
to haul a couple of computers also take note that all of this stuff was supposed to be out of here
a month ago tech swap was supposed to be done a month ago i'm sorry that is not unprofessional
it's just incompetent there are carts you can borrow at the lobby have a nice day and i left
back to my office funny thing i never heard of them again no complaints nothing weird right as
was mentioned in the comments down below i think the tactic that was put into play here was they
were gonna try and gather a large team drag things out and then assist you with the new install and
send you a massive bill in the process you did the right thing by just directing them to the
pile of their crap and getting out of the way do me a quick favor have a look down below the video
if that subscribe button still red it means you're not actually subscribed to the kcc channel please
hit that subscribe button for more daily reddit stories our next story today comes to us from
this is sandwich oh that that's been broken ever since we got it let's jump right in first some
background i work in a research and development laboratory as a team of two where we use a number
of different specialized pieces of equipment including data acquisition systems high-speed
cameras electric pulse and function generators and temperature chambers our it people don't support
this equipment so if something goes down we're on our own i've quickly learned the value of our tfm
we have a sister site that does mostly production work their test department does real simple stuff
with the smaller range of equipment following well-established procedures although some steps
are unwritten as such the tech in that department has generally not needed to be technically savvy
and so the man who was in that position we'll call him jim for no particular reason put little to no
effort to actually understand the equipment he was using jim's two solutions to problems were either
to give up and ignore it or call us if it was something he couldn't ignore this meant our sister
site accumulated a lot of broken equipment to be fair to jim a decent amount was actually broken
as we have come to expect given we're testing explosives but there were times when things just
needed a little bit of tlc or buttons pressed in the right order jim recently retired and his
replacement mark got the bare minimum in terms of training from jim and now mark has basically been
thrown into the deep end fortunately mark seems to be up to the task and at the very least would show
him the things that only exist as tribal knowledge rather than being written down and documented a
few weeks ago i was at our sister site to do some testing we couldn't do at my home site mark is
helping out as a training opportunity and his own testing is dead in the water because the guy he's
been working with who has the special license we need to do the testing is in vacation and mark
doesn't have one yet well good news i have this special license and it looks like my testing is
going to finish early let's prep the test samples and get mark moving on his stuff because it's
holding up production it's also a good opportunity for me to see what they actually do for testing
here since i never seen it and their written procedure sucks prep involves conditioning some
samples at an elevated temperature easy enough as both sites have a couple of temperature chambers
for this we go where they keep these chambers the big ones already in use on something then
the following paraphrased conversation happens oh i guess we can't test what why someone else is
using the oven points to the other chamber sitting dormant what about this one starts punching in
our target temperature of 250 fahrenheit oh that it's been broken ever since we got it
broken how suspicious that a ten thousand dollar plus piece of equipment has never worked it won't
stay a temp taking a closer look looks like it's throwing an alarm yeah jim couldn't figure out how
to stop it so he just silenced it tapping buttons on the limit control panel do you guys have the
manual i don't think so alright let's find one and we're off to google a few minutes and a manual is
printing i send mark to grab it while i go back to the oven to see if i can figure out what the issue
is this chamber being new its control panel and limit control panel are different from what we've
got at my home site fumbling through the menu i figure out the alarm is for a limit being exceeded
and therefore power to the heating element is cut off i fumbled my way to see the limits are set to
300 and -10 okay even if that was in celsius we should be well within that wtf mark comes in with
the manual as i'm rifling through i realize this manual is for a temperature controller with the
same model number and not a limiter back to google model number limit goes into the search bar bingo
i do a quick skim to make sure i have the right thing before i print off another 100 page document
then i come to a realization i sit up and look at the wall in the direction the chamber is in
i think i figured it out mark and i head over and i start tapping away at a panel
yep someone jim mixed up the low and high end limits so the chamber would throw alarms and not
work if the temperature was between -10 fahrenheit and 300 fahrenheit which it always would be
30 seconds later we had a second fully functional temperature chamber and testing could continue i
then proceeded to watch in horror as i find out this test the company has been doing for decades
is unreliable a bit unsafe incredibly unscientific and takes longer than it has any right to but
that's a tale for a different subreddit probably it's kind of scary thinking that a lot of the big
systems in important places like hospitals and whatnot use equipment that could be serviced by
people like this this story does remind me though when somebody asks you a question and you don't
know the answer but you know it's a simple answer hey let me google that for you so we're starting
to ramp up the kcc discord so if you're not a member there yet click the link in the description
down below it's completely free you can come over and say hi to me i'm in there every day
along with a bunch of members of the kcc community it's a great quiet spot where we can talk about
the kcc stories or anything else that's going on in our lives i look forward to seeing you there
link at the top of the description down below check out both ops also linked in the description
down below i thank you for watching hope you have a wonderful day and we'll see you tomorrow