From Dusty Shelves

I sent an email out to the company this morning, as I tend to do as the network adminstrator.

Warning folks to be vigilant against holiday e-card scams.
Showing an example of one of the recent password encrypted zip file scams.
Thanking them for being careful so far, keep up the good work.

I had several say thanks for the heads up.

I had several managers saying I wrote above the level of their employees. They didn't understand what the word vigilant meant. What the phrase "fall prey to" meant.

(shakes head sadly)

Ever hear a user strip a gear when they are trying not to admit to something?

I did today..
I have a user whose machine was whacked by a nasty 1 2 punch of spyware/malware. I talked with her on the phone, walking her through where she went. Her bank.. No, that won't cause a problem... she traveled through a few more places, all harmless... then she said, with hesitation, that she had been doing some research..

Research I asked?

Yeah, research... when gently pressed she eventually revealed she had gone to youtube, and then... everything happened.

It was hard to restrain the chuckle. For one thing, I block YouTube for the company, so she had mistyped the URL, leading to a link/malware-farm that whacked her machine. For another, you could hear it in her voice when she realized that she was going to have to somehow admit to going to YouTube for 'research'.

Then I asked her to turn off her pc as I had requested her to leave off until her new one arrived. She asked how I knew she had it on. I told her, because I've been killing a ton of spam coming out of your branch trying to get to the Internet this morning. Then proceeded to explain to her how that just because she wasn't seeing an error, it could still be very busy this morning, and THAT was why I told her to turn it OFF until she got her new machine.

*sigh*

Still, hearing her throw a cog this morning... It did make me smile.

What does it say about the email spam problem when you arrive at the office. Pop open your company email. Find one spam message from 6:52 the previous evening, and then, that's it.

The first thing you think is that something must be broken. A quick trip to ye old gmail account and I bounce a message in. Nope, it's working. A check on the mail stats on the gateway. Nope, yesterday was actually the 2nd highest day since the first of december for inbound mail/junk spam.

How refreshing to have the current updates on the spam gateway be functioning well enough to filter that much crud out of our mail system. Somedays, it's nice to feel like the good guys have come out on top. If only for the moment.

--my life in IT--

the problem with tech outsourcing....

when you have a contractor onsite that has a thorny problem...
so they open an incident ticket with Microsoft...
and MS blames the hardware...
so contractor puts MS on hold, and opens a ticket with Dell....

then you have a contractor...
on a conference call...
with a MS support tech in the Mexico call center...
talking with the Dell supprt tech in India....

and the out-sourced techs, can't understand each other....
irony....

it would almost be funny....

....

and then the contractor ends the call to leave at 5.....
and you realize....
that nobody cares anymore...
if I had been in the contractors shoes(as I've been in the past) I would have stayed on the call until the problem was resolved(which I've done in the past when a contractor), because now they'll just have to pick it up tomorrow, and we go yet another day behind schedule... on a schedule we can't go behind on

I guess I shouldn't care anymore either....
no one else does...

work is but a desolate void..
on monday morning
you stare at the walls of your office
and wonder

is this all life is meant to be?

small moments of being who you are...
of being who you dream to be...

separated by long moments of futile efforts
for those who don't care
won't learn
demmand the world
yet WON'T EVER TRY TO LEARN

or perhaps...
are simply lost on their own way...

all I know is

monday mornings need more coffee

and a change...