We won a big tender this week, which is very exciting! But then people started congratulating me in the corridor which surprised me because we hadn’t issued a press release or anything. So I asked around, and there was an email sent to the whole company that I didn’t get.
A little but of sleuthing discovered that the email hadn’t made across the Lotus Notes – Outlook chasm. And lo and behold, neither had any of the email sent directly to the LN email address. For a whole week. Including stuff from customers, my boss and corporate training.
Yay.
You see, I have three corporate email addresses, and only one of them is directly delivered to Outlook. The other two I have had forwarded by using LN Mail Rules, which mysteriously stopped working sometime this week.
I created the highest possible priority ticket in the helpdesk system, because I’m travelling all next week. No response yet.
Usually, they are too quick to close issues that have not been solved.
This time, for fun, they will not close an issue that was successfully resolved in July last year.
Hilarity ensues.
I posted this not too long ago. Huh. I should probably find something else to whinge about.
In case you’re wondering, the attachment referred to in the entry for July 22 is here.
While slowly beating my brains out with a SAP shaped hammer, the oh-so -helpfull IT support called, and asked why I was trying to use the native SAP client? I asked what was wrong with that? To which he replied:
Well, no-one uses it, and its really bad.
Yeah, no shit Sherlock.
So I kindly informed him that I had previously reported that the SAP web application had stopped working, and had turned into a paint program. He said, “By any chance do you have the zoom set to anything other than 100%?”
Stunned silence.
As my brain slowly started processing the idea that a client-side zoom setting had caused the ENTIRE application to hang, I realised that I was trying to apply Reason in the first place. So I simply did what the IT guy said, and checked.
Oh. My. Fracking. God.
Behold – the IE zoom level of death:
IE zoom of death
I set this back to 100%, and wouldn’t you know it, it started working….
….until… <click>
<click>….wait….<click><click>
…. ah yes – we all knew this wasn’t actually going to solve all the problems. In fact, it has joyfully created another problem.
The report which I had wasted my ENTIRE DAY on is inaccesable from the web client. The IT guy on the phone said those dreaded words:
“Huh. Never seen it do that before.”
I said that if I have to delete my report, and start ALL OVER AGAIN, I would come through the phone and strangle him. He laughed, but with that tinge of fear caused by the realisation that I might actually manage it, somehow.
It is 2010, and yet when I browse a shared drive over the WAN, explorer slows down to a crawl reminiscent of the days when we were trying to FTP things over a 2400 SLIP connection.
Seriously, what is Explorer doing that it takes a full minute to retreive a directory listing of 16 objects? And why must it completely take over the whole computer while it’s doing it?
Worse still is if you are browsing a very large directory listing, and try to scroll. Then it hangs again, and this time, stops painting, so you get a big white square on the screen. And then the Start menu stops responding. And then you can’t Alt-Tab to other processes.
“Oh, well it’s retrieving information about all the files in the directory.”
No. Because when I click on the file, I have to wait another 30 seconds for the context menu to appear.
“It negotiating security priveledges.”
Uh-huh. We are all in the same domain, and I am several levels deep into the directory structure.
Does anyone know how I can browse file-shares over the WAN in this lifetime?
This link is blocked: http://www.rotronic.co.uk/content/humidity_feuchte/index.php The resulting page said it was in the “pornography” category.
Out of frustration, I typed in “Dirty Sex Sluts” into Google and selected the first link. Can you guess what happened? I wasn’t blocked! Boom! Full-on porn right there, on my screen, in the middle of the cube-farm!
And yet, I’m told that I can’t have the RDP port opened between internal offices on an intranet because of security concerns. Right.
Here’s a lesson kids:
If you say that you will eventually follow up with a response, don’t close the ticket.
I draw your attention to exhibit A. Notice the “status” (my highlight).
Reference # 091002-001455
Date Created 10/01/2009 02:57 PM
Last Updated 11/10/2009 11:32 AM
Date Closed 10/09/2009 04:18 PM
Status Solved
PID or S/N LZ840BK
P/N 810-000864
Software Version xx.x.x
Downloaded latest SW Yes
Dear JakeDue to unexpectedly high volumes of e-mails we have been unable to respond to you in a timely fashion. In addition to contacting us by e-mail you can also:
1) Visit our support site at www.Logitech.com/support. There you will find answers to many frequently asked questions, software downloads, product feature descriptions, and product documentation.
2) Call us, you can find our support telephone numbers for your country by clicking on the “Support” > “Contact Us” links at the top of the page. Please have your support number available when you call ( 091002-001455 ).
If you still prefer to have your question answered via e-mail, please reply to this e-mail. If you do not respond, we will assume that you chose one of the other support options listed above. Please note that if you still want to receive a response via e-mail, there may be a delay before we are able to answer your question.
This is a temporary condition and we are working to resolve it as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Update I’ve been using the replacement mouse they sent ever since then, which at the time of this update, was 5 years ago. Was so impressed with the mouse I bought another one for the iMac.
