Snow 2

Then I come in this morning, driving through snow, and find this as my first e-mail:

IS Service Desk running with Reduced Staffing Levels due to weather conditions

Above and beyond

Glen was in before me this morning messing about with computers on his lots team. I asked what he was up to and was told that he was moving machines around.

Me: “You’re doing it yourself, rather than getting IT to do it?”
Glen: “Yes,
they charge £60 for each machine.”
Me: “Aren’t they going to be upset when IT
have to deal with a problem on one of them and they aren’t on the right desk
number?”
Glen: “No. They don’t keep a record of the machine and desk numbers.
We update the drawing which tells us where each machine is.”
Me: “Why are you
doing it so early?”
Glen: “I’ve got to do it before any of the bosses come
in. They don’t want to know about it. ..That’s what I’ve been told, “if anybody
asks we don’t know about it.””

So he’d come in early for no extra pay, flexi-time doesn’t start until 7.30a.m. to do something that his boss had told him to do, but would deny knowledge of if asked.

Me: “Have you got many to do?”
Glen: “Only this one and that one (pointing to
a couple of desks further down)…but next week I’ve got to bring one down from
the sixth floor and swap it for that one.”

IT trouble

There area a new bunch of rules for making up passwords which we have to adhere to now. Everyone has had to change their password to their computer last week. Becks came in this morning and was having trouble remembering her password and was eventually blocked-out after three goes. She phoned IT who asked her to get someone to request a “password reset” by e-mail, which I did for her. Eventually they replied with a new password, “yellow12”. I passed this on to Becks, and because they were so specific I reminded her that it was case-sensitive. She tried this 3 times and got blocked out again. I e-mailed IT back and they told her to try again with “yellow12”. It didn’t work again, so we phoned them back and explained what was happening. I had checked that she had made it all lower-case. Eventually we heard the IT guy at the next desk, to the woman we were talking to, shout over “That needs to be a capital Y”. They had e-mailed us over a password which they hadn’t made case-sensitive. We tried “Yellow12” (with a capital Y) and it was fine.

Network down

When we got on and logged in this morning the whole of the network was down. I spent 15 minutes with my speaker phone on waiting to get through to the helpdesk, who informed me that the whole of the company’s networks were down. We ended up chatting with each other about yesterday’s interviews, among other stuff. Eric came over to see us because no one was around in his section yet. He has the same shirt on as me. It always seems that when I pick this shirt to wear, Eric also has the same idea:

Me: “If I get a team manger job you’re going to be the first one I try and head hunt for my section.”
Eric: “That’s very nice of you to say so.”
Me: (Pointing to one of the Steve’s) “You needn’t bother I’m going to head hunt you though.”
Steve: “I’m not bothered. I would probably refuse to work for you anyway.”
Eric: “You’re making the right decision there Ed. He’s very touchy and has a vile temper, doesn’t he.”

We ended up going down for breakfast early, which we were lucky with to be first down because half the place had got the same idea. The network came back on around 9.00, just after Karen had phoned the boss (who was interviewing today as well) to get an opinion about what we should do. He sent a message to say the time should be spent tidying up our desks and the rest of the office. This all happened before Junior and Alan had come in. They were upset that they’d missed all the commotion.

Plotter trouble

The big plotter broke this morning, due to the paper getting jammed, because people pile up their drawings on the top of the machine, until it gets too heavy for the paper to come out at the back. Usually we can clear the jam and cut the paper out, but this morning one of the metal plates that takes the paper in had warped, and the front would not shut again. When anything mechanical happens we have to get the engineer from OCE to come and fix it. We pay for a twelve hour service, so it should be fixed the same day, but I have to phone the internal service desk first. The service desk type in all the details on the system, then give me a ticket number. Then they pass on the message to our IT department. Depending on the priority level, IT then have to phone me to ask what the problem is with the plotter, because the description that the service desk write down is useless. Then one of the guys from IT will come up and see if it really is broken or if he can fix it. Then when he’s looked it over he will call out the OCE engineer. So that wastes 3 or 4 hours, and the engineer will either come late on in the day so that nobody is around to explain the problem, or often which machine needs fixing. Usually he will come the next day and he won’t have the part we need, so we have to wait another three or four days for the part to come over from Germany and then for the engineer to come and fit it. So our 12 hour repair service takes more like a week.

The IT eventually called me at 11.25 to ask for the printer number and serial number, having phoned the service desk at 8.30.

IT Problems

When Russell came into the office this morning his machine was beeping constantly when he turned it on. Ii just assumed he was leaning on the keyboard, but he wasn’t. So he asked me why his machine should be beeping and I took a quick look. Meanwhile, one of the Steve’s who sits opposite him reckoned that it sounded like a major hardware fault, like the motherboard, and that it could explode at any moment. I couldn’t figure it out, so I called IT. We have a spare machine since Neil left, so I got Russell to work on that one. Half an hour or so later Matt from IT came up, tried it out, and as I suspected took the machine away. We expected that we would just get a replacement machine when one became available. A little later though he sent an e-mail saying that it had booted up fine downstairs and he was bringing it up to try again. He tried it back up here and it still beeped continuously. He figured it must be the keyboard, so we booted it without the keyboard and it worked. He said he’d get a new keyboard. I started looking at the keyboard and found there was a bit of silver foil (possibly from a chocolate wrapper) wedged in the keyboard, underneath a couple of keys. I prized it out with a bent paper-clip and tried rebooting the machine. This time there was no noise, and it booted up fine. I rang the IT guy back to tell him it was all fine now. I could hear them all laughing in the IT department when I told them it was just a piece of silver foil, and that I’d banned Russell from eating chocolate in the office again.