As some of you know, I've been working in the IT industry for a gruelling 15 some years. Recent jobs have had me working a lot with Citrix and VMWare, and running the server environments for large companies in the Milwaukee, WI area. I'm at one of those now, a large manufacturing company with nearly 1500 servers located around the globe. I get all sorts of issues that come up, but I've managed to trick people into thinking I'm one of the smarter members on my team (not very tough considering some of the competition), and as a result I get all the "special" issues to deal with (read: crap sandwiches).
I'd like to share with you some chats I've had with a guy we'll call Pat because, well, that's his name. Pat is a pretty stupid moron of a donk, but we won't let that get in the way of his goals to apparently be the most clueless person possible. He somehow managed to get his co-worker Bill (mentioned later) fired, and inherited all the shit that this other guy did, and of course doesn't know a fucking thing about it. So his default course of action is to blame it on us. (We're called the Wintel team by the way). Favorite phrases of his are "I don't know anything about this, Wintel has always handled it for us" and "uhhh, vmkdfmmfkdlj;
Need to have someone to shut down processes on Server237 and Server238. Do not restart the process, but shut it down.
Seems pretty simple, right? Sure, but dear Pat, WHAT FUCKING PROCESSES DO YOU WANT SHUT DOWN YOU MORON??!?!? Uhhh, sorry. You guys aren't as far along as I am. So I pull up my IM program and decide to see how badly he wants to piss me off today:
Morphy: Hi Patrick
Pat: Hello
Morphy: for this ticket, what processes do you need shut down on Server237/238?
Pat: dcm on 238 and background processor and websphere on 237
Morphy: are you the app owner for these servers?
Pat: yes, I just don't have remote access yet, Bill was gonna do it, however, he has left for the day
Great, for a quick translation: the guy who knows wtf he's doing left for the day, and asked this retard to handle it. We get requests like this all the time...the application owners want to do something to their app that likely will fuck it up for all future use, and want us to abet them in their donkness. Wonderful. I don't know what these services do and frankly I don't care. But I know that sometimes these guys reboot the servers during their work, and a standard Windows service when set to automatic will start automatically (neat, huh?) at boot-up. So I try to get more info from him. I'm already logged into the server remotely and am starting to look for whatever it is that he's talking about.
Morphy: ok, are they services that start up? Do you want me to set them to disabled? If so, who will take care of getting them started up again?
Pat: Yes, we will correct everything after the tad db get restored tonitr
Pat: tonite
What? Did I just ask an either/or question and he answered yes? That surely can't be right. Not sure wtf the rest of his line was supposed to mean, so I ignored it. Meanwhile, I'm looking at the services on the server and don't see anything even closely related to whatever the fuck dcm is supposed to be. Remember, I don't really care what the app is on the server or what it does. That's not my job. My job is apparently translating moron into English...
Morphy: ok, by dcm do you mean the DCOM Server Process Launcher?
Pat: The Kronos Data Communications apps
Morphy: do you know what the process and/or service name is?
Pat: It should be running on the task bar
Morphy: let me try logging onto the local console
Pat: ok
Ok, ignoring the fact that he's calling something with the initials KDC "dcm" I actually managed to get something useful from this. From what he's saying, it's not a "process", it's a program running on the task bar (yes, I realize that this will spawn a "process" but I'm trying to simplify this for those who don't care). I'm logged in remotely (via remote desktop or rdp) and I don't see anything running. There's about a 2% chance that there's something running on the local console that I just don't know what the "process" name is in the list of random shit running on a Windows box (box is just a name for server). So I go to logon to the local console of the server which through the wonders of modern technology I can still do from my desk...
Morphy: I didn't see it via rdp
Pat: On Server248 ?
Morphy: 238
Morphy: should it be 248? the ticket said 238
Pat: yes
There it is again! Well, not as bad this time, but he's still going out of his way to be as vague as possible. Keep in mind that we have 1500 servers in the environment and while I'm simplifying the names here for the purpose of the blog entry, the servers are just numbered sequentially so we'll have like file001/002/003 etc. then apps001/002/003 etc. and there's no meaning to the number other than to separate it from the others. So server 237 could be a totally different app than 238. I could shut down 237 by mistake and take down something major whereas 238 is the one that really needs work on it. I hate it when the people who own the apps don't even know the names of their own goddamn servers, but that's another discussion. So here we go, let's try to find out what the fuck server he's talking about before I wind up shutting down an app on the VP's personal torrent server or some shit.
Morphy: is the other one still Server237?
Pat: Server237 contains Web/Application/Background Processor, they all need to be shut down
Morphy: and the other server is Server238 or Server248?
Pat: yes
Fuck me, he did it again, for 100% certain this time! Are you fucking stupid or just a moron? Yes? Great! Go fuck off and leave me alone then ffs!
Morphy: yes? which one is it?
Pat: 248
Morphy: ok I don't see anything in the task bar on Server237...so I'm going to need the exact names of the processes and/or services that need to be shut down
Pat: It may have been shut down already, in task manager, are there any apps running?
Morphy: no
Morphy: on either server
Pat: I just logged into the the s/w is running on 237
klakjdsl;fkajsdfl;kjasdf WTF? If he just logged into it then what the fucking hell am I doing bothering with this shit? Jesus, this guy is a fuckin moron. Ok fuck it, one last try and I'm done...
Morphy: ok then I'm going to need the exact names of the processes and/or services that need to be shut down
Pat: Kronos should be the only thing running, so you can shut down everything
Hmmm, I wonder if this will work...
Morphy: do you want me to shut down the server???
Nah, there's no possible way that he's going to start out asking to shut down a program on a server and agree to having me just power the fucker off. These people don't have remote access to power them back on. I do of course, because I have ZEEE POWERRRRRRRRR MUAHAHAHA err, sorry. But this fucker doesn't have any access to the datacenter where the server lives, and even if he called up the operations center, they wouldn't do shit for him either. Now it's a game, I just want to see if I can get away with this...
Pat: Yeah, as long as the TAD db isn't loaded on that box
Morphy: I don't know what that is
Pat: Thats the Kronos Dev Oracle database
The what? The KDO TAD db WTF SOL PDQ STFD STFU GFY and GTFOH???
Morphy: how would I tell if that's on either of these servers?
Pat: Its loaded on (name of some Unix server that we don't support)
Pat: So we can just shut down those 2 boxes
Jesus Christ, he's gonna let me shut the servers down isn't he? This is great, and I'm actually paying attention now and sitting up at my desk. I need to ask one more question though...
Morphy: ok, and how will you get them turned back on?
Pat: Yes
Morphy: So just to confirm, I will power these boxes off right now. I'll notify the GOC not to page out any alarms. You will then take care of bringing them back online. Is this correct?
Pat: Yes
YES! YES IS THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING! Oh boy, what a moron. I mean, I could sit here and correct him. I could tell him that when I ask a "how will you do this" question that "YES" isn't even a fucking possible answer to it. Or, I could copy/paste the chat to the ticket, shut down the servers, and send myself a copy of the chat to post to my blog later. I don't suppose you guys have guessed which route I'll take? Boom, servers down, noted in ticket, and I contacted the GOC (uhh, global, umm, operations, cookie? err wait, center, yeah that's it) and told them to put those servers into blackout mode which ignores any alarms coming from them. Then I left early for the day, hah!
Of course every story has a happy ending, right? Yup, Bill comes in the next day and SPRIZE! can't get to his servers. So he contacts a guy he knows on my team who we'll call Tony, cause that's what he tells me is the name of his alter ego. I won't go into my thoughts on people who feel the need to use alter egos to post things online. Err, ummm, nevermind. Anyway, I of course sent Tony the chat above so he was able to laugh at Pat with me, and I'm sure he knew that the next morning Bill would be getting a hold of him anyway. Here's that chat:
Tony: hey bud
Morphy: hey
Tony: my buddy bill is pissed
Morphy: hah uh oh, why? lemme guess, they finally figured out they have no way to power the boxes back on?
Tony: lol here his chat:
Tony: Bill: tony buddy ol' pal
Tony: mmmmm
Bill: I cannot remote or into Server237
Bill: it looks like 248 as well.
Bill: wtf
Tony: blame that on pat,, he had morphy shutdown both dev servers
Bill: shutdown
Bill: that idiot
Tony: yes said he would bring them up.. hol don i'll send u the sm
Bill: Do I need a ticket to get restarted?
Bill: sorry I will hold on
Tony: y..
Tony: read email.,. what a dork
Bill: yes ticket?
Tony: y
Bill: k. tks
Tony: morphy will be pleased
Bill: great
Bill: screw it I will email pat to create the ticket
Tony: lol
Bill: I am going home now and will deal with it on Monday
And there we have it. Since then we've had Pat runins monthly or so, where he doesnt' know wtf he's doing, how to ask what he needs, or anything. I'm pretty sure this fucking guy has a map at his desk for how to get to the bathroom. His latest was knowing 3 months in advance that a security certificate was going to expire, then waiting until 2 days after it expired to put in a production outage incident. Hopefully management will realize what a moron this guy is and get rid of him, or throw him off the building, or something. Or maybe I'll find a new job and quit. Hmmm...that sounds pretty damn tempting. Until next time.
Yours Donkily,
Morphy
