Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2014-07-24 12:22 am
azurelunatic) wrote2014-07-24 12:22 am
Entry tags:
Handcuffs: advantages of being a long-haired freaky person (yoga & hairpins helpful) & other stories
Today at work, the security club had a lockpick intro/practice session. I picked a disembodied lock with two pins! I poked at one with four and one with six. Mr. Zune said that the one with four was actually harder than the one with six. He also mentioned that it was actually sort of amazing that he'd left his alma mater without picking up lockpicking skills. Since he wears the brass rat, that is sort of amazing. In addition to the various locks, they had a tabletop stunt door with a knob, a deadbolt, and a chain. I learned that my long hair and typical braid is good for having an excuse to have hairpins on me at any given time, given their utility in shimming carelessly-locked handcuffs.
Lunch involved Purple getting asked geopolitical questions by some of his buddies, and him holding forth a bit. He's generally sensible on the topic, it seems.
As my manager warned me might happen, dev work on my database has halted. At least we have a bit, or something?
I keep discovering horrible usability problems with various bits of the new helpdesk system. Today's shenanigans went a little off-script.
The immediate problem: on a certain non-branded page, any attempt to view your open tickets results in a game of punch-the-monkey, or, catch the moving icon as it leaps away from you.
The cause of this problem: elastic page design, on mouseover event triggering a popup, hair-trigger event in Chrome (slower/fuzzier in IE), and a window size set such that there's no vertical scrollbar before the preview popup flies out, but there is after. So there's this hilarious perpetual motion thing going on if you try to click the icon in order to view your ticket.
The meta-cause of this issue: the link to view your ticket is also the preview icon. The ticket number is not also converted into a link that you could click and bypass the whole moving monkey game in the first place.
The helpdesk guy finally caught me at my desk and we set about making clear the issue. I showed him the page, and how the presence of a link on the incident number would make things basically okay. He was a little baffled by why there was not a link and why the page appeared differently to any other page he was familiar with. He asked to take over my system for the first troubleshooting steps. I assented.
He got into the browser menu settings, and said he'd need to clear stuff out to make sure it wasn't a browser issue, and clicked the checkbox to clear cookies as well as cache. I said no. He continued clicking checkboxes to turn them on in the list of things that were to be cleared. I said, more forcefully, NO, and that I could not have such a disruption to my browser at this time. And clicked the mouse to take back control. He clicked back to take back control from me, I clicked to take back from him, still protesting, and when it became clear he was not understanding or not listening and intended to clear ALL the data from my browser right then and there even though I had said no (repeatedly), I slammed down the phone and closed the WebEx session before he could go through with it.
I pulled up the IM window. As I sent a message that I could not have such a disruption to my browser at this time in my work, he sent a message saying the call had been cut off. NO SHIT, SHERLOCK. I kept my typing fairly friendly (there was a reciprocal smiley involved) and he closed my issue saying that I'd refused to do the browser troubleshooting at that time and that he'd given instructions on what browser troubleshooting to do. (He hadn't in chat, just in the ticket.)
I asked my manager whether my towering, red-eyed rage was an overreaction. (No.) I called the escalation manager and made it crystal clear what part of his helpdesk guy's asshole assumptionist bullshit I was upset and angry with. I don't want or need to know what he does to the guy, I just needed him to be aware that that was a thing that had just happened, and that it was a thing that needed to not happen. The manager seemed responsive and understanding that this was a bad thing, and asked quite worriedly whether the helpdesk guy had in fact managed to clear my cookies, and seemed relieved when I said that he had not. Then I chatted with my own manager again.
Later in the evening, I was in fact able to go through all my browser tabs in order to handle, dismiss, document, or bookmark what was going on in them. Then I relaunched the thing to update it, went in and cleared the data, went back and looked at the page (surprise surprise, it wasn't a browser issue) and reopened and updated the ticket. And opened a new ticket because the closing comment from Asshat the Wonder Listener hadn't arrived in my email box, even though the "hey, your issue? closed." message did.
I hadn't gotten to sleep until nearly 5am last night. Purple gave me a few helpful suggestions by way of commiseration, which included a brief digression on milk substitutes for the lactose intolerant, and their likely effectiveness as a sleep aid.
Somehow it went from "hey, I might get out of here early!" to "oh god it's fuckin' late", but at least Purple found the bug he was looking for! At some point I must ask him whether it really does make sense to park where he does, but tonight was not that night. Purple did earn a "Best $NAME" due to some wisecrack. Also, even if the Randomizer were huggy in the absence of my manager, would I even want hugs from him? (No.)
I'm due an early-morning email presence to round people up for Second Thursday (reprise) (which is actually this Friday) and then I can finish setting up the meetings for next week's research participants. Whee!
Lunch involved Purple getting asked geopolitical questions by some of his buddies, and him holding forth a bit. He's generally sensible on the topic, it seems.
As my manager warned me might happen, dev work on my database has halted. At least we have a bit, or something?
I keep discovering horrible usability problems with various bits of the new helpdesk system. Today's shenanigans went a little off-script.
The immediate problem: on a certain non-branded page, any attempt to view your open tickets results in a game of punch-the-monkey, or, catch the moving icon as it leaps away from you.
The cause of this problem: elastic page design, on mouseover event triggering a popup, hair-trigger event in Chrome (slower/fuzzier in IE), and a window size set such that there's no vertical scrollbar before the preview popup flies out, but there is after. So there's this hilarious perpetual motion thing going on if you try to click the icon in order to view your ticket.
The meta-cause of this issue: the link to view your ticket is also the preview icon. The ticket number is not also converted into a link that you could click and bypass the whole moving monkey game in the first place.
The helpdesk guy finally caught me at my desk and we set about making clear the issue. I showed him the page, and how the presence of a link on the incident number would make things basically okay. He was a little baffled by why there was not a link and why the page appeared differently to any other page he was familiar with. He asked to take over my system for the first troubleshooting steps. I assented.
He got into the browser menu settings, and said he'd need to clear stuff out to make sure it wasn't a browser issue, and clicked the checkbox to clear cookies as well as cache. I said no. He continued clicking checkboxes to turn them on in the list of things that were to be cleared. I said, more forcefully, NO, and that I could not have such a disruption to my browser at this time. And clicked the mouse to take back control. He clicked back to take back control from me, I clicked to take back from him, still protesting, and when it became clear he was not understanding or not listening and intended to clear ALL the data from my browser right then and there even though I had said no (repeatedly), I slammed down the phone and closed the WebEx session before he could go through with it.
I pulled up the IM window. As I sent a message that I could not have such a disruption to my browser at this time in my work, he sent a message saying the call had been cut off. NO SHIT, SHERLOCK. I kept my typing fairly friendly (there was a reciprocal smiley involved) and he closed my issue saying that I'd refused to do the browser troubleshooting at that time and that he'd given instructions on what browser troubleshooting to do. (He hadn't in chat, just in the ticket.)
I asked my manager whether my towering, red-eyed rage was an overreaction. (No.) I called the escalation manager and made it crystal clear what part of his helpdesk guy's asshole assumptionist bullshit I was upset and angry with. I don't want or need to know what he does to the guy, I just needed him to be aware that that was a thing that had just happened, and that it was a thing that needed to not happen. The manager seemed responsive and understanding that this was a bad thing, and asked quite worriedly whether the helpdesk guy had in fact managed to clear my cookies, and seemed relieved when I said that he had not. Then I chatted with my own manager again.
Later in the evening, I was in fact able to go through all my browser tabs in order to handle, dismiss, document, or bookmark what was going on in them. Then I relaunched the thing to update it, went in and cleared the data, went back and looked at the page (surprise surprise, it wasn't a browser issue) and reopened and updated the ticket. And opened a new ticket because the closing comment from Asshat the Wonder Listener hadn't arrived in my email box, even though the "hey, your issue? closed." message did.
I hadn't gotten to sleep until nearly 5am last night. Purple gave me a few helpful suggestions by way of commiseration, which included a brief digression on milk substitutes for the lactose intolerant, and their likely effectiveness as a sleep aid.
Somehow it went from "hey, I might get out of here early!" to "oh god it's fuckin' late", but at least Purple found the bug he was looking for! At some point I must ask him whether it really does make sense to park where he does, but tonight was not that night. Purple did earn a "Best $NAME" due to some wisecrack. Also, even if the Randomizer were huggy in the absence of my manager, would I even want hugs from him? (No.)
I'm due an early-morning email presence to round people up for Second Thursday (reprise) (which is actually this Friday) and then I can finish setting up the meetings for next week's research participants. Whee!
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no, that was not an overreaction in the slightest. i would have been livid. what the HELL.
i am glad the escalation manager seemed to appreciate the issues involved.
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He also asked me to type one of my passwords into chat, and when I said that doesn't seem very secure, he explained "oh, this is 128-bit encrypted chat!" SO NOT THE POINT, ASSHOLE.
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I have had several here, and they have not been bad. That's why this one was so surprising and awful.
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This is the first time I've heard of Sun Restore.
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...that should be "Session Restore", but autocorrect is never quite accurate enough when I'm going at speed.
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:D