Printers

One of my jobs I’ve been given before I leave was to get an old server out of the domain, which had a load of printers on. These printers had not been provisioned by a script, but the users had manually browsed and installed the printers on.

So I needed to move them from one server to another. Spools first, then made a little script that people could run which deleted the printers and re-added them.

“Please click start, run, paste this line of text in, and click OK” the email said.

“You would be better doing this than allowing everyone to do their own,” came the reply from a Director.

Sweet joy.

Day Off

A had a day off on Monday.

Nobody new. Well, me, being his manager, didn’t know. So I asked him about it today.

“Where were you Monday?”

“It was my day off.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“Did I need to? I told H, and she put it on the wall chart.”

“It’s not in your calendar.”

“It says ‘Crawley’.”

“That means nothing to me. It doesn’t say Annual Leave, so I presume you’re still around, and still answering your phone.”

“Well, I did all I needed to, as far as I’m concerned.”

“As far as I was aware, it’s courtesy, if nothing else, to notify your manager when you intend to have a day off.”

“I did,” came his reply.

Oh. Okay. Last time I checked, I was his manager. At least, that’s what it says on my Job Description (which, incidentally, I am the only person in the whole company who has a JD).

Passwords, Part Deux

Another week-long meeting happened today. Started at 10am, brief break for lunch at 2pm, and continued until a few minutes past 5pm.

The first part of the meeting was a summary of the previous meeting for people that had not attended. Excuse me, is that not what minutes are for?

Anyway, we were running through things, and one of the items was the helpdesk system we use. It’s a web-based system with a MySQL back-end.

“So it connects to a database?” J said.

“Yeah,” came my enthusiastic reply.

“And this is where?”

“On the hosting account.”

“And the password for that is?”

“For what, the database or the hosting account?”

“No, I know the hosting account password,” he said, and he’d be right, after they un-ceremoniously snatched it from me the week before. “The database password.”

“Why would you want it? You would never need it unless you wanted to tinker in the database, and I strongly recommend you don’t.”

“But we just need the password,” said J. “In fact, is it one of these?”

And, to my horror, he held up a print-out of all the MySQL database names, and their associated usernames and passwords, to me. He then pointed out that this sheet was in the hand-out that all the attendees of the meeting had been presented with.

I sank a couple of inches farther in my chair. “Yes, second one down,” came my reply.

The Trust Issue

Obviously when you give someone the keys to your business’s IT, you have to trust them.

Well, two weeks after I handed my notice in, it seems as though they’re having the jitters about me holding so many accounts (website, online backup, etc) and have started contacting the organisations I deal with behind my back in order to secure control of them before I leave.

I’ve had access to the web hosting accounts taken off me, and I’ve discovered that they’ve been requesting copies of the agreements that were set up in order to ensure that somebody proper did authorise them.

K (in an email to our online backup supplier): “I would be very grateful if you could scan to me a copy of the document we signed to set up this agreement (i.e. who signed the agreement)  and also a copy of who signed the direct debit mandate please.”