We’re still dealing with the same problems

Back in August, Allan Hirt (blog|twitter) tweeted:

In the roughly 25 years of I have been in IT, we’re still dealing with the same problems.

I had a slow day, so I generated a storm of responses. This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is inspired by this tweet. Here’s my list of problems:

The 15 minutes needed to start a conference call.

The guy who rebooted the production server in the middle of the day because he didn’t think anyone used it (They do)

Being asked “Did you try rebooting it?” Giving the person crap Realizing that you haven’t rebooted Rebooting works.

Having 10 dongles in your bag, but not the one you need to connect your machine to this projector.

Your default browser magically reverting back to IE (now Edge).

Outlook. Every damned thing about Outlook.

Install 95% complete.
Translation: Install is still going. We have no idea how much longer this will take

Spaces in file paths. Breaking all the things.

Your password. You know the one. You really should go change it.

Users who expect “Backwards compatible” to be the same as “forwards compatible.”

Keyboards that die because you spilled your coffee/soda on them.

The insistence of Support techs that your problem’s fixed in the latest update. Call again after you install updates

Conference T-shirts that are a plague on fashion.

The IT guy that really does live in his mom’s basement, perpetuating the stereotype.

The sysadmin who tells you how much better Novell was.

The sysadmin who tells you how much better NT4 was.

Your inbox is full.

There is exactly 1 day after the latest tech is no longer overpriced, but before it is obsolete.

The SAN is running low on storage. Do you really need that big of a disk?

Realizing that you didn’t need anyone to give you the URL because you would have guessed it first try /cc @billinkc

There’s always someone speaking a language you don’t understand. Who’s Ruby? Is she married to JSON?

Auto-reboot from Windows Updates, even though you told them not to install. /cc @AaronBertrand

The server naming convention has changed 3 times You have servers with all 3 name conventions There is no convention

The user who realizes right click is a thing and always needs to know “Right click or left click?”

IP v4

Everyone who isn’t in IT assumes you know everything about IT.

No, I cannot fix your laptop. Stop visiting shady porn sites, and this wouldn’t be a problem.

Sure, I’ll fix your laptop. My consulting rate is $200/hr. Oh, you thought I’d do it for free? Sorry, Mom.

The Fn key is to the left of Ctrl on a ThinkPad laptop. Still.

Sorry, we can’t change that because there’s a client who still does that the dumb way.

Someone decided it was a good idea to put a version in a path name. Now you’re stuck with it. (PowerShell v1.0!)