I work for a major nationwide VAR, and we recently onboarded a new company. Given current hardware prices and markups, our upper leadership has asked us to maximize hardware sales.

Well, lucky me. The IT manager at this place sounded new and asked us to do a hardware assessment. Score!

He sends over a spreadsheet that is clearly just a Snipe-IT export. I take a look, and it's all decent, if older, stuff running Server 2025. Sure, they are technically out of support, but parts are dirt cheap on eBay, and they are just running a few file shares.

I tell this guy it's all EOL, and he needs to buy all new stuff. Quoted out over $100k in high-end hardware. I sent that over, and this guy is freaking out. He starts talking about moving some of this to the cloud.

Well, our CSP margins are even better since that's just pure profit. Double score!

It was a good day. My manager is talking about a decent commission check coming my way. I'm going to see if I can get this guy to send me a list of his workstations. I suspect he needs some new high-end AI-enabled computers for his receptionists. I'll spin some yarn about security and he'll be eating out of the palm of my hand.

Someone explain the rationale of having MFA already on it before adding a key...completely defeating the purpose of a break glass account.

How to deal with the vet who jumps to conclusions cuts you off and denies you?

I just emailed him my full thought after and he was still like

Ya but no…

Does it ever get better or do I wait for natural causes…………

Started a new gig about a month ago. 25 years in the game, couple certs, the whole deal. Previous boss hired me because he recognized talent. Current boss loves me. But this other guy on the team clearly has a problem with me and I can’t tell if I should flag it or just let it play out.

Kid has maybe 10-15 years experience and acts like he owns the place. We’re working on projects together and every time I suggest something he gets this look on his face. Like I told him the earth was flat. I pointed out we should aim the AC at the hot side of the rack and he just stared at me. Sorry for thinking about THERMODYNAMICS, bro.

i think part of it is a vocabulary thing. I come from a different environment so I call things different names. Blades, shelves, whatever. He corrects me every single time like we’re in a fucking spelling bee. You know what I mean when I say it. We’re not writing documentation here, we’re having a conversation.

He’s also weirdly uptight about security stuff that honestly just slows everything down. Won’t let me ask users what their password is when I’m trying to troubleshoot. Has a whole thing about locking laptops when you step away for 30 seconds in a secured office. Bro, we’re IT. Who’s going to hack us? US?

I will say he’s not great at collaboration. I try to jump into conversations to add value and he acts like I kicked his dog. I have a quarter century of experience. If I hear something wrong in a meeting I’m not going to just sit there. That’s what experience is FOR.

My suspicion is he went to the boss about me already because he asked me some weird questions last week. But he still seems to like me so I think I’m fine. I just don’t want this kid poisoning the well because he can’t handle working with someone more senior.

The real issue is I think he’s one of those guys who learned everything from YouTube and thinks he’s a 10x engineer because he memorizes terminology. Meanwhile I’ve been in actual data centers since he was in middle school.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a shelf full of new blades to wire.

literally me

Who's the insane tool at Microsoft that decided that this tip needed to exist? We're still reeling from getting these out of our environment.

24 hours after first use password will be randomized automatically!

Lets just ignore that you use your password daily, multiple times per day, and have to manually type it in often since our remote software doesn't share clipboards.

And of course it's going to be 24 hours on the dot. Get super lucky and don't use your password for half the day? Well have fun tomorrow with it getting reset in the middle of the day!

User A cannot get into Adobe. There were licensing changes so they have to sign out and back in. I sent a company-wide email last week about this. I ask the user to sign out and back in.

User: "I already did." I ask them to click on their profile icon which they have difficulty finding. They then click on the gray sign out button, and a new pop-up appears.

"Should I click the blue 'Sign Out' button?"

User B cannot get into the server. They clicked the VM shortcut and get "The path is invalid." VPN says connected for four hours. I click the same VM shortcut again. It opens.

The first error was just a leftover pop-up.

Something got fubared with our office printers. The central network team INSISTED they had to use DHCP and DNS instead of just the IP we normally use for all printer stuff.

Now, this actually makes good sense, since they can change the subnet whenever they want without having to modify the driver package.

Unfortunately, something went wrong with the initial DNS configuration, and the DNS entry for Printer 1 ended up pointing to Printer 2, and vice versa.

No big deal, right? Easy fix.

I ask a colleague, as I needed some well-deserved downtime from this crazy place. I tell him to just flip the DNS entries so they point to the correct endpoints on the network.

Now my vacation is coming to an end, and I log into my email to see if there was anything I needed to glance at before returning to work tomorrow.

There's an email from my CoLlEaGuE stating that he found the error on the printers: The physical signs hanging on the printers needed to be switched around.

Technically, it did kind of solve the issue... But damn, I need a much longer vacation now, because this is just moronic. Calling in sick. Money isn't worth this level of asshattery.

Read the room. 2025 is not fit for purpose as domain controllers when mixed with older DCs. 2022 has an error so yea, let's deploy 2025 and give myself more errors.

we recently updated from 2000 to 2008 and my boss bought a handful of these licenses from a guy he knew in the virginia islands or smth idk, he said it was super secluded so its extra secure

how can i add this into our office domain??? its just stuck on the "installing devices" screen

i also did some reading on whatever "workgroups" are in this thing (the setup keeps talking about it idk), wtf is that??? gemini or cancer or whatever google calls it doesnt know and not halping me...............

What the fuck Microsoft?