begin quoting David Looney as of Sat, Apr 08, 2006 at 09:58:42AM -0700:
[snip]
> It also illustrates the important principle that users careful
> descriptions of problems, however goofy they may sound to you, should
> not be dismissed.
An oft-forgotton point. :)
[snip]
> I got the typical response from ACS support. After being told that what
> I was describing was impossible, and to change it again ... and again,
> they said they would do it for me.
>
> The kid at the help desk gave me an "old idiot can't change his
> password" smile, entered the new password on the same damn web form, and
> announced that my problem was "all fixed now" (there, there).
Users typically don't follow instructions, and help desk staffers often
don't listen or engage their brain. Both groups tend to regard the other
as complete idiots (often rightly so, but not always). (See the recent
"Tuttle-CentOS" fiasco -- dumb user, arrogant tech support...)
I'm astonished that the kid at the help desk didn't _test_ his
"solution". Then again, at project[-3], we had a kid doing the
sysadmin stuff ('cuz I wasn't going to let myself get unrecovered),
and he didn't believe in testing his "solutions" either. (Really
Smart People often make this mistake... testing is seen as a lack of
confidence or something.)
[snip]
> After about 2 days of fiddling, Brian discovered the password database
> for the secure server was not being correctly updated, and fixed the
> problem (IMHO, a security flaw for a "secure" email server.)
Whee!
It's always fun to be the one that exposes a problem. It may be
annoying at the time, but you get to tell some fun stories. :)
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