The Vent and Rant Thread

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

This must be my week for completely idiotic encounters!

My phone rings and one of my least favorite co-workers asks "What's our Fed-Ex account number?"
Me: "We don't have a Fed-Ex account. We just phone for pick-ups when needed."
Co-worker: "I have a lady on line 6 at Fed-Ex. She says we do have an account but can only release the number to someone in authority."

[At this point I should have known better - this co-worker is infamous for needlessly complicating others' lives with unnecessary details, requests, explanations, etc.]

So I unwisely pick up the phone and speak to the lady at Fed-Ex:
Lady: "I'm showing in my records that your company does have an account with us."
Me: "I'm showing in my records that we haven't written a check to you in over 10 years."
Lady: "Yes, it's not an active account - there's no credit card associated with it. But you do have an account number."
Me: "Which is?"
Lady: "I can't tell you. There is a person of importance whose name is associated with your account. I can only release the number to that person."
Me: "What is the name?"
Lady: "I can't tell you. They have to call us to request the release of your account number."
Me: "How am I supposed to ask this person to call you if you won't tell me who it is?"
Lady: "You'll just have to ask around your company and find out who is associated with your account in our records."

At this point I hung up the phone.
[Disclaimer: This was a real conversation. She seriously expected me to spend my day asking everyone here one by one if they were the contact listed on our corporate Fed-Ex account.]

So, I phoned the wacko co-worker to tell him we couldn't get our account number.
Co-worker: "That's OK - I didn't really need it to schedule a pick up anyway. I was just curious."

I really wanted to smash his smiling face in at that moment.

And the day isn't over ..... yet ....

All I can say is Eeeeekkkkkkk!!! Time to call in The Destroyer.

Helen

[CRussel]

Far be it from me, poohbear_nc, to suggest any sort of retaliation. After all, that would be unconscionable, certainly. OTOH, you DO have the power to set his account to require a 15 character password that needs to be reset every 10 days. Think about it for a moment....

<EVIL GRIN>

(no, of COURSE I've never done such a thing. Never.
Well, hardly ever.)

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Far be it from me, poohbear_nc, to suggest any sort of retaliation. After all, that would be unconscionable, certainly. OTOH, you DO have the power to set his account to require a 15 character password that needs to be reset every 10 days. Think about it for a moment....

<EVIL GRIN>

(no, of COURSE I've never done such a thing. Never.
Well, hardly ever.)

LOL!!!!!!!!

[ProfCrash]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Far be it from me, poohbear_nc, to suggest any sort of retaliation. After all, that would be unconscionable, certainly. OTOH, you DO have the power to set his account to require a 15 character password that needs to be reset every 10 days. Think about it for a moment....

<EVIL GRIN>

(no, of COURSE I've never done such a thing. Never.
Well, hardly ever.)

With three special characters, two numbers but not next to each other, three uppercase letters but not next to each other, and four vowels.

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Far be it from me, poohbear_nc, to suggest any sort of retaliation. After all, that would be unconscionable, certainly. OTOH, you DO have the power to set his account to require a 15 character password that needs to be reset every 10 days. Think about it for a moment....

<EVIL GRIN>

(no, of COURSE I've never done such a thing. Never.
Well, hardly ever.)

And I do control the firewall settings too .... and could severely limit his play time online .... or have it block different sites on different days ....
"No, you can't check the weather on Thursday. Only Mondays in months that begin with O."

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Far be it from me, poohbear_nc, to suggest any sort of retaliation. After all, that would be unconscionable, certainly. OTOH, you DO have the power to set his account to require a 15 character password that needs to be reset every 10 days. Think about it for a moment....

<EVIL GRIN>

(no, of COURSE I've never done such a thing. Never.
Well, hardly ever.)

One of the few "laugh out loud" experiences I ever had working at this madhouse:
Older employee (who always tried to blame me personally whenever he made a mistake using a computer) tried to log in one morning, and kept mis-typing his password over & over & over ... [I had nothing to do with this - just sheer fat finger syndrome on his part] and finally banged down the keyboard and announced to the general office that 'someone' had 'hacked' his account ... all the while glaring at me standing by the copy machine ... For once I had a snappy comeback -- I rubbed my hands together and said in my mad professor voice "Aha! My plans to take over the world are finally working!" and stalked out of the room. I really enjoyed that moment ...

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

And I do control the firewall settings too .... and could severely limit his play time online .... or have it block different sites on different days ....
"No, you can't check the weather on Thursday. Only Mondays in months that begin with O."

I like it.

As you can tell, I've BTDT and the T-Shirt I got for it is so worn it has holes and I'm using it for a rag. But patience, my little chickadee. What goes around, comes around. NEVER screw with IT. They can make your life very unproductive and frustrating.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Far be it from me, poohbear_nc, to suggest any sort of retaliation. After all, that would be unconscionable, certainly. OTOH, you DO have the power to set his account to require a 15 character password that needs to be reset every 10 days. Think about it for a moment....



(no, of COURSE I've never done such a thing. Never.
Well, hardly ever.)

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

With three special characters, two numbers but not next to each other, three uppercase letters but not next to each other, and four vowels.

Sounds like the scheme used by the government's payroll site. Your password must be 15-30 characters in length and include numbers, a mix of upper and lower case letters, and special characters. On top of that, it seems like every two or three months you are required to change your password.

[Stitchawl]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Sounds like the scheme used by the government's payroll site. Your password must be 15-30 characters in length and include numbers, a mix of upper and lower case letters, and special characters. On top of that, it seems like every two or three months you are required to change your password.

I do this as a matter of course for all my 'important' passwords. But using certain key phrases based on events in my life (no, not birthdays or anniversaries,) have managed to make easy-to-remember entries. Just very difficult to hack.


Stitchawl

[cromag]

I have a good memory for old street addresses and phone numbers. It comes in handy.

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by Stitchawl

I do this as a matter of course for all my 'important' passwords. But using certain key phrases based on events in my life (no, not birthdays or anniversaries,) have managed to make easy-to-remember entries. Just very difficult to hack.


Stitchawl

and being multi lingual to boot!

[nohmi2]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Far be it from me, poohbear_nc, to suggest any sort of retaliation. After all, that would be unconscionable, certainly. OTOH, you DO have the power to set his account to require a 15 character password that needs to be reset every 10 days. Think about it for a moment....

<EVIL GRIN>

(no, of COURSE I've never done such a thing. Never.
Well, hardly ever.)

I like the way you think
Cheers

[ProfCrash]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Sounds like the scheme used by the government's payroll site. Your password must be 15-30 characters in length and include numbers, a mix of upper and lower case letters, and special characters. On top of that, it seems like every two or three months you are required to change your password.

Every 30 days for work. And don't write it down. And there are four different passwords. And a random number generator token.

[CRussel]

I got rid of all that pain. I never change my domain password. BUT, I use a one-time password generator for a second factor of authentication. (For any who care, AuthAnvil. ) I don't have to remember a regularly changing password, but I also never repeat it. My regular domain password is not easily crackable, but it can be done. Any password can be cracked. But you'll have to work at this one, and it's both easy for me to remember and easy for me to type as a touch typist. Good enough that I don't change it all that often, but don't use it anywhere else. But to log on to our network, you need your AuthAnvil passcode, PLUS a PIN, plus your domain password. Good luck with that.

(Full disclosure: I have no financial connection to AuthAnvil, but the CTO and founder is a good friend and fellow Microsoft MVP.)

[speakingtohe]

Reminds me of when I was doing Industrial control programming. My boss at the time said that another company had gotten access to our Sorter program (which was impossible to protect and still be useable by the customer) and we needed better passwords (which weren't implemented on PLCS at the time)

The only comment was from our top programmer who said "I bet that set them back quite a bit".

Helen