What annoys you most in IT? | Veeam Community Resource Hub

Hi Everyone,

I thought I would first of explain what inspired me to write this on a nice September morning. It was a dumb decision. I have made many dumb decisions in my life and sometimes, just for fun I repeat them. In this case it was agreeing to a dentist appointment at 7 am on a Friday morning.

This all came about around the time of VeeamON. Some of you noticed there were times at VeeamON in Miami when I was walking around with a not so jolly expression on my face. The reason for this was because I was stuck in between benefits providers (read dental insurance) and precisely at that time one of my remaining wisdom teeth decided to cause Armageddon. I held out as best I could. I tried keeping Listerine in my mouth for long periods at a time, then going to the beach and holding salt water in my mouth as I read it has healing powers (although this caused some fellow beach dwellers to give me strange looks). Finally a few weeks after getting back home I was able to go to the dentist without massive financial pain and get my tooth removed.

Upon leaving the dentist office that morning in a moment of pure stupidity I agreed to the 7 am appointment thinking “ha 6 Months away who cares”.

Well 6 Months was up this morning, so in a horrendous mood I dragged myself to the dentist. One thing I have never understood is why the dentist receptionist asks “how are you this morning” at 7am to someone about to be lying with their mouth open with metal tools in it for an hour,, “I am great” l lied and then headed into the torture chamber.

The next major annoyance is when you get a dental hygienist who asks you questions when your mouth is full of dental equipment, it reminded me of that scene in the movie “The King’s Speech” where the King tried to speak with his mouth full of rocks. I tried the old meditation technique in order for the time to go faster picturing myself on a sunny beach somewhere in the Caribbean, however, that was rudely interrupted when the hygienist gleefully found a tough stop and the tool that was being used started to emit some kind of a sawing noise. My Caribbean meditation turned into a flashback of that time when I was playing soccer on a beach in Mexico and kicked the ball not seeing the rock that was underneath it, breaking my middle toe in the process. I don’t remember what was worse, the toe pain or the amusement of my fellow high school students had in the fact that “Butcher Burke” as I was known on the soccer, football and rugby teams had a middle toe broken unlike the valiant injuries of other players, broken arms, knees elbows and so on.

Then there was the horror of turning and looking at the Dentist’s computer monitor and seeing Windows XP! Well at least I am not having a brain scan I thought!

But I digress. The most annoying thing that I find in IT are byzantine logs. Byzantine refers of course to the Byzantine Empire and because the latter was unique in its intrigue and complicated power struggles, the term Byzantine has taken on another meaning in English:

Quote from Google Dictionary:

“(of a system or situation) excessively complicated, and typically involving a great deal of administrative detail.”

You have to wonder sometimes if developers are simply creating log messages for fun. My all time least favorite would have to be the Microsoft Event viewer. I don’t think I have ever found some cognitive meaning for the messages that one finds in there. Of course this is an exaggeration but honestly how many times have googled Event Viewer ID’s and walked away more confused than before you started searching?

So folks what do you all find the most annoying in your IT work. Also let’s leave out some universal truths i.e. boss, end users and so one ?

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The term: Single Pane of Glass. Because what tends to be forgotten is that if every product has a single pane of glass, I have dozens of ‘single panes of glass’

Microsoft changing the UI of Windows/Office products (what it seems like) every single update.

Well because it’s fresh and happening a lot today, users sharing my phone number around to get past the service desk.

I regrettably helped a few too many people going the extra mile and trying to be a nice guy the first few times. I explained to them, “Please call the helpdesk going forward, as we have a desktop team, and I’m an Infrastructure Specialist, but let me take a quick look”.

The main issue is I always seem to fix their issues, and word spread fast. I’m assuming there were emails going around or my phone number is pasted on post-it notes all over now.

I had a repeat offender just call me, and a few minutes later a different user called me saying the repeat offender TOLD THEM TO CALL me and that “I’m the guy to call”

Needless to say I politely told him a different team would handle this and he needs to call the helpdesk for all tickets going forward.

This didn’t even take into the account he was logged in as a different user, that had given him their credentials. Sigh…. it’s Friday and a long weekend. I am so happy I give everyone the bare minimum access these days when I see things like that.

Think positive….. The 100Summet will happen soon, It’s Friday afternoon, It’s going to be a nice weekend, and I didn’t have to go to the dentist this am

One thing that annoys me is being the Architect for Veeam and you create multiple design documents and Wiki pages, but NO ONE follows them! You then audit a site and find the IPs are wrong, server configurations are wrong, no extra drives for Veeam installation, etc.