Printer Nazi cum Server Nazi

Sigh.

Server Nazi, you make me upset. Your powers of control over the printer were not enough for you, and you are now attempting to increase your range to the company fileserver/email server.

Unfortunately for me, you deem me some kind of technological whiz, so I get to field lots of questions and commentary from you, and this makes my brain hurt.

For instance, I did not enjoy the conversation we just had about how "when the bytes get to 140 our IT guy said that's 'breakdown time' and people need to start cleaning stuff out."

I think what this means is, when the size of our backup data set reaches approximately 140GB the server hard drive is uncomfortably full.

But unfortunately, by telling you that this is "breakdown time" the IT guy has given you ammunition you really didn't need as you were already happy to pester people about "cleaning stuff out" on the fileserver and in their email.

Besides the obviously annoying parts of this whole debacle, my real point is this:

Storage is cheap.

If we keep running out of room on the hard drive of the server the solution is not to keep telling people to "clean out" their files, possibly deleting stuff they would rather not or that they may need, the solution is just to get a bigger hard drive. Please, for the love of God. I mean honestly, when we have significantly more file storage in our apartment than our company has in the office, I think there's cause for concern.

In other words, if we can afford a terabyte external drive for backup at home, I'm pretty sure the company can spring for a larger hard drive (or even multiples!) for the server. Larger than 300GB that is.

An IT Tirade

Why the fuck does a company whose owners literally make hundreds of millions of dollars a year have shittier IT than I do in my apartment? Seriously.

1. Everyone uses their last name as their password for the network and email. The reason for this? That's how the consultant sets up new accounts by default. Nobody changes it. (Well, with rare exception, I know of 2 people including myself.)


2. Their "backup strategy" is having a random person who happens to sit near the server change the backup tape each morning and take the previous day's tape home with her. We only keep 2 weeks worth of backups and we keep "archive" backups on the last Friday of every month. So if you deleted something important on November 20, 2007, too bad for you. It's gone forever.


3. Our IT consultant hasn't checked the server logs in at least 7 months. They are so large that Excel can't even import the full .csv files because they're too many rows long.


4. Nothing on the server is organized with any sort of permissions at all. Everyone has access to everything. Including offer letters, severance information, personal financial data about the owners, etc. (Again, with rare exception - I have a protected folder with some HR stuff in it.)


5. Everyone has a different computer. When we hire someone, if they're not a replacement for somebody else (and thus inheriting their old computer) we just buy them some new computer. Whatever Dell is pushing at the moment. We have no plan for rolling out new systems or schedule for doing so.


6. We don't manage our software licenses like a business should. We just get a copy of Windows with whatever computer we order. We can't transfer licenses for these copies of Windows, so if we trash a computer we trash the license too. Awesome.


7. Pretty much, nobody knows how to use anything. Everybody needs to be trained. Those of us who are a little more tech-savvy than others end up trouble shooting everything ourselves and for others.


8. Our IT consultant is a moron. He knows less than I do about most stuff and I certainly would never even attempt to get a job in IT. On numerous occasions he has fed me total bullshit that I know for a fact to be 100% wrong. But we're paying him $150/hour or something for this great "work".


9. The person "in charge of IT" (ie: in charge of calling our IT consultant) doesn't know jack shit about it and spends no time planning or managing it at all.

What the fuck.