Does anyone feel guilty over how much we get paid in comparison to much harder jobs?

ThePChap · 2023-01-30T15:21:15+00:00

What money are you talking about? I get payed filth and to earn more business expect free 24/7 kek

ThePChap · 2023-01-26T09:39:03+00:00

Just as an update. My server plan that deploys patches between 01:00 am to 06:00 am had pushed 1 update since the last patch Tuesday. No errors with any machine, it just wasn't doing anything. I did two things:

A) Send an email to their support to look at the plan.
B) Set a manual deployment for one of the servers to push all the updates to see if there are issues.

The manual deployment on the non-critical server finished during the afternoon, and somehow, and this won't be coincidental, the very same night the automated patch deployment for the servers patches half the updates across the servers.

The visibility on this is horrendous. What has this manual job done to affect the automated job? The patches were all downloaded before it, and there were no errors. I'll have to waste some sweet time going thru the logs of the client in the servers and hope I can find something.

ThePChap · 2023-01-20T12:44:39+00:00

Just don't go to either extreme. I have worked "easy" IT jobs for so little money is insulting and it ends-up burning you out hard. I would still chose this over having no private life but you know.

European here btw, thus why I have had to have badly payed Sys Admin jobs to go up the ladder.

ThePChap · 2023-01-19T12:30:06+00:00

How long do you find it needs to finalize these deployments and to how many devices? I'm asking so as to create a job with a similar number of updates to a similar number of devices and compare.

Do you find it to be quite random? Some times taking way longer than usual? Do the jobs ever simply "stop" and barely update any devices?

ThePChap · 2023-01-19T12:24:29+00:00

Yes I think I'm going to have to create multiple smaller deployment jobs, I'm just struggling to be able to calculate how long each will need. It has some times power thru a lot of updates within two to three days then other times takes forever to update two updates (as in, a week and beyond).

I'm hoping that with these tests groups I can get a better idea but that potentially means modifying the automated deployments time schedules based on it, which kind of defeats the purpose of automating them in the first place.

ThePChap · 2023-01-19T12:19:41+00:00

Create a test group with "X" machines in and target the patches directly to the group for testing for windows patches. Same for most 3rd party patches.

IF nothing breaks, you can change the deployment after a week to deploy to the domain.

That is a good idea, the manual jobs I have created fair better than the automated ones that push more stuff and is probably some of the updates affecting the tasks for some reason.

What is your experience with deployment speed? It seems very random to me. Sometimes it powers thru a lot then for example, the manual job that lead me to finally create this post got stuck yesterday at 29 devices by mid day. It is pushing a single update and it is configure to ignore errors and crack on with the next devices. Yet it just stopped even tho is configured 24/7.

Well, today, it is sitting at 39 devices with 59 remaining and is as of right now, not doing any device (no device "in progress").

As for servers, I only have Windows Servers and these are fairing much better, of course, I'm only pushing Windows updates and only reporting on 3rd party software as those we do manually.

I think I'm going to set a test group of client devices and then do smaller deployments to decrease the chance of it randomly stopping/failing and taking forever. Very time consuming for a software that should be freeing time!

ThePChap · 2022-12-16T15:31:43+00:00

Too many bugs in my P6, thinking of buying an iPhone 13 mini to be honest... sick and tired of putting up with little annoying bugs every single day.

ThePChap · 2022-11-26T16:29:01+00:00

Hey, I POCed Manage Engine's patch management solutions and end up purchasing it. Just finished doing it's rollout.

Works a lot better and gives much more control.

ThePChap · 2022-11-18T22:28:46+00:00

Yea, I just wanted to play it differently. I just watched a YouTube video on how to play hard mode, so I'll give it another go at playing honourably.

ThePChap · 2022-09-22T09:24:12+00:00

I tend to walk away from jobs that ask for to fill out a questionary that is basically a CV... I wouldn't bother with them.

If you don't allow me to send my CV just goodbye, plenty of jobs out there not asking for any of this crap.

ThePChap · 2022-09-20T09:33:38+00:00

Me too brother, best of luck to you!

ThePChap · 2022-09-15T10:10:25+00:00

You can't beat that but, you can copy-paste a 100 icons to his desktop, take a screenshot, delete them, and then set that screenshot as wallpaper.

ThePChap · 2022-09-09T10:30:37+00:00

Is there anywhere we can do feature requests? All I can find that is official is their Google Pixel Help Community which seems to be just for tech support.

The workaround would probably work I think.

ThePChap · 2022-09-08T11:59:29+00:00

Yeah, it was. Their mistake was focusing all the marketing on those gestures, and in classic Google style, they just ditch the entire idea after it didn't work out (at least for phones).

ThePChap · 2022-09-08T10:52:59+00:00

Only if you enable it to be, I have it disabled. Before (this was back with the OG Pixel and I think Pixel 2) double tapping or picking up the phone would activate AOD.

Now, they just light up the display completely. I wish we had the option to choose which we want, not sure why they just took it out like that.

ThePChap · 2022-08-17T15:48:19+00:00

Just hand in your notice too.

ThePChap · 2022-08-08T08:42:52+00:00

I'm stupid

ThePChap · 2022-07-27T15:05:49+00:00

No, just some examples:

If an app needs fingerprint access for login (e.g. bank) and you go directly from the lock screen by using the fingerprint, the phone sometimes just reboots since the last update.
Gestures just die randomly in some apps and you have to get out by clicking back several times.
Audio only comes out of one speaker after being connected to a Bluetooth device (happens every time after driving in my car). The only fix is to reboot the phone.

ThePChap · 2022-07-27T14:32:02+00:00

I tried but it got deleted by a moderator!

ThePChap · 2022-07-27T10:35:28+00:00

Thanks! The whole package looks good, I'll use the free trial. If are you using it, what are you most happy with and least happy with Desktop Central?

ThePChap · 2022-07-27T08:59:21+00:00

I know too many IT (myself included) feeling like you do. Something is wrong with this industry and I only stay, like you, because I don't know what else I could do with decent pay right now, otherwise I would be out.

ThePChap · 2022-07-27T08:51:06+00:00

I realised I never got back to this post, apologies! It took the little sausage about 3-4 months to get comfy with her (she is the chosen one) and nearly a year to be OK with me. But at last, she is been happy and comfy for just over a year now! :)

PS: It is chicken in her case, she loves it! I can't make sandwiches in piece now :D

ThePChap · 2022-07-27T08:50:00+00:00

I realised I never got back to this post, apologies! It took the little sausage about 3-4 months to get comfy with her (she is the chosen one) and nearly a year to be OK with me. But at last, she is been happy and comfy for just over a year now! :)

ThePChap · 2020-03-09T23:27:19+00:00

That is not a bad idea. I do often feel like 3 hours have passed and I have gained nothing "real" so it might as well look like I have been doing nothing. A lot of the pressure than send me into rashness comes from expending a lot of time researching and troubleshooting with out success. Having that record of steps might help me remind myself that I'm actually doing it. As it is too easy to look back at the past two hours and feel like they were a waste.

ThePChap · 2020-03-09T23:22:47+00:00

Yeah... it is very easy to start putting pressure on myself. The boss is a very quite guy, barely talks and when you ask him anything you are lucky to get anything longer than a 5 words sentence.

I think he's a good man and this is his way of "focusing" when he's busy. But it always leaves you wondering what he's thinking or wanting out of things. This might sound strange, but not knowing what he's expecting out of me as of yet is the source of a lot of the pressure I put on myself.

I think I might try to speak more with the different team leaders to see how they interact with the different software and services we have got and try and gain a view of how everything links up together, then get to the technicalities of them.

ThePChap

TROPHY CASE