Story 1: My job is very broad, working on industrial processing equipment, servers, and networking. A lot of this equipment runs on windows xp and NT. The operator software is locked so they can't minimize or close it but every time a warning pops up they try to click outside of it instead just pressing enter to close it. So then we get a call saying the keyboard and mouse doesn't work when all they needed to do was use the mouse to click back into the pop up to close it.

Story 2: The bad batch- So we replaced like 80% of our computers that run the Operator software a couple years ago. A part of the upgrade was to replace the old ps2 mechanical keyboards with new usb membrane ones. Recently one started going bad. Only the control key which we use to switch computers with the kvm. So a tech went and got a new one and the keyboard wouldn't work with the machine but would with a normal computer. So they got another and same thing. So I got called to look into the problem. The new keyboards were the same model as the old one so they should just work but no dice. After testing around 20 keyboards on multiple machines I found out all the ones not working had sequential serial numbers. I had only one that was not made it that batch and it worked. All of them worked with a normal pc but not the machinery. I couldn't find anything from the manufacturer saying this but there's different keyboard communication standards not all kvms support multiple standards so they couldn't communicate through the kvm.

Story 3: How did you do that? So i got a call because an operator somehow managed to press all the right keys to switch computers with the kvm but they didn't know how. Easy fix to get back to theirs but they really wanted to know how to get back. Basic IT is to not tell them how to access something they shouldn't touch so I didn't tell them.

Story 4: The lazy tier 3 support So some of you might be familiar with a network monitoring tool called Nagios. It tells you if the status of your network equipment and being a company with over 200 sites it's one of the few reasonable ways to monitor that much networking hardware. So the intranet website for my site stopped working and I didn't know where the hardware at my site hosting it was but even if I did I didn't think I should touch it. So I opened a support ticket. Then they said they didn't know how to fix it and closed it. Same result with 2 more tickets. I had to go to our training facility in another state and while I was there I asked my previous networking teacher what the problem is and they didn't know. So while in a stupid comptia class that i was taking for the heck of it i started researching the server that host the software. Most security conscious companies including mine has a rule that shared logins are stored in a password vault that only shows you the logins required for your job and if possible have a personal logins/SSO. For the heck of it while in another state i pinged the server and got a reply. Then i tried ssh and got a login prompt. So i tried my sso that works on the other servers and cisco switch, no dice. So i checked the vault, no login. Well the login for this server hosting the software for some reason was just listed in our KB that anyone can access and I was able to get it. Saw the uptime was a couple months and no one bothered to reboot when I opened a ticket. One reboot later and now I can access the website. Probably shouldn't have the login and ssh open though to all 600k employees.

Sorry theses aren't action packed but hopefully they were interesting.