Today and The Past Days

It has been one of my hectic and longest days ever. It started of by having almost all the PCs in the office being infected with some sort of a malicious virus. It was really surprising to see all these PCs being infected, as for the fact for that I am currently using one of the most expensive and well known and respected AVs existing on the planet. I must yet admit that I was not very satisfied with it, as it’s server side administration tool has been having funny and unexpected errors. I have however, downloaded a trial of another AV, which from the installation minute had an error stating some missing .dll file – huh? and we havn’t started doing anything yet. Three weeks ago, I contacted the branch for this company in Dubai, and some lady told me that I will be contacted by 1) A sales person 2) A support person and 3) I will be send a working trial copy for my Windows SBS 2003 on a CD – none of this happened.

Two weeks ago, my weekend was totally ruined and screwed, as for some f***ed up tender. I had to cut it short, come back home, and start working on it. Surprisingly, the efforts this time were appreciated.
Practically, nothing special happened, except for some f*** ups.

Ah yes, our ISP has just hired a “Genius” in the name of “Sayed”.
It was around 9 pm and I noticed that the internet connection was really lagging and not as it should be. I called support and this was the conversation:
Sayed: “****** Coperate Sypport, Sayed Speaking”
Me: “Sayed this is JP from ***”
Sayed: “Are you a corperate customer?”
Me: “Why will I call if I’m not?”
Sayed: “Ok Mr. J***, how can I help you”
Me: “I can see that my connection until your premises is OK, after that it’s really lagging”
Sayed: “Just one second, let me check”
I go on hold, and after like waiting for 3 minutes, Sayed is back.
Sayed: “I can ping to your router without any problem”
Me: *Really holding myself from swearing or making unhuman noises* “I know that there is no problem between us, the problem is after you”
Sayed: “Just one second, let me check”
And history repeats itself. Wait, wait and wait.
Sayed: “Mr. J, can I have your number and call you later?”
Me: “You already have it on the system, just make sure you fix it before tomorrow”
I was on my home, when he called me, he said that he can see activity on 4 IPs. I was like, WTF?, none of this IPs are on!
I really had to drive back to the office, and after checking everything, I was sure that I was right and none of them were working, except the mail server IP.
I called our “Genius back”
Sayed: “****** Coperate Sypport, Sayed Speaking”
Me: “Sayed, I have only 1 IP that should show traffic”
Sayed: “No Sir, you have this IP and this IP …” (Something like 5, 6 IPs)
Me: “A7A” (It’s explicitely saying F*** in the Egyptian Slang, Spelled more like AHHA, with stressing on the ‘H’, making it sound more like ‘KH’)
Sayed: “Hold on please Sir”
New Voice: “Mr.J, long time no hear”
Me: “Who is this?”
New Voice: “Ayman”
Me: “Ayman, have mercy on me, am I that blind that I dunno which IPs have traffic on?”
Ayman: “Allow me to check Mr. J”
Ayman: “YOu only have 1 IP with traffic”
Me: “Thank you Ayman”
Ayman: “Anytime Mr. J, Sorry for the inconvenience”
Me: “It’s OK, GNight”

Sigghh, efficient technical support (My A$$)

Oh, and by the way, I am back.