Re: Confession of IT nightmare employee

I think you missed the point of my message.

1. The reason things don't uninstall properly is the ID you are attempting
to use was not given those rights.

2. If you are unable to contact IT directly then you need to have your
union contract changed so you can contact them. Having a manager who is
unwilling to deal with IT because they are afraid of them just isn't a
tenable situation long term. This of course begs the question of why people
are afraid of the IT group. IT exists to help people and serve the goals of
the business or agency, clearly the IT group in your agency isn't doing this
which is regretable as it gives all IT people a bad name.

3. Just because you are authorized to use the software/device doesn't give
you the right to install/uninstall it regarless of why you had to do it.
Again we return to the issue of your being unable to deal with IT directly.

4. A typical response to working in an environment where IT views itself as
superior to others and is unhelpful. By the same token your superior
attitude has the same effect on IT. I've worked in a multitude of IT
environments from ones where IT was appreciated to ones where IT was the
enemy (and everything in between). I can certainly tell you in the ones
where IT was viewed as the enemy there was plenty of blame to go around. In
a simple paragraph you pretty much said (as I interpret it), "I'm a case
manager and I work 47+ hours a week, and IT needs to do every thing I ask it
to do. I don't care how much education/experience you have, you are here to
serve me!" Do you know how it feels to be an person who has worked 60+ hours
straight repairing an issue created by a user who thought they knew what they
were doing? I sure do. And guess what, after 8 hours of sleep I was back at
work the next morning. My guess is your union contract ensures overtime for
those extra 7 hours a week you work, most IT people have no idea what
overtime pay is.

As to being in a union and your accumulated hours of employment. I worked
for a state agency for almost a decade. I can assure you that an IT offence
such as the one you've commited would have had no civil service protection
for any state employee in my state. Check your union contract and I'm sure
you'll find you are in the same boat; no protection for knowingly commiting
an IT security breach (which is the formal deffinition of what you've done).


Your message shows a clear amount of hostility towards IT, but it seems
justifiable. However, we in IT face the same challenges as all others in
business and government service: limited budgets, limited resources, limited
time. If your manager is unable/unwilling to interact with IT because she is
afraid of them then these are issues which she needs to take up with her
supervisor so her team can receive the support from IT they deserve. Also
characterizing the IT people as crooks and thieves ("can't reinstall the
software because they sold the disks on Ebay") is extremely unfair.

My message to you was not intended to be judgemental though I can certainly
understand why you percieved it that way. It was however probably the only
response you'll get on a board like this. The people you are asking for help
in doing something quite likely against company/agency policy (and possibly
even illegal) are the same people who are tasked with ensuring such
activities don't occur. As to not answering your questions I did in fact
answer them to extent I felt I could. Your first question was, "Why does
this password work in the script, but not for logon?". To which I answered,
"it is possible to have an account which is an administrator, but which does
not have rights to logon". Your second question was, "Also if I try to use
it in the command window (cmd.exe--runas /profile...) the
key board won't even type the password. Why?" I didn't answer this
question as the behavior of the runas command is well documented on Technet
and on other sites. In the interests of being helpful however I will
indicate this is the intended behavior.

While I think your heart was in the right place and your motives pure; it
doesn't matter why you did what you did, it was wrong plain and simple. I
doubt you'll find an IT person anywhere who will support what you've done as
being justified. While as I've indicated I do understand why you felt you
had to do it, I can't support it. My original suggestions stand on what I
feel your course of action needs to be, but in place of contacting IT to
determine why they didn't respond you need to talk with your supervisor and
have her unstand your needs, since she is the required communication channel.
At the very least you need to come clean to your supervisor so she can
support/protect you should she agree with you that your actions were
justified.

Good luck.

Brian


"cinnamngrl" wrote:

1. nothing fully uninstalls, which seems to be a big part of the
problem
2. I can't call IT, my office manager has to call them, and she is
afraid of them.
3. I am authorized to use Palm software. I asked for help when it
stopped working and that was over 8 months ago, I mentioned this to
the office manager but she is afraid to call them.
4. I am tired of being bullied by people that are so insecure about
their own qualifications that they attack the people they were hired
to help. I am using my palm in my job as a case manager, not
installing games or porn. I know what it is like to spend 47 hours a
week helping people that don't appreciate it so they can just get over
it. I certainly can understand why people might be upset, but I have
a union, hundreds of hours of accumulated time, and I am very tired of
being treated like dirt by people that can't reinstall software
because they sold the disks on ebay.

I am sure that you are a very important person, Brian. I can
certainly understand if you don't feel comfortable answering my
questions. I am amazed that you would take time out your busy vital
work to judge me.

On Oct 6, 12:00 pm, Brian <Br...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Well there are a lot of issues going on that I see. First, you hacked your
work desktop to install a piece of software. Yup, you hacked it, you may not
think so but my guess is your IT department would not agree with that view.
Second, you then admit you hacked your work computer on a public forum.
Third, the IT unit didn't clean up after themselves and left scripts on your
system which you then exploited.

The fact that you have tried to logon using the username/password
combination provided in the script shows you are not content to leave well
enough alone. As I'm guessing this is an AD environment you can be assured
the logon attempt was recorded by AD and hopefully someone in the IT unit is
monitoring those logs. It is possible to create an administrative account
which has rights to install software, but does not have rights to logon,
which is what the IT group has apparently has done.

My advice would be as follows. First, uninstall the Palm software from the
system ASAP. Second, send an email to the head of IT with a request to find
out why your initial request for software installation was denied or not
followed up on (this is what you should have done in the first place).
Finally, come clean about what you've done. This may be the only way to keep
your job, because if IT finds out before you admit to it be assured your
termination will be swift and brutal.

Just my .02

Brian
MCSE 2003




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