neat.
in like 2001 or so, i worked in this building for like 8 months maybe? for a company called 'peoplefirst' which did some kinda cash car loan type deal. i was a combination helpdesk tier 1 guy and "run around and do ethernet cabling and punchdown management for access level switches" guy. the one actual thing about the job i liked was that they had a 'nap room'. and i took naps most days.
the building has aesbestos in it.
the job, for peoplefirst however, i have a funny story about it.
it was my first experience with "people in middle management are fucking terrified of people younger than them that know more than they do" and at like 22 years old i had no idea that i needed to mask that shit, so i kept dealing with butthurt, angry, middle managers that always seemed to hate me for some reason and i could never pin down why.
at this job, they heavily filtered internet access and did crazy egress rules
i never got to meet any of the sysadmins or network folks at all. i was kept in a bullpen style office with 2 other guys and all we did all day was password resets, cable punchdown work, and replacing keyboards. tons of websites were blocked and they blocked outbound ssh as well.
but being an enterprising young nerd with a redhat box at home, i decided to run telnet on port 80 to see if i could squeak past their shortsighted ruleset, and it totally worked
this was 2001 or so, and telnet "wasnt as big a deal as it is now", and internet scanning hadnt been invented yet, so it was 'ostensibly safe' to telnet over the internet like that.
i'd get to work, crack open a dos prompt, lower the font several points in size, then telnet home and light up irssi so i could jump on irc with my friends. efnet represent!
the middle manager would roll in and see me with irssi open and like scream at me. like actually scream and get red in the face
guy was SUPER BUTTHURT that this tiny helpdesk nerd kid was able to bypass whatever nonsense they'd conjoured up in another office, that they refused to read me into or explain to me at all. I opined about how i wanted to be a sysadmin and he abjectly refused to even give me the names of the people to talk to so i could plead my case to get moved into another department. he kept threatening my job.
i'd say shit like "look, ill happily explain it all, but during an interview for sysadmin"
the rule is (and this stands today)
the MILLISECOND that a superior even jokes about firing you - look for a new spot. like right the fuck away. the writing is on the wall. they want you out, thats why they feel comfortable joking about it.
so i started applying places.
within about a month, i scored a tech support job at websense (remember those people?) and when i put in my two weeks the pressure was off, they couldnt 'just fire me' cuz they now needed to backfill the position id leave
since they didnt know how to stop me from telnetting home, the best they could come up with was literally coming into the helpdesk bullpen and screaming at me "GET OFF THAT FUCKING CHAT".
i kept offering to show them how it all worked, but their stupid pride was more important. they were more interested in "being in charge and exerting power over the little people" than "learning anything"
boy did being smug that last two weeks feel great.
anyhoo - thats my little 101 ash story. great knowing that i actively slept in a nap room probably a few dozen times in the 8ish months i was there - having zero clue the building had aesbestos in it.
and now they wanna turn it into 'affordable housing for low income families'.
prolly um.
prolly dont lead with that aesbestos part.
@jpm its a different story altogether when:
A) in a classified environment
B) the people who run sysadmin/networking know stuff about computers and networks
in my story, it was neither of those two
Viss
zh4ck
I love this, so I