Dunno details, since im off sick, but noticed tons of emails today related to an DNS outage. Lets see, a service that is brain-dead easy to setup for redundancy.    Eggs in one basket = fail.

They deserve to have the egg in said basket on their face.

l337 Hax0rz

W

Hey!  How did you get my password?!?

Tue Dec 23 2025 05:35:04 AM UTC from ParanoidDelusions

F*cKY3r$3lF1571@$$#013zxyzqw3rty!SuckMyD!ck&dieF*cKY3r$3lF1571@$$#013zxyzqw3rty!SuckMyD!ck&dieF*cKY3r$3lF1571@$$#013zxyzqw3rty!SuckMyD!ck&dieUKuNt!!!
Got it. 

Hey!  How did you get my password?!?

"we breached our SLA because our vendor dropped the ball, its not fair"

Well, its not supposed to be fair, and ya, that is how it should work. They are OUR vendor.. 

Reverse it, and add some numeric and special characters, every 48 hours as necessary. 

Feel free to copy and paste.  I don't use this one, but you have a good idea of what mine look like now, if you want to hack my accounts. They're hostile. 

Also works for buffer overflow exploits on outdated SQL and Oracle DBs. 

F*cKY3r$3lF1571@$$#013zxyzqw3rty!SuckMyD!ck&dieF*cKY3r$3lF1571@$$#013zxyzqw3rty!SuckMyD!ck&dieF*cKY3r$3lF1571@$$#013zxyzqw3rty!SuckMyD!ck&dieUKuNt!!!
Got it. 

Fri Dec 12 2025 15:40:42 UTC from Nurb432

New password requirements: 50 characters, no 'words' at all, must include special characters, never repeat for your entire career, expires every 48 hours, 3 MFA prompts.

 

New password requirements: 50 characters, no 'words' at all, must include special characters, never repeat for your entire career, expires every 48 hours, 3 MFA prompts.

It does - but here is the thing - of the individual payer bucket (we call it private payer, or self pay) you only collect pennies on the dollar. A HUGE percentage of those will let it go to collections, and fight it until the healthcare provider just writes it off... 

And those write offs - go to those who WILL pay - so, there is your $50 aspirin in the ER. You'll pay. If your insurance doesn't - you'll absorb it. SOMEONE has to pay. 

We ALREADY have socialized medicine - and those who are honest and pay their bills carry EVERYONE else, from Medicare and Medicaid to the private nationals to the deadbeat patients - until you're paying $750 for a saline drip that your insurance doesn't cover but you'll pay because you're an honest person. 

It is all kinds of effed up. 

When I get done, and my wife is out - when we're both retired from healthcare - I'm writing a tell-all expose whistleblower book. 

Shhhhhh

Wed Dec 03 2025 03:08:43 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

A doctor friend explained it to me as a series of buckets.  The first bucket is Medicare and Medicaid, and whatever those refuse to cover spill into the private insurance bucket.  Whatever private insurance won't cover spills over into the individual payer bucket.  Since there is no bucket after that, the costs inflate until there is a zero balance (at least on paper).

And if you don't pay, which is a LOT of the time, we pass it on to the rest of the patients and payors - which is why medical costs are so high. Most medical bills... pay 1 out of 99 dollars. The other 99 dollars, just go back into the cost passed on to the next patients, to try and recoup. 

It is why you pay $50 for an aspirin at the ER. 

A doctor friend explained it to me as a series of buckets.  The first bucket is Medicare and Medicaid, and whatever those refuse to cover spill into the private insurance bucket.  Whatever private insurance won't cover spills over into the individual payer bucket.  Since there is no bucket after that, the costs inflate until there is a zero balance (at least on paper).

Man, it cant come soon enough.  So over this.

Now its my responsibility to fix mistakes the contractor made..  

It will absolutely grant you those things - and you can absolutely find a work-from-home-all-the-time gig in healthcare. 

They want people who will show up consistently, who can figure out the complexity, and who won't take 4 hour lunch breaks because there is no supervisor hanging over their head. If you meet those criteria - and you can sell how your previous experience can translate into working the technology in their industry - they'll hire you and train you up. 

Thu Nov 27 2025 15:46:07 UTC from Nurb432

Even lower pay + insurance is fine. ill have my pension along with it so overall income wont drop enough to notice ( or might even be more.. if get lucky )..  its going to be supplemental until i can get to medicare.  I'm old, but not old enough for that. 

 

 

Even lower pay + insurance is fine. ill have my pension along with it so overall income wont drop enough to notice ( or might even be more.. if get lucky )..  its going to be supplemental until i can get to medicare.  I'm old, but not old enough for that. 

Thu Nov 27 2025 05:06:58 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

Healthcare is complex, requires critical thinking, troubleshooting, and is frustrating - but you can do it remotely. 

But it pays *shit* compared to what you're used to in technology. The executives and physicians and pharmaceuticals and DME suppliers take all the money. 

Even Healthcare IT pays dogshit. Everyone who isn't a Doctor or an executive has to get paid peanuts to make the machine work. 


But you can work from home, and they'll give you a flexible AF work schedule if you're smart - because mostly they hire mouthbreathers who couldn't critically think their way out of a wet paper bag. 

Don't tell them I said this. 

 

Healthcare is complex, requires critical thinking, troubleshooting, and is frustrating - but you can do it remotely. 

But it pays *shit* compared to what you're used to in technology. The executives and physicians and pharmaceuticals and DME suppliers take all the money. 

Even Healthcare IT pays dogshit. Everyone who isn't a Doctor or an executive has to get paid peanuts to make the machine work. 


But you can work from home, and they'll give you a flexible AF work schedule if you're smart - because mostly they hire mouthbreathers who couldn't critically think their way out of a wet paper bag. 

Don't tell them I said this. 

We want insurance to pay - but we want SOMEONE to pay eventually. If it isn't insurance, you're the next target - and we'll send you to collections, we'll ruin you - you got the service or supply or goods, and you signed a thing, you didn't know it because you were sick or hurt and just wanted to feel better, that said, "if my insurance doesn't pay, I will." 99 times out of 100. So we'll go after you... 

And if you don't pay, which is a LOT of the time, we pass it on to the rest of the patients and payors - which is why medical costs are so high. Most medical bills... pay 1 out of 99 dollars. The other 99 dollars, just go back into the cost passed on to the next patients, to try and recoup. 

It is why you pay $50 for an aspirin at the ER. 

You're ALREADY paying for socialized medicine. 

Or they sue you.. and 1/2 the time you don't even know it happened until you get a letter "we are garnishing wages, sucker"

Sat Nov 22 2025 22:57:48 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

  I find that if you ignore them long enough, someone eventually finds a way to make insurance pay.

 healthcare is WAY more complex. The logic makes no sense - where when I figure out what I f'ed up in the DC - I always go, "OH! I'm stupid." 

But because no one knows in healthcare. There is no "right way". EVERYONE is guessing, the whole way up, mostly because of Government regulation. If you need healthcare/provider/payor tips, hit me up. I'll try to help. 

It's that way on purpose.

Scott Adams calls it a "confusopoly".

With regard to medical bills, I simply don't pay them.  I find that if you ignore them long enough, someone eventually finds a way to make insurance pay.

Ironically, i was actually considering something like that ( not billing specifically, but some sort of sit at home and talk to people regarding medical stuff )

When i bail from this place here shortly, id love to get out of IT.  But, it has to be a 'real' job, with insurance and stuff. ( and i really need to be home most of the time now, wont get into why but its important ).  Which for someone who has worked in the IT industry since the mid 80s, back when it was fun, its limiting.  But medical "document" stuff, is geared towards people at home instead of wasting office space just talking on the phone. 

Sat Nov 22 2025 04:14:54 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

I do Healthcare Billing Collections now - because it is from 7 to 3:30, hard, work from home, and I don't every have to be on call or work after hours. Yet. When they ask me, I'll tell them to fuck off. 

I do Healthcare Billing Collections now - because it is from 7 to 3:30, hard, work from home, and I don't every have to be on call or work after hours. Yet. When they ask me, I'll tell them to fuck off. 

It is a Walmart greeter job I can do from my bedroom in my underwear - and I never have to figure out user permissions, group policy issues, AD trusts. I just have to go, "Yeah, you got denied by your insurance, we're going to bill you... kill the CEO of the insurance company if you're upset." 

Healthcare *sucks*. We're running on AS400s with terminal connections. I get paid less than $18 an hour to figure out if your insurance claim is valid or not, and they want me to do it in 15 minutes or less, per issue. 

And if I don't get it right - they'll outsource me to India. 

It is still easier than Fortune 500 corporate IT datacenter work. Sorta. But only because... I mean - healthcare is WAY more complex. The logic makes no sense - where when I figure out what

arrrgggghhhhh!  ( i'm sure you can hear me several states away )

Wont get into details for obvious reasons, but man its been a horrendously frustrating day here. I cant wait until its time to flip these people the bird and walk.   And yes that is the plan. Literally flip it as i head to the door .. . AFTER i get a signed receipt for my equipment being turned in, as i don't trust these people at all not to lose it and blame me.  You have like 24 business hours on termination/exit to turn it in, or its $10k + 5 years in jail, with felony theft charges.  

Make sure you log all your work in the sprint's story

( i hate agile ..  stupid overhead )

Fri Nov 14 2025 02:49:58 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar Subject: Work is great!

I just got added to a project today whose infrastructure requires building just about everything I dreamed of being able to build in the new role.

Things are pretty damn good right now!

I just got added to a project today whose infrastructure requires building just about everything I dreamed of being able to build in the new role.

Things are pretty damn good right now!

I guess Firefox is being removed enterprise wide next month. Its too open and they cant control it enough.    "no freedom for you, digital serf"   And some sort of 'enterprise control system' is being enabled for chrome.   And a few other things that are going to totally F-up things due to not using AD anymore for authentication. 

Now, i get we need to be secure,  but i think these people enjoy making our lives hard and restricting our movements. 

I remember in 2020, there was talk about "mandated cameras on during business hours" and a staff of people would monitor for missing faces.."why were you away from your desk".    It didn't happen, fell apart before it was enacted.  Today, they would do it via AI, just toss money at it.. its free money.

Cant go into details for obvious reasons, but i guess we had an attempted "break-in" in our on-site data center this week.  Someone tried to sneak in.

Scary times we live in.

Being successful in getting funding for projects is always exciting. 

Tue Oct 21 2025 11:25:53 UTC from darknetuser

I am making it look more exciting than it is, to be honest.

Good for you.

Now that it's official, I finally can post this.

Your humble sysop is moving into a brand new role at the same company.  This will be the biggest change since I first moved in to this company nearly 25 years ago.

Our security engineering team is taking over a brand new line of business, namely security-focused and customer-facing products.  And they've created a new role for someone to head up infrastructure and architecture for all of it.  Me!  I am sooooooper jazzed about this.  What I was doing before was starting to get a little stale.

This is going to be fantastic!

"top IT CEOs bashing the 40 hour work week, suggesting to move to a 60 hour week instead"

My personal dislike aside, is it just my corner view of the industry, or is the entire IT ecosystem collapsing? Bunch of freaking siloed morons. Everywhere. 

Sponsoring you to do what?  Are you secretly on social media?

Nah, i know all about that stuff. I used to deal in that in the 80s and 90s. 

Somehow I found a supplier of grey-market goods.  It really was the same exact thing, just missing the logos.  Nothing they sold was 'original', so to speak, And for a small fee, they would add your logo if you wanted.  They also had a catalog you could get, with either no prices or what prices you wanted ( for a small fee ) The internet killed them off long ago.

Wed Oct 08 2025 20:45:34 UTC from darknetuser

I think what you say about rebranded products is more true than you imagine.

Ya, purely at a technical level, not all chinese stuff is crapola.  Choose wisely, its just as good as western products, or sometimes even better as you get more options ( if there even is a western version.. ), and sometimes it IS the western version, just rebranded...  and all of it tons cheaper.

Now, choose poorly, its crap. But its a choice.

Wed Oct 08 2025 20:27:41 UTC from darknetuser

Ladies and gentlemen, I made it. I am an influencer. A branch of Huawei is actually sponsoring me. Yay.

Now I am going to have to defend China and Xi Jinping against the slander and propaganda from decadent capitalist westerns, I guess. That is actually not on the contract but I suspect the sponsorship would not last 5 minutes if I criticised China in public lol.

I have been saying it for a while, but a big problem in the West is the West has not been fostering any loyalty from its subjects in decades. Basically, if the society you live in is bent on destroying your lifestyle, mock your demographic group and take your animals, then you have no reason whatsoever to be loyal. The second an outsider hires you to promote their products so they displace the Western ones, you take the chance because you owe nothing to society.

By the way the product I am sponsored to promote is actually quite ok. Basically they copied a Western Big Tech design and made

yay office locking down chrome this weekend to the point its basically useless.  No plugins. No passwords, even basic autofill is being removed. 

Not long ago they removed the ability for our field techs to remote into a machine for service. Now its 5 steps including 3 the user has to do just to let them in.  And 1/2 the time, it takes 4 attempts to get it to work. I didn't know that happened until i need admin rights to install something. Since they removed it from all our accounts i had to call for an install. And getting that install approved was a nightmare, even tho i bought it with approval... 

Wont miss this place one bit.  "if we can do it, lets over do it as much as possible and make our users lives miserable, then we will laugh about it in meetings"  (no, im not joking. They do think its funny and laugh in internal meetings )

And speaking of ports and VPN.

this morning i guess something happened, and everyone's VPN client is being removed automatically. ( on windows i think. perhaps mac and phones too, dunno ).  And people using SCCM "store" to reinstall, isn't working. And of course they sent out a link to manually do it, which no one has the rights to do anymore. " oops, users cant reinstall manually... sorry!  we are working on this " .   

lol 

Most ports are blocked at the network level, and stuff like that would need requested for being open from your box to the remote IP. And in the case of a PDZ server, you have to access those from a VDI jump-box..   Also, if its not a whitelisted app, it wont run. it notifies security when you try. ( ssh is approved to have installed, but just saying )  And we all lost our local admin rights. Even field techs.. now its basically "if its not trivial, its a reload, sorry". And my understanding is they monitor traffic for 'questionable packets'. An entire team for that. hidden on another floor.

Officially getting around the blocks in any way is forbidden and cause for unconditional termination. ( before someone suggests "just move the port" )

Only real solution is to write a web app that does SQL management and claim its "part of the administration components of our app"..   

Mon Aug 11 2025 00:32:37 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

The latest rumor: All direct DB traffic from workstations will
be banned shortly.  Even for developers.. 

We call that "ssh tunneling"

Aside from the security folks getting out of line, i mostly suspect its a push to stop all fat clients and traditional development and push more money to 'friends'.  "we are now a no-code shop, and no apps are allowed unless they are web based, in the cloud".   A feeling that the security team is just being used as the ones to transfer blame to.

And while that sounds paranoid, where i work, a lot of what goes on is to transfer cash to friends in the club. The system is corrupt at its core, and its how we operate, so its not paranoia, its always the first thing to suspect.

The latest rumor: All direct DB traffic from workstations will be banned shortly.  Even for developers.. 

wtf.. really.. wtf..

That ship sailed long ago. 

Thu Jul 03 2025 17:38:35 UTC from Nurb432

I have heard most wont even accept a paper copy.. 

 

I have heard most wont even accept a paper copy.. 

I am at the end of my rope, 'technically' I have time but i need to get my act together and work this out.  

Thu Jul 03 2025 17:02:48 UTC from darknetuser

Just walking into office asking who to hand your CV to does not work anymore and in fact it is discouraged.

Ya, starting there but at my age most of them have moved out of the workforce too.    And for those i used to work with years ago, after 25 years, you sort of lose touch.  ( or they die off )

Sat Jun 28 2025 04:22:18 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

Use your own network of contacts and see if anyone is hiring. If you have to do it cold, you're competing with like 600 other people for each opening.

Welp, looks like its time for me to move on. But, need a job for a few years more for insurance. How do people look for work these days? I have been out of the loop for decades.   it was still reading the back of the newspaper back then.

"why is it that when you run a report based on manager for the last 3 years the numbers dont seem to add up"

"perhaps if you are that stupid, you should not be a manager"

Grrrrrrrrrr

Time to move on. 

IG,

That's about as much security as Windows (or pretty much everything else) offers you for when you walk away from your desk without locking it.  At least in that case, though, powering it off doesn't leave you permanently unlocked. lol

It's more of a "oops, i didn't de-escalate my permissions" backup, I guess.

Be nice if what we had would work that way.  Even our desktop admin folks lost rights and its all via 'zero trust' nonsense where you have to be approved to run a non-whitelisted executable. Server admins, not yet, but soon.

And basically if you hose your PC to a certain point, what used to be fixable is now a shoulder shrug and a re-load. If you lose stuff, "well, should have had it out on one-drive or a network share, sorry".  

They are exempt from sinking. If they were to collapse, society has collapsed and it would be total anarchy and be academic. Profit is not on the agenda, and to an extent they have no limit on expenditures.  ( might be a practical limit, as it might cause a populace revolt, but in theory, no limit )

Fri Mar 14 2025 01:43:50 UTC from darknetuser Subject: Re: Work computers

Well, that is a red flag for sinking firm

No, but here if you don't produce and meet goals decided for you, you no longer are employed. The 'why' you did not meet is not taken into consideration.  And yes, i have seen people setup that way just to be outed. Among a few others, I had to go to court on one to produce documents, as he sued. Turned out, the documents we were told to provide supported him and his claim.  It didn't go well, he got reinstated, back pay, fees paid.  Of course he turned in his notice on the spot.  Another i know of sued, won, and did come back, but with a different BU.

I actually was in a similar situation with another company once, long ago. i refused to steal from the customers. So they manufactured a way to get rid of me. I sued, won, and due to the 'evidence' of what was going they lost enough of their customer base to go under a year or so later. F-them   ( and i was already working for another company by the time the case went to court.. got back pay, severance, 'time and trouble' etc.  Not a lot in the bigger picture but it wasn't after the actual money. Just wanted to take down a criminal, and clear my name, as back then it was a smallish community and word travels..  I heard the people involved had to leave the state totally to start over their careers as word traveled and no one would touch them as employees. ( the owner just walked. he had millions saved up , but at least the gravy train stopped )

Fri Mar 14 2025 00:16:07 UTC from darknetuser Subject: Re: Work computers

Unless you are being paid extras for productivity,

I get upset when they make it harder to get my work done, or even impossible. ( like taking 2 months to get fully vetted software approved to install that i got approval to buy in the first place... and it was just a freaking upgrade of what i had installed on another machine and others have ....  yet they let me install gimp without asking .. even offering it in our catalog )

I do realize its their box their rules and sometimes they have no choice.  But....

I still say the IT industry has become everything that i hate.  And i have been looking for alternatives, but at my age, i may just have to retire out. 

"we are placing Firefox on the banned list and its being removed"

"we are locking down chrome as a intermediate step, with the intent to ban it in the near future"

"The plan is to move to a managed browser, called island"

wtf. 

( can they remove edge? )

"In 30 days you will have to either turn over your iCloud account to us, or you will lose access"  ( yes you can create a new one under our total control, but just the idea.. )

Apple refuses to give out personal in information on accounts ( good for them ), but was willing to send notices on behalf based on the email domain they used to register. So there is talk of scanning incoming mail for apple notices to find out who has an account. 

I cant tell you how many apple devices we have, as windows is the 'official platform', however iOS is the official phone/tablet platform.

geesh. glad my time is almost over here, and in the industry.  i really hate what IT has become.

Oh, that was on top of MFA.. ( i stopped calling it 2FA as around here you may see it 3 or 4 times trying to get in every morning, and some apps..... every.. single..time.... its insane )

Officially we are not supposed to use password managers, unless its the approved one, that the security team manages.

Wed Jan 22 2025 15:04:28 UTC from fandarel Subject: password nonsense

I recently encountered a client like that. They are also not allowed to write down their password anywhere, nor use any sort of password manager. Corporate apparently has never heard of 2FA. So what do they do? Everyone takes out their personal phone and screenshots their password. Which then goes to the clown in the sky, of course.

Your new password must meet the following criteria:

• At least 12 characters.
• Must include upper, lower, numeric and special characters.
• It must have at least 6 changes from previous password.
• You can never repeat a password, ever.
• Must be changed at least every 30 days.

Oh, i wasn't complaining, ya i know how it works, the goal is zero..  just that i normally break even.

Thu Jan 16 2025 00:18:57 UTC from zelgomer

2025-01-15 12:37 from Nurb432 <nurb432@uncensored.citadel.org>
I guess technically withheld until its 'official', with the rest of
my salary.  But i never get a refund, i just break even, so same net
result.

You don't want a refund. Tax refund means you were giving the government a 0% interest loan.

I guess technically withheld until its 'official', with the rest of my salary.  But i never get a refund, i just break even, so same net result.

And it was taxed at over 40%.   So basically nothing, as i expected. 

Wed Jan 01 2025 19:17:41 UTC from Nurb432

Nope. Not a rumor just saw the official announcement.  Nothing for us serfs but a one time small bonus check this month. A check that will mostly be eaten by taxes anyway ( and only this month ). No baseline increase, not even to offset cost of living.  However, the uppers, their salary nearly doubled. 

 

And they wonder why morale here is poor.

Not one that accepts crypto.

Fri Jan 03 2025 21:51:53 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

Does anyone know where I can rent a cybertruck?

It always is.. 

Thu Jan 02 2025 03:02:00 UTC from zelgomer

 and the idea of starting fresh someplace else is a little scary to me.

In my case uppers re elected officials.  You don't just "become" one.  Especially if you an average person without the money to buy your way into the club.

That is why i didnt use the term 'management', while they are protected, and do get 'perks' we dont, they also got nothing this time.

Thu Jan 02 2025 03:02:00 UTC from zelgomer

If you want to make what the uppers make, then why aren't you an upper? 

Nope. Not a rumor just saw the official announcement.  Nothing for us serfs but a one time small bonus check this month. A check that will mostly be eaten by taxes anyway ( and only this month ). No baseline increase, not even to offset cost of living.  However, the uppers, their salary nearly doubled. 

And they wonder why morale here is poor.

Rumor is no raise this year. just a 'bonus'.

Scam. Means your base salary has not changed, so it impacts your retirement, career path if you move on, and what they pay out next year if they don't feel like giving you anything extra. 

Probably more than you think, depending on your age.

I'm still seething mad at the person who threw me under the bus at work a couple of months ago.  Somehow that incident ended up snowballing into an omnibus gripe list that got added to my HR file.

Whatever happened to just talking to people?  Seems like ever since the PlannedEmic we had a culture shift, we don't work out differences anymore, we just go over people's heads now.

that is because most cant admit failure.  OR the blame the now-gone contracting company, even tho it was not their fault.

"they set it up to fail, it wasn't our decisions that caused it"

Mon Nov 25 2024 18:24:47 UTC from darknetuser Subject: Out-contracted

It is interesting to notice that everytime they fire a contractor and cause a money making mechanism to fail as a result, they never hire the contractor back. It would be funny if it didn't happen so often.

Oh, well.

"20 years ago IT was a support team to the business" "Today it IS the business in every field and no one can survive without us"

That attitude is one reason i hate the industry.  Disgusting. Power hungry scumbags

4 emails, at the end of each one "And be sure to exit via the menu, so it will save your setting changes"

5th "ok i made those updates and it worked, how do i save my settings"  

Well, i know i have mentioned it before about our MFA, token timeouts, SSO being a joke, etc .. that entire fiasco.

Here shortly we roll this mess out to our customers ( around 30,000 people ). Aside from the attitudes or some people here on how much harm we are going to cause, and they don't give a Flying-F what we do to our customers ( some even think its funny.. rather disgusting attitude if you ask me )...  I guess they are expecting such chaos that they have created a new support team dedicated to this.  So far there are over 200 people in it.

LoL. 

You have no idea how many times i have considered that sort of thing myself. Toss it all in the trash, cut ties and start over with nature. Tho i could never do 'food animals' would have to be something like dairy cows, wool sheep, perhaps chickens for eggs, crops, stuff like that.

But, its not financially realistic for me to do so.

( even better, a flat coated retriever rescue, along side some crops to help pay the bills...  but that is even more out of the realm of possibility )

Fri Nov 15 2024 10:49:30 UTC from darknetuser Subject: We love you dude

 about a developer who got tired and retired to a farming life. 

Not that it matters, but i understood.  Im sure the others did too.

Wed Nov 13 2024 01:20:45 UTC from zelgomer

My job is a waste of a life, I mean. I don't want to quit life. As soon as I posted that I noticed how it came out.

</mini-rant ON>

What is the point of having a policy if some groups refuse to follow it, and executive management refuses to do anything about it?

<mini-rant OFF/>

Ouch.

Fri Nov 01 2024 06:06:36 EDT from darknetuser Subject: Re: The Job Offer

Law here makes it so if you hire somebody you are nearly marrying him. 

We call that outsourcing. :) 

Thu Oct 31 2024 20:48:02 EDT from zelgomer Subject: Re: The Job Offer

You need to start hiring employees to work all your jobs for you!

And so it begins.

( and yes, i know, security is important. But i don't support going overboard with it )

Thu Oct 17 2024 08:51:15 EDT from Nurb432

Neat.

Soon we are going to be getting MFA prompts all day long, even if we are on shop owned devices on the internal network. 

Neat.

Soon we are going to be getting MFA prompts all day long, even if we are on shop owned devices on the internal network. 

Why even bother with automated incident creation based on monitors if people are not going to bother to use the data.

Lets do it all the hard way !!! yaya!

"Token timeout will be less than one working day, and many apps will now require MFA every time you touch them"

LoL.  Part of the process to make remote work so painful you want to come back.

Who?

( remember i dont watch much TV )

"Planned cleanup of empty folders on shared network drives older than 60 days"    Ok that makes sense, its a waste of resources and makes it harder to find things.  "Estimated 1.5 million to be removed"

LoL

Well, that is disappointing.  I guess representatives from our various BUs are not permitted to join our weekly CMR meetings anymore.  We should encourage their participation, not block it.   Or at the least have a 2nd meeting where they can join and discuss concerns/hear about changes/etc.  While i do understand security concerns and am all for that, ( more than many around here ) transparency to our customers is also important. 

But i don't drive this boat. At this point i don't even paddle, i just ride. And continue to pack my lifeboat as that iceberg slowly approaches over the horizon..

Most are too afraid to, since i'm always right.   But at this point, what can they do? i'm working on leaving in the near future anyway.  

Around here if its 'unjust' you file a grievance with the workers board, and you normally win. 

Thu Sep 26 2024 09:30:23 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar Subject: Re: Ask your doctor if rabble rousing is right for you!

I have heard that many people at work fear me, but are afraid to
admit it. "you will tell it like it is and what you actually
think"

That's great until someone throws you under the bus for it.

lol

I have heard that many people at work fear me, but are afraid to admit it. "you will tell it like it is and what you actually think"

"well, ya..... "

Wed Sep 25 2024 19:32:26 EDT from anonymous Subject: Ask your doctor if rabble rousing is right for you!

And during a frustrated teleconference I unfortunately let out the words "at some point, someone has to do their job."

 

Yeah, I get it.  I have a big heart, a big brain, and a big mouth.  And just like Big Orange, I've earned a lot of fans and a lot of detractors. When I get frustrated, I get sarcastic.

Like most helpful hackers, the absolute worst way to make me upset is to waste my time.  So after wasting my time for two years on a project that should have taken a week, Those People have decided to waste even more of it by changing all of the specs that they already signed off on and demanding a third redesign.

And during a frustrated teleconference I unfortunately let out the words "at some point, someone has to do their job."

Y'all have not read our employee handbook because you don't work where I work.  But please take a guess as to what the HR recommendation says.  When you are put off by someone's conduct, do you:

1) If you can do so safely, take it up directly with them; most of the time you can work it out without further issue

-or-

2) Launch a smear campaign against them that goes three levels up the org chart

If you guessed "it says (1) but they did (2)" then congratulations!  You're smarter than they are, but don't feel too proud about it because the bar was set really low. 

I can be your friendliest and most useful resource, or I can be the person who automates your job away.  Choose carefully.

Previous job was sort of like that.  Spent the first 6 months cleaning up the mess from my predecessor.   I still remember the CFO calling me in one afternoon. "you know, since you got here, stuff just works, and we have forgot what it was like before.  Thank You"

It wasn't 100% smooth sailing after the cleanup, as i really didn't have much of a budget to work with. But it was clearly not panic smoldering fire mode anymore, and i got to help out more with the engineers out on the plant floor, which i like doing.

I miss that place, and 95% of the people. Long story .. When the partnership was formed the plan was to slowly run it into bankruptcy on purpose, to push out the other and claim the technology they brought in. Around 15 years in, it was successful and they managed to do it, but it was so far in the hole when the tech partner did finally call it quits it wasn't recoverable.  The building, which is in a 'manufacturing area', still sits empty, nearly 25 years later.

its not always about the deed, its about the outcome. 

Thu Sep 19 2024 13:20:01 EDT from darknetuser

Also, it feels like I am a bit stagnant when my heroic deed of the week is replacing cable.

*insert XKCD cloud comic here*

Thu Sep 19 2024 13:18:02 EDT from darknetuser

. I guess somebody stepped on it or whatever 

Grrr

VDI client, for Linux, web, android, ios are all permanently dead due to this change.  "We really don't care, so we never even tested it. Don't bother us again". 

I wont miss this place one bit when I leave next year.  Yes, i have made the decision. I'm gone.  Wont be Jan 1, But mid-year after i get rid of more PTO, and find some place else to be for a couple of years for insurance needs. So over this freaking industry too.  Wonder if i can find something outside of IT when i leave next year.

"it will be a transparent change"

This morning " bla bla emergency outage meeting" . And instead of using our process of creating an outage teams channel via the escalation manger, it was put in outlook, and invited EVERYONE to it.. 

Also seems no one tested AWS clients..     Android: ( for chromeos ) No longer "authorized". Linux: No longer "authorized".    Grr   I don't think we were allowed anyway, but Web client: dead unless Amazon updates authentication someday.. ( try to authorize "wont work  bla bla support of bla bla install a client if you wish to connect"  )  Trying to track down someone with OSX to try as well. 

If i have to power up a windows vm/machine to get to windows vdi going forward.. why bother.

I guess the actual wording was "As of Tomorrow, bla bla bla" and was sent after hours.  Did not actually say 'In the morning bla bla bla" . But it didn't happen.... So everyone is going around this morning asking what is going on...  Turns out its 6 *PM* that it takes effect today.  

Geesh.. 

*insert image of drunk ducks not in a row here*

Sigh.

"Tonight we are changing your MFA/SSO process. you must register with new system or you cant access xyz, pretty much everything!"   "if you have troubles just contact the HD using the system that will also be broken" ( ok they didn't say the last part but suggested they use a system that also relies on MFA/SSO.... )

Much like the PMs we have who are mostly IT illiterate, they are ok people, nothing against them personally but i really wish we would NOT hire non-IT people that need to interact with IT stuff.  Just makes things harder than it needs to be ( projects ) or makes us look stupid ( communications )

For us, money is not a concern. We need more, we will just take more. its not like we have to compete or something.  And if we hire more contractors, they dont 'count' as 'headcount' the same way on the books.

But for our BUs if they can move it to cloud and get away from us, its a procedural win.

Thu Aug 29 2024 09:29:11 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Cloud never saves money, complexity, or head count,

Could be wrong on motive but i think due to cost we are puling java off everything everywhere unless you can justify a need.  ( and of course our oracle people are freaking out )

And seems 2 more of our BUs are starting the move out of our data-center and to Azure, under their own control.   The exodus has begun. We suck. Everyone knows it.

• "Im getting a login error, says xyz "
• "ok its fixed, try again "
• "i still get the same thing"
• "well, actually it now says abc, not "login error xyz, and that is now fixed too, try again"
• *crickets for days*
• "hello, just checking in from last week" ( and sent daily reminders.. )
• "ok i got in just now, does that mean its working now?"

I will not miss doing this level of admin support when i move on to only managing AI and reports ( well i do reports now.. but still i will be out of the general admin scene.. )

Heard yet again today:      "I really wish the users would quit calling and bothering me i'm trying to get work done. They just need to go away"

"um dude, you do realize without them you don't have any work to do, or a job at all, right"

Some of us think that is part of the long term plan. Piss us off and get people to quit ( with luck before they are vested ) and replace their positions with contractors.  While its true upfront costs of contractors are higher, when you factor in benefits, including retirement funds, and the overhead of having actual employees it comes out as a 'savings' as far as they are concerned.  "just throw money at it"

Just like moving IT resources to 'the cloud', they want to move staff there too, in effect.   Already contact out most of the road construction work from what i hear.  And a number of other areas are mostly contract now.  

Tue Aug 13 2024 09:05:42 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Ooooh. They're gonna lose a ton of people that way. It is the current year.

"Remote work request denied. "

Time to take as much V time as i can, and i'm out come January.  F- these people.  Im sick and tired of going the extra mile, just to be peed on. ( and not just over this, just the last straw. )  I'd leave today, but i need the insurance and $ so have to have a place to go..  and i dont want to to lose some $70k in vacation time.  Gotta try to get rid of as much as i can.

Seems that unless exceptions are somehow made at the last minute, the week of sept 9 is back in office week.  2 days out out 3 days in.  We get to share desks. Or sit on the floor, or something. i donno. we dont have the room.  Tho with the staff that we will lose from them quitting, who knows.  

So i lose ~2 hours a day, and a pay cut of at least 2k a year, due to travel expenses ( gas, oil, tires, wear and tear on the jeep, etc )

We also have tons of people that were home before 2020, ( like a couple of call centers ). They will also be impacted. The policy is not just the people who 'recently' moved to working out of home.

Many no longer have floor space, but it wont matter, money is endless here.  Some gave it up to others to move into the 'campus' to save money on renting from external place, others closed up 'remote offices' and sent everyone home.   Some, like us, have x floor space but have exceeded limits on staff.. not enough room. ( we were heading there anyway, but with 2/3 of us home, it made it even easier to exceed floor space )  One team was suddenly moved to another floor about 3 months ago without warning. ( i think i mentioned that actually.. Upper MGT came in : "ok, you are moving, pack up and be up at x floor by noon" )

In theory we could reclaim space for us in the data center now that its slowly becoming a ghost town i guess.

And i guess in this agreement you sign, you have to state where you will be working.  "Home or static remote site" ( and must input the address ).    Not that hardly anyone will get approved, but still... 

Well its been coming for some time now. The 'letter' finally came out.

"you will return to the office 3 days a week, if you are in good standing" "you will need your manager to approve hybrid work".   "However, if you are to work from home more than the accepted hybrid work schedule, you must agree to all rules and regulations, must get your manager approval, and then your BU representative's approval. Then they must justify to us  ( HR ) why we should allow this on a individual case by case basis. And then we decide if its accepted or not. "under the rare case...." "and you must renew this agreement and re-submit your request each calendar year for approval"

So they are setting everyone up to sign the agreement, then deny it all.and flip us the bird.

Might be time to move on sooner than later. Ironically i was going to bail in 2020, but being sent home for fluvid made me reconsider. 

Putting my request in tomorrow.  I guess we will see if they bounce it or not,

Put in a bid with management to move positions and become AI and report manager..   Most likely sometime mid next year for it to happen.

This admin level support of ITSM systems for the last few decades, is getting tiresome, and will really suck when we move platforms next year.   I'm ready to just do one thing for here on out. ( ok 2, but i do business reports now anyway )

So at the office when we have an outage that effects x number of people they open up a teams channel/conf call. While i hate MS, its what we use, so it makes sense.

Today, Teams is down.   LoL.

A *single* system outage. So lets email EVERYONE .. all 700 of us.

Squatters rights!!!

Thu Jun 27 2024 11:09:40 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

As it so happens I am on vacation right now 

Oh and i think if you leave under good terms and come back later, you get what you had before you left re-applied to your account.  You also get to keep the years accumulated towards pension if you leave and come back. That i do know happens. 

Sorry, ya "Vacation, Comp, Sick".   Ours roll over here. If they didn't, i bet id have been more diligent about a day here and there. But they don't, so 'Im busy so ill do it later' and later never really happened.

Monday i heard they will pay you for ~230 hours of V time unused.  Then up to $5k above that in whatever hours you have left in the pool, at your current pay rate, not when it was earned.  Anything over that is gone.    Of course that is subject to change each fiscal year when new rules come out.

Do most people use their V/C/S time?

I never did in previous jobs..  never did in this one either and now i have so much i cant take enough before i retire  ( literally over 2000 hours.. )...  Been trying to take a day off her and there starting this spring, and it feels 'strange'..  

I'm not even sure what i lost before. Never really even thought of not going into work each day..  Its how my dad was too, so i grew up: "we just go do our thing..."

I remember one time i wrecked my car between jobs when i was a field guy..  it was around noon ( a spare tire/wheel fell off a semi in front of me doing about 65 mph on the interstate.. about flipped the car.. i did go airborne ). Within an hour i had my car towed, a rental delivered to where i was, parts and tools transferred, and i was on the road.   So basically i used my lunch hour..  And i was not late to the next appointment..               And the time i got my arm rebuilt after i lost the radius a few years ago.. i took off an afternoon for surgery, which felt odd.. And i was back on the job the next morning. ( one handed, but was back and typing and talking on the phone )

Or am i just a weirdo?

and 4k a month to host an oracle app. per site

Ouch. ( im sure oracle is screwing us and we are only passing it along.... but still .. ouch )

So i guess this coming fiscal year we upped our rates we charge back to departments to host physical servers to ~ 550 a month.   That is just hosting, you still have to buy it..

We include admin support to keep the OS patched ( mandatory. its on our network, so we dictate )  and a tech to swap out parts if they die under warranty., and sure we supply power, cooling, network.....  but man that seems expensive just to let it sit in our room..

yay losing local admin rights. Even us IT support people. Now everything has to go thru that silly 'zero trust' nonsense if it requires any elevated rights.    Had to use that to install an app on VDI. took 5 rounds of them adjusting things to get it to work.  

I dont trust surveys. Even so called anonymous ones. 

Thu May 23 2024 06:40:29 EDT from darknetuser

2024-05-22 08:23 from Nurb432
This is true in any industry really, not just "IT" as most people are

sick and tired of the nonsense. 

Sure, but the point is this comes from a serious survey with proper methodology and no bias. It comes to show the real interest people shows in woke policies when they can express themselves in an unpunishing neutral environment. If you had to guide yourself by what the media says, woke is the nw normal; according to this survey, woke matters for a percentage in the single digits range.


Also, it looks to me like sysadmins have a bigger tendency to be pissed off by their jobs than developers, and the "other" category seems to be happier overall.

This is true in any industry really, not just "IT" as most people are sick and tired of the nonsense. 

Wed May 22 2024 08:04:45 EDT from darknetuser

Progressive woke policies score so low in the priority list as to be negligible 

No, the office is not a social club. 

"We are outsiders and just got here. We dont know your business. We dont know your customers. And we dont care. You will do it our way because we said so, and you will shut up"

And when it all falls apart i get to :  " i told ya "  then exit stage left as it all burns to the ground.

( could fall into software, MS bash or bottom feeders even, but its my shop machine )

Neat.

Boot up shop windows VM ( after trying 3 times. . first 1 got updates of some sort, forever..... 2nd 'we cant log you in' grrr ever mention i hate windows? ).    Nice pretty "we need admin rights to install bla bla HP bla bla "  popup. Um, full stop. we manage our machines via ssms. It has rights so wtf is this?

Call our HD team, talked to them a bit ( about vacations and stuff.. i have known these people for decades due to my position :) ) :  "ya, HP is sending out driver updates for printers, we were told just to let it install"  wtf..  how are they bypassing pretty much all our security and getting to the machines? 

Oh, well that wont work in this module you will need to buy more modules and hire more people to manage them. Oh and ya, any approver also needs a license.

PAY US MOAR MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Neat.

One of our main external facing web apps, has now banned my ISP' sub-nets.. so countless thousands have to now use VPN. ( which of course requires windows.. )

Wonder if they will block VPN next.  "you have to drive in.. hahahahahah"

4 days of meetings about software licensing..  zzzzzz

I have a solution : no more commercial applications.. problem solved :) 

No incoming email for nearly 6 hours now.  

Can send out, and internal mail works fine, but outside email, like from our customers... millions of them.. cant get in. 

Normally we have a huge 'emergency meeting' for stuff at this level.  crickets..   Was down 2 hours before anyone notices.. and it was MY team was the first to report it.. really???  ( was in a 4 hour meeting. we figured it out 20 mins after the meeting was over )

Soooo odd.

Problems I have with how we are doing VDI: ( YMMV of course )

• Speed. Its dismal. ( yes, fixable with more $. but.. )
• Networking.  Having issues getting access to some of our sub-nets. ( in my case, makes it mostly useless.. until we change ITSM platforms )
• Zero access to the PDZ, tho that is being worked on, as mentioned since Horizon is a non-product now. They are still not sure they can pull it off or not without blowing up all the guard rails.
• Rights - lose admin rights and all installs have to be done via SCCM, or you have a lot of hoops to jump thru. ( like i did, for getting crystal reports installed, licenced and running.. We have to use beyond trust, and 100000 settings to make it work ). I assume this could be fixed, but not where we are at... )
• Have to use windows client ( yes, fixable if our security team were not butt-heads. Going to try to fight that battle again next spring if i'm still around. Horizon, which is 'super duper secure' we can even use web client... )
• MFA.. seems every time we use an app, have to go thru MFA again... and again.. and again... as a new app starts. Even VPN isn't this bad. you do it once and the machine is 'ok' for the session. .. ( im sure its our fault )

On site VDI may not be as bad, we are going cloud. Was Azure, now AWS. Don't as me why..  We all know how much i hate Microsoft, but if you are using windows.. it makes sense to be using Azure...

Email floating around due a project. Looks like in the future, all we get are VDI terminals. Nothing gets to run locally anymore. 

Wonder if they switch to giving us all Chromebooks then :) 

Well darn. Just a passing thought, losing my office space blows my current off-site backup plan.  Normally every 2 weeks id bring home an encrypted USB m.2 i would store in my desk. update, then return it.  My office is far enough away and not in the 'normal weather path' to be safe from natural disasters like tornadoes.   Been doing this for decades and 3 jobs back..I just improved the medium i transported back and forth.

Will need to work out something else i guess.  ( and no, cant do a safety deposit box at the bank. i did that for a while. they closed that service down 15+ years ago. Plus the bank is too close anyway to be 'really' safe )

Cleared out my stuff today. Ripped up my name tag and threw it away.  I suspect i wont have a desk again for the rest of the short time i have left. 

Was nice walking around tho, with nearly no one in the building other than essential personnel .  Well aside that we have motion sensing lights. so wherever i walked, lights would turn on.. i hate light....

During fluvid we were sent home totally, around March.  Year or later some of us came back part time, some came back full time ( sux to be them :( ). Others stayed home.

I was one that came in part time, so i got to keep my own desk. Then later it became less, but still part time, and i still got to keep my desk.

Similar at our place, they setup 'hotel spaces' for those that stayed home but came in once in a blue moon. But for me no desk = little incentive to come in.  One 4 hour manager meeting a month, sometimes, and a 5 hour monthly open house i run for the software i support, which i have a training room in another building reserved for...  ( could be moved to online, but i really do think its better in person.. )

Ironically some higher-ups and HR will keep complaining about people not coming in, but they are providing dis-incentives to do so and making it harder.

Mon Mar 11 2024 19:48:22 EDT from zelgomer

Yup, that's how it happened for me. During covid they switched to a "use the website to reserve a desk before you come in" model. Then they took away our desktops and we have to login to a cloud VM from our HR-friendly windows laptops to get to a real development environment. That was when I said to myself, "ok, I'm remote now whether I'm at home or in the office." I'll go back in when they tell me I have to.

Guess i have to go in this week and clean out my desk. It was taken away from me.

I think ill stop coming in but perhaps once a month now. With no 'home', no real interest. 

Local hacks are still an option if you can get to the machine. 

Hey, that's how they got the original Windows NT to pass the C3 "orange book" certification.  They removed all of the network interfaces and removable storage drives.  Can't hack it if you can't get to it.

The network can't be hacked if there is no network, XD

CMR #543776554   "To enhance security of our network we are removing all user access to our network and disabling all accounts. All external network switches will also be turned off"   "all future tasks will be submitted via paper job listings at the data center window"

Ok that is weird. i did NOT quote the work as a dog part.   it had the bit about 'eggs in one basket'  but it did weird stuff when i submitted. 

I think we are all there really, even in other industries. Im just glad my end is nearing. Not here yet, but that light at the end of the tunnel is no longer a train, but the way out.

( and 2 points if you know the show this came from.. )

Sat Feb 24 2024 12:08:08 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Worked like a dog this week.  I've been saying for years that we need to stop being so dependent on [vendor] but now it's an emergency and it's a chinese fire drill to reposition ourselves.

We have people in leadership who blindly listen to Gartner and Flexera and Forrester without actually looking at what's happening in the real world.

But you know, the grass is always greener and all ... and my paycheck keeps clearing so I'll deal with it.

"access your desktop from anywhere from any device"

Ya, anywhere that security lets you, and from any device they permit.

"hi, im missing a report from over a year ago, can you run it again"

wtf. 

"Replicate group membership of user X to user Y"

"what group does Y need to be in" 

wtf. 

Windows machine updates today from the office. yay. ( noticed that CPU on my VM went thru the roof.. wasn't really using it but it was on.. )

Of course WMI and Powershell taking turns sucking the CPU dry... but something new to me: "file system walker" wtf.   50% CPU for a while.   Also got a java update.  but it was openJDK according to the process monitor. i really figured we would be force to use the $version..  With all the crap Oracle is giving us about licensing every citizen in the state.

Waiting on the forced reboot..  Hell of a way to write an OS.. require reboots on app updates. Idiot Microsoft

That is just how IT infrastructure life is. you go unnoticed until there is an outage.

One place i came in and took over ( CTO basically )..  i completely incrementally redid everything in the place over the summer to reduce impact... with basically zero budget.  About a year the CFO called me over, "you know, since you got here things just work.. we forgot what that was like.. thank you )

Sun Jan 21 2024 07:48:42 EST from darknetuser

Sooooo....... today I have becomed a hero, because my awesome, unmatched IT skills allowed me to help an accountant find a missing report.... which he had sent into the trash bin by accident.

Now he is telling everybody how great an IT dude I am. On the other hand, nobody is praising my (as of now) zero-business-downtime deployments.

Life is weird.

sounds like they should...

Fri Jan 19 2024 13:59:59 EST from darknetuser

I think somebody is gonna get fired over this.

Grrr!

• "i cant do X in system Y"  ( lots of people reported issue, 1/2 of the calls were not properly logged/linked/etc which pisses me off as i'm the ITSM guy. HD wont listen. )
• "we rolled back a change, closing ticket" ( no verification at all ) ( and a change made on a business day, clearly without testing either - really? )
• "ummm i cant even login now"
• "not related, not my problem go away"

wtf.. 

If we were an IT service company, we wouldn't be for long.

I understand VPN. But but why still offer VDI if that is the goal?  ( be it true VDI or apps via citrix ). 

Thu Jan 18 2024 09:19:14 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

So they want you to remote using a company-issued laptop. That's what it sounds like to me, anyway.

So new rules came out today.. 2 caught my attention as being really not well thought out:

1 - "if you separate employment, you must turn in all devices no later than time of separation. "

So i guess that means if you get fired unexpectedly, and some or all of your stuff is at home, they arrest you as you head out that day?

2 - "All internal network access must be done via our stuff" ( paraphrased of course )  "... this includes VDI..."

If you are forced to use a shop machine to access VDI, then what is the point of VDI?

Mentioned it before but happened to read our warning today with the penalties for abusing the systems ( as an employee/contractor anyway. External entries, would face higher penalties )

"bla bla misuse ......may result in termination of employment or contract as well as criminal and civil actions including imprisonment for as long as 5 years and fines as much as 5K"

I was thinking 10y/$10k but either i forgot or it changed over the years.  Either way i knew it existed.  

Was in the office a couple of days this week.  Noticed a sign "1 in 6 workers in this state are licensed by state government"   ( paraphrased, to protect the guilty )

That is sad, and concerning.. 

Office chair warmth consultant. 

"Computer guy"

Gold Production Support Engineer

Gold Customer Sat Engineer

Senior Citizen Operations Lead

Producer of Operations

Wed Dec 27 2023 11:44:13 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Lead Production Support Engineer

Lead Customer Sat Engineer

Senior Operations Lead

Director of Operations

At least in your case it makes sense, your title isn't representative of what you do for a living. In my case, while its generic, its 100% clearly IT..  

Wed Dec 20 2023 16:35:46 EST from fandarel

Got the daily spam and happened to blink before i deleted.  "People
with your role" The top job was "retail sales at lowes hardware" (

I'm having a closely related problem in the job hunt. My formal title is "Director of Customer Service". On job sites, including StinkedIn, "Customer Service" = the guy at Lenscrafters that helps you pick out new lenses, or the lady at AT&T who helps you find a new phone. It's not a technical position.
I'm a BSEE with 26 years of experience, but you'd never know it from my title or business card. I'm also much more on the IT side of the house than traditional EE stuff like circuits.
I've been trying to think of a replacement title to put on the sites & on my resume. Not something so far off that I could be accused of misrepresentation, but something that much more clearly defines what I do day to day. "Director of Customer Engineering" just sounds squirrely as heck. "Electrical Engineer" is too generic. Still thinking on it.
My subordinates have the title "Customer Service Engineer", which is similarly problematic.

Customer Solutions Necrowomancer.

Wed Dec 20 2023 16:38:25 EST from fandarel

Customer Solutions Wizard. I wonder if I could get away with that.

I remember that name. not sure why.

Tue Dec 19 2023 21:37:07 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

 "that guy who was really awful and ruined everything" (Curly Surmudgeon).

lol

like most people in IT i have account with linked in, that mostly is ignored.

Got the daily spam and happened to blink before i deleted.  "People with your role" The top job was "retail sales at lowes hardware" ( no, not sysadmin or something which would make sense.. but sales )  i hope that is not a prediction of some sort.. that is sad.. but i guess its better than greeter at walmart. 

Yay.. so another dept. one of their scripts freaked out.  has opened up 13,000 calls in my system today so far..  should have been ~2000...  its looping.  Now my system has 200k emails to send out, and its all jammed up as you can only send so many emails at a time...

"We need your plan to retire legacy scrips and api calls"  on a system we are retiring in a year, that we dont have a clue what the new one can do yet, or what features we are buying,  but in theory does 90% of it out of box?

umm.. Let me get out my crystal ball.

While it could save money by replacing 2 lesser with one better. It does increase your risk, especially if that is the entire team..

Oh and to add, we have a clause that intentional misuse of equipment can = fines and jail time, via actual law. ( i think its up to 10k + 5 years )  I do suspect it was an honest mistake on his part, but we all know the drill: Before you do anything like that you ask ...

No, its in the contract that you agree not to take our property out of the country, security reasons.

Thu Nov 30 2023 13:20:46 EST from LadySerenaKitty

Now that's a case of wrongful termination.  Like srsly wtf?

Thu Nov 30 2023 11:32:18 EST from Nurb432

Well that was interesting.

I wont get into which BU it was, or where he went to.. but one BU had a guy go home for holidays or something, out of the country. Took his company laptop with him. My assumption is 'in case of emergency at the office i could login'. ( something a lot of us would do without thinking really )  Hooked up for whatever reason, my guess email, laptop checked in, instantly detected was not where it should be, wiped itself, bricked itself, and he was instantly fired...

I guess we do offer an option of 'over seas travel machines' of some sort, but he didnt go that route. 

I dont know the guy and heard this 3rd hand. So I cant say it was malicious or not, but if i was going to do that and had nefarious intent, its trivial to hide my tracks. I can only assume it was a honest ( but career fatal ) mistake.. 

 

 

Now that's a case of wrongful termination.  Like srsly wtf?

Thu Nov 30 2023 11:32:18 EST from Nurb432

Well that was interesting.

I wont get into which BU it was, or where he went to.. but one BU had a guy go home for holidays or something, out of the country. Took his company laptop with him. My assumption is 'in case of emergency at the office i could login'. ( something a lot of us would do without thinking really )  Hooked up for whatever reason, my guess email, laptop checked in, instantly detected was not where it should be, wiped itself, bricked itself, and he was instantly fired...

I guess we do offer an option of 'over seas travel machines' of some sort, but he didnt go that route. 

I dont know the guy and heard this 3rd hand. So I cant say it was malicious or not, but if i was going to do that and had nefarious intent, its trivial to hide my tracks. I can only assume it was a honest ( but career fatal ) mistake.. 

 

Well that was interesting.

I wont get into which BU it was, or where he went to.. but one BU had a guy go home for holidays or something, out of the country. Took his company laptop with him. My assumption is 'in case of emergency at the office i could login'. ( something a lot of us would do without thinking really )  Hooked up for whatever reason, my guess email, laptop checked in, instantly detected was not where it should be, wiped itself, bricked itself, and he was instantly fired...

I guess we do offer an option of 'over seas travel machines' of some sort, but he didnt go that route. 

I dont know the guy and heard this 3rd hand. So I cant say it was malicious or not, but if i was going to do that and had nefarious intent, its trivial to hide my tracks. I can only assume it was a honest ( but career fatal ) mistake.. 

I guess this spring they are cutting off VPN access to anything they dont manage. They already cut them off the wire. If your device inst managed, you plug in, the best you can get ( if you are not blocked totally ) is public internet only. 

Been talked about a bit, now its got a hard date. 

oh i have seen outsource cases too, where they just hire everyone, then later fire the worst of the bunch. In this case its purely an audit firm of some sort doing this. Not another IT firm looking to take over. This is being done to ALL the business units ( 30K+ employees ). and not just us.

While its true we all cant be outsourced across the board ( some practical reasons, some legal reasons ) it could be sent to management of each area 'you dont need all these employees, get rid of x % and contract it out'. And of course IT is a good candidate for a high %, even on a good day.

Sun Nov 12 2023 06:50:30 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

I know someone who had that happen. He ended up working for the contractor.
Ultimately it was a better experience.

Rumor now is that there is an outside company looking at our badge readers ( both garage and coming and going on our floor ), and our time sheets, and productivity, and analyzing it all. "for an upcoming discussion about work from home policy"

How invasive. May be time to retire early.That is If they dont use it as an excuse to fire us all and outsource the entire thing to a contractor. 

I know one thing if they bitch too much i wont be donating a second of my time. It all gets 'billed back' so to speak. Especially if they make is go in all the time.  i lose 2 hours a day in the commute + cost of gas/maintenance. i wont be looking at anything after hours unless i'm on call and get called. and they get that billed for.. 

"we require an AI solution to read mail, look at a spreadsheet figure out what we want, and parse the information and aggregate what we want as people will modify the columns and sheet structure"  "we need magic to happen since we are inept"  

Um, how about rejecting any formatting changes, or even locking format with a password? Or even not using freaking spreadsheets and email. its 2023. not 1999. 

Idiots. 

So we built a semi-automated process here for when people leave. Forms to fill out and stuff to do so nothing gets forgot.. One of the first steps is to send a task to the employee to start to gather their stuff to turn in on their last day ( in effect ) nothing really out of the ordinary.

Yesterday a manager submitted the workflow, for a person he was going to fire Friday.

LoL. 

:(

I accidentally left out the best part - he was stabbed IN THE HEAD with the screwdriver.

Tue Oct 17 2023 07:20:41 EDT from Nurb432

:(

Most of the homeless around my work ( downtown ) seem to be in their own little world, but toss in some drugs, and there is always potential.. 

Tue Oct 17 2023 00:09:39 EDT from LadySerenaKitty

So on Caturday I saw some shit go down near downtown SATX.  I was getting explodey juice at the Circle Valero at the intersection of McCullogh and Dallas.  A homeless instigated an altercation with a security guard for one of the nearby buildings.

Security guard fucking STABS THE HOMELESS WITH A SCREWDRIVER!  But that's not the weirdest part -

The cops come, and then the homeless guy starts arguing with the SAPD officer about what happened.  WTF

 

:(

Most of the homeless around my work ( downtown ) seem to be in their own little world, but toss in some drugs, and there is always potential.. 

Tue Oct 17 2023 00:09:39 EDT from LadySerenaKitty

So on Caturday I saw some shit go down near downtown SATX.  I was getting explodey juice at the Circle Valero at the intersection of McCullogh and Dallas.  A homeless instigated an altercation with a security guard for one of the nearby buildings.

Security guard fucking STABS THE HOMELESS WITH A SCREWDRIVER!  But that's not the weirdest part -

The cops come, and then the homeless guy starts arguing with the SAPD officer about what happened.  WTF

So on Caturday I saw some shit go down near downtown SATX.  I was getting explodey juice at the Circle Valero at the intersection of McCullogh and Dallas.  A homeless instigated an altercation with a security guard for one of the nearby buildings.

Security guard fucking STABS THE HOMELESS WITH A SCREWDRIVER!  But that's not the weirdest part -

The cops come, and then the homeless guy starts arguing with the SAPD officer about what happened.  WTF

yay updates.

3 reboots so far today.  Each time every thing you had open, reopens on its own and requires SSO..   arrrgh...

Tell you what, you come and visit and try, ill get you in the place ( we are pretty locked down and guards are state police, so they can shoot invaders if they want ).  It wont happen, trust me. They are dead set on this path. ( plus *all^ our external facing apps requires MFA, not just VPN )

Hey Ill buy you a consolation dinner afterwards :) 

Fri Oct 13 2023 15:40:30 EDT from LadySerenaKitty

Make them switch to WireGuard.  I'm running a WireGuard net and it's pretty awesome.

Thu Oct 12 2023 15:51:34 EDT from Nurb432

in my case i use what the office provides or i dont get access, and have to drive in.

 

Make them switch to WireGuard.  I'm running a WireGuard net and it's pretty awesome.

Thu Oct 12 2023 15:51:34 EDT from Nurb432

in my case i use what the office provides or i dont get access, and have to drive in.

in my case i use what the office provides or i dont get access, and have to drive in.

Thu Oct 12 2023 14:37:38 EDT from LadySerenaKitty

Why not WireGuard?  It's easy to set up, and only those who have keys can access it.  No username/password/2fa nonsense.

 

Why not WireGuard?  It's easy to set up, and only those who have keys can access it.  No username/password/2fa nonsense.

Wed Oct 11 2023 17:38:15 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Yeah, the steps required to get onto a "secure" corporate network are getting more and more numerous.

I get it, the whole 2FA thing is secure, but there are sooooo many steps it is getting ridiculous.

Make that 10 steps. you have to now login to SSO via web broswer too.   

sigh. 

To get into vpn we have added 2 more steps! yay we are sooooo freaking secure! Yay!

1 login to your PC

2 login to vpn client

3 receive code from vpn client  ( new ) 

4 unlock your phone

5 get mfa prompt

6 enter you phone password again

7 enter the number form the client ( new )

8 authorize the number

9 accept EULA agreement back on your PC with threats of 5 years jail time if you screw up ( every time,, )

then you can actually work...

wtf. wtf. wtf.

"in office presentation on a product we 'sell' as a 'service'"   Great, i'm interested in what other groups do.... go in an extra day to the office.

4 hour sales pitch to our customers..    sure, of value, but not to me.

But i was seen by my manger, his manager and our director, AND the CTO.... so i guess not a total loss.  "look im a team player.. yay, go team... "

For our resident kitty:

I dont know if there is actual money to be made, but Temu uses private citizens to deliver their garbage.    So, just a thought that does not include having to deal with people in your car, breaking things, or stinking the thing up.

So a year or so i moved to a new desk ( during our 'return to work every so often' thing ) I opted to come in enough to have an actual desk of my own. 

1 - i have odd hardware so using hotel spaces woudl be a pain. i would spend 10 mins a day hooking up and disconnecting. And more stuff to carry around.

2 - i like having my own drawers to shove stuff in. ( plenty of jokes there, i know ) 

3 - Eventually ( i predict 2024 ) we will be back in office 3 days a week, figured might as well find a spot i like ( ok, hate the least ), and beat the madness.

But the story :   At this desk was a docking station for the windows laptops, and a USBC thunderbolt hub. Neither had power supplies.  Fast forward a year, "might be nice to have a backup plan in case the usb hub i bought dies"  Talk to the manager over that stuff " just put in a ticket and they can grab one out of stock "..   So i do. About a week later " the price quote is 170 dollars, who is going to sign off on this"  wtf. no.

"if its going to cost to repair what as here before i got here, then never mind, ill toss it in the garbage" "no, you cant do that, you have to bring it to.. "  "if they want this worthless item, they can come get it".. lol 

Looked on eBay and i can get the set, both hub and PS, for 50 or 60 bucks.   Yay for government pricing.   One reason government fees are so high, we get gouged, and have to pass the costs down.

• "i need a scheduled report, that sort of does xyz" 
• Same day: "Ok here is a best guess sample. You will need to give me some more details, such as run time/window, data elements you want to see. This is just a couple of items for x range". 
• FF 3 weeks " i really need to start getting that report "  um, here is another sample formatted like last time with current data, i still need the same info i asked for last time.
• FF another week.. Crickets. . "ok, i ran it again for you for last weeks data, still need details...."

Really folks?

Or the classic "why is my request not processed yet, what is wrong with your system its broke and i need this now and its been weeks since i submitted"

99% Its either:

• Well, its waiting on you to approve the EULA before it moves on, you get daily reminders.
• Well, its waiting on your manager to approve, might want to ask him why he hasn't. Oh, and they also get daily reminder emails.

1%

• Well, its stuck with team xyz, we can ask them what the delay is, but you are able to go into the portal and see where its at too, even email the team from there asking for an update, remember? 

Not really looking forward to what is coming next year. Trying to look at it as a learning opportunity, where if the ship goes down, i can just for retirement and find somewhere else to be for 6 years. ( age ) . But its hard. 

I am thinking of adding pronouns to my account at the office.

"Me, Myself and I" 

:) 

Wed Aug 23 2023 01:47:34 PM EDT from LadySerenaKitty

With an obviously feminine name, she shouldn't even be placing pronouns (see my prev post). 🔪

 

lol its gotten so bad they are moving everyone to WebX as MSteams is collapsing too. ( i guess too many ties to our local AD stuff.. )

So tonight they ran an emergency update on some stuff due to what has been going on since Monday ( intermittent internet outages ). Totally killed the network.

"help, we have no network, we cant even look up peoples numbers to call, we had to go outside and use cell signal to get to MSteams"

lol. eggs. .one basket.  

Depriving someone of their cat videos is a purrfectly valid reason to commit justified homicide.

Wed Aug 23 2023 14:26:10 EDT from Nurb432

Yay! internet down several times today for extended periods ( and flaky yesterday but no one wanted to do anything about it ).   Not like we dont need to watch our cat videos eh? 

Yay! internet down several times today for extended periods ( and flaky yesterday but no one wanted to do anything about it ).   Not like we dont need to watch our cat videos eh? 

Well that name was made up to protect the guilty, but it was just as 'clear' of a name in reality. 

Wed Aug 23 2023 01:47:34 PM EDT from LadySerenaKitty

With an obviously feminine name, she shouldn't even be placing pronouns (see my prev post). 🔪

 

With an obviously feminine name, she shouldn't even be placing pronouns (see my prev post). 🔪

Tue Aug 22 2023 17:51:41 EDT from Nurb432

If it helps this was the format: ( fake names and such )

 

Pam Smith

Pronouns: She/her

System Admin

Bla bla Address

 

 

Normally its 

Pam Smith   She/Her

System Admin

Bla bla Address

 

 

My feelings about keeping personal stuff out of work aside, the 2nd is fully understandable as written, and 'standard'. The 1st is like they are insulting me, that i'm too stupid to understand She/Her after a name is a pronoun. Which is why it bugs me the most, its like they are flipping the bird at me and yelling "hey, stupid"

If it helps this was the format: ( fake names and such )

Pam Smith

Pronouns: She/her

System Admin

Bla bla Address

Normally its 

Pam Smith   She/Her

System Admin

Bla bla Address

My feelings about keeping personal stuff out of work aside, the 2nd is fully understandable as written, and 'standard'. The 1st is like they are insulting me, that i'm too stupid to understand She/Her after a name is a pronoun. Which is why it bugs me the most, its like they are flipping the bird at me and yelling "hey, stupid"

I understand the pronoun concept, even if a few confuse me to their meaning, as my personal friends who are 'alt' dont label themselves with pronouns. "im just xyz" and that is it..  it was the labeling/branding of the pronouns as such. like people are too dumb to realize its a pronoun..

And i know i have mentioned it before, but i really dont care what a person wants to be, or what they want to call themselves. We all have our 'thing'. Personally i judge people by character only. But that said, please just leave it at home. Be it orientation, chosen or otherwise, what car you drive, pets you own, hobbies.... we are at work and have a job to do, its not a social club. My first meeting with our new manager here recently "so, what are your hobbies" ... no thanks. i dont care to get into that, you are not my buddy, you are my boss.   ( actually i said ' i dont have any ' )

I refuse to even have an email signature as its too personal..  And i dont post my picture on O365...  So in meetings you get my initials.   

And sure, there are people at work that you become friends with because you spend so much time with them ( or more then friends, which i cant comment on as im guilty.. ), but i still think that should be separated from the office. We have a job to do, save fraternization for after hours. 

It's supposed to aid in not misgendering peoples.  It's fine for those who are trans (like me) and those who have gender-neutral names (like Taylor), but libtards being libtards tend to go full libtard and insist purronouns are for everykitty.

If you don't have a gender-neutral name and your gender is obvious from your picture/appurrance, then you don't need to purrovide your purronouns (in fact, please don't!).

And now you can actually tell people that providing their "she/her" purronouns while having a feminine name and presenting female is transphobic, you have it on good authoriteh from an actual trans kitty you know.

And now you can actually tell people that providing their "he/him" purronouns while having a masculine name and presenting male is transphobic, you have it on good authoriteh from an actual trans kitty you know.

Tue Aug 22 2023 10:04:15 EDT from Nurb432

Wont get into the actual discussion of 'pronouns' but today got an email, the tag had she/her, which unfortunately is not unusual now at work,  but its was prefixed with the actual words "Pronouns:  She/Her"

So people are now so stupid they dont even know what a pronoun is and have to be told? 

Wont get into the actual discussion of 'pronouns' but today got an email, the tag had she/her, which unfortunately is not unusual now at work,  but its was prefixed with the actual words "Pronouns:  She/Her"

So people are now so stupid they dont even know what a pronoun is and have to be told? 

He said " bla bla bla"    "Um, no, not even close.. Here is the email of the actual words used."

Man, people annoy me some days. No, most days.

Oh and i heard if you BYOD, you have to install their security tools, and they enforce their standards, so it becomes theirs, in effect. And access to "all resources", must be done "thru approved devices" ( Not sure what that mean for O365, or the app i support, but i can guess.. )

Guess people will be carrying 2 phones.  F- that idea of letting them control my device.   so $ goes up.

"the software we let you buy the upgrade for, that others use, that we have packages for, and you need it daily for your job, you have to remove it and get an exception then you can reinstall it" wtf. 

And 

"what is this that is installed on your PC"  " i dont know,  you are the freaking expert bitching about things being installed, you tell me what it is"

Time is nearing.. 

Both systems can be turned off on my 2023 Ford Escape.

Fri Aug 11 2023 11:30:03 EDT from LoanShark

Ever feel like driving on a racetrack? Better make sure the collision avoidance and lane-keeping can be completely disabled, or they won't let you on track. Subarus have all that stuff as standard now, and ghod only knows if it can be disabled. (Maybe on the BRZ, which was designed from the ground up as a track car.)

Awful lot of trouble... 

Latest rumor is that all servers must be in our protected data zone. 

That sounds neat and secure until you realize you have to punch all sorts of holes so apps can actually be used....  And if you want access to a server, You have to use dedicated VDI boxes to get there.  Unless you happen to add tools in your app to do stuff like SQL queries.. ( hint hint )    yay lets make it nearly impossible to do work!

Years ago they threatened "any updates to any server or any data in the PDZ must be checked in and reviewed by security team before they apply them for you, and any data export/access has to also be reviewed before you get your data"  . until they finally realized that means nothing would actually function....   Idiots. 

i have had to do it both ways at various times,  mostly depending on the 'boss'

Related we had a developer once that got a huge monitor ( early 90s.. not common ) to work on. He developed a non-important phone book app, on his own with no directive, mostly to learn stuff. At his resolution. Boss thought it was neat. "lets use this"

• Option 1 = spend a couple of days and redo the interface a bit.
• Option 2 = spend 100K or so and buy new monitors for everyone in the place.

They chose option 2. For a phone book.... 

Gimme one of these. ( picture attached, for you console folks )

2099351767@Uncensoredhttp://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=The%20Workplace?start_reading_at=2099351672Thu, 27 Jul 2023 23:45:53 -00002099351672@Uncensored

And long ago why i decided id never buy a 'new' car ever again. 

Thu Jul 27 2023 07:22:27 PM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

cars are getting too complex these days. I try to go easy on the techy

option packages... or I would, if I were buying new.

Agreed, and it's getting harder to do.

Just the part.

Wed Jul 26 2023 16:12:58 EDT from LoanShark

much it costs to replace just ONE liftgate actuator motor.  It's
$2400 for ONE of them, and there are two (port and starboard).

just the part? or dealer labor??

"we decided you are changing platforms"

Well there goes 15+ years of work. Starting over, with what connects to EVERY part of our business. And is our core.  ( and 35 business units.. 40000 end users.. )

Sort of saw it coming for a while. I was hoping it would get derailed.  But no. 

While true, it does not help her expenses. 

While the idea does fit within the theme, i cant, firearms are banned at my work, via legislative action. 

Wed Jul 19 2023 09:54:05 PM EDT from zelgomer

I should go. Drive the Fiero, bring a plastic drinking bottle.

Bring your Glock.

Darn. 

Wed Jul 19 2023 04:58:01 PM EDT from LadySerenaKitty

Nope!  There are no hydraulic or gas lifters like in older cars, it's just the motors.

 

Nope!  There are no hydraulic or gas lifters like in older cars, it's just the motors.

Wed Jul 19 2023 16:45:22 EDT from Nurb432

Does not surprise me. Everything is over priced.

Any way to disable them while you are carting people around? Prevent that from happening?

Does not surprise me. Everything is over priced.

Any way to disable them while you are carting people around? Prevent that from happening?

Wed Jul 19 2023 04:25:29 PM EDT from LadySerenaKitty

For whatever reason, a lot of Uber passengers don't push the button to close the liftgate on my car.  Instead, they reach up and just force the thing down.  Now it will occasionally get stuck when I push the button to auto-close.  Something broke.  I looked up how much it costs to replace just ONE liftgate actuator motor.  It's $2400 for ONE of them, and there are two (port and starboard).

For whatever reason, a lot of Uber passengers don't push the button to close the liftgate on my car.  Instead, they reach up and just force the thing down.  Now it will occasionally get stuck when I push the button to auto-close.  Something broke.  I looked up how much it costs to replace just ONE liftgate actuator motor.  It's $2400 for ONE of them, and there are two (port and starboard).

Office is having a 'plastic free celebration' next week.  ( what the hell that means i dont know, i cant stomach 2/3 of the emails now as they are so full of 'inclusion/equity/green/etc' )

I should go. Drive the Fiero, bring a plastic drinking bottle.

Ouch

Mon Jul 10 2023 01:22:28 AM EDT from LadySerenaKitty

My first passengers today was an expurrience I would prefur never to repeat again.

I picked up a lesbian couple.  They were extremely toxic.  By the end of the trip, they broke up.

I picked up a lesbian couple, I dropped off two single women.

My first passengers today was an expurrience I would prefur never to repeat again.

I picked up a lesbian couple.  They were extremely toxic.  By the end of the trip, they broke up.

I picked up a lesbian couple, I dropped off two single women.

"why does it not just do xyz?"  "Well, that was not part of the requirements you gave me, and that we agreed on for this project.  I am not magic.. I cant read your mind."

Here 'win or lose' isn't really an option. Its a mandate, you comply or go elsewhere. You are replaceable. While direct management may care, go up a couple of levels and get outside the agency, and you are of zero value to them. Just another name, and resource drain.

Rumor is the hammer is going to be coming down on WFH this summer.  I guess the powers that be are pissed that so few departments are following the mandate, and are tired of it, so its not going to be pretty.  I hear ultimatums are coming, ( do or you are fired ).  Late last year several agencies have had to sign papers that they have read, understood the policy and if they dont follow it they can be terminated.  So it might even be retroactive in some cases.

Even talk of having legislature get involved to give it even sharper teeth. So if you dont follow,  you violate the law, not just policy. ( i guess Ohio had to go to that extent.. ) I suspect the extra teeth is if you break law and get fired, you lose pension...  currently if you just break rules and get fired, you dont lose it, and that would be hard to change.

Blind mandates are stupid. It should be based on need for each position. Also, I hate when people whine "its not fair". Don't like it, shut your whiny ass face, and transfer to a different position that permits it. But its going to cost jobs as people quit/fired, more cost ( managing office space is more expensive than VPN.. ). I know of a few agencies that sent everyone home but those who had to be there, and gave up their floor space ( which is how it should be ). Once floor space opened, to save cost, several leasing off-site space moved back onto the campus.  So now we have to lease space again.

And its not just 'worker's' as I know a few managers that will be gone too, they refuse to force their people to do stupid stuff.

( And the rule is not 100% in office, its 2 out and 3 in, per week. A comprise, and from what i gather not an uncommon rule )

Dont forget:

• Cameras *everywhere* tracking and recording movements. Remember when they pieced together every movement of one of the 911 terrorists? and that was decades ago.. These days if you are in any city they know every step a person makes. There are a few ways to ditch it, but it takes a lot of practice, and even those are getting harder to do as most buildings inside, and even parking garages have cameras now.    And they record anyone that comes near a post office box ( ever see '2000 mules'.. its far worse now, by several magnitudes ).
• Cameras include inside and outside of buildings, street corners, ATMs, satellites...   Several states now have active monitoring of ALL cameras, even private ones. All shoved into a database for later. 
• Cell towers, knows where you phone is even if you dont use it. 
• Your car...  its transmitting 
• Fingerprints and DNA. Even on paper, after they have traveled cross-country.   It may not be 'proof' but it does lead them back to trace the movements. And if they natch, THEN its evidence

Fri Jun 30 2023 09:10:36 PM EDT from LadySerenaKitty

I know how to mail packages without leaving any leaving a trace back to me.  I can mail a disembodied My Little Pony head to whomever introduces legislation that jeopardizes my job.

 

I know how to mail packages without leaving any leaving a trace back to me.  I can mail a disembodied My Little Pony head to whomever introduces legislation that jeopardizes my job.

Fri Jun 30 2023 20:28:06 EDT from Nurb432

Well, one is a 'organized system for 3rd party food ordering and delivery' and the other is ' hey dude, grab us a pizza on your way here'.

But, its not quite the same, as with AirBnb as the owners of the house do have to opt-in.  Would be more like if you rented rooms, then rented them back out ( which is forbidden in many leases ). Similar for ride share, all parties opt-ed in.  ( which is being attacked by the taxi industry ). i do agree its wrong to restrict this, but not a 1:1 comparison. 

And of course:  Personal interest = agenda = money = legislation.

Well, one is a 'organized system for 3rd party food ordering and delivery' and the other is ' hey dude, grab us a pizza on your way here'.

But, its not quite the same, as with AirBnb as the owners of the house do have to opt-in.  Would be more like if you rented rooms, then rented them back out ( which is forbidden in many leases ). Similar for ride share, all parties opt-ed in.  ( which is being attacked by the taxi industry ). i do agree its wrong to restrict this, but not a 1:1 comparison. 

And of course:  Personal interest = agenda = money = legislation. 

Thu Jun 29 2023 05:28:46 PM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

So here locally they just passed a law that any 'food delivery app'
has to have approval from the companies that you get food from, and
they can deny it without recourse if they dont want you delivering
their food..

What's the difference between a "food delivery app" and a person picking up food for someone else?

Isn't that how Uber and all of the "Uber for [industry]" companies present themselves? Uber isn't a taxi, it's a "ride share". Airbnb isn't a hotel reservation system, it's a "house/apartment share". Likewise for food?

Sounds like someone either has their panties in a bunch or has a personal interest to protect.

Man. Worse remote accessible meeting, ever.

Can only hear people if they are on the mic up by the TV that is doing the slide show..  they were told via text message .... no one is moving so all you hear is perhaps every 15th word.

That dont seem right to me. Law or not.    Now if i try to represent them, sure that is wrong, but if i clearly am a 3rd party service, should be my right and i should not get permission.  

"common carrier" stats should apply.

It's already like that, no need for such a law.

Wed Jun 28 2023 19:29:05 EDT from Nurb432

So here locally they just passed a law that any 'food delivery app' has to have approval from the companies that you get food from, and they can deny it without recourse if they dont want you delivering their food..

Seems like a violation of freedom to me.

So here locally they just passed a law that any 'food delivery app' has to have approval from the companies that you get food from, and they can deny it without recourse if they dont want you delivering their food..

Seems like a violation of freedom to me.

MFA breaks for 3/4 of our stuff this afternoon.

Now that they have removed physical lines and 3rd party VoIP and its all teams voice, would have been funny if it took that out too.  "we are down, but we cant call anyone or have our little meeting to talk about it " "and our card readers are broke, we cant get in the building "

So ya, sort of like taxis getting in line, hoping for business. 

At airports, we wait in a parking lot set aside for us.  It is a geofenced area so the Uber and Lyft apps can put us into a queue as soon as we enter the lot.  It's a FIFO buffer of cars, so get parked and wait in line.  At least KSAT (San Antonio International Airport) has tents and stuff set up for us, including a full-on litterbox at the far end of the parking lot.  We chill and talk at the picnic tables set up under the tents.

Sun Jun 04 2023 08:57:00 EDT from Nurb432

Dont they pre-order your services? Or are you doing it like a taxi, just get in line and wait for someone to climb aboard?

Err i meant at the airport.  i know you do service-on-call for the rest

Dont they pre-order your services? Or are you doing it like a taxi, just get in line and wait for someone to climb aboard?

Sat Jun 03 2023 11:29:02 PM EDT from LadySerenaKitty

Fuckin' shit!  Today was a TRAGEDY.  Went to work, FUCKIN NOTHIN ALL DAY!  Out of 4 times I went to the airport, I had to sit around for A FUCKIN HOUR before getting a passenger.  Third time arriving at the TNF lot, I was backing into a parking spot when DING DING DING.  Got lucky that time.  With the amount of time I was AFH (away from home) I should have way moar than $73.

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

Fuckin' shit!  Today was a TRAGEDY.  Went to work, FUCKIN NOTHIN ALL DAY!  Out of 4 times I went to the airport, I had to sit around for A FUCKIN HOUR before getting a passenger.  Third time arriving at the TNF lot, I was backing into a parking spot when DING DING DING.  Got lucky that time.  With the amount of time I was AFH (away from home) I should have way moar than $73.

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

No.  Central Indiana. 

Mon May 29 2023 02:32:20 PM EDT from LadySerenaKitty

Tell me you live in Baltimore without telling me you live in Baltimore.

Fri May 26 2023 17:28:38 EDT from Nurb432

a block away from the store, our delivery person got rear ended..  

 

Tell me you live in Baltimore without telling me you live in Baltimore.

Fri May 26 2023 17:28:38 EDT from Nurb432

a block away from the store, our delivery person got rear ended..  

Wife ordered some food, including ice cream, from local grocery.  I guess a block away from the store, our delivery person got rear ended..  

Since its all app based, the fed already knows. 

Fri May 26 2023 02:01:42 PM EDT from test2

don't tell uncle scam, he'll want his cut for the big guy.

don't tell uncle scam, he'll want his cut for the big guy.

Started the day by opening Shipt and taking BOTH of the prescription deliveries at CVS in Leon Valley, at $8 each.  Then there were 2 moar deliveries from H-E-B in Spring Branch.  Deliveries in that area take forever because it's all rich people with their McMansions and their fancy HOAs and stuffs, houses are spaced 1,000 feet apart at the MINIMUM and up to half a mile apart.  $15.21 and $23.01.

Then the nearest Shipt order was in LaVernia.  Nope, not gonna drive to LaVernia from Spring Branch, so I fired up Uber and started heading to my usual service area: a rather large range from Windcrest and Kirby going up between I-35 and FM-78 up to Schertz and Cibolo.

Cruising south on US-281, an UberX order came in.  $20.96 for the hour long drive from Spring Branch to New Braunfels.  NICE!  Other 2 orders were $19.33 for an Uber Comfort ride, and $4.97 for an UberX.  It was 19:40 when I dropped the last one off, so I headed home.  Finished the day with a Little Caesar's delivery for $2.61.  Not worth it, but meh.

With all that, I brought in $102.09 today, and all on less than a quarter tank of explodey juice.

We had a guy do the opposite.

Hes long gone.

Server had to be upgraded ( here an OS version upgrade is a tear own and rebuild with a new name so we break everything )

"what is on here, how does ti work"   "i donno, i warned you to document that stuff before he left. Good luck"

Mon May 15 2023 11:00:52 PM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

And again, this is "The Workplace" room, so to tie it back ... for internally built software, yes, you'd damned well better be using the toolchain I told you to use.

Or at the least not engineered to hinder ..

Mon May 15 2023 10:25:21 AM EDT from darknetuser

2023-05-13 14:12 from LadySerenaKitty
I am the exact opposite.  I say "here's the sauce" but I don't
provide anything else, except for a build guide written for
FreeBSD.  It is up to the end-user or the porter to adapt my
instructions for their OS.

The point is, if there are instructions, that is ok.

Checking for the famed '26GB windows patch' again today, and they added even more OSS stuff to the menu..   This is really odd. Security was so dead set against it. Did i get transported to the twilight zone?

• Python is there  AND pip...  ( and pip works. tho the install paths are off, i need to look at that a bit )
• Rstudio
• VLC
• GIMP
• iTunes ( true not oss, but..  a music app is approved for everyone??? )
• Visual studio code ( for the entire enterprise??? )

I am the exact opposite.  I say "here's the sauce" but I don't provide anything else, except for a build guide written for FreeBSD.  It is up to the end-user or the porter to adapt my instructions for their OS.

I second that. 

I dont expect hand holding but i also dont expect restraints either..

Fri May 12 2023 08:23:28 PM EDT from darknetuser

 "We deploy only flatpacks, here is the source code but no build documentation is included because you are to use the flatpack" then the probabilities of me bothering porting your project drop.

Sun Apr 02 2023 13:03:07 EDT from darknetuser

 but I dislike the trend.

 me too, and the point about cloud. the best way to spy, is force this trend. make it easy to use, and poeple will use it. and mostly they dont know, now they stay naked 

Similar here. I hate people. But its my job to be friendly, helpful and be customer focused.  So i am. ( sort of ironic.  "be a computer person, great for introverts". didnt quite work out that way.. )

And yes, government wants all to be serfs. Serfs are not self-employed.  

Im not sure that its having IT, its just having things 'different' than you are going for in general. 

"why are you changing careers, IT makes all sorts of money, what is wrong with you" sort of thing. 

"why do we have to do this evaluation of products, why cant we just go buy what i want and switch".  So we can spend 5 million a year ( up from 175k a year ), lose quite a bit of functionality, a 2 year upheaval and re-engineering of EVERYTHING we do, and a lot of what 35 other business units do.. and how 200 more BUs interact with us...

ya, makes sense to me just to go out and buy what you want instead..  not.

User: "i can access your cloud hosted app from my house, but i cant if i'm on the office VPN" . "Ill open a ticket using the system externally to get some help"

HD:  "Hmm lets send that to the app support team, using the same system and claim its down"

Um no, idiots.

a little of both

Sat Feb 25 2023 09:05:13 AM EST from zelgomer

2023-02-23 22:37 from Nurb432 <nurb432@uncensored.citadel.org>
Email today "i have to say this is a great place to work, as a fellow
employee"   ( paraphrased slightly to protect the guilty )

its the big guy. of course its a great place, for him.

lol is that supposed to be an opinion or a diktat? "This is a great place to work, and you WILL enjoy it. Or else."

Or maybe it's a threat. "You won't find anything better, so don't bother looking."

Email today "i have to say this is a great place to work, as a fellow employee"   ( paraphrased slightly to protect the guilty )

its the big guy. of course its a great place, for him.

lol

Thu Feb 23 2023 09:07:52 AM EST from anonymous

I have! I have! I have!

I suspect the TSA would not let me into the US lol. A friend of mine tried and they pulled guns on him because he looked exactly like some guy in the Top Wanted list.

I get the feeling the entire IT industry is sinking. it feels a lot like when i worked in automotive ( still IT ) back in the 80s and 90s..

I dont have much time left to care, i hope bailing water gets me to that point and no swimming is needed. ( but i fear this fall i need to jump on another boat before i have to swim )

2 more people at the office just announced they are leaving.  Cant sand the place ( management ) anymore

Oh, and since we get free training courses ( actually its part of our review.. x amount of classes ), i figured id take advantage of that as i watch things unfold.

I dig a pretty good hole :)

just kidding, actually i dont.. 

Im actually starting to work on my resume.. I had it up to date until i got hired here, but not kept it up on the various groups i worked in since since i was mainly the "ITSM dude".. everything else was 2ndary and related to the core job so really didnt need to ( like project management, BA, coding, scripting, BI.. bla bla ), But now that i think the hand writing is on the wall, its time to start getting it updated so i can sound special.

I do have some contacts in other BUs that would like to have me around.  Almost got a position to be some sort of "Technical Analyst" in another BU, but just before i applied to make it official, they lost funding. Glad i didnt, it would have looked bad.  But i also have to be careful as since my current BU is planning on gutting IT in other BUs, i dont want to just end up back here. ( that has happened to a few people in the past )

Tue Feb 21 2023 06:45:03 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar

How about that, we both started our current jobs the same year. I will hit 22 years on Feb 26.

Dunno what your skill set is, but if you have a CV you're willing to share?

• Impossible to meet goals mandated down. ( effects your reviews )
• Expansion of the power base into other BUs, when the expansion is not in our charter of what services we provide
• Justification of your existence, what you have done, how much money you saved by being here.
• ROI now has to be done on *everything* we do.. even incident management.
• 5 different ways mandated to track your time and prove you are doing something and have things scheduled to do to fill 100% of your time. ( incidents, not accounted for )
• Petty upper management, wont listen to 'just an employee' or actively holding your career back.
• Bleeding people right and left
• System i support, going to be told we are switching platforms later this year. Zero input in the decision making process, even tho my team of 3 are the experts in this field..

Sounds like its time to move on, or at least get my ducks in a row to prepare. Ya, been talking about how i dislike the place these days, but i do think the bus is coming. And id rather not be underneath it.

Too bad too, just about to hit 22 years here. ( first of April.. ya.. i get the joke :) )

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Tue Feb 14 2023 09:17:28 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Clusterfuck.  You can say the whole thing, this is Uncensored

DAMN FUCKING RIGHT! USE THE FUCKING PROFANITY, ASSHOLES!!

Not me, but heard about another person who left our org as an upper manager "as long as i am here you will never get a raise or be able to move to a new position"

Petty *****es dont deserve to be managers.

Apparently this upper manager wont listen to 'regular folk' it has to come from your manager before its listened to.   So while common sense did prevail in the end, he's still an ass.

Unfortunately we have several people at the office like this, if you are not in the old boys managers club, you are meaningless.  Some will even refuse to speak to you, and not just by ignoring your email, they will literally walk right around you as you stand there and talk to your manager about the SAME EXACT THING like you dont exist...   bunch of freaking children  

Tue Feb 07 2023 01:31:30 PM EST from Nurb432

Yay..  after a 2nd round of explanations, common sense won. 

Yay..  after a 2nd round of explanations, common sense won. 

So we can either spend 7 bucks a month on network accounts ( a handful of people ) and use existing systems as is... or we can spend 100's of hours of dev time, insert 3 layers of complexity, still not get full functionality..   wtf is wrong with our leadership?  

i need out of here. Clearly I am not going to last until time to hang up my towel.

I know, its just not in my nature... 

Thu Feb 02 2023 03:07:33 PM EST from LadySerenaKitty

Clusterfuck.  You can say the whole thing, this is Uncensored Citadel.

 

Tue Jan 03 2023 11:50:42 EST from Nurb432

What a cluterF

 

Sad thing is i run what was mandated to be the repository for work to be submitted, tracked, reported on, as well as the working knowledge repository, linked back to work being done.

Since nearly everyone flat out refused, management actually let them put links to their info in my KB module..    really?  how about step up and be a manager instead? Even to the point now   "we want you to make us a on-boarding form, which then emails us the details and closes the ticket immediately "  wtf.

I'm glad my time is about up.  i'm so over it. 

And i had forgot about smart sheet...  add that to our list too.

Thu Feb 02 2023 02:14:16 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar

lets mange our work in yet another system, at the same time.  ( up
to 5 duplicate systems now..)

Teams, wiki, sharepoint, gitlab, Project Insight, SmartSheet ... no wonder no one can find anything.

Clusterfuck.  You can say the whole thing, this is Uncensored Citadel.

Tue Jan 03 2023 11:50:42 EST from Nurb432

What a cluterF

lets mange our work in yet another system, at the same time.  ( up to 5 duplicate systems now..)

wtf. 

So it looks like in our SINGLE org ( equivalent to a department in the real world ), we now have 10 ways to track our time.  

and 5 or 6 source control systems. bla bla. Im being asked to move to Azure Devops, "ill pass. No thanks. You have your MS crap if you like, but i wont. My latest version is in a file share, you want it in your garbage, you can write a script to grab it. "

and more than one way tot rack incidents ( even tho its been mandated everyone use my system.  " oh, we dont use that" )

What a cluterF

"I dont like this, when did this new policy go into effect, so and so still can do x why cant my other new person" "well, that was missed, thanks for letting us know so we can remove those rights tomorrow" 

lol

New 'suggestion box' form we just ran across today out on our internal portal page. ( i thought it had been turned off years ago..  )

"You can remain anonymous, however the recipient will have your name and email with your submission"

Um, that isn't how it works..

Send out a yearly report to a department. Only has 5 columns.  A total and 4 break downs of the total. 

"my total number is 2x they were last year" ( we average about the same each year.. slight variations but under 5% )

He added all 5 columns..  a senior manager who has been here for a decade.

Its what happens when you isolate people for 2 years. Regular immunity tanks.

( the one down side of being an introvert too :) )

Mon Dec 26 2022 10:38:24 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar

It does seem that we're in an awkward place right now with regard to regular seasonal sickness being back with a vengeance. It feels like everyone is experiencing the equivalent of the first time you send your kid to preschool and everyone gets sick for m onths until your immune system figures out how to cope.

I deal with it by drinking lots of coffee. It doesn't help or hurt; I just really like coffee.

We have about 600 people in our department.  I heard only about`~150 showed up for the xmas dinner this year. Mostly purchased by management, but people brought in deserts, etc. 

I didnt go in the office for it, and even if i did id never go eat. Aside from it being flu season with everyone sniffling and pawing at the food, a few years back we had one where the managers brought in food. Didn't bring enough. Thought id be sociable that year for a change and participate. "team player" nonsense. I stood in line nearly an hour.. Finally got up to the food "sorry, we ran out about 20 minutes ago, but we have some chips and drinks left" wtf.  never again. 

Lol.

When we went home for fluvid i took my keyboard home. Never brought it back just in case we got sent home again.  I got lots of comments about it due to the noise. both good and bad, but many noticed it was gone..

I'm keeping a minimal of personal items there now. Basically a usb hub and a fan are mine. Plus a couple of small trinkets i dont have an issue losing if it came down to it.  But that is about it.

Oh, and my off-site backup of my personal files from my PC ( pictures, email, bla bla ), but they are encrypted so other than losing a 100 dollar device and pissing me off, no real risk.

Mon Dec 26 2022 06:27:29 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar

 At least there's no one to complain about my loud clicky keyboard.

While its not a secret the director im under now prefers people not to come in, last week the ones that ruined it for us last time noticed i was there and made a big deal about me being there. "ya, you are back bla bla"  "ya hi"

After figuring out i wasn't away due to medical ( i had hurt my foot a few weeks ago as mentioned in another room ) Asked me a loaded question " how does it feel only coming in 3 days a week" ( which is not the case now )  " its nice not being here all the time, but having a place to go when i need it "

Be 2 weeks before i go back in, im sure they will figure it out eventually.  ( they still work for the other director, who does not believe in WFH ). IF they ask directly "what is your schedule"  " it varies now based on need so i cant really say"

Mon Dec 26 2022 03:33:56 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar

 "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" basis.

Earlier this year we were mandated by the big guy to come back in 3 days a week, unless it was approved by HR. ( which is not easy, they fought the entire home-work thing in the first place and are stuck in the 50s. it took the blanket health mandate from above to get them out of the way in 2020 )

After the new mandate of return, depending on your director, the policy is either adhered to exactly, or tossed out the window totally.  Does not seem like much in the middle. My director at the time was one of the former, so we all came in 3 days a week.  But i recently changed directors due to some reorg of a couple of departments, and nearly all his people have not been seen hardly at all in 2 years. They all lost their desks too and have to make due with random 'hotel spaces' when they come in for a meeting or something..

But, being who i am, i decided not to take advantage too much, and come in every couple of weeks for 2 or 3 days as a middle ground. It will still save me tons in gas money and travel time, but i can still be around every so often so upper management sees my face.( and i can keep my desk without any static ) I make sure i walk around a lot on those days to be seen.  And since hardly anyone comes in on Fridays, i normally choose that as one of my days in. It makes it for a quiet day at the office.

We have entire agencies created to monitor and enforce the rules.  Even when the rules are stupid. They enjoy it.

Around here, be sure to wave at the camera as you work.  That was another nice thing about working from home, no camera over your shoulder. No tracking your movements via door badges.

Mon Dec 19 2022 01:17:21 PM EST from darknetuser

Or, if they are anything like a regular firm in my country, they put disclaimres about what is allowed and what is not, and never care to check if people is complying.

either way its a big fat NO. 

Rolling out a company sponsored / approved online keypass system.

Can only access it via company devices, even tho its a web app.

No personal accounts allowed, like Netflix.  But if they dont have access, how would they know? 

lol. 

its also hard to give your "life" to someone else. 

Ouch. yes. its good he cared enough about his people to warn you all.  Could he assist in the search? i'm sure he has built up contacts in your industry...

Mon Oct 24 2022 02:14:36 PM EDT from darknetuser

So, the boss pulled me appart last morning and told me there is a good chance we are closing shop within the next couple of years, because he is so damn pissed off by customers and tax collection, and he does not really need the money. I can't say I can blame him. He told me it is not imminent but also told me to "start looking for another job actively".

Not great news, but at least he bothered to tell me.

Only concern i would have ( like i was mentioning ) was making an enemy, even if you simply ghosted him.   Sure, may never see the person again, but i have noticed its a small world. 

Wed Oct 12 2022 06:18:41 AM EDT from darknetuser

I think disappearing is so much better than sending an answer back, because sending an answer back is possitive feedback regarding your availability.

If you are going to steal company property, at least reload it. Geesh..

And ya, i would have done the same thing, tho i might have made up an excuse " i might get fired for helping with that laptop, sorry "  that way if we ever met again in life ( if i changed jobs or they came back ) less chance of hard feelings and having to find another place to work, again.

Here soon every exe will be monitored, as well as file access.  Admin rights are going away, and to run an unapproved exe you have to use a new tool to log the request to execute, which sends a report to security team. that is IF you are even authorized .. else it just reports you in violation )

It wont be too hard to enforce. "you come thru us next time, or you wont be working here any more"

2nd shoe is about to drop.   meeting this week: "well, our team will do all the scripting and you can interface with us "

first they restricted any 'coding' by all the groups but one, now its going to be scripting too. as i suspected.   guy over that stuff is power hungry

i get that all the time.   Other managers think they know more about a subject than i, when i live it, they just work on ways to try to avoid it.

Neat. The office removed my VPN client. Now the upgrade wont install.   That means i get a free day off, right? :)

I was not interested enough to care to watch, and Im sure Depp isn't perfect, but man, from what little i have heard 3d party,  she is totally nuts and should be hospitalized..

Fri Jul 22 2022 09:07:29 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Hehe. Everyone calls her that now, even people not normally into that kind of talk. :)

Because it was such a bombshell revelation during the trial.  It was the one single thing that made everyone hate her, and that was before they started talking about all the abuse.

She deserves the name of Amber Turd, because she used the bed as a litterbox instead of the actual litterbox out of revenge.

Mon Jul 18 2022 15:09:38 EDT from LoanShark

2022-07-02 14:50 from zelgomer
Be careful with Musk. He makes for some good popcorn entertainment, but

he is not our friend, for any interpretation of "our".

Bingo. Nobody likes him. Not the left, not the right, not the center.

Not even Amber Heard.

You seem to have misspelled "Amber Turd"

I think trump proved his sincerity with his actions. He made a lot of promises, and followed thru on them. ( or at least tried, many were blocked, but he did try ),  His history is pretty solid too. I think he does love this country, but ya hes not stupid, and knows all ships rise with the tide, including his.. and yes, you watch everyone.

Musk, clearly is a prick that is only in it for himself. 

Well, he just fell off my list of people i admire.  Hes not as smart as he thinks he is, and is a freaking jerk. I hope his best talent give him the finger, start their own company, and crush him.

One example, "everyone must be in the office AT LEAST 40 hours a week", and you have to "swipe your badge, or you have to justify with your manager why you didnt"

Another:

"Musk has previously hit out against remote working policies and blasted Americans for 'trying to avoid going to work at all' and compared them to staff in China who stay at the factory 'burning the 3am oil'.

In April, staff at Tesla's Gigafactory were made to sleep at work when production resumed after a three-week shutdown. 

The factory started operating as a 'closed loop system to avoid further shutdowns caused by China's strict Zero Covid policy.

Workers were given a sleeping bag and mattress and part of the factory floor to camp out on. "

So someone rolled out a patch by mistake this morning. Killed SCOM enterprise wide. Has to be rebuilt from scratch no rollback possible. ( i would think just restore the last backup...  but what do i know.. even if its a week old, still better than a complete restart.. )

There goes a few people's holiday weekend. 

Actually i'm not sure.   Its a federal holiday now right? Normally we honor those. But it might not happen until next year.

Yay tomorrow is Monday, back to work day!.

( that was sarcasm, for those that dont know me )

"you now have 3 weeks to complete xyz for HR"  "um, months ago we were told it was optional"  "no, its mandatory,  you have 3 weeks left... "

grrrr

Email from the president of my vendor for the software i support "do you have 10 minutes later today to bring you up to speed on some exciting news?"

Ya, they sold out. 

Strange thing is they sold out to a 'holdings company' who does nothing other tan buy smallish software companies.  They provide no products of value of their own. They have at least 40 holdings in various industries, but all software related.. And that company is owned by parent 'shell'..  Who owns 6 companies, who sole purpose is also to buy others..   Between the 6 there must be 1000 entities.. 

The top parent company and the 6 subsidiaries web info is mostly "how can we buy you" "we never sell what we buy, come join us"  ( oh and their web pages SUCK )

Seems like a pyramid scheme to me. 

So one of my tasks is creating KPI reports for the org. ( mostly automated.. but i still manage the thing ) One thing we include is up-time of applications.   To date, no one has figured out how to automate collection from Mainframe apps, so they give them to us manually.

This month the manager that gives us that data: " i dont know why we are reporting on this, it isn't our app and we dont even know what it is" ( slightly paraphrased ).. wtf.. you have been giving me data. 

Freaking liars. 

Assuming you are not kidding. Its a convention for network shares: "Universal Naming Convention"  It gets you out of stupid drive letters

\\blablaserver\blablashare

Thu Jun 02 2022 02:18:50 PM EDT from LadySerenaKitty

I drive FreeBSD.  All my dev stuffs is on FreeBSD.  WTF is a UNC path?

I drive FreeBSD.  All my dev stuffs is on FreeBSD.  WTF is a UNC path?

You are not a 'professional windows developer' either i assume.

He is, he should know this. 

Wed Jun 01 2022 05:32:22 PM EDT from zelgomer

I don't know what a UNC path is. I'm guessing it's either something Windows or something web.

Oh and one of the 'workers' ( a developer ) didnt understand what a UNC path was last week....

University of North Carolina, right?  😉

(My team is based out of Raleigh so we get that a lot)

Oh and one of the 'workers' ( a developer ) didnt understand what a UNC path was last week....

So a team with 2 actual employees that do work. 3 managers, 2 BAs. just got approved for 3 more managers in next years budget.

wth. 

We get it all the time too.  What is funny is the same day as the this months phishing "training" video came out our director sent out a survey, from a 3rd party company with an external strange looking URL.

"dont do this, unless i say its ok" ( and several people reported it.. )

lol.

Our HR stuff uses funny external URLs too ( even the training :) )   At least with my system, when we were forced to move it to the vendor's cloud 2 years ago we kept the same signed URLs and simply had the DNS updated. Its our domain name, we can make up any address we want..  Its not that hard folks.. really.

We get psuedo-spam emails dreamed up by our security dept. One of the women clicked on the fake one about the viewing the camera footage on the fridge because somebody had recently stolen her lunch. We get 'thanks for being vigilant' when we report one of these emails. Especially fun to report emails about new required training as spam, even tho u know they aren't spam.

"lets have a meeting with my 4 team members on how our team uses bla bla system and questions we have"   "Great, we can meet for an hour or so next week."

Word got out now 5 groups and 200 people want to come all at once.. .wtf.  no.  

So we are getting a 'new and improved' time keeping system.  Just got an email from HR " mandatory 2 hour training session so you can learn to enter your time, and 1 more hour if you approve"

What in the holy F .. 2 hours just to learn how to enter time???? ( and all we do is enter how many hours we worked, or vacation, sick, etc and be sure it adds up to our weekly allotment.  its NOT that complex of a concept .. it really isn't )

Everyday i'm so glad its almost time for me to leave.

So as most of you are aware, i work for a fairly large organization. ( guessing around 100k employees total, supporting ~ 7 million "customers" )

One of the jobs my boss has ( still not sure how he got stuck with it ) is to create our agency's org chart ( ~ 500 staff in our agency ).  He does it in PowerPoint..( i know there are better tools out there but its his gig ) This weekend we now have exceeded the limits of PowerPoint due to too many managers and now has to be 2 charts so it will fit.. 

Its been a running joke for decades about "more chiefs than Indians", and creating new managers/departments/agencies as the wind blows, out of both favors and incompetence. "so who became a manager today"   But this is really getting out of hand.

Vendor is really pissing me off.  3 months now on moving their system from AWS to Azure.   on month of no contact.  complain to the owner then in an hour

"can we meet in an hour with 2 of your teams"  um, no. 

Then later in the day:  "we want a new VPN, here is the IP range"  "no, like we told the last 2 times you did this, WE tell YOU what range it is"   ( last time they even ignored what what told them  "the server address is xxxxx" , um no, that isn't the subnet we told you to use" "the paperwork was wrong this is what we used"  "um, no you f-ed up fix it. )     "we need the certs for your LDAP server"  "no you dont, as like i have told you several times we have 15 servers and we are not using LDAPs we use stock LDAP and have no current plans on changing" 

Common sense should say that a vendor does not dictate the local IP range of a client that is THEIR network, not the vendor.  Idiots. 

So a couple of months ago i mentioned they are banning coding in .Net ( anything, be it VB, C#, he does not care ) unless you are on the dev team. 

Well, as I expected, the person in charge of that policy now wants to stop people from making powershell scripts.. unless you are member of another team. ( not dev, but one under his control ). Its not been announced yet, but its on his agenda.  

Working on adding a new business unit to my system ( an ITSM thing.. )

"What is a Q"..    sigh, going to be a fun one.

I have only left 2 jobs due to my direct manager.  And we didnt do an exit interview really on the first one, just a meeting with HR to agree to terms so i didnt sue them.

The 2nd was was funny, i was the ONLY IT guy there, it was my shop.  During the exit meeting with HR:  "hey, you might want the keys to the closet/computer room" Mostly did that to cover myself and not get accused of anything. Didn't trust the manager ( new CFO, who i reported thru to the president ).   Didn't bother telling them the passwords to the servers however, and they didnt ask.  They called a few days later, wife told them i went on vacation for a few days and she would let me know.  ( i didnt, but wanted them to sweat a little )

Called them in about week to give them the IDs. "just wanted to let you know, its a good thing i'm honest and not vindictive. I had passwords and logins for nearly every plant in the extended company ( we were a independent business unit of a larger company. long story ), had remote access to the network for the last 2 weeks, customer records, access to all the design specs on our products, and a few other things that should scare the pee out of you" " Next time you decide to try to screw your next IT guy like you did me, you may want to think twice. He may not be so kind and shut you down"

Left a couple of other jobs just to move on to greener pastures ( or that i saw the company was going down and didnt want to be left standing ). Left on good terms. No exit interviews then either. Just 'gotta go, its been nice'.   

I've been brutal on my manager in a couple of exit reviews. "You are the primary reason I sought a transfer or a different employer. I simply can not work with the level of management incompetence present in this department or organization, and I believe that eventually the current management will be replaced, or this department will fail and be absorbed into a different group with more talented management." 

"Did you get that all? I can repeat it, if you missed anything..." 

Fri Mar 11 2022 08:59:37 EST from Nurb432

Not me, but a coworker is transferring between agencies.  Even tho you are still employed here they still make you do an exit interview with HR, and they have the manager you are leaving there in the room too. How pointless if you are leaving because of that manager?  ( which is often the case here. most of ours suck and drive people away ).

 

And cant really refuse if you are transferring.. But, if i was leaving totally, id flip them the bird.  "request denied, you got your 2 weeks legal notice, cya"

Not me, but a coworker is transferring between agencies.  Even tho you are still employed here they still make you do an exit interview with HR, and they have the manager you are leaving there in the room too. How pointless if you are leaving because of that manager?  ( which is often the case here. most of ours suck and drive people away ).

And cant really refuse if you are transferring.. But, if i was leaving totally, id flip them the bird.  "request denied, you got your 2 weeks legal notice, cya"

Working on automating a particular request process, which does require logging in so we have an audit trail... . "at that step can we have them print the form, sign it, scan, it then reattach it".

Why even bother. 

I guess i'm stuck with web office. "we need to reload your system due to a botched application install".  No thanks. too much trouble especially since i'm going to start using VDI soon.   They tried all the stuff i did first. I was hoping the desktop support team had a trick up their sleeves since they do this for a living, and i dont anymore.

There is one feature i do need from time to time, that isn't in web outlook.  But ill survive i guess.    Disappointing. 

Oh, they can put it back in the bottle here, by decree. Or even enacting a law. Remember who i work for.  

I get it... But... maybe he was showing respect that he figured you were already checking OWA in the absence of access to your local client. More likely, he just didn't think it through - but I'd usually throw a life-vest to a desktop support guy who did this to himself. 

Thu Feb 24 2022 12:43:46 EST from Nurb432

ya owa    just the idea of what he did was nuts. 

lol 

so said tech got a hold of me, logged in remote and after 2 hours gave up " i cant get it either, i need to talk to someone"  ( tier 3 ). This was around lunch. 3 pm rolls around, i shut down and head home.  Get home around 430 and teams messages waiting from tier 3  "ok, i got in and did stuff ( paraphrasing ) and rebooting now"

Um...  

ya owa    just the idea of what he did was nuts. 

LMAO. 

Do you run local Exchange? If you're running OWS or have OWA on your local Exchange server, even if your local Outlook client won't load, you should be able to use the web client to read his e-mail. ;) 

Wed Feb 23 2022 12:05:46 EST from Nurb432

outlook wont load.   put in a call.

tech emails me

 

really?

outlook wont load.   put in a call.

tech emails me

really?

Aaaand because we have people that dont know what they are doing, all my 'service accounts' used for my automated processes were wiped from Azure around 2:30..  thanks folks. 

Man. typos. Sorry folks. Doing too many things at once. I. Need. To. Slow. Down.

2020 actually saved my job in a strange way. I hate people, i hate being around them. People at office are dumb asses and i was over it, and had started looking for another place to work.

Being home for nearly a year, changed my outlook as far less stress, more time in my pocket ( even tho i worked more.. ) etc.  I could just 'do my gig' and not be bothered. 

Going back to the office was dreadful. Thankfully it was  only 3 days.  And with most else still out, it wasn't *terrible* i just wasn't fond of it.    But if everyone comes back. i give myself 6 moths and ill be filing for retirement and go find another place to work.  Would love to find a way to work for DNR or something... out in the woods on my own.  I miss being on the road doing network stuff, but at my age now, and with responsible ( and pets ) that isn't realistic 

Sure, i agree some people need that in-person interaction, but not all of us do. The stress you get from not being there, just remember we get stress from not being home. That person that you are now talking to in the office may actual dread being there and is just putting on a front to appear sociable and like everyone else.  ( and doing that all day, wears you out, really it does )

So an 'anonymous employee survey' came out.  I thought id look at it just for fun.

They ask your orientation 3 different ways. and every 3rd question had the term 'inclusion' in it. ( various forms )   How about "do you like it here, and do you do a good job" who the f-cares what you are or identify as? Its all this forced categorization and recognition nonsense that causes rifts and issues for people who are different. Just let everyone be who they are, judge them on their actions..

Then at the end they asked you to pick your manager and rate him. ya, that will be honest.   Once a few years ago they did that and people were honest, that most of management sucked.  Everyone paid the price. " never again will we be honest" was the sentiment. 

For many of us, we also showed we did far better at home.  Of course not all jobs support not being in office, and of course some people 'need' the in-office interaction to stay focused. But, in general our agency was already moving towards hybrid before everything went haywire. My group was doing 1 day a week, a few others 2 or 3, and one was discussing full time at home.

Problem is the people that run this show here are trapped in the 50s and dont feel you are being productive unless you are strapped to your chair in a sea of desks, and be watched by your supervisor.

My wife has pretty much established, by numbers, that productivity actually IMPROVED when they shifted to WFH... other incidents, like HR issues, have dropped significantly - and Covid cases at work keep spreading with members who have returned from WFH to the office. 


But - the CEO and COO still feel this vague, unformed sense of, "but we're probably getting ripped off because we can't have supervisors looking over their shoulder throughout the entire workday!" 

It is this weird, irrational, "even if the numbers are telling us we're getting better productivity, I *feel* like we could squeeze even MORE out of them if we were standing there whipping them to produce more," response. 

I think at the top level - there is a huge desire to simply make subordinates "bend the knee," and do things to assert dominance.

Why are you making them do this? 

"So that they know I *can*..." 

It applies to so many more things than just WFH policie

Thu Feb 17 2022 16:40:46 EST from Nurb432

Official mandate handed down today from the top of the mountain: A maximum of 2 days WFH per week, if your job duties support it.

That is what i have been doing since we went back. They better be making others start coming in too. There were plenty of people that never came back. Unequal polices, that better stop now that there is a directive. 

Aside from losing 2 + hours a day in driving, and getting up earlier 3 days a week, gas is freaking expensive and only going up ( i heard rumors of $7 a gallon by end of summer + 1970's style shortages )

Official mandate handed down today from the top of the mountain: A maximum of 2 days WFH per week, if your job duties support it.

That is what i have been doing since we went back. They better be making others start coming in too. There were plenty of people that never came back. Unequal polices, that better stop now that there is a directive. 

Aside from losing 2 + hours a day in driving, and getting up earlier 3 days a week, gas is freaking expensive and only going up ( i heard rumors of $7 a gallon by end of summer + 1970's style shortages )

So a slight update on my VDI quest:

Turns out its NOT my people who are either butt-heads or incompetent morons. Something about changes Microsoft made late last year prevents any NEW pool to be accessed externally. Existing pools still can.   Since mine was just created, i didn't get grandfathered, in effect.

Our team who manages it, are not happy either as its caused all sorts of headaches for them. 

I did mange to get it to work via VPN + a regular RDP client ( even on my chromebook ).  So if I dont ever shut the VDI desktop down and only log off, i can at least use my Linux box. We also have web access to vmwareVDI sessions its our 'privileged access' desktops, for special admin work, with even more limited apps, so in theory i could web to that, then RDP back out if they ever pull VPN access from non-shop controlled computers ( there are rumors ). So i guess not all is lost, and its still better than dealing with locally installed windows every day.

I worked for a non-it company once where its destruction was deliberate. 

Long story behind it, but there was a point of failure they were trying to reach, to push out the partner.  They underestimated the determination of said partner, and by the time they did finally bail, it was too late to save it and went under.

Stories like this make me wonder why I'm not employed. It is like corporate IT across America decided they would rather have idiots managing their IT infrastructure. 

Tue Feb 01 2022 17:34:44 EST from Nurb432

So our networking people are unable to figure out an IP that goes along with a DNS entry.  " we need the IP address, not the server name".

Is it time to retire yet? Idiots. 

Yep. 

Unless i'm willing to use the 'shared pool' which has stock apps and i cant add anything, which makes it pointless for me.  

Fri Feb 04 2022 01:27:23 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Seriously? You have to use a Windows machine attached to the corporate network to access a Windows VDI on the corporate network? Someone has missed the point spectacularly.

whoohoo i got approval to have my windowsvdi moved from the 'shared pool' to a 'private pool', AND i get admin rights to install my stuff.

"you now have to use the windows client to use it" ( and i suspect, on vpn or on site too... )

WTF  now its pointless. 

So our networking people are unable to figure out an IP that goes along with a DNS entry.  " we need the IP address, not the server name".

Is it time to retire yet? Idiots. 

Same here, in April...

Tue Feb 01 2022 09:39:44 AM EST from IGnatius T Foobar

 21 years with the same company, which is a freaking eternity.

Got to go up to the top of the statehouse dome today. its 13 stories in the air.   and yes, you have to walk most of it.  Spiral staircases, crawl thru holes in the walls.  

But this time got to run around the rest of the thing, cat walks, maintenance areas.   There were rooms i never knew existed hiding up there.  HUGE things. 3 stories tall.. 

Fun times :) 

In my case, i dont support that stuff.  

Today was the only time i was glad my stuff was in cloud and used external DNS

Mon Jan 24 2022 12:31:40 PM EST from ParanoidDelusions

It seems that at the very least you have excellent job security. 

 

It seems that at the very least you have excellent job security. 

Seems last night they patched DNS servers with some Microsoft OS security patch. that caused a boot loop.  Cant find out the actual patch #, 'its secret'.. ( after that last break-in pretty much every team operates that way now. Refuses to talk to anyone else )

1 - They didnt notice this? Oh, why should we check after a server reboots that its ok?

2 - They did ALL DNS servers .. primary and back up .. at the same time 

3 - Apparently didnt test the patch..

GO TEAM!

( so if you do any patching this week, might want to watch for that :) )

Neat. entire network has collapsed.  DNS is broke, authentication is broke.    The 'network and server people' have no idea what is wrong so called Microsoft. "there are issues with the network stack"

Glad its not my problem :)   Ironically my key pieces are still working, since they are off site. 

Seems we lost 3 or 4 esx servers tonight.  200+ VMs vanished.   Took 3 hours to bring them back. ( took out the SMTP mail relay i use and one of my dev databases, so my apps started throwing errors out of the blue )

I guess they dont know what HA is..   And i wont tell them, dont want them to know i used to be 1/2 our vmware team  some 15 years ago.. i do NOT want to get sucked into that area again. 

Forgot, when my parrot was still alive, every time you talk on the phone or headset he thought you were talking to him.  So of course he would start talking back..  And being a nanday conure it makes it impossible to hear/talk.

Had to close the door and hide so he wouldn't hear me.

in my case its a cat in my lap, or a dog with a squeaky toy bouncing around the room.

So, i got into regular VDI today.

Does not seem too bad *and* i can do it via a browser, however you cant install anything being a 'shared pool'.. They have to build you a separate pool.  And i need 3 'extras' to do my job. So, might ask. Donno yet.

sigh. 'what was being promoted" freaking typo check. :(  sorry.

As far as 'local help' Put in a ticket a week ago due to them taking down another PDC and not putting in a CMR. i was broke. "i see x PDC is down, what should i be using now" was basically all it said. However, THIS time they put a CMR in the next day ( last time they never did.. )  and it mentioned what was being prompted so i fixed my app and moved on with my day. BUT i left the ticket open, just curious how long it took them to respond to a simple 20 second question, that was effecting production ( as far as they knew )

Last night, nearly a week later, i get a response, basically saying i'm stupid for doing it this way and that its wrong with a bunch of unnecessary fancy words to make him look smart. Really wtf THAT is how you treat your customers?. freaking child.. i was doing his job when he was still in grade school learning how to count past 5.  Its a good thing i was home, id have gone over to tell him to fuck off.

Went on a rather long explanation of why we do it, and what the advantage is, and no, we dont have a choice anyway.  No word back from Mr Smarty Pants.

Lol even worse,  they changed the system, and i cant read. it now defaults to a year from today ..  what in the world.  So i was looking at next December.  

I hate this system in its current incarnation. i wish it would burn to the ground.

Great. 

"why is my ticket  escalating, isn't this a holiday" Damned personnel changed our holidays schedule after they first published the dates last summer, so i have the wrong day in my system.  Dammit.  this is the 2nd time they have done that to me over the years.

Now i get to look stupid again, explain to 100s what happened and try to clean up the mess next month.

reminds me of the story i have told so many times:

Met new CFO ( i was on leave when he was hired ) . "hey, IT guy, how do i change the color of the text in this cell"  I thought he was joking at first. "lol, funny guy we got here"   Um, no, the CFO, who LIVES in excel does not know how to change a font....  "we are screwed".  Now dont get me wrong, i dont expect everyone to be experts with computer stuff ( especially 20+ years ago ) but that is HIS JOB...

5 minutes later i had to tell him to shut up when he yelled at our receptionist and made her cry.  Wanted to punch the guy right there.  It went down hill from there. I was gone in under 6 months, from the only place i liked being at. .

And yes. we were screwed. Over about year period he destroyed the company and moved on just before they filed bankruptcy. "i saved x dollars"  

"we are ahead of schedule, but the piece you had planned to wait on for 10:30 will now happen around 2pm"

How is that ahead of schedule ? LoL. 

odd. I got a bright pretty 'security check failed' message the first time i tried to post that above. 

No department can have their own developer doing internal work for your own applications. You also can not do any amateur work to get your job done. You must contract with the blessed development team as a formal project. wtf. 

i'm glad my time is drawing to a close, these f-ers are getting more stupid by the month.

Looks like all our contractors are going to end up getting VDI.  Seems we are having to sue people to get hardware back.. Which of course costs time and money, on our part.

came out of a discussion where apparently with 'shared pools' where VMs are spun/up down on demand ( with random names each time ), SCCM is being installed, so it reports back as an asset in the data feed into my system. ( but not all people are on shared, and some get dedicated VMs.. making it even more of a mess to track )

Administering it is the problem. :) 

Thu Nov 04 2021 18:03:49 EDT from Nurb432

GPO itself isn't the problem but if ours applies, you get all the crap we push.. 

GPO itself isn't the problem but if ours applies, you get all the crap we push.. 

Group Policy is the absolute fsckin' worst. I mean, it is granular, powerful, and simply takes all of the complexity of *nix and wraps it up in an even *more* confusing Graphical User Interface. It is the point where as a Windows admin I went, "I'm an old dog... I'm not learning this one. Fuck the masters..." 

Wed Nov 03 2021 20:32:06 EDT from Nurb432

Join our forest, and let our GPO hit you.. That will fix that :) 

Joking aside, its just insane what they are doing to our machines. If it wasn't for the couple of pieces of software i need on windows, id not be using it at all.   I guess one i could get published via VDI if i bitched enough, but id never get crystal installed on a shared server. 

Wed Nov 03 2021 08:19:50 PM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

Yeah... this kind of behavior is not typical. All of my Win machines are SSD... and they're on constantly... *knock on wood*. 

Join our forest, and let our GPO hit you.. That will fix that :) 

Joking aside, its just insane what they are doing to our machines. If it wasn't for the couple of pieces of software i need on windows, id not be using it at all.   I guess one i could get published via VDI if i bitched enough, but id never get crystal installed on a shared server. 

Wed Nov 03 2021 08:19:50 PM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

Yeah... this kind of behavior is not typical. All of my Win machines are SSD... and they're on constantly... *knock on wood*. 

Yeah... this kind of behavior is not typical. All of my Win machines are SSD... and they're on constantly... *knock on wood*. 

Tue Nov 02 2021 20:25:40 EDT from Nurb432

Its technically a VM on Linux.. so really its just a generic Intel box as far as windows knows.  Had same problem with VM on my generic Intel box too.   So do other people, on metal. 

We are also burning up SSD in the HP's like ice cream on a hot sidewalk. 30% fail rate in a year.

While i would like to blame apple, i have to be honest,  its not their fault. its our security team. 

Tue Nov 02 2021 06:47:00 PM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

The weird thing about this - is it is always APPLE people who have these experiences with trying to wedge Microsoft things on their Macs. 

My Surface Pro 4 and 5 have great all day battery life... or did, when new. 

Maybe this is more a Windows on Mac thing than a Windows thing - and maybe Apple is more of the problem than Microsoft. 

 

 

Its technically a VM on Linux.. so really its just a generic Intel box as far as windows knows.  Had same problem with VM on my generic Intel box too.   So do other people, on metal. 

We are also burning up SSD in the HP's like ice cream on a hot sidewalk. 30% fail rate in a year.

While i would like to blame apple, i have to be honest,  its not their fault. its our security team. 

Tue Nov 02 2021 06:47:00 PM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

The weird thing about this - is it is always APPLE people who have these experiences with trying to wedge Microsoft things on their Macs. 

My Surface Pro 4 and 5 have great all day battery life... or did, when new. 

Maybe this is more a Windows on Mac thing than a Windows thing - and maybe Apple is more of the problem than Microsoft. 

 

The weird thing about this - is it is always APPLE people who have these experiences with trying to wedge Microsoft things on their Macs. 

My Surface Pro 4 and 5 have great all day battery life... or did, when new. 

Maybe this is more a Windows on Mac thing than a Windows thing - and maybe Apple is more of the problem than Microsoft. 

Mon Nov 01 2021 10:52:29 EDT from Nurb432

Could fit in hardware too, but its our office's fault so here it is instead:

 

New macbook. Will run all freaking day on OSX or Linux, even in a VM.  Add a windows VM to the mix and battery lasts about 4 hours. CPU pegged the entire time due to the windows VM, due to security scans and crap. 

I sort of wondered how long it would run, forgot to plug the power into the usb hub this morning. So around 10 am i found out :) 

Could fit in hardware too, but its our office's fault so here it is instead:

New macbook. Will run all freaking day on OSX or Linux, even in a VM.  Add a windows VM to the mix and battery lasts about 4 hours. CPU pegged the entire time due to the windows VM, due to security scans and crap. 

I sort of wondered how long it would run, forgot to plug the power into the usb hub this morning. So around 10 am i found out :) 

Used to work with a black guy at MCI and then Legoto/MCI in support. 

He used to get treated like shit sometimes, and I'd ask him how he put up with it... 

He said, "I take the money and smile." 

Sat Oct 30 2021 11:48:23 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

boss, which has caused the boss to be so happy as to hand me a juicy
bunch of extra cash for fixing the crisis.

Heh. Nice way to make some money if you can handle the abuse.

And that's really the thing, isn't it. If you make enough money you can take a lot more of the crap.

• "Please send me a copy of the email you sent to the system so i can verify its content"
• "ok, here is what i got" 
• "um, no that is what was sent to you i need what you sent back out"
• "oh, that must be in my sent items then"

Really? This is a "senior" IT person.  Id give a non-tech end-user slack, but even then, this is pretty fundamental stuff in 2021...

Hes a nice guy, but geesh. 

arrrgh. idiots. 

Earned money is always good.

lol

This used to happen at Intel quite often. 

As if they didn't understand we all had e-mail, pagers, and push-to-talk Motorola phones that had a group broadcast mode. 

Fri Sep 24 2021 13:07:17 EDT from Nurb432

Every so often i see signs posted " meeting cancelled " on the door to a hearing room ( public stuff )  but its never posted anywhere else. People all the time come in, "dammit, why dont they tell people"

Fri Sep 24 2021 12:50:49 PM EDT from LoanShark

we posted it in the filing cabinet of the 3rd sub-basement of the regional planning office on alpha centauri

 

“There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now. … What do you mean you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh, for heaven’s sake, mankind, it’s only four light years away, you know. I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that’s your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams.”

Fri Sep 24 2021 12:50:49 PM EDT from LoanShark

we posted it in the filing cabinet of the 3rd sub-basement of the regional planning office on alpha centauri

Every so often i see signs posted " meeting cancelled " on the door to a hearing room ( public stuff )  but its never posted anywhere else. People all the time come in, "dammit, why dont they tell people"

Fri Sep 24 2021 12:50:49 PM EDT from LoanShark

we posted it in the filing cabinet of the 3rd sub-basement of the regional planning office on alpha centauri

“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

"we posted it on the project charter page, dont you spend 2 hours every day looking at it? " oh and another 2 hours looking at submitted CMRs" 

No, i rely on the PM to do their damned jobs. 

Fri Sep 24 2021 10:10:33 AM EDT from Nurb432

"ya we are just going to change several thousand AD accounts, why would we tell any of the other teams"

 

wtf

"ya we are just going to change several thousand AD accounts, why would we tell any of the other teams"

wtf

Well, i guess Apple won the race. Got an email that its waiting for me in our dispatch area. WFH today so it will get picked up tomorrow. If i had ordered them at same time. the 'personal' laptop would have beat it by a month at least.

"deploying a short cut to our desktops with an ico file is really difficult'  ( we are actually just asking to have an existing one replaced.. one they pushed out several years ago. new logo, new text, same link. )

wtf

Against better judgement i ordered a new laptop for myself. i dont NEED one.I didnt really need to be wasting money. But i did anyway.  I have grown sort of fond of this little flip-top chromebook i have. Wasn't sure id like the idea, but its actually kind of neat having both a tablet and a laptop at same time. Not even taken my real tablet out of the house since i got it. Problem is its really low on storage, like 16g for the OS and only 10" ( its also ARM, a selling point, for me anyway :) ).  So the new one is 13" ( i'm getting old.. :( ) and 256g. It is intel in this case.

Shipping from china ( i know.. shoot me ) with an eta of 2.5 weeks.  I'm taking bets with people at the office that it shows up before they find my macbook. Got asked again by purchasing yesterday " have you seen your new computer yet ".

At least THIS time if it goes south for me personally, i can early retire if i need to as the 'company' wont go away, just many in our agency.  If i cant do a lateral into another agency, then I go find something back in private sector to supplement income a bit until the house is paid off and to re-gain insurance ( the bigger deal ). Too young for medicaid or SS ( or is that medicare, i can never remember which is which )

In previous collapses like this, i was too young, so i was simply screwed and just had to start over.  I did get out before others did as i saw it coming, but it was the same result, leaving and starting over.

Sun Sep 12 2021 05:18:09 PM EDT from LoanShark

there is a reason why the movie Office Space brought in the management consultants for the opening scenes.

"here is a copy of your applecare documents" "they put it in the wrong name, should we get that fixed"  "oh, have you seen your new laptop yet"

I bet its been lost..  damnit   Sitting in a room " what is this.. what do we do with it, it doesn't say HP and we cant get it to pxe boot to install windows"

2 more people quit this week.

Yeah, I understand the reasons for your pessimism. I'd say more than 80% of the time, it goes the way you fear it is going. 

Mon Sep 06 2021 13:05:53 EDT from Nurb432

Oh, not saying the concept of restructuring is bad.  We are top heavy and poorly organized. ( so far every restructure we have done has only made it worse ). But when a consultant comes in, instead of doing it yourself... normally its not a good result for the people and is just a pussy's way out of taking responsibility. "well, the consultant said to do this, it wasn't my idea to can you"  I have been thru this more than once.  It has the same 'feel' already, but i guess we will see as the wheels start moving.   

Being in the office 3 days a week ill see what is going on better than many, and our manager is really good about keeping us informed ( unlike most. .which is one of our problems. No trickle down.. ).  That is how I knew almost a week before it was announced to the rest of us. I found out the same evening it was announced in the 'manager' meetings. 

 

 

Mon Sep 06 2021 12:28:58 PM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

Sometimes "not backfilling" to flatten a very tall organization can *actually* lead to improvements, in morale, in performance, in efficiency.

But often it becomes, "We're going to do all the same work, with less people, so that we make more money!"

Which almost always fails.

 

 

Oh, not saying the concept of restructuring is bad.  We are top heavy and poorly organized. ( so far every restructure we have done has only made it worse ). But when a consultant comes in, instead of doing it yourself... normally its not a good result for the people and is just a pussy's way out of taking responsibility. "well, the consultant said to do this, it wasn't my idea to can you"  I have been thru this more than once.  It has the same 'feel' already, but i guess we will see as the wheels start moving.   

Being in the office 3 days a week ill see what is going on better than many, and our manager is really good about keeping us informed ( unlike most. .which is one of our problems. No trickle down.. ).  That is how I knew almost a week before it was announced to the rest of us. I found out the same evening it was announced in the 'manager' meetings. 

Mon Sep 06 2021 12:28:58 PM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

Sometimes "not backfilling" to flatten a very tall organization can *actually* lead to improvements, in morale, in performance, in efficiency.

But often it becomes, "We're going to do all the same work, with less people, so that we make more money!"

Which almost always fails.

 

Sometimes "not backfilling" to flatten a very tall organization can *actually* lead to improvements, in morale, in performance, in efficiency.

But often it becomes, "We're going to do all the same work, with less people, so that we make more money!"

Which almost always fails.

Ya, they keep pushing 'making it a preferred workplace' and all that nonsense.  Then this. Even if its 100% above board and they are not hiring the iceman, it still looks bad. 

My position is pretty unique, so i think ill survive fallout.

But if not, i have contacts at other agencies. And if that fails, then early retirement for extra cash, and i go back to private sector for a little bit, for insurance ( and get the house paid off )

Better... "And can I get your name, sir?" 

"Shiva." 

"Shiva? And your last name" 

Shiva TheDestroyer. 

:)

Thu Sep 02 2021 15:58:50 EDT from Nurb432

Why yes my name is Beelzebub. They call me Bee. 

Well, just got an email from our director.

Among other typical fluff you get in those emails:  "We are moving one of our lead managers to another position, but we are not going to back fill at this time as we are going to be  hiring an outside contractor to evaluate our current organizational structure"  I sort of knew both, but now its in writing.  A great way to improve morale. 

Sounds Like we are all going to be reorged out the door in favor of the favorite contractor of this evaluation firm.  Early retirement is coming i suspect. Too bad my house is not paid off yet, ill have to find another job for a couple of years. 

Why yes my name is Beelzebub. They call me Bee. 

I once called Dell Enterprise support... it went like this: 

(Heavy Indian Accent,) Tank you for callink Dell Tekneecall subort. My name es John Smit. Owh may I elp you tuday? 

Me: Well, John. I've got a production server down with a Perc error and I need to get it back up as quickly as possible. 

Agent: Ok. I understand your Perc card in your server has an error state and you need assistance in correcting this issue. Before we go on, can I get your name and callback number in case we get disconnected? 

Me: Sure. My number is dot-dot-dot and my name is Vikran Samanathiravishatan

Agent: Pardon me? Could you please repeat your name... 

Me: The name is Vikran, Samanathiravishatan, John Smith... 

Agent: Long pause.... (quiet chuckle). Ahhhhh. I see, Vikran. Ok. So, tell me more about this problem with your Perc... 

We went through the entire call with me calling him John and him calling me Vikran. 

At the end of the call, I said, "Thank you for your assistance today, John..."

And he responded, "And thank you for being a Dell customer, Vikran - have a pleasant day..." 

what in the hell..  'I cant get logged in'...   no freaking kidding you cant.    It was so long of a name that AD died on it ( normally its first.last and email is the same ), so they shortened it BY FAR but it had exceeded my systems limits too so never got the update passed down.

This is america just call yourself bob.  geez

2099276065@UncensoredIT was just support for the >core business. This is why IT is so often regarded as a cost-center >and not a revenue producer. It is what made the cloud so popular. The >idea that you could get RID of the cost center and just do your core >business. You've just shifted the cost-center, really - but something >about not having that cost center INTERNAL on the books appeals to a >lot of the C level staff. I bet it has to do with the bottom line >financials. It has to do with capex vs. opex. Anything that improves EBITDA is considered a Good Thing by the bean counters, and EBITDA is calculated without the cost of capex. It makes the company's books look more attractive. IT has an interesting history. When computers started appearing in larger companies half a century ago, they were primarily used for accounting -- which is why the wrangling of computers was a function of the Accounting Department. It wasn't until later that it became a separate department in most places. Sometimes it was even called the IBM Department, but eventually they settled on Management Information Services (MIS), then Information Services (IS), then Information Technology (IT). The move to a cloud (public or dedicated private, doesn't matter) is part of a trend called "digital transformation" which began many years ago. The first step was to close your own data center and operate within a colocation facility. The next step was to move to managed hosting, with someone else maintaining the servers for you, so you only focus on your applications. After that, and this is where we are now, you don't even bother with knowing much about the servers; you just rent time on someone else's servers. This can take the form of a massive public cloud (the two evil empires of Seattle), a dedicated private cloud, or anywhere in between. As most of you know, I work in this business. What our customers find is that they still need people to operate the technology aspect of their core business. What changes is the nature of the jobs they do. We have been their "IT Department" for the last 20 years or so. They don't want to deal with backups and topology and server upgrades; they certainly don't want to deal with things like power and air conditioning. There is a lot of value in providing those services for them. ]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=The%20Workplace?start_reading_at=2099275944Sun, 29 Aug 2021 20:38:51 -00002099275944@Uncensored

Oh, speaking of picking locks..   just a few years ago our deployment team was in a jam. I guess their main PXE boot/Microsoft RIS server took a dump.   it was in a server cabinet in their area ( why, i have zero clue it was down in the basement, in a secure area, NOT the datacenter ). And the lost the key.... 

I forget how i found out, but next day brought my lock picks in, and a new pick gun i had just bought ... "there, you are in" ( and i removed the locks so they couldn't screw up )

This is what I like about being a straight systems guy.


Oh... we get yelled at just like the rest of you when this shit happens - and often we take it first and worst, honestly - but - while we're busy holding the front line taking all the abuse from the client/customers and management/executives - you guys are scrambling to figure out who did what and how to fix it - and if you can't do that - eventually those client/customers and management/executives are going to get past our defense and into you - and then the REAL blood letting begins...


And we just sit there at our desks and smile.

Sun Aug 29 2021 07:55:41 EDT from Nurb432

I understand why wanted it, but normally we dont install things that are not supported unless its signed off by upper management. "i want it to build something from scratch" would not have flown. He cant do it himself, it had to go thru 2 teams to do it. ( vmware for the server build and Linux team for the actual OS install. Unless it was after we had templates, then Linux team didnt even install anything. it was about the same time frame )

Sure, once he has a place if he was quiet about it, he could have built the app in whatever tech he wanted.  Most people dont know or care what an app is built on as long as it works.  "functioned as requested, sign off"  but server side, we know.. 

 

 

Now ~15 years ago it wasn't so controlled..   had a few desktops that became 'app servers'.   Was funny, one summer when a critical app for one of the departments just vanished off the network. "hi, um we get an error today" "ok, who is this, what did it do, who did you work with"  Could have been developed by the department back then, never knew. Me and my dev guy converted countless MSAccess apps over to something supportable, but no, not in this case.  It took a couple of days but tracked it down to have been running on a desktop under a contractors desk in our department who had written it for them, but no one else knew. Contractor left, couple months later the PC was erased and put back on the shelf to be rolled out to someone else.

Me and my dev guy managed to find an earlier backup copy he had on a CD in his desk among other garbage ( after i picked the lock.. no key to the desk ). It was using a pre-beta release of .net, and had a dump of the database 2 years old.  Things changed after that.     But that was a different ( smaller, only about 3000 end users ) agency, and the one we all moved to a couple of years later did not have their act together, at all. So that was something we started doing when we took over ( long story of that agency 'move'. And we still dont have our act together enough, and we are way more exposed, tons of things, even citizen facing.. 40k users not including outside. But its getting better, in some ways )

Also had a help desk system server ( why i was  hired ) on a old desktop when i got there. But at least it was in the data center, sitting on the floor at the bottom of a rack.  Got that fixed really fast :) 

I understand why wanted it, but normally we dont install things that are not supported unless its signed off by upper management. "i want it to build something from scratch" would not have flown. He cant do it himself, it had to go thru 2 teams to do it. ( vmware for the server build and Linux team for the actual OS install. Unless it was after we had templates, then Linux team didnt even install anything. it was about the same time frame )

Sure, once he has a place if he was quiet about it, he could have built the app in whatever tech he wanted.  Most people dont know or care what an app is built on as long as it works.  "functioned as requested, sign off"  but server side, we know.. 

Now ~15 years ago it wasn't so controlled..   had a few desktops that became 'app servers'.   Was funny, one summer when a critical app for one of the departments just vanished off the network. "hi, um we get an error today" "ok, who is this, what did it do, who did you work with"  Could have been developed by the department back then, never knew. Me and my dev guy converted countless MSAccess apps over to something supportable, but no, not in this case.  It took a couple of days but tracked it down to have been running on a desktop under a contractors desk in our department who had written it for them, but no one else knew. Contractor left, couple months later the PC was erased and put back on the shelf to be rolled out to someone else.

Me and my dev guy managed to find an earlier backup copy he had on a CD in his desk among other garbage ( after i picked the lock.. no key to the desk ). It was using a pre-beta release of .net, and had a dump of the database 2 years old.  Things changed after that.     But that was a different ( smaller, only about 3000 end users ) agency, and the one we all moved to a couple of years later did not have their act together, at all. So that was something we started doing when we took over ( long story of that agency 'move'. And we still dont have our act together enough, and we are way more exposed, tons of things, even citizen facing.. 40k users not including outside. But its getting better, in some ways )

Also had a help desk system server ( why i was  hired ) on a old desktop when i got there. But at least it was in the data center, sitting on the floor at the bottom of a rack.  Got that fixed really fast :) 

It is his favorite distro. 

I've been a Debian guy from the start. Package Management in the other distros used to suck - they still do, compared to apt. That is why the most successful varieties of Linux are basically all built on Debian. Rpi, Ubuntu - if there is a popular consumer variety of Linux - it is a Debian fork. 

But - every time I've had some sort of issue with Debian - instead of telling me how to fix it, 9 out of 10 responses suggest switching to some other distro. Mint sticks out. But lots of others too - for lots of reasons. 

Not only are Linux guys evangelists about Linux - they're also evangelists about their favorite distro of Linux. It is one of my big turn-offs about the community. I'm not asking for advice on switching from Debian, I'm asking how to fix what I'm encountering with Debian. You didn't like Debian, had problems, and switched to CentOS and never looked back - fantastic. You don't have the answer to my question. 

I don't mind

Sat Aug 28 2021 18:09:06 EDT from Nurb432

I fall under that umbrella.  but i also have been around long enough to understand im not going to be there forever, and 'standards' are important for when that happens.  Even if those standards are lame or i disagree with them, its 'standard' so they know the next guy can come in and get up to speed. The enterprise is larger than me.

Its not my house, so its their rules. People that come in and flat out refuse to keep up their end of the bargain, well, they shouldn't be around. 

And its not so much that Linux isn't supported at all, just not for the in-house dev team to do their code on.  Canned apps, we do have Linux server support.  But, its RH or Oracle. How he got SUSE installed, ill never even guess.

Sat Aug 28 2021 05:33:38 PM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

I mean - this is really common because so many Linux folks are Linux *and* Foss *evangelists*. 

 

 

I fall under that umbrella.  but i also have been around long enough to understand im not going to be there forever, and 'standards' are important for when that happens.  Even if those standards are lame or i disagree with them, its 'standard' so they know the next guy can come in and get up to speed. The enterprise is larger than me.

Its not my house, so its their rules. People that come in and flat out refuse to keep up their end of the bargain, well, they shouldn't be around. 

And its not so much that Linux isn't supported at all, just not for the in-house dev team to do their code on.  Canned apps, we do have Linux server support.  But, its RH or Oracle. How he got SUSE installed, ill never even guess.

Sat Aug 28 2021 05:33:38 PM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

I mean - this is really common because so many Linux folks are Linux *and* Foss *evangelists*. 

 

Awesome. Linux mavericks who insist that their own preferred solutions are superior and aren't team players. 

I mean - this is really common because so many Linux folks are Linux *and* Foss *evangelists*. They've got a philosophical and often fanatical desire to proselytize about Linux - and they'll try to fit it in where it isn't the optimal solution. 

You get Mac and Windows fanatics - and fanatics for certain platforms and applications, outside of Linux too - it isn't exclusive. But sometimes, you just have to go and do the job they're paying you to do, even if you disagree with their approach. 

At least he got shitcanned. He is probably still pulling the same shit somewhere else. On the plus side, guys like this make a lot of outside work for consultants, crisis mitigation services, and other contractors and temporary gigs - so they're arguably good for the economy. 

Fri Aug 27 2021 16:04:03 EDT from Nurb432

So an app at the office has surfaced as needing changes.

Turns out it was on a rouge LAMP server ( we think lamp anyway ), by a dev guy that is no longer here and ALL our dev people are .net/IIS people, and for better or worse that is our standard.  Unix server team cant log in as dev guy even changed the root login.  Is using suse 11... Aside from being old , suse was never approved for use. ( not real sure how he even got it built. it was built in 2013.. )

I guess this dev guy was known for not following our standards, got in trouble and threatened to be fired for using mongo instead of our standard/supported databases.  

Sure, root can be fixed with a reboot with a live image, but sounds like someone is going to be paying for a rewrite in supported technologies.  

 

Oops :)

So an app at the office has surfaced as needing changes.

Turns out it was on a rouge LAMP server ( we think lamp anyway ), by a dev guy that is no longer here and ALL our dev people are .net/IIS people, and for better or worse that is our standard.  Unix server team cant log in as dev guy even changed the root login.  Is using suse 11... Aside from being old , suse was never approved for use. ( not real sure how he even got it built. it was built in 2013.. )

I guess this dev guy was known for not following our standards, got in trouble and threatened to be fired for using mongo instead of our standard/supported databases.  

Sure, root can be fixed with a reboot with a live image, but sounds like someone is going to be paying for a rewrite in supported technologies.  

Oops :)

I donno, there were pure IT companies like i worked for some in the early 90s after i left EDS.  We did service work for external customers.  Pre-cloud, and all we did was 'services' ( site builds, hardware break/fix, OS reloads, network stuff, bla bla ). 

I had actuality forgot about one of them until just now.  Left on bad terms so i wanted to forget the place ( got fired for not stealing from customers ).  Every IT person in town knew the place, "oooohhh you work for so and so"  Shop manager looked like a greasy haired used car salesman from the 70s.  Acted like it too. Was terrible. Actually, being fired was a good thing, in the long run.

I think before "Da Cloud" IT services were almost *always* support services for a different core industry. 

I mean, I worked at MCI. IT wasn't really the service - telephone and related services were the service. The IT was just a service industry for the core business of telecommunications. 

I worked at EMC/Legato. IT wasn't really the service. Backup, high availability, disaster recovery *software* was the core industry. IT was just support services. 

I worked at Matrix/NextGen EHR/EMR solutions. We actually hosted. We did provide service as a core *part* of the business. But the core part of the business was again, software. We were selling NextGEN EMR/EHR software. IT was just a support service. 

There can certainly be crossover. MCI, EMC and NextGen all did sell services as part of their core business. But the foundation business was really something other than "IT". IT was just support for the core business. This is why IT is so often regarded as a cos

Fri Aug 27 2021 11:49:24 EDT from Nurb432

I guess technically that is true. They were not selling traditional 'it services'. But since their product WAS IT.. its sort of fuzzy, to me anyway.

 

I think of companies like EDS, VMware, Microsoft or Dell, or even IBM as traditional IT.    ( ya Several also made/sold "widgets", but they sold a ton of services too )

I guess technically that is true. They were not selling traditional 'it services'. But since their product WAS IT.. its sort of fuzzy, to me anyway.

I think of companies like EDS, VMware, Microsoft or Dell, or even IBM as traditional IT.    ( ya Several also made/sold "widgets", but they sold a ton of services too )

I mean, Intel argued that IT wasn't their core business. Manufacturing widgets were there core business - it just happened that the widgets they manufactured were IT related. 

They basically argued that they would still use the same basic business model if they were the world's largest manufacturer of dildos. 

I'm not sure that is true - but that is the company line. 

Thu Aug 26 2021 16:34:49 EDT from Nurb432

Something that has helped me i think is other than 2 positions over the years, i have been IT but not 'in' IT. And in one case i was mostly assigned to a client who was not an IT shop.   Where im at now, our entire agency is IT, so its sort of 1/2 way due to its size.  Like being part of a huge department but the 'core business' is still not IT.

Something that has helped me i think is other than 2 positions over the years, i have been IT but not 'in' IT. And in one case i was mostly assigned to a client who was not an IT shop.   Where im at now, our entire agency is IT, so its sort of 1/2 way due to its size.  Like being part of a huge department but the 'core business' is still not IT.

IT is a weird industry - in that your business may be so stable and risk adverse that you end up falling behind on learning new, marketable technologies if you stay with the same company too long. 

After Intel, I ran into a lot of difficulty because outside companies considered me "Intel-ized," that is - Intel's methods are so specific, strict and internal that many companies find that former Intel IT employees have trouble readjusting to the real world. 

At least, that was the perception. When the company in Ohio hired me - the principles I learned at Intel were largely responsible for basically revolutionizing their entire IT operations from a podunk NE Ohio shop that started in a DB engineer's living room and that the IT team ended up *managed* by that DBA - into something that helped sell the company to a Bay Area firm.

But on leaving THAT place - I was in a strange place again. I guess part of the problem is that the bubble for tech workers never came back like it e

Thu Aug 26 2021 11:59:52 EDT from darknetuser

2021-08-25 09:07 from IGnatius T Foobar
But you're picking up skills and experience ... it takes some time.

Not that much.

It is the sort of business whose IT infrastructure grows up so slowly as not to be a meaningful experience. Setting it up was actual hard work. Now it is all in "automatic" and most of what I do nowadays is solve issues related to users who can't scan a document because they forgot to plug the scanner's powercord.

I am getting a lot of personal networking with people who is not in IT at all, which is quite nice, and getting some business synergies, but this place 's IT is just not going to grow and there is not much of a chance for personal promotion, which is a bit of a bummer. Adding or removing anything of importance within the network is quite rare.

Definitively not growing up to data center architect from a shop scaled to 50 users, running salvaged computers from recycle containers.

I must say I am a bit worried because in 10 years the boss - the one who throws staplers around - is going to retire, and by that point the whole firm is g

Duct tape to get it up *NOW* is SOP for most of the IT world i think.  "whatever it takes"

As far as vendors on the hook, i will say that as i have gotten older, while its often more overhead than on-site, there is some value of being able to shrug and just say " its the vendors fault"...

Now that said, if i had a boss physically attacking things and throwing stuff. Id be looking for another place to be.

Thu Aug 19 2021 05:11:56 AM EDT from darknetuser

.We build something in 15 minutes with duct tape and chewing gum and I manage to get the whole mess working with degraded performance.


Then I realized I should have phoned the vendor and demanded them to fix their stuff instead, but I guess it is hard to make decision when your boss is throwing staplers around.

Oh well, business as usual :)

Yes that is often what happens to us too. The problem is i have, and want, non-standard equipment. If i was using our normal stuff, this would have been a non-issue and id have a machine tomorow with nothing more than a simple email or 'ticket'..  But how dare me to step outside the box.

Sun Aug 08 2021 11:10:00 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

That's really funny, compared to where I am ... they sent me a new machine simply because I had a problem they couldn't (or wouldn't) fix remotely.  Easier to just reload the old machine and give it to the next person who needs one, they said.

And if I think about it long enough, they're probably right.  If you take the number of hours it would require for them to remotely walk someone through all of the steps it would require to take care of things ... they don't know I'm an advanced user, so it probably does take less time to cross-ship a new machine.  I was just lucky they had a new one to send me and not a retread.

boooooo i want that ..  well, i guess instead to be sent back home. this 3 day a week thing is a crock.

Meanwhile ... we got a company-wide announcement indicating that the return-to-the-office date "has been postponed indefinitely."

I think ours was supposed to be in October.  They cited the rising delta-plague cases as one reason, but they also cited "the changing nature of the modern workplace".  That's kind of a big deal, I think.  Working from home, at least for jobs at which it is practical, is now a societal norm rather than something special.

And yet I still get teased about the guest bed in my office whenever I forget to drop the video curtain or roll the white board in behind me.

That's really funny, compared to where I am ... they sent me a new machine simply because I had a problem they couldn't (or wouldn't) fix remotely.  Easier to just reload the old machine and give it to the next person who needs one, they said.

And if I think about it long enough, they're probably right.  If you take the number of hours it would require for them to remotely walk someone through all of the steps it would require to take care of things ... they don't know I'm an advanced user, so it probably does take less time to cross-ship a new machine.  I was just lucky they had a new one to send me and not a retread.

Got the 'procurement request' in today. Took 3 of us to figure out all the questions.  What a bunch of nonsense.

May still get rejected. 

After 2 days of pulling teeth.  "this is where you get a quote from, then after you submit we do it ourselves too" "and here is a link ( again ) to the form to submit, stop bothering us"  ( the one that is requiring a lot of stupid things before you can submit it )

Why am i doing it if they are just going to do it again anyway, from the same place?   Useless flaming hoops

All not untrue. 

:) 

Sat Jul 31 2021 10:25:04 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

I can't believe that no one ever came up with an effective cooling
solution for this model year of Mac. 

Apple did. It's called "buy the newer Mac" :)

Right to Repair battles are apparently being fought bigly right now. It should be interesting to see what happens. Although that would probably only cover availability of parts to third-party repair shops. There's nothing to stop Apple from continuing to build overly dense bricks.

There's a lot not to like about Apple, but in the end they are building what their customers are buying. Those who eagerly empty their wallets for the latest Apple products vastly outnumber those who want to repair them. You guys are a minority.

May end up with a 'PC' afterall.   Now that we have effectively been sent to procurement, its like 1000' of red tape and at least 15 undefined hoops to jump thru.  While everyone everywhere jokes about this sort of thing, now that i have seen it, I honestly think they make it so hard, that people juts give up and dont buy anything that isn't 'standard' ( be it a computer or a stapler.. )

I did check last week with another guys machine, and at least they are not locking down the ability to boot off USB, so i can at least blow away windows on if, if i end up with a PC laptop. ( yet. im sure that will happen once security realizes it )

lol

Sat Jul 31 2021 10:25:04 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

I can't believe that no one ever came up with an effective cooling
solution for this model year of Mac. 

Apple did. It's called "buy the newer Mac" :)

Not mac related.. but back to the office

I have 2 people sitting near me me. Some sort of security people.  I think they are contractors, or come from Purdue, something.  A guy that looks like hes in his late 30s, and a girl perhaps 25, that looks like she does not eat, covered head to toe in tattoo. Nice people, but stay to themselves..

Today i heard a cart get pulled up over there, and the manager over all the desktops "merry xmas". I of course popped up " i want gifts too ".  He made some comment "you dont want these, they are for them to tear apart".. gave them some screwdrivers and 2 laptops.. 

I can only imagine that it will lead to more restrictions and making it even harder to do our job.  

Hell now with all the security stuff running, i lose 50% of my CPU off the top most days.  Thanks security team. 

Yeah... my problem with Macs is I want something newer than Core 2 Duo but there was a very small window of unibody intel Core (i3/i5/i6/Mini/iMac) that are user repairable/upgradable. Once they got to the Intel Core CPUs, they quickly made them difficult to disassemble. In fact, it makes me very limited in running anything after High Sierra. 

Tue Jul 27 2021 17:05:03 EDT from Nurb432

My old one is NVIDIA, Office mac is Intel.

The one i'm getting is Intel. Wont happen in a week tho l;like i thought, now we have to get a quote from apple, go thru procurement, go up 200 levels for approvals outside normal channels,  bla bla. Since we dont have a contract for 'computers' anymore, we cant 'just order it'.  ( seems old contract expired. The ones that won the bid for the next, backed out at last minute.. so we are screwed. Having to bid out again and we cant get anything be it a PC or Apple, or whatever ).  Gotta love working for who i do. . REEEEEEDDDDD TAAAAAPPPPEEE 

So i'm good, at least GPU wise :) 

My old one is NVIDIA, Office mac is Intel.

The one i'm getting is Intel. Wont happen in a week tho l;like i thought, now we have to get a quote from apple, go thru procurement, go up 200 levels for approvals outside normal channels,  bla bla. Since we dont have a contract for 'computers' anymore, we cant 'just order it'.  ( seems old contract expired. The ones that won the bid for the next, backed out at last minute.. so we are screwed. Having to bid out again and we cant get anything be it a PC or Apple, or whatever ).  Gotta love working for who i do. . REEEEEEDDDDD TAAAAAPPPPEEE 

So i'm good, at least GPU wise :) 

Mine has the ATI Radeon bug. If I use it like it is meant to be used, if I hit the GPU, the GPU will fry and kill the video output on it. The "Fix" is to cut the circuit traces to the ATI, but in a diode or crystal or something, and trick the Mac into bypassing it to run on the Intel HD GPU. 

But I'm kinda considering - what if I disassemble the whole thing and build it into an ATX or other case - and put massive cooling on the ATI GPU. It doesn't NEED to be a laptop. 

I can't believe that no one ever came up with an effective cooling solution for this model year of Mac. 

Mon Jul 26 2021 12:35:16 EDT from Nurb432

2008 for the one i own myself. Man, time flies. still works fine tho. 

2008 for the one i own myself. Man, time flies. still works fine tho. 

Right, its why i would never buy a new one with my own money.  But, since boss is paying, its the better choice for me all things considered. The hardware is NOT controlled by our GPO, for starters.

I do own one of my own, but it was from back when the battery still came out on its own, and underneath was the drive and ram.   Core Duo if i remember right.  Still works.  Older than 2012.  Still had a DVD drive in it.

Sat Jul 24 2021 02:42:01 PM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

The problem with Macs is that they try to get too much into too tiny of a space, and they use that to justify making non user-repairable. 

The 2012ish Unibody was the last fairly easy to repair Macbook - and even then, they were having irreparable  heat related issues. 

I'd like to have a newer Intel Mac - but they started making them impossible to upgrade or repair after the 2012 body style. 

 

The problem with Macs is that they try to get too much into too tiny of a space, and they use that to justify making non user-repairable. 

The 2012ish Unibody was the last fairly easy to repair Macbook - and even then, they were having irreparable  heat related issues. 

I'd like to have a newer Intel Mac - but they started making them impossible to upgrade or repair after the 2012 body style. 

Sat Jul 24 2021 11:51:25 EDT from Nurb432

So boss did order me a 13" i7 macbook. No questions asked.  "I put in a ticket to have it ordered, supposed to take a week or 2 "  I tried to not be too needy " 1TB is plenty.. " etc.   I just wanted to get in before everything was M1, and mine is something like 5 years old now. Im sure age-death is coming and at that age it wont get fixed unless i did it myself.

Of course Linux goes on even before the first boot.

 

Does mean i have to get another USB-C hub to leave at the office.  The laptop i have now it predates USB-C.  So its got apple ports for video and old style usb ports.   it has served me well tho. ( originally i actually had OSX on it, then ran VBox to get windows and Linux, but after the 3rd OS update, video got unstable so one went Linux for the host OS.   I would never buy one out of my own pocket as its way over priced, but the hardware really isn't 'bad'.

So boss did order me a 13" i7 macbook. No questions asked.  "I put in a ticket to have it ordered, supposed to take a week or 2 "  I tried to not be too needy " 1TB is plenty.. " etc.   I just wanted to get in before everything was M1, and mine is something like 5 years old now. Im sure age-death is coming and at that age it wont get fixed unless i did it myself.

Of course Linux goes on even before the first boot.

Does mean i have to get another USB-C hub to leave at the office.  The laptop i have now it predates USB-C.  So its got apple ports for video and old style usb ports.   it has served me well tho. ( originally i actually had OSX on it, then ran VBox to get windows and Linux, but after the 3rd OS update, video got unstable so one went Linux for the host OS.   I would never buy one out of my own pocket as its way over priced, but the hardware really isn't 'bad'.

One more reason to have separate work and personal computers.

Or is that turn on the filter?

Either way, it had xxx results in the list and of course that overpowers 'regular' results unless you tell it not to do that. 

Sun Jul 18 2021 08:15:16 AM EDT from Nurb432

Kidding aside, that WAS the first page of search hits when i looked. I had forgot to turn off the 'xxx' filter. 

Kidding aside, that WAS the first page of search hits when i looked. I had forgot to turn off the 'xxx' filter. 

After i left EDS, but stayed in automotive, pretty much everything was more "business casual".   Was also told once, um dude, ditch the tie, now.  Of course people out in the plants were often given uniforms, so they didnt get their street clothes dirty/destroyed. Office workers, even tho we got dirty too, were on our own. 

Where i'm at now, we went to jeans and 'collar shirts' 7 or 8 years ago.   Unless you deal with the public, then its some sort of dark colored 'pants' and a polo shirt with a logo.

I'm glad I missed that period and started my career on the West Coast. Evidently Jobs and Gates and the rest of them got THAT much right - tipping over that kind of apple cart. 

We used to joke we made IBM look like a bunch of high school band members.

This was EDS, at its height. 

Fri Jul 16 2021 12:11:13 PM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Ah yes, the old "IBM culture" that became pervasive in Corporate America.  Never leave your desk without your jacket on.  Cashing your paycheck at a bar is grounds for dismissal.  That sort of thing.

 

Speaking of union shop:

One of the girls I worked with, also just out of college, had ZERO experience in automotive world. Didn't even grow up in this area. 

She had to drive in the gated area to pick up something, in her HONDA ( GM plant )..  Only reason they didnt burn her car on sight was she was a sweet, clueless girl.  Was only there perhaps 5 minutes, but by the time she got back out of the lot, the big guy was called "this wont happen again, will it". ( no, it wasn't a question :) ) and word had traveled almost instantly across the floor.  I dropped what i was doing, ran out to met her at the gate to explain what she just did after she parked, before she came in past the guard shack.

Some 20 years before that, they would have flipped and roasted it just for being in the outer parking lot.  Times were starting to change.  

When i first started work in the corporate world in mid 80s, you could not leave your cube without your jacket 

Ah yes, the old "IBM culture" that became pervasive in Corporate America.  Never leave your desk without your jacket on.  Cashing your paycheck at a bar is grounds for dismissal.  That sort of thing.

I had to deal with that at my first job.  It was miserable.  I also had to cut my hair, which was equally as miserable.  And being an entry-level IT worker, I often had to crawl under desks to re-cable computers while wearing "good" clothes, which was even more miserable.

When I interviewed for my current job (20 years ago!) the CEO happened to walk by and he blurted out "we don't allow ties here" I knew I was in the right place.

Ok i downloaded it, but got lesbian office porn instead.   Ok just kidding. Its a movie right, and not a TV show? I did download a movie.. If that is it, ill try to watch it this weekend.

It wasn't "just" a movie.  It was originally a series of short cartoons by Mike Judge (Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill, etc.) that was later adapted into a full length movie.

As a whole, the movie was just ok.  It's very quotable, though, and anyone who works in a white-collar space will hear quotes from the movie tossed about.

When i first started work in the corporate world in mid 80s, you could not leave your cube without your jacket ( even tho i was 'assigned' to a manufacturing complex.. ).  3 Piece suits were 'suggested' but not 'mandated'.  Your color choices were mandated however.  Our corporate sales guys, it was down being told which stock numbers of clothing they could order and wear, out of the 'blessed' catalog. Even the cuff links..   My first review was eye opening " you are doing great, bla bla bla, glad to have you here, we made a good decision to pull some strings and get you assigned back here instead  of a 'corporate' site. ( long story. .interview for job, normally you dont go to that site ) but, we were wondering about the girl you have been seeing and we understand you are not married"  "huh, what.. the..hell.. "  Turns out it was my next door neighbor and we were hanging out as friends. We were the same age, came from the same area of the state. Both transplants.  She was a school teacher.  They

Now, some 35 years later:

So, boss came in today. ( been off 2 weeks. was on vacation when we all started going back in ). I complained about my new seating, being IN the walkway and everyone walking up right to me to get around my spot.  He found me a new place.  Still not great, considering the open office situation, but a step up from what i had before, as now i have a actual cube wall ( 1/2 height still of course ) between me and the next guy. Not the simple Plexiglas divider you get being in a pod of 6.  Its also a 'overflow desk' that was tacked on to a supervisor area.. thus the extra wall. 

Oh and someone bitched about my desk fan.  F-em. It stays. 

I never wore a tie. The East Coast focus on formal dress for IT workers - I never understood. Khakis and a polo shirt were always fine in California. Khaki/Cargo shorts in summer. When I got out to Ohio, they were about 20 years behind this trend. For the most part I acquiesced. At this point in my life, I'd resist. "Did you hire me for my skills, or my fashion sense?" 

Wed Jul 14 2021 19:14:59 EDT from Nurb432

I wouldn't say it was 'bad' just not 'good'.  But yes, i can see how people label it as a 'must watch' and the many correlations to ( even if a little a bit dated ) office life. ( like ties, i have not worn a tie in nearly 30 years )

I guess i should print out a red stapler? 

I wouldn't say it was 'bad' just not 'good'.  But yes, i can see how people label it as a 'must watch' and the many correlations to ( even if a little a bit dated ) office life. ( like ties, i have not worn a tie in nearly 30 years )

I guess i should print out a red stapler? 

I'd probably agree. I never revisited it - but there are things that are just so spot-on about that point in my career, in cube-farms in the late 90s/early 2000s, the co-workers, the strip-mall chain-restaurant lunches with the hot college girl waitresses wearing flair. It just got a LOT of it right. The weird old balding guy with the coke-bottle glasses that no one thinks actually does anything. The douchebag executive/manager. The experience was fairly accurate and universal. 

Tue Jul 13 2021 17:30:16 EDT from Nurb432

Not really. 

I see the point everyone was trying to make about parts of it, but ya, it was not all that great of a movie. 

Tue Jul 13 2021 03:41:33 PM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

So, tell me - did you think it got better? 

I don't know that it was a good movie, overall - I just know that it was iconic and accurate of this era of corporate office work. 

 

Not really. 

I see the point everyone was trying to make about parts of it, but ya, it was not all that great of a movie. 

Tue Jul 13 2021 03:41:33 PM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

So, tell me - did you think it got better? 

I don't know that it was a good movie, overall - I just know that it was iconic and accurate of this era of corporate office work. 

 

So, tell me - did you think it got better? 

I don't know that it was a good movie, overall - I just know that it was iconic and accurate of this era of corporate office work. 

Sat Jul 10 2021 14:27:55 EDT from Nurb432

So i'm about 20 mins in.. does it get better?

One interesting note, the 'company' sign on the wall during the pep talk speech at ~ 17 minutes.    That is on the wall in my office. It appeared while we were all at home. Seemed odd to have that on the wall ( since we are not a company ) but i guess know i get the reference.

I suppose more people would get that reference than me adding "33" to our clock in the break room. 

So i'm about 20 mins in.. does it get better?

One interesting note, the 'company' sign on the wall during the pep talk speech at ~ 17 minutes.    That is on the wall in my office. It appeared while we were all at home. Seemed odd to have that on the wall ( since we are not a company ) but i guess know i get the reference.

I suppose more people would get that reference than me adding "33" to our clock in the break room. 

Probably shouldn't have quoted that quote. 

It is a movie. It may feel dated. You'll still enjoy it, I think. 

Either that, or it will trigger PTSD symptoms. 

Thu Jul 08 2021 17:13:09 EDT from Nurb432

Ok i downloaded it, but got lesbian office porn instead.   Ok just kidding. Its a movie right, and not a TV show? I did download a movie.. If that is it, ill try to watch it this weekend.

Wed Jul 07 2021 08:25:59 PM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

Your life literally is Office Space. I can't believe you've never seen it. 

 

 

Ok i downloaded it, but got lesbian office porn instead.   Ok just kidding. Its a movie right, and not a TV show? I did download a movie.. If that is it, ill try to watch it this weekend.

Wed Jul 07 2021 08:25:59 PM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

Your life literally is Office Space. I can't believe you've never seen it. 

 

So we have a agency that is working with the same vendor we use for the system i support.  They tried to get on ours, for free, but we were not 'fed-ramp' and would not do a few other things that would have complicated our lives, when our security level is fine. So they had to buy their own. ( somewhere around 700k i think 

Found out today that request from the vendor to Microsoft for moving this install to fed-ramp is denied.  Funny stuff there.

Your life literally is Office Space. I can't believe you've never seen it. 

"i hit the wrong button and it didnt do what i wanted, please log this as a bug with the vendor"

Um.. how about no?

Funny thing some 20 years ago i started out at a bench against a wall. No computer, no phone.  They were not ready for me. "umm i think there is a chair over there " After a day or so i got my bearings enough to find me a cube, where the surplus computers were stored, found some wire and a switch.. 

Its like my career here is coming full circle as i'm about ready to leave.

Other than the lack of paycheck, id be ok with it.

The picture I included above is Milton from Office Space - a movie about the joyless experience of working in a cube farm. 

Milton ends up moved around until his office is put in a basement. He gets laid off, no one tells him, and he keeps coming in, and no one stops him from doing his job. 

After he misses a few paychecks he asks, and he is told he was laid off months ago. 

Hilarity ensues. 

He had a red stapler. 

And maybe some accelerant. 

Is that bad? ( i assume its a TV show reference, and i dont watch much TV )

Being moved down into the basement, or the back of the data center, would be ok by me.. permanently..

Mmm... yeah, uh... OK... so, uh we're going to have to relocate your workspace just as a temporary measure.  

Mon Jun 28 2021 10:54:31 EDT from Nurb432

Well, went to go mark my territory today.  Me peeing on my desk didnt go over well. ( just kidding )

Seems im sitting in a walkway in one of the 'after thought' desks that were added after the original remodel and we ran out of space..  so downgraded.  as impossible as that sounds.   Oh well, only 3 days a week. I hope.

Well, went to go mark my territory today.  Me peeing on my desk didnt go over well. ( just kidding )

Seems im sitting in a walkway in one of the 'after thought' desks that were added after the original remodel and we ran out of space..  so downgraded.  as impossible as that sounds.   Oh well, only 3 days a week. I hope.

"You will want to come in for a couple of hours next week, i have heard people are taking equipment from the desks. If you hook your stuff up, they will be less likely to take them"

"And it lets you see what is left on your desk and if you are missing something will be more likely to get a replacement now, than when we all return in 2 weeks"

Really? Where do i work again, a daycare?

I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to infer that I found it irritating directly in relation to your predicament. Your story just made me think of times I experienced that sort of thing with my peers. In particular at Intel - I got a reputation as a "Maverick," because I do tend to go, "Well, this isn't working at all - let's try THIS..." 

I think IT needs RTFM -do-it-by-the-book-and-then-do-it-again-until-it-works types... but it also needs, "throw the book out and figure out how to get around whatever is wrong in the code," types, too. 

And yeah, a team absolutely gives you different perspectives that help find resolutions quicker - even if it is simply that you're so deep in your hole having someone look at it from outside - they might see something you're not because you're right on top of it. 

Once basically tore an entire machine down and rebuilt it and the NCR hardware guy found it was a bent SCSI pin causing the problem. Felt pretty stupid about not catching that 3 or 4

Thu Jun 24 2021 14:15:42 EDT from Nurb432

Between the 2 of us we have a little over 30 years experience with this POS system. I have for about 10, the other guy, worked for another company that used it, for about 15 years before coming here a couple of years ago.

He has not worked with this module, so he deferred to me " can you set this up". "well, this is how it should work, but its not doing diddly". Hard to explain in a short version, but this module bridges others.  I have never used it with his module, only mine, so never really tried it before 'that way'. But when that failed, we got together to look at it as a team ( which actually works for us, sometimes the other guy sees what the other had missed or just explaining it, oh ya, that one step, i missed ).  Still nothing. 

THEN we read the documentation. Which did agree with what we were doing..so we called the lead of the tech people in the company directly. ( bypassed their help desk ).

Apparently not many people use those 2 modules together, in the real world. So no one noticed the docs were wrong, or asked before. ( i assume they just did it the "wrong way", and it worked and didnt bother telling anyone )

 

Its a commercial product, and we dont have access to any code,. other than the stored procedures in the DB. Which didnt help us in this case. 

Between the 2 of us we have a little over 30 years experience with this POS system. I have for about 10, the other guy, worked for another company that used it, for about 15 years before coming here a couple of years ago.

He has not worked with this module, so he deferred to me " can you set this up". "well, this is how it should work, but its not doing diddly". Hard to explain in a short version, but this module bridges others.  I have never used it with his module, only mine, so never really tried it before 'that way'. But when that failed, we got together to look at it as a team ( which actually works for us, sometimes the other guy sees what the other had missed or just explaining it, oh ya, that one step, i missed ).  Still nothing. 

THEN we read the documentation. Which did agree with what we were doing..so we called the lead of the tech people in the company directly. ( bypassed their help desk ).

Apparently not many people use those 2 modules together, in the real world. So no one noticed the docs were wrong, or asked before. ( i assume they just did it the "wrong way", and it worked and didnt bother telling anyone )

Its a commercial product, and we dont have access to any code,. other than the stored procedures in the DB. Which didnt help us in this case. 

And I know, you can't always have the luxury of doing this - but where ever I can, I do whatever I can to make sure I do have this luxury. 

Ok... so... this is one of my pet peeves in the industry. People RTFM, it doesn't work, they re-read TFM, repeat it, it doesn't work. They repeat it again. 

Even with Citadel - part of what I did was ignored the instructions where I was having problems. I thought about it, and I tried what I *knew* instead of what I was reading. 

I learned this in like, 5th grade. I got a lego set, a big ol space-ship. I was trying to put it together, and I couldn't get past a part. I was frustrated to tears. Finally I called my Asian friend, Michael Shibata - over. He looked at it, had me explain what I was doing, show him what I was doing, then he read the instructions. He immediately went, "they're telling you to use a piece with 8 dots, but that is wrong - you need a piece with 10 dots for that to fit the front part to the back part right. 

Found the right piece, popped it in, and we had the thing together 10 minutes later. 

Do not trust the experts, or the authorities -

Wed Jun 23 2021 20:59:20 EDT from Nurb432

Along the same lines of "following instructions", trying an old feature in my software for the first time. just wont work. Did everything i knew, including reading the directions. 2 of us fought with it for a couple of days. 

Finally get hold of some upper level tech support on the other side of the pond.  Showed him what we were doing and the document we were following. "oh, well that is wrong, that needs to be changed to say xyz instead"  really its been saying that for 10 years now, and countess versions? 

 

( directions basically said 'X does not work, but Y does, and setup Y this way.  In reality Y does not work and X does.. Which is setup differently than Y )

 

Knowing the guy for 20+ years i do think hes being honest about it and means well, but he's got a lot to learn about how people react to things.

So one of our managerial KPIs is to provide a 'preferred workplace environment' to help attract new people and to retain current.  Ok, its a valid concept. Cant say i have seen a lot of changes come from this, but its at least a good idea. Each year we have an anonymous survey, and then the % is compiled and comments are taken back for possible 'improvements' next year.

This year, its 'in person' ( never a good policy when you want to critique management ), and its a week before everyone is scheduled to return to the office, with one day warning to boot..    what? wait? really?

Along the same lines of "following instructions", trying an old feature in my software for the first time. just wont work. Did everything i knew, including reading the directions. 2 of us fought with it for a couple of days. 

Finally get hold of some upper level tech support on the other side of the pond.  Showed him what we were doing and the document we were following. "oh, well that is wrong, that needs to be changed to say xyz instead"  really its been saying that for 10 years now, and countess versions? 

( directions basically said 'X does not work, but Y does, and setup Y this way.  In reality Y does not work and X does.. Which is setup differently than Y )

Nah, right room.  One of my users earlier today at the office ...  ( a tech user, not an end user. I expect more from them. I know i shouldn't )

Wrong room? 

Or... I guess at your workplace... right room. :) 

Thought this might be aimed at the Citadel Support room at first. :) 

Wed Jun 23 2021 16:41:13 EDT from Nurb432

"No, i didnt follow the process you documented, why do i have to do that in order for it to work right"

"No, i didnt follow the process you documented, why do i have to do that in order for it to work right"

Nah, they were heavy duty triple pane sort of affair like you would see on the 100th floor of a skyscraper. And you cant open them and were just solid. ( security reasons of course ). i bet they were better insulted than the walls were. 

My assumption is that area was not a DC in the beginning.  Building was built in late 50s .. long before any of that stuff. ( automotive plant, admin building part ) My guess was that is where the engineers were kept. Then computers came along, moved them downstairs, and walled off 1/2 the floor in that area to make the DC. The other 1/2 was still office space, for the 'computer guys' 

Now its just a gravel area. It was all torn down a few years ago.  Sad to drive past and it not be there.  Was a staple for so many decades. 

Another building i worked in, was also retrofitted like that. However they put the walls up about 10' before the window. So it was sort of a 'access area' with some tables and KVM type terminals. and not really part of the data center proper. 

Tue Jun 22 2021 03:49:52 PM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

I figured that Windows let heat in, and be less insulated about keeping cool in - and that is why most DCs just have walls, no windows. 

But... in either case, if you loose your cooling, you're hosed. 

 

I figured that Windows let heat in, and be less insulated about keeping cool in - and that is why most DCs just have walls, no windows. 

But... in either case, if you loose your cooling, you're hosed. 

Tue Jun 22 2021 06:18:46 EDT from Nurb432

Oh, the windows didnt help lack of cooling.  ( they were sealed anyway ) it just made for a nicer place to work. Instead of the "dark dingy DC" many are stuck with.

 

Even tho in general i'm not a fan of sunlight, it worked for that room due to placement and tint.

Tue Jun 22 2021 01:50:14 AM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

I'm not sure windows matter if you lose your coolers in the middle of summer. We had the same problem in a DC in the very middle of the building. I guess we would have been MORE effed if there had been windows, but we were pretty effed none-the-less. 

A DC with windows would be a strange experience, though. 

 

Mon Jun 21 2021 19:47:35 EDT from Nurb432

One i worked in ( i had a room off the side of it, so it was part of it but not in the middle of it,  had windows to the outside.  Rarely seen a DC like that in my life, but made it a nice place to be. 

Except that one time the coolers went out, middle of summer... ( i told that story before. about the HP that they had to fly parts in from the west cost, or japan.. )

 

 

Oh, the windows didnt help lack of cooling.  ( they were sealed anyway ) it just made for a nicer place to work. Instead of the "dark dingy DC" many are stuck with.

Even tho in general i'm not a fan of sunlight, it worked for that room due to placement and tint.

Tue Jun 22 2021 01:50:14 AM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

I'm not sure windows matter if you lose your coolers in the middle of summer. We had the same problem in a DC in the very middle of the building. I guess we would have been MORE effed if there had been windows, but we were pretty effed none-the-less. 

A DC with windows would be a strange experience, though. 

 

Mon Jun 21 2021 19:47:35 EDT from Nurb432

One i worked in ( i had a room off the side of it, so it was part of it but not in the middle of it,  had windows to the outside.  Rarely seen a DC like that in my life, but made it a nice place to be. 

Except that one time the coolers went out, middle of summer... ( i told that story before. about the HP that they had to fly parts in from the west cost, or japan.. )

 

I'm not sure windows matter if you lose your coolers in the middle of summer. We had the same problem in a DC in the very middle of the building. I guess we would have been MORE effed if there had been windows, but we were pretty effed none-the-less. 

A DC with windows would be a strange experience, though. 

Mon Jun 21 2021 19:47:35 EDT from Nurb432

One i worked in ( i had a room off the side of it, so it was part of it but not in the middle of it,  had windows to the outside.  Rarely seen a DC like that in my life, but made it a nice place to be. 

Except that one time the coolers went out, middle of summer... ( i told that story before. about the HP that they had to fly parts in from the west cost, or japan.. )

One i worked in ( i had a room off the side of it, so it was part of it but not in the middle of it,  had windows to the outside.  Rarely seen a DC like that in my life, but made it a nice place to be. 

Except that one time the coolers went out, middle of summer... ( i told that story before. about the HP that they had to fly parts in from the west cost, or japan.. )

LOL. That is awesome. 

My biggest problem in the DC was usually it was cold, fairly dark, with the monotonous white-noise hum of a thousand fans all spinning.

I'd always get so sleepy. :) 

Sat Jun 19 2021 12:41:14 EDT from Nurb432

Last time i worked IN a data center, i moved a bunch of tiles around one evening, so my 'desk area' was fulled with the ones with the little hole vents.   Enough wind my hair would fly up.  Was wonderful. I miss that.

"make me a report of xyz"

ok. here ya go.

"make it more restrictive"

um its not what you are looking for, but ok, here ya go

"why are there fewer results on this one"

*facepalm*   ( and a phone call tomorow to explain it )

Last time i worked IN a data center, i moved a bunch of tiles around one evening, so my 'desk area' was fulled with the ones with the little hole vents.   Enough wind my hair would fly up.  Was wonderful. I miss that.

Heh.  It looks pretty typical.  I've also seen places where sections of data centers (or "computer rooms" as they were called in the mainframe days) were converted to office space without removing the raised floor.  One of them was just being cheap and didn't want to deal with the construction costs, so they just put up a curtain wall between the computers and the office, and a carpet on the floor.   The other was a company that expected their data center to expand a lot and did the whole building as raised floor, expecting that they could quickly convert office space to data center space whenever they needed to.

That second one was a little outfit called Prodigy.  Didn't quite work out the way they expected.

Forgot i had this. Its the floor plan when we lost our cubes and went to open concept.

The blank area at top is the data center and 2 support areas that sneak into the floor proper.   If you remove that, the running joke is it looked like a viking or slave ship. "ok you f-ers, row"

2099269669@Uncensored

I guess i should add i DO understand their paranoia, considering they data they have, but they have got to use some logic. 

They also at one point asked "can we prevent users from entering information they shouldn't"    "how would you do that?"    "um, ya i guess there is no way, so we need a way to remediate it afterward" 

I considered that. I have too... but generally people asking for something this boneheaded, don't ask for or realize it generally isn't a thing where admin changes are notified to the users - even about permissions. 

And often, if you're an admin - you can get rid of any logging that they might receive or modify it before they receive it. It is usually easier for an admin to cover his tracks than for someone in userspace to discover he has done so. 

Thu Jun 17 2021 19:42:26 EDT from Nurb432

To an extent. I have worked with systems where that sort of change is logged. ( mostly mainframe, but i have seen 'PC' type apps do that too ) Does not stop the admins of course, but they do have an audit trail. ( if they asked for that, j would not be laughing at them.  Tho this system does not do that, i can at least understand wanting that )

 

 

Thu Jun 17 2021 07:31:40 PM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

Sure... I can take away my permissions to your files - but I can also give them back to myself anytime I want, and the only one who knows these permissions changes is... THE ADMIN. 

 

To an extent. I have worked with systems where that sort of change is logged. ( mostly mainframe, but i have seen 'PC' type apps do that too ) Does not stop the admins of course, but they do have an audit trail. ( if they asked for that, j would not be laughing at them.  Tho this system does not do that, i can at least understand wanting that )

Thu Jun 17 2021 07:31:40 PM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

Sure... I can take away my permissions to your files - but I can also give them back to myself anytime I want, and the only one who knows these permissions changes is... THE ADMIN. 

 

Or that you cant support the system without the access...

Glad i'm not having to implement or support this mess.  They tried to get on board mine as a tenant, but our security structure was not adequate for them ( thankfully... ). I'm sort of acting like a 'trusted consultant' as they work out their own dedicated install with the same vendor.

PM came to me this evening " can we calk about this new requirement they are asking about, and how it might be done"  LoL, sure we can talk about it, i need a good laugh..

Thu Jun 17 2021 07:31:40 PM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

WTF? Do they understand how admin accounts work? 

 

There is a subred called /malicious compliance 

That seems like this scenario is perfectly suited for. 

"They said no admin access to their data, so I disabled all admin access to their data. Then their drive died, and they wanted it restored from backup... but their backups failed, because the admin utility accounts didn't have access to their data." 

I said, 

"When you told me to remove admin access from your data, I assumed you knew all the ramifications of that request being that you were making decisions that should have been made by the IT team." 

WTF? Do they understand how admin accounts work? 

Sure... I can take away my permissions to your files - but I can also give them back to myself anytime I want, and the only one who knows these permissions changes is... THE ADMIN. 

Furthermore - if administrator accounts don't have access to your files, when you somehow lose your WENIS report and want me to restore it from backup - guess what ELSE didn't have access to your data? 

Yeah. The backup system. 

And our policy won't allow you to hook up a USB storage device - so you can't really back it up yourself. 

Hope your hard drive doesn't die - now that you've painted yourself into a corner with ridiculous requests that you don't understand the implications of because you distrust the IT department. 

Thu Jun 17 2021 18:29:37 EDT from Nurb432

"New requirement from xyz department" "they require that admin accounts do not have access to data stored in the system"

 

Ya, sure.

"New requirement from xyz department" "they require that admin accounts do not have access to data stored in the system"

Ya, sure.

Well, i guess my boss found me a desk i can have. Even tho i'm only there 3 days a week at least ill have a place of my own again and no festival seating. Means i can have a real keyboard instead of the laptop keyboard, and not have to drag it back and forth. ( people are filthy, not going to share that  and yes mine is too, but at least its my filth :) ). And i can have a small desk fan so i dont melt, again without carrying it back and forth each day. Tho i did just buy a 'flat' folding portable fan. About the size of a cell phone. 

Still not thrilled with 3 days a week, but i guess having a desk is something. 

Well, lost that battle.  We are now going to force non IT customers to figure out ITIL terms to interact with us.   "customer focused" my ass.

"How about we ask a couple of actual customers before we do that"   "well if you do that you will get several answers, we just need to do it as we want, and let them figure it out on their own"..  Without these customers we dont exist. I dont see how hard that is to understand. If our customers were not 'captive' they would not be using us.

Man i wish i could leave. Soon, but not soon enough.

The business isn't always the thing the company is doing - sometimes it is the thing being done to the company. 

Tue Jun 08 2021 10:34:20 EDT from Nurb432

Oh, i didnt do the burn ..

Short version is we got a new CFO and his 'goal' was to bankrupt the company but not make it obvious.  Among other causalities, i was one. Another was our manufacturing maintenance people/supplies. "they are not doing anything, machines are running, get rid of them" ( this was during our annual shut down/product change over.... )

While it sounds silly to an outsider why someone would do this, we were a a joint venture between an American corporation and Japanese. They brought the tech, US brought the business. They had 51%. The ONLY reason the US company did it was to get a hold of the tech. After a few years of decent business the goal was to run it into the ground just enough so the Japanese woudl bail, leaving behind the tech.  They are far more committed than most people think and it took a total collapse to get them gone. But it went too deep, and ended up being bought by a investment firm. 

 

"look at me i saved all this cash... "   as the place went under 6 months after he left. Could not recover, by design. He had been there less than 6 months. 

 

That was also were i learned a new term: "containment". I been in the automotive manufacturing business over a decade by then but never heard that term.   Never want to hear it again. Most companies dont survive it. We did, somehow. ( before new CFO )

Actually, its the only job i actually was happy at.  Both the job, the business, and the people. It was the 'right place' for me. 

( until that new guy showed to kill us )

Oh, i didnt do the burn ..

Short version is we got a new CFO and his 'goal' was to bankrupt the company but not make it obvious.  Among other causalities, i was one. Another was our manufacturing maintenance people/supplies. "they are not doing anything, machines are running, get rid of them" ( this was during our annual shut down/product change over.... )

While it sounds silly to an outsider why someone would do this, we were a a joint venture between an American corporation and Japanese. They brought the tech, US brought the business. They had 51%. The ONLY reason the US company did it was to get a hold of the tech. After a few years of decent business the goal was to run it into the ground just enough so the Japanese woudl bail, leaving behind the tech.  They are far more committed than most people think and it took a total collapse to get them gone. But it went too deep, and ended up being bought by a investment firm. 

"look at me i saved all this cash... "   as the place went under 6 months after he left. Could not recover, by design. He had been there less than 6 months. 

That was also were i learned a new term: "containment". I been in the automotive manufacturing business over a decade by then but never heard that term.   Never want to hear it again. Most companies dont survive it. We did, somehow. ( before new CFO )

I like to say when I leave a place, I don't burn my bridges - I napalm them. Or as my AMA racing Intel buddy who reminds me of Ig likes to say it before he punches it into a corner at triple digits, "in for a penny, in for a pound..." 


I knew a couple of guys who worked at shops in Ohio that were like this. Where one or two people were supporting *everything* in IT for like... 300 or more employees. 

I was at a place where I started with two guys, they added me, I added a third guy, and then 4 more and each was specialized. The difference that made was tremendous. It is an industry where you can have one very cross disciplined guy - but things work great if you have a specialized guy/team for each department that are cross disciplined enough to provide backup support. 

But - yeah - if you're pretty good, at those one man shops - you generally get treated like you're virtually irreplaceable. 

Mon Jun 07 2021 12:45:48 EDT from Nurb432

The last plant i worked for ( which i really miss. . long story of why i'm not there. A 'slash and burn' event ) i was the entire IT department ( we only had about 300 employees, were a aluminum casting faculty )  Came in and it was a mess. Dude before me was a moron and  had been gone a month before. ( "I think he left a note for the new guy when he left.. there is the door where the computer stuff is, and here is a key... good luck, that is about all we know" Sooo first thing on the agenda was to make a backup.  There were not any! 

I started in spring and over that summer redid everything one by one. Servers, workstations, printers.  Even the network. ( both blue hose for the shop and Ethernet/fiber for the office area. but kept them separate, out of paranoia of getting hacked and crashing production, or killing someone. Even tho it was 25 years ago and that stuff really didnt happen.

Later that fall, the CTO called me in to his office ( i reported up thru him ) and commented "you know, ever since  you got here, our stuff 'just works' i had forgot what that is like.. thank you"

Grr make that CFO   i was CTO..  

The last plant i worked for ( which i really miss. . long story of why i'm not there. A 'slash and burn' event ) i was the entire IT department ( we only had about 300 employees, were a aluminum casting faculty )  Came in and it was a mess. Dude before me was a moron and  had been gone a month before. ( "I think he left a note for the new guy when he left.. there is the door where the computer stuff is, and here is a key... good luck, that is about all we know" Sooo first thing on the agenda was to make a backup.  There were not any! 

I started in spring and over that summer redid everything one by one. Servers, workstations, printers.  Even the network. ( both blue hose for the shop and Ethernet/fiber for the office area. but kept them separate, out of paranoia of getting hacked and crashing production, or killing someone. Even tho it was 25 years ago and that stuff really didnt happen.

Later that fall, the CTO called me in to his office ( i reported up thru him ) and commented "you know, ever since  you got here, our stuff 'just works' i had forgot what that is like.. thank you"

It actually sounds a lot like my first group at Intel. At one point I was the sole owner for a poorly maintained server that simply did EDI translations for all of Intel's eBuisness. It handled billions of dollars in Intel transactions every year - and if it went down, that business came to a halt. We were rebooting it at least once a week when the translator queue stalled when I first took over the environment. On a couple of top end Xeons with internal RAID and shared, clustered DAS storage - that reboot took about 20 to 30 minutes. Figured out what process it was that was stalling, and was able to just kill and restart it for a while, then organized a tiger team with the product vendor (Sterling Gentran) and helped them discover a legacy issue in the translator that was corrected. We went from somewhere around 87% uptime to being on track for better than five nines in the space of 3 years. Because of Intel's policy of "continuous improvement,"  I was moved on to a new project to "keep me challenged,"

Mon Jun 07 2021 12:03:13 EDT from Nurb432

We used to be more like that.  but as things got more complex over the years ( both in products and our environment ), and our user base grew ( making the risk higher to be on the nightly news if we screwed up ), it made more sense to separate out duties across architecture boundaries. 

Sure it was nice to be able to get into the VM host or the server OS that ran my app when i wanted to, but its also nice to just point my finger when it goes up in smoke down the line a bit..  

 

I think our core user base is around 40k. But its in the millions if you want to include all non-core interactions with our 'customers'. Sure there are larger environments out there, but its not a 'seat of pants' level shop like we used to be.

Mon Jun 07 2021 10:29:15 AM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

Intel didn't draw distinction between app and server/infrastructure. System Engineer meant you were responsible for the server, attached hardware (DAS, NAS, SAN, whatever) and the apps that it served. We had networking - and development - but development worked in test labs and then we moved the finished apps up through dev, test, day1, preprod and production with less assistance from Development at each step. 

Which I guess was a smart move. It kept the developers out of production environments and tried to assure that production apps were so polished that someone without development skills could land them. 

 

We used to be more like that.  but as things got more complex over the years ( both in products and our environment ), and our user base grew ( making the risk higher to be on the nightly news if we screwed up ), it made more sense to separate out duties across architecture boundaries. 

Sure it was nice to be able to get into the VM host or the server OS that ran my app when i wanted to, but its also nice to just point my finger when it goes up in smoke down the line a bit..  

I think our core user base is around 40k. But its in the millions if you want to include all non-core interactions with our 'customers'. Sure there are larger environments out there, but its not a 'seat of pants' level shop like we used to be.

Mon Jun 07 2021 10:29:15 AM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

Intel didn't draw distinction between app and server/infrastructure. System Engineer meant you were responsible for the server, attached hardware (DAS, NAS, SAN, whatever) and the apps that it served. We had networking - and development - but development worked in test labs and then we moved the finished apps up through dev, test, day1, preprod and production with less assistance from Development at each step. 

Which I guess was a smart move. It kept the developers out of production environments and tried to assure that production apps were so polished that someone without development skills could land them. 

 

Intel didn't draw distinction between app and server/infrastructure. System Engineer meant you were responsible for the server, attached hardware (DAS, NAS, SAN, whatever) and the apps that it served. We had networking - and development - but development worked in test labs and then we moved the finished apps up through dev, test, day1, preprod and production with less assistance from Development at each step. 

Which I guess was a smart move. It kept the developers out of production environments and tried to assure that production apps were so polished that someone without development skills could land them. 

Mon Jun 07 2021 07:51:39 EDT from Nurb432

Thankfully now that i'm 'just' an app guy.  Infrastructure issues are not my problem.  I get to sit back and watch the show.

Tho i did have some work to do, that was impossible until evening.

Mon Jun 07 2021 01:22:33 AM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

So they pushed an update that hoses multiple mission critical site locations? 

That bites. I *hate* days like this in enterprise IT. It literally gives me that "sick in my stomach" feeling just thinking about anyone *else* having to go through that. 

 

 

Thankfully now that i'm 'just' an app guy.  Infrastructure issues are not my problem.  I get to sit back and watch the show.

Tho i did have some work to do, that was impossible until evening.

Mon Jun 07 2021 01:22:33 AM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

So they pushed an update that hoses multiple mission critical site locations? 

That bites. I *hate* days like this in enterprise IT. It literally gives me that "sick in my stomach" feeling just thinking about anyone *else* having to go through that. 

 

So they pushed an update that hoses multiple mission critical site locations? 

That bites. I *hate* days like this in enterprise IT. It literally gives me that "sick in my stomach" feeling just thinking about anyone *else* having to go through that. 

"issue is not resolved yet, we are still waiting on a engineer from cisco as they are dealing with multiple OTV outages at many customer sites". 

LOL 

"Just a quick update to Cisco OTV" should only be a few seconds of outage  ( not 100% about what that means yet, something about "virtualization of layer 2 network across the enterprise" )

So it goes down hard, partially, and is taking pretty much everything else with it. Network guys are with CISCO on the phone so its bad.. 100s of VMs failing-over to off-site where they cant talk back to the home data center, VPN barely working, storage arrays are inaccessible. Phone hotlines ( like for police.. ) are toast..   what  freaking mess. 

And i need to do something this afternoon. 

My Nephew once brought a lesbian home after closing time. I knew she was a lesbian the minute I saw her. They messed around all night, and my Nephew was so drunk, the next day he reported about how epically bad his performance was to me, while still insisting she wasn't a lesbian. 

This is on topic... just bear with me... 

So, on top of whiskey dick, he was clumsy and sloppy and just generally terrible. A few hours later, the bartender called my nephew up - told him he should stay away from the bar... that the girlfriend of the girl he had taken home was SUPER pissed... they had broken up and the girl he brought home had decided to try the other team again - mostly to offend her girlfriend. 


I said, "congratulations, buddy - you had a lesbian in bed considering switching teams last night, and she woke up this morning and thought to herself... 


"*That* is why I'm a lesbian..." 

And went right back to her girlfriend..." 




 

Thu Jun 03 2021 10:32:14 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Hoteling was becoming a trend even before the chinavirus drove everyone out of the offices. Much has been written about it, mostly pieces about how it is at once a cost savings and a productivity killer.

Oh, that does suck. 

Mostly because it seems like just a "We want to remind you who is your boss..." kind of policy. The whole "no assigned desks" thing also strips you of any agency. "We're also going to use this opportunity to strip you of any dignity you *did* have before in your role as our employee." 

Wed Jun 02 2021 17:46:20 EDT from Nurb432

"you will return to the office July 6.  You will work in the office a minimum of 6 days every 2 weeks  ( our pay periods re 2 weeks )"

"There will be no more assigned desks but there will be a variety of hotel spaces to use ( what we call non-assigned desks ) and there will be an app related to reserve a space as well as what resources they have"

 

 

Bleh.

"you will return to the office July 6.  You will work in the office a minimum of 6 days every 2 weeks  ( our pay periods re 2 weeks )"

"There will be no more assigned desks but there will be a variety of hotel spaces to use ( what we call non-assigned desks ) and there will be an app related to reserve a space as well as what resources they have"

Bleh.

Wed May 26 2021 10:15:20 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

 Keeping off the road because bella asked for it. :)

You're a love

They're paying you.  You can end the arrangement at any time.  Every job is a tradeoff of benefits: pay vs. quality of life vs. workplace amenities vs. doing work you love vs. etc etc etc etc.

This is the problem with all of it... and the solution does sound very collectivist, unionist, soilidaritist... 

But nobody stands up because they're afraid that alone, no one will stand with them (which is likely) and they'll be destroyed for doing the principled thing. 

If we ALL said fuck it to ALL of it... hell... for a week... if we got that organized. This shit would change. 

And it *has* happened, it can happen - but mostly, we just put up with the shit and wait for one brave, empowered person to call it for the bullshit it is and change it. 

Thu May 27 2021 13:51:36 EDT from Nurb432

Doesn't mean you "personally" accept it.

The only other option is to find another job, with their own set of draconian rules and monitoring. Its not like you can really get away from it, in practical terms.  

Doesn't mean you "personally" accept it.

The only other option is to find another job, with their own set of draconian rules and monitoring. Its not like you can really get away from it, in practical terms.  

The problem is... you're work place is a set for a dystopian Black Mirror episode. 

It isn't an employer - it is a labor camp - if they took down your walls and put in cameras so that some guy in a gray room can monitor you for productivity. 


And... we *accept* it. 

I mean, just read that from outside yourself - and it sounds like a labor camp in some authoritarian dystopian-future regime. 

Wed May 26 2021 19:27:06 EDT from Nurb432

Last week when i was there i was talking to the only 3 people that were there. I had not seen them for over a year so i stopped off to visit. ( Unrelated, Its funny how you can still tell who people are, even with masks. )

Struggling to hear each other to we all looked at each other at the same time sort of shrugged our shoulders and said ' do you care ' and off they went, and then we started talking about how stupid it all is, instead of work stuff.  Even joked about the cameras "they see us, we are gonna get kicked out now". 

 

Those cameras, another story sometime. They appeared right after we lost our cubes."for our safety". ya, right.

Wed May 26 2021 07:07:59 PM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

I went in to one of our offices for a week-long series of meetings a few weeks ago. The mask mandate lasted about five hours on the first day, after we all just kind of agreed that nobody cares and we'd rather breathe.

 

Last week when i was there i was talking to the only 3 people that were there. I had not seen them for over a year so i stopped off to visit. ( Unrelated, Its funny how you can still tell who people are, even with masks. )

Struggling to hear each other to we all looked at each other at the same time sort of shrugged our shoulders and said ' do you care ' and off they went, and then we started talking about how stupid it all is, instead of work stuff.  Even joked about the cameras "they see us, we are gonna get kicked out now". 

Those cameras, another story sometime. They appeared right after we lost our cubes."for our safety". ya, right.

Wed May 26 2021 07:07:59 PM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

I went in to one of our offices for a week-long series of meetings a few weeks ago. The mask mandate lasted about five hours on the first day, after we all just kind of agreed that nobody cares and we'd rather breathe.

We all proved it, but when the big guy says jump, you either jump or find another job.

I think hes only got one more term available to him. but by that time it will be time for me to move on anyway.

Humanity has comfort zones. Trust me, I proved to my boss I could be nearly as effective, and work longer hours and get more done, working from home. 

But he just feels like employees need to come into the office. 

People revert to old habits quickly. 

Wed May 26 2021 14:54:00 EDT from Nurb432

Donno what is going to happen for the agencies who moved out totally and shut down operations on campus.. Other people have moved in ( to get out of off-campus leases )  they dont have places to go. I guess they have to lease space off-campus. Which isn't budgeted for as budgets for the next 3 years *just* got signed of on..

One of our teams that didnt have room to be with us moved down to our floor, due to another larger team vacating permeability ( they thought ). Now they have to go back where the came from so the others can come back in. So much effort, wasted.

 

What a freaking mess, 1950s mentality. 

Donno what is going to happen for the agencies who moved out totally and shut down operations on campus.. Other people have moved in ( to get out of off-campus leases )  they dont have places to go. I guess they have to lease space off-campus. Which isn't budgeted for as budgets for the next 3 years *just* got signed of on..

One of our teams that didnt have room to be with us moved down to our floor, due to another larger team vacating permeability ( they thought ). Now they have to go back where the came from so the others can come back in. So much effort, wasted.

What a freaking mess, 1950s mentality. 

Bleh just got worse. 

Even tho our manager is asking for 'stuff' to help keep a few at home longer, its going to be denied as this is now the official mandate from the big guy who has unconditional control over *everything*:

Here is how we will return:

1. Beginning Tuesday, June 7, all agency heads, senior staff and supervisors should be in their pre-pandemic work locations full time
2. No later than Monday, June 21, all non-supervisory employees should report to their pre-pandemic work locations at least 50 percent of their work week
3. No later than Tuesday, July 6, all employees should report to their pre-pandemic locations full time

Oh well, was fun while it lasted. Time to start re-training my dogs to be alone during the day.

LOL so just now we get an email from facilities: "we are closing 1/2 the north garage for 4 months for repairs"  

Really? We have been out of there nearly 1.5 year and they just NOW decide to do repairs, as we start going back?

"If you're vaccinated, you don't have to wear a mask, unless someone else has FEELINGS that you *should* wear a mask." 

So, your office is operating on Slowest Ship in the Fleet principles. Basically, you *have* to wear a mask, regardless of the science. 

Wed May 26 2021 10:15:20 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Yeah, we got "you can take off your mask in the office if you're vaccinated, unless someone asks you to keep it on, and we'll all be returning to the office after Labor Day."

Lucky for me I've been working from home for at least five years and will continue to do so. Keeping off the road because bella asked for it. :)

It of course is not end of world, i was at the office before ( tho eventually they started letting some of us work a day or 2 a week from home ), so its not like things 'changed' from when i first started and got sold a bill of goods. But i like it here. I used to work out of the house when i was doing network stuff ( and of course traveling between sites but never the 'office' other than to get parts if i didnt have time to ship ) and sort of forgot how nice it is. 

oh well another 4 years i can tell them to stick it and still get full pension, if i can pay off the house by then and figure out medical insurance ( not nearly old enough for medicare.. )

Wed May 26 2021 10:15:20 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Yeah, we got "you can take off your mask in the office if you're vaccinated, unless someone asks you to keep it on, and we'll all be returning to the office after Labor Day."

Lucky for me I've been working from home for at least five years and will continue to do so. Keeping off the road because bella asked for it. :)

"July 6: back to pre-pandemic staffing"

grumble.