Dear Users… (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people) Part 10

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Faydra said:
<RANT>

My company, which I will admit has been great throughout the pandemic, giving us 40 hours of covid sick leave each year since it began, and a 'wellness' week off, and allowed us to work from home, has now swung its pendulum in the other direction.

Someone, somewhere has decided we IT folks get far too many perks.

We are required as of April 11th to return to work. In a new building. Freestyle seating (in case you don't know, thats where you don't have an assigned desk you carry all your stuff with you and choose an open desk when you arrive). Awful enough, but the thing that has most of us screaming from the rooftops is that they have decided one 27" monitor is the company standard and you will just have to deal with that.

ONE. 27. Inch. Monitor. Are you crazy?

There's a slack thread with people screaming from the rooftops how their productivity will suffer greatly. They don't care. Deal with it.

This may seem like first world problems to a lot of you, but I'm quite pissy about it. One 27" monitor. Insanity. Just Insanity.

</RANT>
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*I look up from the 14 inch, two generation old HP laptop, balanced on the knee that is my desk 90% of the time while my phone is wedged between my shoulder and ear*

"Got it. You can't possibly work without a triple 40" 4k monitor setup ergonomically perfectly setup for your exact bodily dimensions, a special brand of keyboard that was only manufactured for 6 months in West Germany, a standing desk, a headset that doesn't weigh more than .00004 ounces so it doesn't give you neck strain, and a space heater plugged into the same outlet as your PC."
 
I'm just seeing if I can ditch Adobe products as a bit of a cost cutting exercise so trying out a few alternatives. One is the Affinity range. One off purchase for all their apps on PC/MAC and iPad.

But this threat has me worrying!



Will "Uses all system resources" EEK! :boggled:
 
Faydra said:
<RANT>

My company, which I will admit has been great throughout the pandemic, giving us 40 hours of covid sick leave each year since it began, and a 'wellness' week off, and allowed us to work from home, has now swung its pendulum in the other direction.

Someone, somewhere has decided we IT folks get far too many perks.

We are required as of April 11th to return to work. In a new building. Freestyle seating (in case you don't know, thats where you don't have an assigned desk you carry all your stuff with you and choose an open desk when you arrive). Awful enough, but the thing that has most of us screaming from the rooftops is that they have decided one 27" monitor is the company standard and you will just have to deal with that.

ONE. 27. Inch. Monitor. Are you crazy?

There's a slack thread with people screaming from the rooftops how their productivity will suffer greatly. They don't care. Deal with it.

This may seem like first world problems to a lot of you, but I'm quite pissy about it. One 27" monitor. Insanity. Just Insanity.

</RANT>
Click to expand...
We had a new manager that came up with a stupid edict nearly as bad - he said we could only have two screens on our desks, including PDAs (it was the time when they were just becoming common). I don't recall he ever gave any sensible reason for this, and I know I just ignored it and he can't have lasted long as there were no repercussions. At the time, I would have had a UNIX workstation under my desk, and a PC, and quite possibly a third machine, plus a Windows PDA. I don't think at that time that I had multiple monitors on one machine, but these days I'd expect at least three.
 
Faydra said:
<RANT>

My company, which I will admit has been great throughout the pandemic, giving us 40 hours of covid sick leave each year since it began, and a 'wellness' week off, and allowed us to work from home, has now swung its pendulum in the other direction.

Someone, somewhere has decided we IT folks get far too many perks.

We are required as of April 11th to return to work. In a new building. Freestyle seating (in case you don't know, thats where you don't have an assigned desk you carry all your stuff with you and choose an open desk when you arrive). Awful enough, but the thing that has most of us screaming from the rooftops is that they have decided one 27" monitor is the company standard and you will just have to deal with that.

ONE. 27. Inch. Monitor. Are you crazy?

There's a slack thread with people screaming from the rooftops how their productivity will suffer greatly. They don't care. Deal with it.

This may seem like first world problems to a lot of you, but I'm quite pissy about it. One 27" monitor. Insanity. Just Insanity.

</RANT>
Click to expand...

Luxury! You got monitors!

Why, in OUR day, we only had small blackboards to write our FORTRAN on and give it to the Keeper of the Dragon's Cave to magically process. They gave us it back as big reams of paper with gobble-de-gook on it. And we lapped it up and asked for more!

Aye, them was the days!
 
Dear Users.

I... can't.... *******... work... the.... issue... if... you... don't.... *******... stop... banging... on... my.... door... to... tell... me... there's... an... issue.

This is why we have a help desk, a central place for you all the report your problems so the actual techs like me can work at fixing them. But since you are all too stupid, rude, self centered, or all three to do that no problem will actually get fixed until every single old lady in this ******* building has pulled me away from fixing it to show me the she's having the exact same problem i already knew everyone was having and was trying to ******* fix.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Dear Users.

I... can't.... *******... work... the.... issue... if... you... don't.... *******... stop... banging... on... my.... door... to... tell... me... there's... an... issue.

This is why we have a help desk, a central place for you all the report your problems so the actual techs like me can work at fixing them. But since you are all too stupid, rude, self centered, or all three to do that no problem will actually get fixed until every single old lady in this ******* building has pulled me away from fixing it to show me the she's having the exact same problem i already knew everyone was having and was trying to ******* fix.
Click to expand...

There's an unwritten maxim in our place: Users always, always, ALWAYS go directly to the last person who actually helped them whenever they have a problem after that. If you were dumb enough to give them your cell number then they will have it tattooed on their arm and that's who they will call first, not Help Desk.

Moral of the story: Don't help anybody; stay out of touch.
 
Norman Alexander said:
There's an unwritten maxim in our place: Users always, always, ALWAYS go directly to the last person who actually helped them whenever they have a problem after that. If you were dumb enough to give them your cell number then they will have it tattooed on their arm and that's who they will call first, not Help Desk.

Moral of the story: Don't help anybody; stay out of touch.
Click to expand...

We have to have an onsite person. It's part of the contract. They know where I'm at.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Dear Users.

I... can't.... *******... work... the.... issue... if... you... don't.... *******... stop... banging... on... my.... door... to... tell... me... there's... an... issue.

This is why we have a help desk, a central place for you all the report your problems so the actual techs like me can work at fixing them. But since you are all too stupid, rude, self centered, or all three to do that no problem will actually get fixed until every single old lady in this ******* building has pulled me away from fixing it to show me the she's having the exact same problem i already knew everyone was having and was trying to ******* fix.
Click to expand...

When I was a junior systems programmer at IBM UK my team lead was the chief system programmer for something called IMS which was the main, in modern terms think of it as the DB and web server hosting other applications. Some major problems me and another sysyprog took turns acting as doormen. Managers of application teams would wander by "looking for an update" and we'd stop them and ask if they'd prefer an update or a fix.
 
zooterkin said:
We had a new manager that came up with a stupid edict nearly as bad - he said we could only have two screens on our desks, including PDAs (it was the time when they were just becoming common). I don't recall he ever gave any sensible reason for this, and I know I just ignored it and he can't have lasted long as there were no repercussions. At the time, I would have had a UNIX workstation under my desk, and a PC, and quite possibly a third machine, plus a Windows PDA. I don't think at that time that I had multiple monitors on one machine, but these days I'd expect at least three.
Click to expand...

I had a stack of twelve 'standard' PCs on a wheeled cupboard next to my desk.
We used them to host four user virtual desktops each, configured to use three different 'environments' at the back end. (Think set of servers running services, databases, etc.)
Users (including DEVS and the test team) would remote to those computers to test elements of the build in each environment.

Every now and then I had someone come along and start whingeing that 'I' had too many computers.

We'd been promised the ability to virtualise the whole setup for about six years...
 
Norman Alexander said:
Luxury! You got monitors!

Why, in OUR day, we only had small blackboards to write our FORTRAN on and give it to the Keeper of the Dragon's Cave to magically process. They gave us it back as big reams of paper with gobble-de-gook on it. And we lapped it up and asked for more!

Aye, them was the days!
Click to expand...

Blackboards?

Ahh, we used to dream of having blackboards!!

In OUR day we'd place rocks as inputs on levers constructed by baboons. The outputs were the rocks (and whatever) that got hurled back at you.

Ya tell techs today that and they won't believe you.
 
Norman Alexander said:
There's an unwritten maxim in our place: Users always, always, ALWAYS go directly to the last person who actually helped them whenever they have a problem after that. If you were dumb enough to give them your cell number then they will have it tattooed on their arm and that's who they will call first, not Help Desk.

Moral of the story: Don't help anybody; stay out of touch.
Click to expand...

HELP DESK. If you're looking for a little help, you've come to the right place. We can offer as little as anybody else.
 
The Man said:
Blackboards?

Ahh, we used to dream of having blackboards!!

In OUR day we'd place rocks as inputs on levers constructed by baboons. The outputs were the rocks (and whatever) that got hurled back at you.

Ya tell techs today that and they won't believe you.
Click to expand...

You were lucky to have baboons. We had sloths, and were still expected to produce a line of code every day.
 
arthwollipot said:
I remember when I was in high school, the teacher was trying to get us to remove our bags and books from our desks. "Clean desk, clean mind!" she said.

"Empty desk?" I asked.
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My mother attended a parent-teacher conference concerning me in about 1955 and was told that. She told me about it. I didn't come up with the comeback until years later.
I think what the teacher actually said was "A cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind." She was probably right. I'm thinking about lots of stuff all the time. I don't consider it to be a bad thing.
 
Them: We want to add some things to the data extract.
Me: Which things?
Them: We don't know.
Me: ...
Them: How long will it take?! It's important.
Me: You need to tell me what to add.
Them: Can't you just ask somebody?
 
novaphile said:
A friend of mine has spent his working life on COBOL applications.

He has been told throughout this time, that COBOL is a dead language and that he has no future.

At this stage, he's wondering if he'll be allowed to retire.

:jaw-dropp
Click to expand...

If I felt like working again I could probably get a job doing just that.
 
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