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blackswordca posted:Just got an email from my manager It sounds like it's a lot of machines so I'd expect a volume license to be a fair bit cheaper. Or is it enough seats to be annoying to make email accounts for but not enough to make a VL cheap?
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 22:13 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 22:00 |
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Nativity In Black posted:Not to go off on a somewhat unrelated tangent, but when our system gets set up for P25, I will be so happy. A lot of the adjacent departments are on the same system we are but the bigger city we are a suburb of is not. It will be nice to have the PD/FD be able to flip a channel to hit their main. How are you not on P25? You poor thing. Are you at least running something trunked? <ramble content="firefighter-IT"> The company I work for is one of the companies pushing for technology for FF/first responders, but we mainly target the dispatch center and chiefs/captains -- for the reason that most suburban or volly FFs don't have laptops in the rigs or the money or interest in doing so, and most of the information should flow through those two groups anyway. Our main focus is getting preplan information accessible to the people in the field, with a heavy emphasis on providing info for mutual aid responses. (We also include the hazmat manual in a surprisingly handy searchable format. We've gotten props for being more convenient than both competitors and the book.) Paper preplans are nice, but for multiple towns at once, it usually means at least one group is going in blind. They're also an administrative hassle -- we've visited a few stations where we've asked "so how do you guys organize your preplans" and were basically told "uhh, up here" *taps head* ...I'm sure you can share that information really easily when you're on a call and mutual aid gets called in from a neighboring town for a fire at the nursing home. A lot of the busier suburban and rural departments get a chance to update the plans when doing fire inspections every few years at most. We provide retired firefighters that do those preplans for them. There have been stacks of "waiting to be filed" paper preplans sitting in the dispatch office waiting for downtimes to process them. That's just not right; you guys need accurate info and the tools to let you do your jobs. I've seen a lot of "throw IT at it and it'll get better!" stuff and a lot of "well, you just have to put in the data during your copious free time" stuff (hint: electronic systems only get used if they're more convenient than the paper systems they replace, and there is no such thing if you're only selling the software and not working with the customers and providing quality support. One of the big visual preplan packages requires the user to draw the entire building's floorplan before it's useful. Any firefighters want to take up drafting? I thought not). Talking to actual firefighters gives you a good idea of what subset of features actually gets used and an eye for how to incorporate it in a more usable way. It's eye-opening how few of the big ticket features so many CAD systems use fall into that category. It's like they do absolutely no market research when they develop it. If you want a huge example of "IT for IT's sake" look at UICDS. Holy poo poo, I'm yet to find anything remotely approaching a proper use for it in firefighting. Plus it has the barrier that major companies won't include support for it until other companies do, and companies won't build support for it until there's a pressing business need that overrides the lock-in they get when they can convince an entire region to use their dispatch software. And with firefighters especially, you usually get one failure before they go "yeah, gently caress it." Things have to be reliable and resilient or they may as well not be there. False information is worse than no information. Also, FLIR is awesome. One of the fire academies we work with has an entire building outfitted with FLIR cameras for post-training quarterbacking, and I drool over them. I covet them. </ramble> On topic: OpenVPN randomly decided to stop working on one machine without administrator access on Windows (shows the connection as successful and then doesn't actually add the route). It was confusing as hell the first time I ran into it but it's getting to the point where I know the places where our internal stuff actually fails. I think that's a good thing. Our internal IT is a mess. I can't wait until we get enough funding to properly unfuck it. I won't even explain how our email system is set up, because it'll make me either laugh or cry.
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 22:14 |
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Storysmith posted:How are you not on P25? You poor thing. quote:Are you at least running something trunked? Yeah we currently run EDACS. A lot of people would be comfortable staying with EDACS except my boss is aware that it's EOL. We are a part of a big trunking co-op that covers a large portion of my state. Us and a group that piggy backs off of us are the only ones still on EDACS. At the end of 2014 the last parts of that system are going to get yanked by the people who own it so we have to be migrated by then. They were gonna try to get the money from a bond, but it got shot down by City Council, so we have to find it somewhere. If we get the system and location we want I think other districts will be drooling to hop on it. It covers a quarter of the state.
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 22:27 |
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AlexDeGruven posted:Dear HP, if you send me a replacement Hard Drive (or replacement anything, for that matter) and you want the old one back within 5 days like it says on the included sheet: Don't include a UPS ground label. Either send me a 2nd Day Air label, or ask for the old one within 10 days. HP is pretty lax if you email them back. Explain that you have received the item but the old one cannot be replaced until X time because reason and you would like an extension for the return date. I had a long weekend and got it a few hours before leaving emailed HP and they gave me 60 days. I only asked for another week, but hey 2 months is nice!
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 22:39 |
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Emergency services IT is kinda fumbling its way forward, but it is going forward and the benefits are obvious. Someday all respodning units (and dispatch) can enjoy live video from the first unit on scene whilst they're still en route for instance. One of the incidents I worked today is also something that used to be scoffed at as "we always managed before", but now it's priority 1 A, heaven and earth shall move to get it working again ASAP (as it should be). ECG transmission from ambulances to receiving hospitals stopped working in a district. (Database problem, poor programming, two units had been set up with the same license, they proceeded to "fight" for the use of the licence and ground the DB-server to a standstill at 100% CPU.) Just a few years ago (some) paramedics would have been insulted at the implication they couldn't read an ECG well enough to decide what hospital to go to, now they'll take the ambulance off duty or go transports only if this poo poo doesn't work. Not just because it's protocol but because they agree with it.
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 22:41 |
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chia posted:Subject: "The Guy" here writes his entire email on the loving subject line regards "the guy" We have a guy who does that. He'll ask a short question in the subject and have no message body. I've started replying directly in the subject line to him.
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 22:42 |
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Speaking of emails, we have one who has an out-of-office message of "I am out of the office. -name" No alternative contacts or contact details, just that one little blunt response. totalnewbie posted:You guys should read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Eats-Shoots-Leaves-Tolerance-Punctuation/dp/1592402038 Or watch this clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 22:53 |
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Agrikk posted:th guy hr, What the gently caress? I'd have to tell that person not to bother emailing me until (s)he learns how to communicate like an adult. I shouldn't need some secret decoder ring to decipher emails. Speaking of writing like each keypress feeling like it costs $10., my Kinesis keyboard came in today and holy crap is it going to take some getting used to. Love the Cherry brown keys though. Much more comfortable to type with, just a funky layout. Wagonburner posted:Personal stuff yes you probably could get them involved but if it's work-related personal stuff and he was getting into it to do work with you really shouldn't involve the cops. Get it returned, get his/your boss to make sure he knows not to do this.
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 22:56 |
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Volmarias posted:We have a guy who does that. He'll ask a short question in the subject and have no message body. I've started replying directly in the subject line to him. Nothing really wrong with this. Otherwise it'd just be the same thing in the subject and body.
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 23:20 |
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Lum posted:Probably goes without saying that this machine does not have an SSD. That's your problem. The place I was working for over the summer had similar Dell laptops with mechanical drives and they were slow as gently caress. I'm not sure if Dell uses especially lovely hard drives or if they have some hardware/firmware flaw but the I/O on those laptops was extremely bad even by mechanical drive standards. e: My technical challenge for the day was trying (and failing) to unfuck my google voice. Somehow a voicemail escaped google voice and ended up somewhere else on my phone. In the process of trying to fix that my google voice number stopped forwarding to my cell. It just says "call cannot be completed as dialed" and hangs up. I can forward the number to my home phone and it works fine. I generated another google voice number on another account and can forward that to my cell but my original number will not work. Slightly hosed since that's the number I've given everyone and is the number on my resume. Not completely hosed since it will at least go to the home phone. I think it's time to just give up on google voice and pay out the nose for text messaging through my carrier. Galler fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Aug 30, 2013 |
# ? Aug 29, 2013 23:52 |
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I'm currently deploying a two node fail over cluster and hyper-v install. One of the servers I'm replacing has a bad power supply, and I have no way to turn the alarm off. Also, the forest functional level is still at 2000.
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# ? Aug 29, 2013 23:59 |
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Galler posted:That's your problem. The place I was working for over the summer had similar Dell laptops with mechanical drives and they were slow as gently caress. I'm not sure if Dell uses especially lovely hard drives or if they have some hardware/firmware flaw but the I/O on those laptops was extremely bad even by mechanical drive standards. I know that they had some certain Seagate hard drives that had a pretty serious firmware flaw. We had a bad batch in some 9010's (not sure why they stuck a 2.5" drive in a full on desktop.) They would be excruciatingly slow after being left on for ~10 days. Some that we tested would take over 20mins to shutdown, then another 30mins to boot up to a somewhat usable desktop.
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 00:11 |
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I hope no-one asks me how to understand Youtube and Google's account systems, as neither do I. I think the problem is, it usually pops up in my face with "ohai, do you want to use your full name? Please use your full name? Pretty please?" just as I'm trying to do something and I'm like "what? No, gently caress off out of my face" without reading it properly. But whatever "no" I keep giving it is one that it obviously doesn't understand as it asks me again a couple of days later. Yesterday it pestered me about my Google Apps account, saying I needed to move data from their old system to their new system or something. Once again I was trying to do something and tired and stupid and just wanting it out of my face. Just now I clicked through the daily Youtube real name nag and it created a Google+ account for me. I already have a Google+ account, what the gently caress? This is getting annoying. GOOGLE, STAHP. Or make one giant "merge everything I have into this email address with this display name and gently caress off" button.
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 00:27 |
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quote:We are in the process of cleaning out our storage area and came across an old computer tower. I would like to send it to IT to have whatever is on it saved on CDs (or whatever is available) and then have it wiped and surplused. Computer tag number 05852
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 00:31 |
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SEKCobra posted:Reset them? Since you don't know their passwords you don't know their config and that is BAD. If they're Cisco, you can boot them into the ROM and change the password without wiping out everything else.
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 00:32 |
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GargleBlaster posted:GOOGLE, STAHP. I'm so loving tired of this focus-stealing spammy garbage.
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 00:34 |
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Was away from my office for no more than 15 minutes and came back to find a small box outdide my office door labeled "computer stuff". Opened it up to find a couple floppy disks, some MS Works software from like 1999 and a gross, sticky USB cable. Gee, thanks for leaving your trash with me.
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 00:36 |
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Che Delilas posted:I'm so loving tired of this focus-stealing spammy garbage. If I didn't have an Android phone, I'd be sorely tempted to delete all my Google stuff and move to something else (Owncloud maybe) Curse them for being so convenient and well integrated. I am however tempted if possible, to back everything up, delete them all and start again with one up-to-date account where I've answered everything on the latest sign-up page. Obviously my Google and Youtube accounts are ancient and have had acquisitions, mergers, naming policy changes, the removal of personal/free Google Apps etc and now they're just out of sync with reality.
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 00:49 |
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GargleBlaster posted:I hope no-one asks me how to understand Youtube and Google's account systems, as neither do I. I think the problem is, it usually pops up in my face with "ohai, do you want to use your full name? Please use your full name? Pretty please?" just as I'm trying to do something and I'm like "what? No, gently caress off out of my face" without reading it properly. But whatever "no" I keep giving it is one that it obviously doesn't understand as it asks me again a couple of days later. You're using the same excuse that my clients use when they're complaining about doing updates.
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 00:53 |
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The Fool posted:You're using the same excuse that my clients use when they're complaining about doing updates. Aye, but I'm not putting my company's network security in danger, or even my own, so it's not really the same thing. I'm just trying to dick around on Youtube at home, and they keep fiddling with their account systems and expecting me to care about it.
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 00:57 |
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Not only did microsoft switching their Web email to 365 change our login page, it also broke our SSO. So every one of our roughly 15k users had to be sent an email saying "make a password to login with and use this specific username format at this website you've never heard of" once a week leading up to the changeover. We logged something like 8k contacts from shitbirds who couldn't be bothered to read the emails we repeatedly sent them. Many of them were angry for us not warning them ahead of time.
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 01:45 |
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chia posted:Subject: "The Guy" here writes his entire email on the loving subject line regards "the guy" "The Guy" here (actually The Gal, and there's about 4 of them from the same department who do the same thing) emails us a ticket, then comes to the window to tell us verbatim what their email said. When you cut them off with, "I got it, I saw the email, we're working on it." they get mad and continue telling us about their stupid email. This happens several times a day. And their desk is on the complete opposite side of the building from our little cubicle room.
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 02:28 |
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Spazz posted:Did you go to management about this? I think it would strongly depend on your office environment but where I work you would be fired during your first week for doing that poo poo. Yeah, not sure if that alone would get him fired but he is quickly proving to be a bit useless and full of bullshit. He keeps telling stories of how great he is but none of the training seems to be sticking. He also brags about his unreal tournament clan from many years ago. Now that I describe him I've realized he is just
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 03:29 |
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jim truds posted:Yeah, not sure if that alone would get him fired but he is quickly proving to be a bit useless and full of bullshit. He keeps telling stories of how great he is but none of the training seems to be sticking. He also brags about his unreal tournament clan from many years ago. Now that I describe him I've realized he is just He brags about a UT clan? To strangers? Sounds more like to me.
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 03:47 |
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Measures to reduce support calls: Step 1
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 04:14 |
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Godsped posted:Measures to reduce support calls: I was the only person in my theory/audiation classes who could ever get that goddamn program working. It almost singlehandedly pointed me towards IT rather than music. Even with instructions like that, MacGAMUT can still go get hosed.
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 05:09 |
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GargleBlaster posted:I hope no-one asks me how to understand Youtube and Google's account systems, as neither do I. I think the problem is, it usually pops up in my face with "ohai, do you want to use your full name? Please use your full name? Pretty please?" just as I'm trying to do something and I'm like "what? No, gently caress off out of my face" without reading it properly. But whatever "no" I keep giving it is one that it obviously doesn't understand as it asks me again a couple of days later. Had to contact YouTube to get them to restore my fiancée's "channel" after she selected one option just to get rid of that stupid popup and it managed to delete all of her favourites and playlists.
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 05:19 |
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pixaal posted:Yeah we just don't have the time to figure out what the passwords are for the switches since no one knows them, and we have other things not working. We know its an issue, but its going to be messy since no one has any idea what the password is. Maybe he got stuck with the muscle memory from training days. I'm sure you've tried "cisco", give "class" a shot. Seems like every PT lab I do uses cisco and class as passwords. Now I think I skimmed over a section on password recovery/resetting in my textbook, pushing MODE, renaming the configuration file, sound familiar? I know I don't know jack, I'm just a student. But I do like a good puzzle. EDIT: Well, this thread moves fast. Inspector_71 knows what I'm talking about. JukeboxHerostratus fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Aug 30, 2013 |
# ? Aug 30, 2013 05:41 |
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jim truds posted:Yeah, not sure if that alone would get him fired but he is quickly proving to be a bit useless and full of bullshit. He keeps telling stories of how great he is but none of the training seems to be sticking. He also brags about his unreal tournament clan from many years ago. Now that I describe him I've realized he is just How the hell do people like this pass interviews?
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 05:42 |
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About google name updates: I was getting the annoying "please use your real name"thing as well again and again. Then I sent feedback to youtube about it and it stopped. When I heard people talking about it later, I thought maybe they removed the 'bother this person' flag?
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 06:00 |
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-What are you doing Betamax?-
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 06:00 |
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Verdugo posted:And their desk is on the complete opposite side of the building from our little cubicle room. And now you know why they need to walk over and give you the ticket again verbally!
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 06:02 |
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Sweevo posted:theres a guy here..... who writes like this..... like he just....... starts jabbing the . key...... every time he pauses.......
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 07:08 |
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blackswordca posted:Just got an email from my manager Yeah, gently caress that. Told my boss the AVG price of a workstation just went up.
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 07:26 |
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Motronic posted:Our cops also use their laptops to check for warrants/solen property/etc. I'd argue that some of what they can do is pretty critical to their safety and a big improvement from the old days when they didn't have access to this information (dispatch isn't going to have to time to look it up all for them in every situation).
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 07:58 |
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ookiimarukochan posted:This is both a WTF and thing that I have seen myself (started a new job and the machine they'd bought for me had 6GB of RAM / x86 OS "because some of our code won't work on x64" - fair enough, but why the extra 2GB? I never got a good explanation for that) hosed if I know, such decisions aren't mine to make, I just have to deal with the 'it's slow' tickets In the minds of those who do make such decisions, the happiness of the users isn't even a consideration (even when it = saving ££).
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 08:28 |
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My boss is a maroon. We have gigabit switched ethernet network and a 3 VMware servers with 6 network cards each. We have a 3 megabit internet connection (dual T1's). In an effort to make the internet run a little quicker I threw together a squid web cache on Linux. After trying to explain to him for a half hour that it's running on Linux and both squid and Linux are GPL and we can run them for free, he keeps insisting it can't be any good if it's free and we need to sign a software license with the company who makes the software, and have it on record. He must have been up late thinking about it because about an hour after I left yesterday, he emails me with this amazing discovery: quote:Are you concerned about running all internet traffic through VMware and essentially adding much more traffic volume to the NIC cards on the ESX servers? 3 megs of traffic on a 1 gig network? omg ponies!
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 12:59 |
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Honestly apart from the dumb stuff him wanting to have things on record is "a good thing". I started my last job taking over from someone who left literally no documentation. He was a ninja coder and made loads of systems with nothing written down about them, all of his code has 0 comments in it. For the love of God I just wish he had written something down about what he was doing and what some of his systems did. It seems he built up a complex and delicate structure of job and process which while are actually written quite well, and simplified a lot of functions, they now have to be torn down and started from scratch because the retard did not write a single thing down about what he did or made and nobody knows how it works. For some reason people seem to think their jobs are more secure if only they know how to do something. Don't think that, good documentation skills make you more valuable than anything else you think you can do.
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 14:22 |
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But if they know how your stuff works, they don't need to pay you consultant money after you've left the company.
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 14:31 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 22:00 |
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Dravs posted:Honestly apart from the dumb stuff him wanting to have things on record is "a good thing". I started my last job taking over from someone who left literally no documentation. He was a ninja coder and made loads of systems with nothing written down about them, all of his code has 0 comments in it.
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# ? Aug 30, 2013 14:51 |