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Misogynist posted:Now ask the same person to describe their problems to a mechanic who continually interrupts them to give them a condescending frown, and tell them how their explanations aren't good enough and demonstrate a really serious misunderstanding of how cars work. Do this over and over and over, every week, for years. Then, see if you get the same quantity of words coming out. Misogynist posted:I don't mean to imply that most people in the industry are unprofessional to the point of reprimand. I would argue that the scenario you described is way past the point of reprimand in a well-managed IT department. It would go something like, "Hey Che, we've had complaints about you from every person you've serviced a ticket on for the last 2 weeks, that you're being condescending and unapproachable, and instead of determining and solving their problems, you're telling them how stupid they are when it comes to computers. Let's talk about basic manners and politeness." And no, I don't give users a free pass just because their computer-savvy teenage neighbor may have talked down to them and now they have PTSD. When you say "it's broken" and the tech responds with "what is not happening that should be, and are there any error messages that pop up?" and the user says "JUST FIX IT!" that is not the technician being difficult. That is the user being lazy.
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# ? Nov 9, 2013 20:22 |
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# ? May 11, 2024 14:20 |
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Misogynist posted:I don't mean to imply that most people in the industry are unprofessional to the point of reprimand. It's usually a lot more subtle, and I know exactly how subtle it is because I do it all the loving time myself when I find myself explaining things to people. I haven't decided if I'm blessed or cursed with the self-awareness to realize what an rear end in a top hat I am to people sometimes. People are aware of what the rudimentary parts of cars are for. So the call comes in as, "When I try to stop, my car makes a funny noise, can you check my brakes because I know brakes are to do with stopping" It's unusual for someone to say "My PC takes forever to turn on, can you check the startup items" - it would just be "computer slow"
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# ? Nov 10, 2013 00:49 |
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Sirotan posted:I would take a guess that more than a majority of people who drive a car can tell you where the engine is, how many wheels it's got, that it has windows, etc. That's 'rudimentary'. Before we were married, my ex wife had no idea that you had to fill tires up with air or check the air pressure in them until she almost had an accident when one of her tires blew out. She didn't know how the wheel lock worked, and had to call AAA in a panic because the steering wheel wouldn't turn. She almost put diesel in her car once, and thank god that the diesel pump diameter is bigger than the regular gas diameter or she'd have done it. You're a reasonably intelligent woman, but you have no idea how goddamn dumb some people are. Even people that are reasonably intelligent in some ways can be extremely stupid about anything that it's not cool to know. For your average women, its not cool to know about cars or computers, just like for your average guy, its not cool to know how to cook or sew. Societal pressure can make you incredibly stupid about any of these things. And before teh social justice warriors get on me, i'm in no way saying that women are incapable of being good with cars or computers (Sirotan and Lum are perfect examples of how wrong THAT conclusion is) I'm saying its a society thing, not a gender or a lack of intelligence thing. I seriously think people are stupid as hell about computers because there's this idea that only bucktoothed nerds know about them, so somehow learning a little bit about computers will automatically give you a diastema.
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# ? Nov 10, 2013 02:06 |
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The notion that computers are only for nerds only applies to people over the age of 35. Millenials actually think geeky/nerdy poo poo is cool, I suspect due in part to growing up with the internet and being in adolescence/young adulthood when YouTube became huge, and partly due to the widely published massive salaries that people in the computing industry make. It's cool to be rich, after all. And indeed, at my previous job the older people were all "Lol nerd" when I tried to show them something and the younger people were fascinated and interested in learning about computers.
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# ? Nov 10, 2013 04:53 |
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psydude posted:And indeed, at my previous job the older people were all "Lol nerd" when I tried to show them something Please tell me that it occurred something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43GChXc6RVY
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# ? Nov 10, 2013 05:00 |
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psydude posted:The notion that computers are only for nerds only applies to people over the age of 35. Millenials actually think geeky/nerdy poo poo is cool, From what I've seen, not really. People are going to use Twitter/Facebook/etc, but not a lot of people are going to transition their ability to post dozens of times on Facebook in a day to learning how websites work. This isn't any specific to Millenials, its just how people use computers. More people use them, but probably not many of them understand the computers more then the bare minimum. I've got coworkers who spends hundreds on a new smartphone, hundreds more a year on a plan, and never use it beyond texting, calling, listening to music, and occasionally looking up something online.
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# ? Nov 10, 2013 08:35 |
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CitizenKain posted:I've got coworkers who spends hundreds on a new smartphone, hundreds more a year on a plan, and never use it beyond texting, calling, listening to music, and occasionally looking up something online. This is me, pretty much, except that I also don't call or text much. But I have a cheap old Optimus and I'm only paying ~$300/yr for service, so at least I'm not like one of these suckers who buys new iPhones every year and has a $100/mo unlimited plan and still never uses their phone for anything, I guess. As for computer knowledge in general, I think us tech folks sometimes forget that figuring out how an unfamiliar and complicated device or process works and troubleshooting issues are actually skills, and like any skill, they require a bit of aptitude, a bit of talent, and a shitload of practice. We just spend so much time using those skills in the course of our jobs and hobbies that we tend to forget they aren't actually second nature to everyone.
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# ? Nov 10, 2013 16:21 |
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CitizenKain posted:From what I've seen, not really. People are going to use Twitter/Facebook/etc, but not a lot of people are going to transition their ability to post dozens of times on Facebook in a day to learning how websites work. I don't expect them to know how a certain method is called in their favorite mobile app or how to set up multi-homed BGP for funzies, but I've noticed far fewer instances of getting calls because, say, the power cord is unplugged and they can't figure it out among the younger crowd. They also tend to understand the whole "turn it off and on again" trope much better than older people and don't have difficulty navigating menus in programs or applications.
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# ? Nov 10, 2013 18:01 |
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In parent's attic: Oh hello old HP inkjet, nice to see you again. You served us well, but we bought a new scanner/printer and so you got put into storage (fcuk HP and their policy of not providing Win7 drivers for older scanners)' It's been a year and I might as well dump you. On the way down the newly-carpet stairs, I notice that it's leaving a trail of black ink. Lots of it. I don't get it. When it was new, the two main characteristics it had were: 1) ink cartidges that hold only a teaspoon of ink 2) ink that dries solid within 2 weeks of opening. How is it that something that has been in an uninsulated attic for 2 years manages to make such a mess?
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# ? Nov 10, 2013 21:02 |
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spog posted:In parent's attic: It's the final "gently caress you" from a hated piece of technology
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# ? Nov 10, 2013 21:46 |
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Yup, somehow stuff knows when it's being chucked out. Whether it's deracking an old UPS only to have any sort of way of carrying it break off, or throwing some old servers into a skip and getting your hand caught on a rail that's decided at that moment to slide out.
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# ? Nov 10, 2013 21:55 |
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spog posted:In parent's attic: Sounds like a Stephen King book; did you spill virgin blood on it?
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 01:23 |
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I'd always wondered why our core switches were 10.10.3.2 and 10.10.3.4, but we had no 10.10.3.3. Oh, we did though. Do, rather. It was in an old surplus pile. Someone plugged it in and all loving hell broke loose as it rejoined the data and voice VLANs and tried to be useful again. Since it was last in service at least eight years ago, we renumbered the voice VLAN and it promptly decided that it needed to own the IP address assigned to our external VOIP server. After a few hours of randomly dropped calls I simply rebooted the VOIP machine. I was very, very confused when I reloaded the web interface and got prompted to log into a Procurve. Worse, it doesn't use any of the old passwords I happened to still remember. The kicker is that I went remote three months ago, so I can't just drive down there over the weekend to unplug it and bring the VOIP server back up. Nope, gotta wait until someone decides to check their mail this weekend and hope that one of them can make it in before 9. Otherwise I get to deal with the set of prima donna salespeople that are going to be screaming at me because they can't make calls at 8 in the loving morning. Make sure all your machines have IPMI, folks. Remote out-of-band management is a glorious thing...
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 07:23 |
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Fiber. loving Fiber cross-connects. Got a couple of 10Gb/s cross-site links provisioned, and then cross-connects at each datacentre which hop through around 5 racks before arriving at ours. Needless to say, at each end I see "line protocol is down". So somewhere along the cross-site links, 10 or more hops through different racks and cable lengths and different (incompatible) connectors, even before we get to our L3 switches, something is broken. And I now get the joy of trying to bang together the respective heads of the network providers, datacentre staff at two sites and countless others to work out who's swapped the Tx/Rx links or some poo poo like that. gently caress Monday, gently caress datacentres, gently caress networks, and gently caress fiber.
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 12:22 |
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Finally got a boss that really wants me to use a mac, asked him for something else, showed up this morning to see a macbook pro sitting at my desk. I even have to install parallels and a windows VM on it, since many of the programs I use are windows only, however he insists that I need one since I am a consultant and some of the customers uses mac. I must admit that leaning a new OS is a major pain, I mean Linux and Windows are kinda similar, or atleast some of the shortcuts are. The lack of control-f to find something or the windows button - "start typing" to search is getting annoying fast. Also switching between active programs is different and thus I have no idea how to multitask effetive now. Even the scroll up and down thing seems difficult to get to appear. I feel like my ability to work just got reduced by 25% and yet my workload did not, trying to explain this to my boss has not yet succeded, I feel this will be a very long week. Any tips on how to quickly mastering this OS? Most of what I do involves web interfaces, putty, remote desktop, reading txt and word files with documentation and C5 which is a windows only economy system.
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 13:46 |
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DagPenge posted:Finally got a boss that really wants me to use a mac, asked him for something else, showed up this morning to see a macbook pro sitting at my desk. I even have to install parallels and a windows VM on it, since many of the programs I use are windows only, however he insists that I need one since I am a consultant and some of the customers uses mac. I feel your pain (or at least, I was in similar situation) - I was gifted with a mac, and found the shortcuts killing me. Oh - there's no home / end / page up / page down? Ok - let's do shift+arrows to do that. Oh, but that doesn't work under putty, and isn't possible to work that way under putty? Oh... there's no delete? Why there's no delete? Why to make a screenshot I've got to press command+shift+f4 (or something similarly horrible). Why clicking on close button for one app closes it, and it minimizes it for the other? Probably if you're accustomed to mac, it's very clear and sensible, but at least these things messed up with my brain.
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 14:04 |
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DagPenge posted:Finally got a boss that really wants me to use a mac, asked him for something else, showed up this morning to see a macbook pro sitting at my desk. I even have to install parallels and a windows VM on it, since many of the programs I use are windows only, however he insists that I need one since I am a consultant and some of the customers uses mac. You could use bootcamp and just boot into windows.
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 14:20 |
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My job just mutated into a pos, my table is being downgraded along with several coworkers, to desks taken from a building that's being demolished, approx. 25 years old and damaged to gently caress. Also instead of writing an order for facilities, The 7 of us who haven't been here for more than 4 years have been ordered to dissasemble shelves and carry them here, along with the tables. So basically we just got degraded to movers, moving poo poo that isn't even our departments. It's not even like facilities work comes out of our (huge) budget or anything... I honestly don't know what to make of this poo poo, nor how to work on those children playdesks, you can barely fit a keyboard in front of a screen, so no paperwork or anything. They also smell like poo poo and I don't want to store my personal clothes in those drawers. I have no idea who to complain to about this, they are basically making our desks as horrible to be at as possible.
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 14:29 |
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demonachizer posted:You could use bootcamp and just boot into windows. Yep I know that, however it would kinda defeat the point, which was that he wanted me to learn mac. If I just used bootcamp to run, then I might as well use another computer, since I wouldn't be booting to macOS at all.
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 14:42 |
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DagPenge posted:Yep I know that, however it would kinda defeat the point, which was that he wanted me to learn mac. If I just used bootcamp to run, then I might as well use another computer, since I wouldn't be booting to macOS at all. Are you afraid you're gonna end up liking OS X? Go on, it's ok. Come to the dark side. We have cookies.
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 14:44 |
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DagPenge posted:Any tips on how to quickly mastering this OS? Most of what I do involves web interfaces, putty, remote desktop, reading txt and word files with documentation and C5 which is a windows only economy system. CMD + Space Gives you search (spotlight) that is actually better than Windows Start. Edit: If you're used to TAB between fields (like any experienced Windows user) you'll want to enable "Full Keyboard Access". Crowley fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Nov 11, 2013 |
# ? Nov 11, 2013 14:51 |
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Powdered Toast Man posted:Are you afraid you're gonna end up liking OS X? To be honest I was afraid that I would just end up using windows as I have been doing so far, only because until I get the hang of OS X, windows will just be that much easier. However I am almost setup with parallels, so I'll be able to open the windows programs from the dock (or whatever it is called) without having to go to the windows VM. Should make sure that I stick the OS X until I get a hang of it. Crowley posted:CMD + Space Gives you search (spotlight) that is actually better than Windows Start. Thanks for the tips! I'll start using CMD + space right away and look into the full keyboard access thing.
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 15:15 |
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Watching the new 2nd level fail to set up his own laptop is amazing. He had to be walked through making himself a local admin.
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 16:18 |
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My coworker was in the office over the weekend working his end of an outage window doing maintenance on some storage. He takes it upon himself to change patch cables into difference ports on a few switches. The only problem is that he ends up making multiple loops without having the proper knowledge to fix them or having the accountability to ask for help. Fast forward to today and I am spending my Monday morning trying to unfuck a large part of the infrastructure. At least my ccna is becoming handy.
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 16:47 |
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eithedog posted:Probably if you're accustomed to mac, it's very clear and sensible, but at least these things messed up with my brain. I've heard before that "oh, lots of Unix devs have moved to Apple, as it's the best Unix there is" and I'd love for this to be true, but I haven't found it to be (i.e. the real Unix grognards are still stuck on full-strength Unix, it's Java or PHP devs who moved over - tools that tend to be deployed on Unix as it were) ookiimarukochan fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Nov 11, 2013 |
# ? Nov 11, 2013 17:14 |
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psydude posted:I don't expect them to know how a certain method is called in their favorite mobile app or how to set up multi-homed BGP for funzies, but I've noticed far fewer instances of getting calls because, say, the power cord is unplugged and they can't figure it out among the younger crowd. They also tend to understand the whole "turn it off and on again" trope much better than older people and don't have difficulty navigating menus in programs or applications. I'm one of the developers who know how computers work, have built more computers than I can count, and could probably manage to land at least an entry level DBA job, and I still called tech support one time for something not being plugged in. That phone call ended with me saying "and now excuse me while I jump off the building in shame" because I realized I had become one of "those" users. At least I really checked when the tech asked and didn't lie about it.
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 18:33 |
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Khisanth Magus posted:I'm one of the developers who know how computers work, have built more computers than I can count, and could probably manage to land at least an entry level DBA job, and I still called tech support one time for something not being plugged in. Oh child, you haven't Become. You have merely taken the first step. Spun the first thread of your chrysalis. Soon more threads will follow, as you hinted at: Lying about following troubleshooting steps. Describing your problems in vague terms like "internet is down!" Refusing to describe your problems at all. Demanding tech support Just Fix It! CCing management when complaining about a problem to 1st tier support. Dropping your devices into the sink and demanding an upgrade to the latest version to replace them. At the end, you will emerge from your metamorphosis, a beautiful, ignorant office worker. Watcher of CNN or Fox News, credulous of politicians and radio personalities. Doing the task to which you are assigned, and no more. But you will be happy, child. You will be happy.
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 19:52 |
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Che Delilas posted:Oh child, you haven't Become. You have merely taken the first step. Spun the first thread of your chrysalis. Soon more threads will follow, as you hinted at: Lying about following troubleshooting steps. Describing your problems in vague terms like "internet is down!" Refusing to describe your problems at all. Demanding tech support Just Fix It! CCing management when complaining about a problem to 1st tier support. Dropping your devices into the sink and demanding an upgrade to the latest version to replace them. Well, I have lied about troubleshooting steps, but it was to dell when my laptops power cord started loving up and I knew they were going too have to replace it and all the steps were pointless. I'm pretty sure everyone in this thread has done that one. Oh, did it again when the GPU on my same laptop began to die, probably from overheating because that entire model was designed horribly and if you played games on it the laptop would get so hot you couldn't rest your wrist on it.
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 20:19 |
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DagPenge posted:Yep I know that, however it would kinda defeat the point, which was that he wanted me to learn mac. If I just used bootcamp to run, then I might as well use another computer, since I wouldn't be booting to macOS at all. Here's how you Mac: Step 1: Turn it on Step 2: Use Mac Oh, you want to use it for poo poo other than iChat and photo sharing? Step 1: Download FreeBSD Step 2: Spend months learning to use FreeBSD
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 21:06 |
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DagPenge posted:
To add to this, a lot--but by no means all--of the common Windows/Linux keyboard commands (search, copy/paste, etc.) use the same letter key in Mac OS, except with the Command key instead of Control. Make that mental swap and you'll probably find yourself acclimating at least a little quicker.
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 21:13 |
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Khisanth Magus posted:I'm one of the developers who know how computers work, have built more computers than I can count, and could probably manage to land at least an entry level DBA job, and I still called tech support one time for something not being plugged in. Just because you build computers doesn't mean you know how they work. Once you deal with the turning on registers and dealing with watchdogs at the hardware level, then my son, you will know how a computer works.
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 21:35 |
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Well son, you obviously don't know computers if you can't use DIP switches to manually set IRQs, like in the good old days
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 22:27 |
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Reminds me of one our helpdesk guys. Makes the users feel so stupid because they aren't nerds. REALLY? YOU'VE CALLED ME ABOUT THIS TEN TIMES BEFORE!!! JUST HIT CTRL-F, TAB, TAB, F8 AND IT CLEARS YOUR COOKIES. loving MORON11!!!!
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 22:31 |
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Carpet posted:Well son, you obviously don't know computers if you can't use DIP switches to manually set IRQs, like in the good old days Thanks for the PTSD. gently caress Modems, the precursor to gently caress printers.
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 22:36 |
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DagPenge posted:I must admit that leaning a new OS is a major pain, I mean Linux and Windows are kinda similar, or atleast some of the shortcuts are. The lack of control-f to find something or the windows button - "start typing" to search is getting annoying fast. Also switching between active programs is different and thus I have no idea how to multitask effetive now. Even the scroll up and down thing seems difficult to get to appear. Indeed. I just had to try to figure out why a user was unable to get into any of our Citrix based apps on her Mac. We don't officially support Macs, but Corp. has put in some workarounds that (usually) allow it to work. Turns out, for whatever reason, that our Citrix portal apparently didn't like Java 7, so I had to figure out to uninstall that version and get the Java 6 that was provided by apple re-enabled. Finally got it thanks to Google and Apple's KB. Not surprisingly, the Citrix team was worthless. "Oh, we don't support Macs." Then, why the gently caress did you write up documentation on how to get it working (Here again, the documentation wasn't helpful)? That sets precedence, now Doctors/Nurses all seem to think that we should have to support their poo poo. At this point, I think I'm just going to refuse to work on them. When they start crying about it, I'll just point them to policy that states that we: Don't work on Personal systems We don't support Macs If that's a problem, they can take it up with Corporate.
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 22:44 |
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gently caress trying to make emails look nice on multiple platforms. Looks nice on Windows RT Looks nice on iOS Looks nice on Android Pick 2 of 3.
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 22:52 |
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Well clearly iOS and Android. That was easy.
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 22:53 |
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Paladine_PSoT posted:gently caress trying to make emails look nice on multiple platforms. Microsoft went from the IE model of HTML email to the Word model. Throws a wrench into anything you want to make look nice in GMail and Outlook. You get to use tables again! There's a website that has a much bigger list - anyone know what it is?
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 22:56 |
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Hello all, I've needed to post in this thread for a while but here goes.. I'm on the phone instructing a user how to change their AD account password through Outlook Web Access (we use the AD accounts to authenticate for a lot of things and OWA is the most readily available way for our users to change it.) One of my coworkers here, not one of our most technical guys, tells me that when changing it through OWA it doesn't "replicate." Which granted we do have replication issues if an account is changed on a domain controller that's not the main one, but all of our apps and authentication usually point to the main one. And even if the password change wasn't applied to the main server it should in fact replicate eventually otherwise we'd be having bigger problems. Apparently this has been an issue for a while, so I decide to test it out because I suppose it's within the realm of possibility. I update my AD password on OWA, lock my workstation and unlock it with my brand new password, no sweat. Times like these I feel like I am working with cave men who are trying to appease the computer gods. No one in the last couple years could apparently be arsed to do the same 2 minute test I did so half of our guys believe this is an issue. (Also the "Save" button you're required to hit is weirdly placed in OWA so that might have something to do with it.) In summary my main frustration is the lack of critical thinking my colleagues exhibit. You don't have to/can't possibly KNOW everything but you should have the common sense to be able to test/recreate these things instead of taking it on the word of users who can't ever remember passwords for any of the other systems that their password was not updated successfully. Jeesh!
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 23:05 |
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# ? May 11, 2024 14:20 |
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HTML email pisses me off
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# ? Nov 11, 2013 23:08 |