More shit that pisses you off: What does that say about the quality of your emails?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > More shit that pisses you off: What does that say about the quality of your emails?

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Che Delilas: Nov 23, 2009; FREE TIBET WEED

Ursine Asylum posted:

Ugh, hourly IT always sounds lovely to me. I've got a friend working as a dev for a company that's giving him crap because his weeks tend to look like "7.97, 7.96, 7.98, 7.97, 8.5", and his boss gave him a "low" rating for "Being at work during core hours".

Boss at my last job was like this. He was obsessed with my "scheduled hours." As a salaried developer, whether I come in at 8:00 or 8:01 doesn't make a loving bit of difference, but that was enough for him to officially write me up (yes, for one minute late being at my desk, despite the fact that I was in the building at 8:00).

I pointed out that I took a 20 minute lunch on the day in question, instead of the entitled 30, and he said "that doesn't matter." Because I "didn't do what I said I was going to do" which apparently translates to my butt in a chair, instead of you know, getting all my programming done by deadlines that have nothing to do with where the minute hand is on the clock on any given day. He kept bringing up these hypothetical problems with me being available a literal single minute later than he expected, like if he had some kind of emergency with the still-in-development and not-in-production program that I was working on, and I wasn't there, oh what would he do (try the phone)? Shockingly, these incredibly thin emergency scenarios never materialized, and as usual only served to insult my intelligence that he expected me to buy their plausibility.

The time I sat down at the beginning of the day and the time I stood up at the end were, in fact, the ONLY things that he evaluated me on. Oh, he wrote numbers for all the categories on the official performance review. But start and end time were the only measure of my worth he cared to employ.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 01:12

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# ? May 22, 2024 08:25

frogbert: Jun 2, 2007

Sir_Substance posted:

Bad Luck

Sounds to me like your power supply blew up and took your video card along with it.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 01:15

Sir_Substance: Dec 13, 2013

Partycat posted:

Monday 9 am meetings are playing with fire. Meetings in general are scheduled around hour blocks, never 20 minutes or whatever is needed.

When people talk at me rather then to me in long blocks, I start going to sleep. It's embarrassing and quite problematic, it used to be a hellish problem in maths classes in highschool. It happens in these kinds of meetings too.

Real meeting where things are really being discussed, it's fine. But when people are waffling to fill time and I don't actually have to think about what they're saying, I start nodding off. It's probably really visible too, although everyones been too polite to mention it, but I get those "chin hits your chest and you jerk awake" moments in the middle of departmental meetings.

I'm sure it offends some of the speakers, but I think my brain knows when it's not wanted.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 01:17

Sir_Substance: Dec 13, 2013

frogbert posted:

Sounds to me like your power supply blew up and took your video card along with it.

Yeah, I appreciate the confirmation from everyone who responded. I thought that was the case as well, but when a spectacular run of things go off like that it's really hard to tell yourself it wasn't your fault somehow.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 01:19

Alliterate Addict: Jul 10, 2012; dreaming of that face again

it's bright and blue and shimmering

grinning wide and comforting me with it's three warm and wild eyes

Che Delilas posted:

But start and end time were the only measure of my worth he cared to employ.

Yep. Friend's response to this is going to be to clock out at the 8:01 mark every day from now on, rain or shine, hell or high water.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 02:40

Ynglaur: Oct 9, 2013; The Malta Conference, anyone?

Malkar posted:

My company has a Chief Technology Evangelist. And an evangelism team. But, it's a start-up, so evangelism is kind of important?

So...you had a sales team without a quota? That's a pretty sweet gig.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 05:13

Gumball Gumption: Jan 7, 2012

All of this talk of womens clothing just reminds me how many better options women seem to get for clothing. Mens business clothing is so god drat boring.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 06:03

dogstile: May 1, 2012; fucking clocks
how do they work?

jim truds posted:

All of this talk of womens clothing just reminds me how many better options women seem to get for clothing. Mens business clothing is so god drat boring.

Heh, agreed. I get the choice of shirt and tie. Aside from that, black suit trousers, black jacket. Lame as gently caress.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 08:12

jammyozzy: Dec 7, 2006; Is that a challenge?

Our office network got re-wired recently, but it's still taking ages do move CAD models and FE solutions around between my workstation and our solvers (servers about 50m from my desk.)

Poked about in network settings this morning out of curiosity and we're still all connected at 100mbps. How do you expend so much time and effort re-wiring and still end up with that result?

# ? Apr 3, 2014 09:15

Che Delilas: Nov 23, 2009; FREE TIBET WEED

dogstile posted:

Heh, agreed. I get the choice of shirt and tie. Aside from that, black suit trousers, black jacket. Lame as gently caress.

Women get the accessories. Men get the comfortable shoes.

Ursine Asylum posted:

Yep. Friend's response to this is going to be to clock out at the 8:01 mark every day from now on, rain or shine, hell or high water.

If you mean clock in at 7:59 and clock out at 5:01, that's pretty much how I handled it. I also become dramatically less productive during my actual work hours, since it was demonstrated to me that doing more, better quality work than the majority of people with my level of experience (my quite senior co-worker/team leader's words, not my own) did not factor into my evaluations at all. Not much you could do that would demotivate me more than that.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 09:35

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Che Delilas posted:

The time I sat down at the beginning of the day and the time I stood up at the end were, in fact, the ONLY things that he evaluated me on. Oh, he wrote numbers for all the categories on the official performance review. But start and end time were the only measure of my worth he cared to employ.

Let me guess that he never involves himself in your workday otherwise? Like asking how your projects are going, if you can handle everything on your plate, if you need backup etc? You know, things that managers are supposed to do. I've had lovely managers like that who only care about how much time you spend in the office and not how much work you actually do, because time is the only metric they know how to measure.

e: Clothes chat, do like a friend of mine occasionally does and wear a highland dress to work. :scotland:

Collateral Damage fucked around with this message at 09:40 on Apr 3, 2014

# ? Apr 3, 2014 09:35

ming-the-mazdaless: Nov 30, 2005; Whore funded horsepower

My last gripe in this thread has kinda escalated.
I finally got invited to a client meeting about the application issue, and the customer formally asked that the sales guy not set foot in their building without me. It was stated:
Do not set up and attend meetings without Ming, he is the only member of your team that has the capability to handle this.

I know I have to start looking for a new job again, I just don't want to.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 10:34

dogstile: May 1, 2012; fucking clocks
how do they work?

Che Delilas posted:

Women get the accessories. Men get the comfortable shoes.

I don't get to wear my DC's :colbert:

Seriously though everyone in my office wears flats and I don't blame them, heels are uncomfortable. There's a picture somewhere of me trying them on (my size).

Never again. Goddamn how do people walk in those?

# ? Apr 3, 2014 10:45

canis minor: May 4, 2011

I'm working with people whose way of thinking escapes me. The task is simple - create a list of links for social media: twitter, facebook, whatever. It is simple, right? You'd have it as array of elements, facebook => url, google => url, because what else do you need?

And then your template would look like:

code:

<ul>
[itrate through array of social media key=key item=item]
<li><a href="[item]" class="[key]">[key] (not needed, but whatever, let's display it if we don't have image for given social)</a></li>
[/iterate]
</ul>

But no, it's never as simple. No, let's on this project use span, and on this, a div, and here, let's every element be different. Let's put an icon element into every a tag, because doing it through css is too easy. Let's add a class on ul, because having it display differently depending on the container element is too easy as well. Let's change that the class of every element can be whatever - facebook class is ok, but let's make twitter class tw.

CUSTOMIZATION!

I like these people to bits and the designs that come through look great, but why the hell, after all the yelling, can't they put it to their heads to make things simple.

EDIT: it pisses me off, because it's with every... single... template.

canis minor fucked around with this message at 11:00 on Apr 3, 2014

# ? Apr 3, 2014 10:56

Che Delilas: Nov 23, 2009; FREE TIBET WEED

Collateral Damage posted:

Let me guess that he never involves himself in your workday otherwise? Like asking how your projects are going, if you can handle everything on your plate, if you need backup etc? You know, things that managers are supposed to do. I've had lovely managers like that who only care about how much time you spend in the office and not how much work you actually do, because time is the only metric they know how to measure.

Well, he had a pet project he had me working on, and he was big on waterfall-style up-front documentation and milestones with hard dates attached to them. So when a milestone date rolled around we would meet so that I could demo it. But otherwise, he was very hands-off; he was the director for the IT department, not just development. Honestly that worked out just fine for me, because he was so obnoxious that the less I saw and heard of him, the better for my mood.

But he also tended to conveniently not document changes to the schedule that we would agree upon in the interim, and then when the original milestone wasn't met (because it was changed) he would thrust out his jaw and wave the original document in my face and be all drill sergeant.

Example: He took a trip to a convention of sorts and wanted to show off what I had built so far to the people there. This was at a point in the project where I had a decent amount of backend work done but not a whole lot of functionality. I told him I could either proceed as the schedule dictated, which meant I would have very, very basic and broad functionality and interface done for his trip, which would look as unpolished as it was but at least give a small idea of what all the features would be like when it was done. Or I could polish up one section now but the feature set would be smaller. Either way it wasn't going to affect the shipping time of the final product, I would just be shuffling priorities around.

He chose the latter option so he could show at least SOMETHING that looked polished. So this was going to change the next milestone, since I was shifting priorities around, naturally. I saw him write things in his notebook when we decided on this, so I had assumed he was dealing in good faith (this was before I knew what a shithead he really was underneath his facade). Of course, when the original milestone date rolled around he came in and got all pissed because I didn't have the original stuff done. Because we had changed my priorities in light of his trip. As we agreed. He mysteriously did not have the changes to the schedule written down anywhere.

My co-worker vouched for me in a rather insulted manner (he was there when we decided all this), so I didn't get in any real trouble. But my co-worker and I were both pretty pissed off and from then on confirmed everything with him via e-mail. That was my get-everything-in-writing lesson, fortunately it wasn't a bad one. It just made me just a little bit more cynical, which is a mindset I don't enjoy having.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 11:06

dogstile: May 1, 2012; fucking clocks
how do they work?

Well, this is going well. My company that decided to change its support from normal helpdesk to 1st/2nd/3rd/etc line support has told everyone in first line to get all of the tickets that are older than a day out of their name. This comes after complaining that we don't have enough people to do tickets. The result?

The tickets are now being worked on by half the people and all the first liners are doing gently caress all. I'm sat on the forums right now because i've sorted all of my calls (that i had left). What loving idiot decided tickets should be raised by time rather than by difficulty?

# ? Apr 3, 2014 11:59

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

jim truds posted:

All of this talk of womens clothing just reminds me how many better options women seem to get for clothing. Mens business clothing is so god drat boring.

Yeah, but at least you don't have to plan your outfits in advance, since as far as I can tell every item of mens business clothing (and a lot of their casual stuff) basically goes with everything, so you can just stagger out of bed half asleep and grab random things that work together. So long as you manage to avoid wearing your shirt backwards and going out without pants, you're golden.

Most men I know kinda prefer not having to deal with such things.

(As for heels, I have fairly large feet and have been wearing them for so long that a 3" heel I don't even notice and flats feel weird)

Lum fucked around with this message at 12:51 on Apr 3, 2014

# ? Apr 3, 2014 12:48

spog: Aug 7, 2004; It's your own bloody fault.

Lum posted:

Yeah, but at least you don't have to plan your outfits in advance, since as far as I can tell every item of mens business clothing (and a lot of their casual stuff) basically goes with everything, so you can just stagger out of bed half asleep and grab random things that work together. So long as you manage to avoid wearing your shirt backwards and going out without pants, you're golden.

Most men I know kinda prefer not having to deal with such things.

(As for heels, I have fairly large feet and have been wearing them for so long that a 3" heel I don't even notice and flats feel weird)

Yeah, that is definitely a bonus.

But on the flip side, when I am feeling flirty, I can't wear something that shows off my pecs or that enhances my butt cleavage (lifts and separates)

# ? Apr 3, 2014 13:12

canis minor: May 4, 2011

spog posted:

Yeah, that is definitely a bonus.

But on the flip side, when I am feeling flirty, I can't wear something that shows off my pecs or that enhances my butt cleavage (lifts and separates)

You can't?

# ? Apr 3, 2014 13:15

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

spog posted:

Yeah, that is definitely a bonus.

But on the flip side, when I am feeling flirty, I can't wear something that shows off my pecs or that enhances my butt cleavage (lifts and separates)

The best part of going from operations to development is getting to wear really tight pants

# ? Apr 3, 2014 13:15

Esser-Z: Jun 3, 2012

I'm a little different in my (current) part of the field than most of you. Rather than working with offices and computers therein, I'm out on a warehouse floor doing support for LRTs (Laser Radio Terminals). Basically, laser barcode scanners with a display built in that connect wirelessly to a server and do inventory tracking, tell people where to take a product, and so on. Useful system.

Now, our LRTs are a few years old, and not all exactly the same model. Some of them are drat slow, while there's one specific variety that's drat fast (and thankfully marked on the case). The slow ones can take several seconds to finish processing a scan and be ready to go again.

This leads to what annoys me: Users who declare a gun "doesn't scan" simply because it takes awhile between trigger pulls. I have to swap it out and troubleshoot it, usually finding almost nothing wrong. It's a tiny thing, but come on man. Just tell me it's slow and I'll be happy to rotate for you. Don't make me gently caress around with it.

On a non-user related gripe, sometimes the guns just decide not to connect anymore, or boot anymore, or whatever. Just up and quit, arbitrarily. Now, we don't handle major issues in house--we ship them out to corporate, and corporate's been getting pissy about the amount of guns they get in they can't find anything wrong with (not just from us, this is company wide), which is pretty annoying. If we don't get the tools to properly diagnose, don't give us poo poo about sending you stuff we couldn't properly diagnose.

Fortuntely, most LRTs that inexplicably stop working will recover if you leave them on the shelf with no battery for a day or two. Assuming the night cage guy (who does not work for IT and just checks things in and out) does try putting them back in rotation, even if they're from the service shelf. :v:

Or put perfectly fine equipment on the service shelf. Or put things on the service shelf without entering them in the log, so we have no idea what the problem is. If there's a problem. :argh:

Wow. That go long. And mostly irrelevant. Sorry!

# ? Apr 3, 2014 13:36

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

Welp.

I sent out a "hey everyone by the way XP is end of life in less than a week you should probably buy a new computer at home or something" email to everyone yesterday, and I came in today to three people's personal XP laptops, with no note or label or anything, on my desk.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 13:44

Esser-Z: Jun 3, 2012

Free computers!

# ? Apr 3, 2014 13:50

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

Okay, so one of them is a windows 7 machine, and one is a macbook.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 14:10

Esser-Z: Jun 3, 2012

They got power cords? I'm going to guess not, but you never know.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 14:16

dogstile: May 1, 2012; fucking clocks
how do they work?

Yeah, they're just giving them away now, use them all to play quake against yourself. Both hands, both feet. Final destination.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 14:21

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

Esser-Z posted:

They got power cords? I'm going to guess not, but you never know.

one of them has a bunch of power cords of different sizes, the other two have nothing!

# ? Apr 3, 2014 14:23

Crowley: Mar 13, 2003

Lum posted:

so you can just stagger out of bed half asleep and grab random things that work together.

Well yeah, but don't adults lay out their clothes the night before anyway? or is it just us who're odd. :ohdear:

Anyways, our dresscode depends on the job.

Interview royalty - Business attire, and make sure your tie is boring (don't wear bright colors!)
Interview politicians - Business attire, skip the tie if they're from a left-leaning party
Interview busines/sports/famous people - Business pants and a shirt, Skip the tie
Interview anyone else - the older they are the more business-like you dress
Work behind the camera, shoot with royalty - nice jeans or dress pants, shirt recommended but at least a monochromatic T-shirt.
Work behind the camera, anything else - Please wear pants

# ? Apr 3, 2014 14:32

Esser-Z: Jun 3, 2012

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:

one of them has a bunch of power cords of different sizes, the other two have nothing!

Sounds about right. Back when I was working helpdesk at a university, we refused to take any laptop without a power cord.

We sent a lot of people back to their rooms.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 14:35

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

Esser-Z posted:

Sounds about right. Back when I was working helpdesk at a university, we refused to take any laptop without a power cord.

We sent a lot of people back to their rooms.

I mean, we have a strict "no personal stuff" policy so I'm not going to do work on any of these, so it really doesn't matter that they didn't bring in the cords.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 14:37

Esser-Z: Jun 3, 2012

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:

I mean, we have a strict "no personal stuff" policy so I'm not going to do work on any of these, so it really doesn't matter that they didn't bring in the cords.

Of course. I was thinking along the FREE COMPUTERS lines.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 14:38

Che Delilas: Nov 23, 2009; FREE TIBET WEED

Crowley posted:

Well yeah, but don't adults lay out their clothes the night before anyway? or is it just us who're odd.

I make sure that my closet contains at least one pants and one shirts that isn't on fire before I hit the sack. Does that count?

# ? Apr 3, 2014 15:27

UFOTacoMan: Sep 22, 2005; Thanks easter bunny!
bok bok!

A shot in the dark but do any of you have experience with surveillance solutions? I'm tasked with putting together a small video surveillance solution with about 5 cameras that should record to a DVR with maybe a couple days or week retention. Ideally the cameras would send the feed over our wireless network to the DVR so we don't have to run cable for the cameras. There seems to be an overwhelming amount of marginal solutions out there. Thanks!

# ? Apr 3, 2014 15:40

Bob Morales: Aug 18, 2006; ~~Just wear the fucking mask, Bob~~

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

UFOTofuTacoCat posted:

A shot in the dark but do any of you have experience with surveillance solutions? I'm tasked with putting together a small video surveillance solution with about 5 cameras that should record to a DVR with maybe a couple days or week retention. Ideally the cameras would send the feed over our wireless network to the DVR so we don't have to run cable for the cameras. There seems to be an overwhelming amount of marginal solutions out there. Thanks!

You can buy something with 8 cameras and a DVR for a couple hundred bucks pretty much anywhere.

What kind of camera enclosures do you need? Indoor or outdoor? What resolution do you need? Do you need to read license plates or do you just need 'Joe wasn't wearing his safety harness when he fell off the shipping dock'

# ? Apr 3, 2014 15:49

UFOTacoMan: Sep 22, 2005; Thanks easter bunny!
bok bok!

Bob Morales posted:

You can buy something with 8 cameras and a DVR for a couple hundred bucks pretty much anywhere.

What kind of camera enclosures do you need? Indoor or outdoor? What resolution do you need? Do you need to read license plates or do you just need 'Joe wasn't wearing his safety harness when he fell off the shipping dock'

Indoor Cameras, we just need to be able to see if someone was doing a thing (there's nothing actively going, this is just in case.)
I would prefer battery powered wireless cameras so we don't have to worry with cables. Also I notice a lot of solutions have wireless cameras that talk back to the DVR directly, I think the building's walls are too dense for something like that as this is an old building with brick walls.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 15:52

SEKCobra: Feb 28, 2011; Hi
Don't look at my site

UFOTofuTacoCat posted:

A shot in the dark but do any of you have experience with surveillance solutions? I'm tasked with putting together a small video surveillance solution with about 5 cameras that should record to a DVR with maybe a couple days or week retention. Ideally the cameras would send the feed over our wireless network to the DVR so we don't have to run cable for the cameras. There seems to be an overwhelming amount of marginal solutions out there. Thanks!

1. Legality. Make sure that recording is legal where you are.
2. Security. Wireless is jammed faster than a printer.
3. Technology. Decide wheter you want network cameras or classic. The range on wireless is highly dependant on this. Network cameras are easily integrated in existing environments, also PoE. Theres also shittons of software and cheap hardware. DVR Server software can be had for free.
Classic cameras on the other hand are somewhat expensive, wireless sometimes not even secured and generally on their way out imo. You have a wide selection of frequency ranges tho. Central dvrs are also the standard.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 15:53

SEKCobra: Feb 28, 2011; Hi
Don't look at my site

UFOTofuTacoCat posted:

Indoor Cameras, we just need to be able to see if someone was doing a thing (there's nothing actively going, this is just in case.)
I would prefer battery powered wireless cameras so we don't have to worry with cables. Also I notice a lot of solutions have wireless cameras that talk back to the DVR directly, I think the building's walls are too dense for something like that as this is an old building with brick walls.

Battery powered doesnt exist to my knowledge. What good is a security device that needs recharging every few weeks.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 15:54

Inspector_666: Oct 7, 2003; _{benny with the good hair}

UFOTofuTacoCat posted:

Indoor Cameras, we just need to be able to see if someone was doing a thing (there's nothing actively going, this is just in case.)
I would prefer battery powered wireless cameras so we don't have to worry with cables. Also I notice a lot of solutions have wireless cameras that talk back to the DVR directly, I think the building's walls are too dense for something like that as this is an old building with brick walls.

The idea of using battery powered wireless cameras for "security" is so hilarious I hope you're joking.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 15:55

SEKCobra: Feb 28, 2011; Hi
Don't look at my site

Inspector_666 posted:

The idea of using battery powered wireless cameras for "security" is so hilarious I hope you're joking.

Sounds more like a spy camera imho.

# ? Apr 3, 2014 15:58

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# ? May 22, 2024 08:25

spog: Aug 7, 2004; It's your own bloody fault.

UFOTofuTacoCat posted:

A shot in the dark but do any of you have experience with surveillance solutions? I'm tasked with putting together a small video surveillance solution with about 5 cameras that should record to a DVR with maybe a couple days or week retention. Ideally the cameras would send the feed over our wireless network to the DVR so we don't have to run cable for the cameras. There seems to be an overwhelming amount of marginal solutions out there. Thanks!

There's an A/T thread about this topic.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3547030&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1

# ? Apr 3, 2014 16:02

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > More shit that pisses you off: What does that say about the quality of your emails?

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