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Che Delilas posted:It just keeps going. So. Many. Eggs. Thinking about sending it to my brother-in-law so he "knows" what I have to go through to get his loving computer to work when he breaks it.
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May 3, 2014 17:54
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stubblyhead posted:Here's something someone posted a while back that I stuck in evernote. I didn't note who it was though so I can't give credit: That was me. Many bothans died to bring us etc. etc. I think most of that post is still correct - the domain join issue may be solved with Windows 8 but I haven't yet deployed a W8 image so I can't tell you. The VBS script is still the only way I've found to pin icons, and I have in fact done a domain join script a few times - the one thing I'd mention about that is it's obviously reliant on the network card / driver to be up and running, and connecting to the network properly. So if you do a domain join script, put in a wait command for a couple minutes before joining the domain, because otherwise the machine may not have the entire network stack up and the join may fail. Anyway, I used to try and put as much crap into the unattend file as possible, but these days I basically just keep it simple, specify the copyprofile=true, the location info, timezone, and the org name etc. Customizing the admin profile basically does the rest. I've also stopped bothering to put it into audit mode, because I'm still not sure exactly what the gently caress that does. The last time I really looked into it, it seemed like the point was more if you were doing a fully automated build process, i.e. the actual creation of the image was also automated, and once you put it into audit mode it would start gathering info as to what you had changed. (I'd look up the technet page but I don't really care right now and I don't recall it being helpful). I really haven't noticed any differences whether I've done the image from audit mode or not - the important thing is the copyprofile parameter, because that's what actually copies the admin image to the default. And of course attaching the unattend file to the deployed image in WDS, which again, took me loving forever to figure out so take advantage of my mistakes. (The worst part about that was that I was testing the image by booting up the sysprepped machine, which still had the unattend in its Panther directory, so it worked fine, and it wasn't until I started deploying to a clean machine that it stopped working and I went all  for a while).Oh, and these days, create your gold master on a VM, snapshot just before sysprep, sysprep & capture, roll back snapshot. Every few months, or whenever, boot up, run updates, repeat snapshot/capture process. Much easier and faster than doing it physically.
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May 3, 2014 18:39
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Humphreys posted:My predecessor it turns out probably just used Youtube tutorials to do everything. Funny, I assumed it was going to be like Swedish Meal Time, and it even incorporates food. 
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May 3, 2014 21:57
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I was wondering if it was going to be returned to Fry's after that.
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May 3, 2014 22:21
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Bought my parents a Galaxy note and a galaxy 5s today. They came from mid 08 dumbphones. Now I understand why those "how to use a phone" classes exist. "well how can this app be free? is it a virus?" "I can just speak into the phone to tell it what to do? How does that work?!" "So is google going to know my life if I use one? Like where I am all the time?" This went on for about 2 and a half hours.
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May 3, 2014 23:01
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Dilbert As gently caress posted:"well how can this app be free? is it a virus?" Ads, possibly, no, it probably won't, yes, and yes.
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May 3, 2014 23:08
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Dilbert As gently caress posted:Bought my parents a Galaxy note and a galaxy 5s today. They came from mid 08 dumbphones. If they're suspicious of free poo poo then you've trained them well. Of course that's just the beginning. My Dad a little while ago sent me an email that just said "is this safe?" with a word doc attached. My first thought was his email was compromised and the doc a virus, but it turned out inside that doc was a screenshot of a website that offered a free program he wanted to trial. Why he couldn't just send a link I have no idea...
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May 3, 2014 23:13
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Ad block plus for andriod!  But yeah making my 62 year old mom a facebook was one of the greatest pains.... I still don't know how many versions of the bible I installed on that device...
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May 3, 2014 23:19
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Management decides that it's time to get serious about tracking our work. -That sounds absolutely fantastic! Coming from a previous job that was very effective due to work tracking, that sounds like a huge improvement. They're going to use TFS and SCRUM. -Great! I already know both of those from said previous job. SCRUM and TFS training start. Our new product manager is in the training with us. He sure is asking a lot of questions, and struggling with TFS... Turns out he was told he was going to be the product owner the previous day. He has no experience with SCRUM, TFS, or our product. The last day of training comes, our first sprint starts the next day. We're told that we're not sprinting our product, but will be combined with another team, and all of our work will be put on hold for the next two weeks. The sprint goes absolutely terribly as none of the team (including management) is trained well enough in the process, also the other team is abysmal at their job. Last day of the sprint comes up and again we find out that we will put all of our work on hold and shadow the other team for another sprint. All the while our work is literally piling up around us. Every morning we tell management that if we aren't able to do our work we're going to miss huge external deadlines worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Our sprint finally comes up, and we have 3 months of work that has to be done in 2 weeks. Management is shocked and disappointed that we're all over capacity. Their solution? Cancel my co-workers training that has been planned and approved for the last 4 months the afternoon before the training starts. I've seen incompetant management before, and I've seen jerk management before, but I've never seen such a terrible mix of the two. Sudden Loud Noise fucked around with this message at 00:05 on May 4, 2014 |
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May 4, 2014 00:03
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Is there a handy explanation of this whole scrum thing around because every time I've tried to understand it my eyes glaze over. I get that it's a way to run software projects and that's about it.
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May 4, 2014 00:06
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Caged posted:Is there a handy explanation of this whole scrum thing around because every time I've tried to understand it my eyes glaze over. I get that it's a way to run software projects and that's about it. 1. Break your work up into manageable chunks. 2. Tell stakeholders "for the next two weeks, I'm going to be working on these things" based on priorities they've given you. 3. Do the work. 4. If they want you to work on something different before those two weeks are through, tell them to piss off. There, you now know everything you need to know about scrum/agile/whatever.
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May 4, 2014 00:13
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So in other words it's "making a plan" and then "following a plan", instead of getting sidetracked by whatever the flavour of the week is?
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May 4, 2014 00:17
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Sailor_Spoon posted:1. Break your work up into manageable chunks. Oh man that reminds me, so at the start of this process, team members stated their concern about the "tell them to piss off" part. We have a lot of external customers that we can't tell to piss off, management needs to tell them. Management said okay, just send us all of their contact information and we will let them all know. We provided them the requested contact information. It's been two months, no email or other communication has been initiated with our contacts. Also: "You're only allowed 1 production obstacle a month." ...Okay, so we'll just ignore those other production issues I guess...
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May 4, 2014 00:19
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Caged posted:Is there a handy explanation of this whole scrum thing around because every time I've tried to understand it my eyes glaze over. I get that it's a way to run software projects and that's about it. A scrum is merely a status update meeting. They're generally used in an environment that embraces agile project management methodologies. There's a million and 5 different ideas as to how to do it, but a quick overview to get you up and running:
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May 4, 2014 01:24
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Also please for the love of god remember this:quote:Agile is not an excuse for not documenting anything about what the project is trying to . And having "scrum" meetings does not mean you have an agile project. The number of times I see projects spiralling into the ground in flames because the PM has gone "well we don't need to spend a week writing a technical spec because we're using agile" only for the devs to then get to sprint 3 and realise they shot themselves in the foot is ridiculous. Take the spec, break it into sprints, reorder when necessary and deliver continuously, then you're agile. Writing down nothing, having daily meetings but then coding for 6 months solid with no release or user acceptance of features is a loving disaster.
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May 4, 2014 01:38
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Paladine_PSoT posted:A scrum is merely a status update meeting. They're generally used in an environment that embraces agile project management methodologies. There's a million and 5 different ideas as to how to do it, but a quick overview to get you up and running: While what you are describing is often referred to as a daily scrum, What you are actually describing is a stand-up meeting. Scrum is an agile project management methodology. In order to avoid this turning into an  post, please see the following video that breaks down Scrum very nicely:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU0llRltyFM It covers core concepts and components better than any of the other ones I've seen. I've spent a good portion of the last 10 years implementing Scrum in a comically wide variety of contexts, so I've had to answer the "what is scrum?" question a lot. Now I just start the discussion with that video. I turn it off at 7:15, because it turns into a product pitch at that point. Powerful Two-Hander posted:Take the spec, break it into sprints, reorder when necessary and deliver continuously, then you're agile. Writing down nothing, having daily meetings but then coding for 6 months solid with no release or user acceptance of features is a loving disaster. The only modification I have for this is Take the spec, break it into user stories with explicit, objective, testable acceptance criteria... User acceptance should be JIT, if not continuous. At a minimum, a sprint requires user acceptance at the end of each sprint. Feral Bueller fucked around with this message at 03:18 on May 4, 2014 |
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May 4, 2014 03:13
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More poo poo that pisses me off: lazy Army helpdesk people. I dropped a laptop off to get imaged and went back to pick it up the next day. Hi, I dropped off a laptop yesterday to get reimaged for this location. Is it ready? Sorry, the image didn't work. What do you mean it "didn't work". I tried a few times and it just wouldn't take. I ran a diagnostic and everything. Okay, so are you going to kick it up to Tier 2? Nah, it's just not going to work. You sure about that? Yep. Positive.I just said gently caress it and walked off. Gives me an excuse to not talk to my boss, I guess. Their supervisor came in and bitched them out after that because there were 4 other people in line and every person inside the helpdesk was sitting around watching TV. psydude fucked around with this message at 09:00 on May 4, 2014 |
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May 4, 2014 08:57
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Paladine_PSoT posted:
We moved ours from 9.30am to 3pm. Gets a better grip on what people are actually doing instead of a caffeine-deprived vision on what you want to work on. People started showing up later at work as an effect of this as well, so you take the good with the maybe bad.
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May 4, 2014 09:34
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Caged posted:Is there a handy explanation of this whole scrum thing around because every time I've tried to understand it my eyes glaze over. I get that it's a way to run software projects and that's about it. A whole bunch of small waterfalls. Sarcasmatron posted:User acceptance should be JIT, if not continuous. At a minimum, a sprint requires user acceptance at the end of each sprint. What do you do when you've got users like mine, who refuse to even look at software unless it's feature complete? Other than  or  .
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May 4, 2014 10:03
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Ego Trip posted:A whole bunch of small waterfalls. Four waterfalls, on a cliff...
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May 4, 2014 10:25
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Ego Trip posted:What do you do when you've got users like mine, who refuse to even look at software unless it's feature complete? Other than "User offered no complaint or negative feedback. Feature accepted as-is."
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May 4, 2014 13:55
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psydude posted:More poo poo that pisses me off: lazy Army helpdesk people...
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May 4, 2014 14:44
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Che Delilas posted:"User offered no complaint or negative feedback. Feature accepted as-is." This. I also send that to them in an email to please confirm, and let them know if I haven't heard from them by x time on y day that their lack of response signifies acceptance. None of this prevents in inevitable shitstorm at some really inconvenient point in the project, it just provides a paper trail to encourage them to act like responsible adults who are spending someone else's money. I also make sure that there is a project charter before work starts. For a project already in process, I stop work on the project until we have an accepted and approved project charter. People move fast on this when there's time sensitivity. Finally, my project charters include a high-level communication plan: people get amazingly sensitive to email notifications like the one I mentioned above. I make sure that this is all communicated to the project team and owners, up front. Think of it as a project SLA. For example:
When all of this is accepted and approved as a sub-component of the Project Charter, there are no surprises, as the expectation is that all project members have acknowledged receipt and understanding of the Project Charter. The way that all of this works for me on a practical level: 1. Whoever hired me gets a lot of walk-in visits from various non-performing team members and functional managers questioning the need for onerous documentation and my prescence. 2. Things get delivered, on time, and with a minimum of crunch time shenanigans. I don't like working weekends, so I manage my projects accordingly. 3. Project teams get used to the warm fuzzy feeling that comes from delivering on time. 4. I have very little to do when things are going well. When they start going sideways, they get straightened quickly, as they know I will escalate without hesitation. I like getting the project teams out of foxhole mode, as they're rarely the problem. Business owners who participate according to the accepted and approved Project Charter have a relatively low-stress enjoyable time of things. Those who don't, get fire-walled at a minimum. My last gig, it was the COO who was the gnarly problem. They were fire walled 3 weeks into the project. We shipped on time (Xbox One launch app). The COO departed the company a week after launch. Ultimately, the success of a project rests firmly on my shoulders -- I manage them accordingly.
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May 4, 2014 14:59
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Sarcasmatron posted:Ultimately, the success of a project rests firmly on my shoulders -- I manage them accordingly. I think I'm in love, we could use a few good PMs like you.
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May 4, 2014 16:42
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Most Project Managers are overpaid stenographers.
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May 4, 2014 17:19
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Sarcasmatron posted:Most Project Managers are overpaid stenographers.
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May 4, 2014 19:10
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ookiimarukochan posted:If you work in San Jose, I hate you (other vendors at least have a go at testing their APIs before releasing them to the public / advertising them heavily) I quit several years ago, when I realized that I was actually hoping that bad gas was another kidney stone so I could go to the hospital and skip work that day. I do have friends that still work there, and hearing the inside skinny on why certain things turned out like they have...  and  but I can't find it any more. thanks!Suffice to say, they're like an onion of poor decisions with a core of engineers who have had hope and joy crushed out of them. And they're the LEAST WORST. Volmarias fucked around with this message at 02:12 on May 5, 2014 |
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May 4, 2014 22:04
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poo poo not pissing me off... Doing 5 hours overtime on a Friday night for a Sev-1 and getting 2 days off in return  At my last job, a Small/Medium MSP, I would have probably been lucky to get a morning off
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May 5, 2014 01:10
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Volmarias posted:I quit several years ago, when I realized that I was actually hoping that bad gas was another kidney stone so I could go to the hospital and skip work that day. My old place had no project management whatsoever (and the pay was only a few dollars above minimum wage). Complete a feature with no access to the actual code ("security"!), no documentation, and no bug-testing or review until months after it's complete. Three years later I find out the owner is into bitcoins. Somehow I am not surprised.
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May 5, 2014 02:08
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That Sarcasmatron project management post was like reading a soothing back massage.
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May 5, 2014 08:27
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skooky posted:Doing 5 hours overtime on a Friday night for a Sev-1 and getting 2 days off in return Sounds like your manager puts exactly the same weighted values on hours that I do. That is, the hours from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon are worth about 3x as much as weekday business hours. Good on him.
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May 5, 2014 08:58
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dogstile posted:You know that April fools prank I convinced the sysadmin to do? A couple of years ago i ran a script to change all of the HP LaserJet LCDs to say "PC LOAD LETTER". In a company with nearly 1000 employees, only 2 people got the joke. 
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May 5, 2014 15:37
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On the LJ 4200 my previous employer used I always made them say "INSERT COIN / CREDITS 0". The MFPs with graphical displays don't let you change the home screen.
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May 5, 2014 15:47
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Lord Dudeguy posted:I ALMOST shouted "DFS!" but I think you're looking for one massive storage "blob" (maybe with parity in case a POS dies), right? dorkanoid posted:iSCSI target on each machine, then software RAID across it!
NullPtr4Lunch fucked around with this message at 15:50 on May 5, 2014 |
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May 5, 2014 15:48
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Sarcasmatron posted:Most Project Managers are overpaid stenographers. Yeah, but a good one... poo poo they're worth their weight in gold. I've only worked with one good project manager, and it was enlightening to say the least.
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May 5, 2014 18:32
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We just got our third brand new Dell SMB team since the start of the year(who sound like they are in an even smaller call center). Yay for fuckups for the next couple of orders.
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May 5, 2014 19:00
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ghostinmyshell posted:We just got our third brand new Dell SMB team since the start of the year(who sound like they are in an even smaller call center). Yay for fuckups for the next couple of orders. Our Dell rep just quit his job, so maybe now I can get someone who can configure my five change requests that I ask for in one email, instead of me having to send five emails with successively less change requests in each. Also, does anyone elses Premier page configurators include half a page of actually relevant stuff and then two and a half pages of unchangeable options like Thank you for choosing Dell - Not selected - $0 ?
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May 5, 2014 19:07
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evobatman posted:Our Dell rep just quit his job, so maybe now I can get someone who can configure my five change requests that I ask for in one email, instead of me having to send five emails with successively less change requests in each. I had four 'Thanks for choosing Dell' on the invoice when ordering my XPS 15. Why on earth...
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May 5, 2014 19:15
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Westie posted:I had four 'Thanks for choosing Dell' on the invoice when ordering my XPS 15. Probably some vague mandate to remind the customer who they ordered from by an executive who had a marketing intern propose it as part of a new strategic initiative to increase market penetration, maximise brand loyalty, and enhance intangible assets. This of course as executed by an outsourced engineering team and integrated into the invoicing system by an overworked DBA who just wants to be let out of the dell ordering system farm to see the light of day again for just a moment.
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May 5, 2014 19:21
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QuiteEasilyDone posted:Probably some vague mandate to remind the customer who they ordered from by an executive who had a marketing intern propose it as part of a new strategic initiative to increase market penetration, maximise brand loyalty, and enhance intangible assets. This of course as executed by an outsourced engineering team and integrated into the invoicing system by an overworked DBA who just wants to be let out of the dell ordering system farm to see the light of day again for just a moment. Is it bad that I understood this word salad? Great Scott, I have become one of them!
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