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SEKCobra posted:This didnt exactly come out of the blue, the whole department has some hostility going on originating from a few certain people. One of my coworkers who simply doesnt like me has been feeding my boss bullshit for a while, and since my boss avoids contact with pretty much everyone, it seems impossible to change his impression. This coworker is part of his inner circle I guess. Don't neglect your elephant.
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Jul 9, 2014 06:26
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Ok, fax machines suck. I have a customer that moved from local ISDN lines to centralized SIP trunks. Apparently they just did this one day and tested it by making a few phone calls and calling it good. Now I am in fax hell because most fax machines are not working. 80% were not working due to a specific codec issue that is resolved, but should have been configured correctly before they went SIP. The rest of the problems are random depending on which SIP provider is used, what kind of fax machine it is, and other things like how heavy their trunk utilization is. This has been going on for a month. Twice a week I get an email with new faxes reporting problems and hopefully a trace showing why the call is not completing. Twice a week, even though they can see all of the different issues, I get an email asking why it is taking so long to fix the 'fax issue' as if it was a simple problem and not a major pain in the rear end caused by them dumping things into production without testing or even thought. Sigh, I kinda stopped drinking.
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Jul 9, 2014 15:36
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Yeah, faxing over SIP really doesn't work. If this had been a planned project then you would have ended up with a fax server and porting the fax numbers to an outside service. Goondolences.
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Jul 9, 2014 18:24
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Today? Truecrypts insistence that I burn an .iso of their "Rescue disk" while encrypting a drive. The machine has no burner so I had to install Virtual Clonedrive and then mount the .iso in order to fool Truecrypt into thinking that I had actually burned a disk. For Pete's sake just let me save the .iso and spit out a warning about the world ending if I dont ever actually burn it to disk
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Jul 9, 2014 19:12
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You're still using truecrypt after what happened?
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Jul 9, 2014 19:54
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Why not? TrueCrypt still works fine even though there might be some sort of rumoured NSA issue. If you're protecting your banking info from some random thefts it works. If you're loading up your terrorist plans and are an enemy of the state? Well, you probably still don't have any better options.
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Jul 9, 2014 19:58
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Wozbo posted:You're still using truecrypt after what happened? I'm not using this to protect anything that the NSA would care about. If I hear of criminals actively defeating Truecrypt, I'll consider switching. Plus, the agency I work for doesnt want to pay for anything so...yeah.
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Jul 9, 2014 20:16
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My entire office couldn't send email at all last week because my boss' computer was spamming. It took forever to clean everything up and then a couple days to get our domain off of blacklists. Just now he opened a zip file in an email that seemed to be from Amazon, because "I ordered some stuff from Amazon." Literally less than a week after our entire business was paralyzed because he is a complete computer idiot. I am considering implementing a whitelist in his Outlook and just not telling him about it.
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Jul 9, 2014 20:29
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You should have outbound port 25 blocked for anything that isn't a mail server.
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Jul 9, 2014 20:34
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sanchez posted:You should have outbound port 25 blocked for anything that isn't a mail server. I'm not actually an IT guy but I will pass that on to them, thanks! I do know that we have an Exchange server, but the idea is that the server itself would need to be infected for spam to get through?
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Jul 9, 2014 20:41
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Correct, or an infected client could still send spam through it. Most viruses are not that smart and try to connect directly from the infected machine out to the internet though, so it definitely helps.
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Jul 9, 2014 20:43
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Depending on how the exchange server is set up, any infection could presumably just send an email to the server and tell it to forward it out. This wouldn't be a very well setup exchange server though.
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Jul 9, 2014 20:45
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sanchez posted:You should have outbound port 25 blocked for anything that isn't a mail server. 
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Jul 9, 2014 21:14
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Things pissing me off I work for an MSP. We have 2 large clients among many others for Tier 2 work. Company A is heavy amounts of tickets but we were doing ok. We get Company B and start drowning in tickets because we weren't told the truth on number of tickets per day they expected. We get told to save\focus on Company B. Company A suffers and gets angry. We get told to save both and there isn't enough people. Solution? Hire a PM to see what's wrong with our flow for Company A.  What's pissing me off is just being screwed by sales and unrealistic expectations with a staff already facing manpower issues.
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Jul 9, 2014 21:40
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Irritated Goat posted:Things pissing me off Your company is trying to put out a forest fire with a garden hose. That's what's wrong with your flow. My consultant's fee for that information is $12,500.00 U.S., what's the address of your company's accounts payable so I can get them an invoice?
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Jul 9, 2014 21:49
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Mr. Clark2 posted:I'm not using this to protect anything that the NSA would care about. If I hear of criminals actively defeating Truecrypt, I'll consider switching. Look into DiskCryptor, brah.
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Jul 10, 2014 00:08
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Lord Dudeguy posted:Look into DiskCryptor, brah. Don't modern OSs all support encryption now? Bitlocker, etc...
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Jul 10, 2014 01:44
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The idea is that technologies such as Bitlocker are universally understood to contain NSA backdoors. Truecrypt is either unsecure or under pressure by the NSA - if you believe the latter, downloading the last stable build to allow encryption is probably about the most secure you can get.
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Jul 10, 2014 01:54
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kiwid posted:Don't modern OSs all support encryption now? Bitlocker, etc... Linux? LVM w/ encryption. Windows for businesses? Bitlocker. Windows for home use? DiskCryptor if you want something "trustworthy"/still maintained/not NSL'd to death. TrueCrypt 7.1 if you want something a little more "renowned".
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Jul 10, 2014 02:21
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:The idea is that technologies such as Bitlocker are universally understood to contain NSA backdoors. Truecrypt is either unsecure or under pressure by the NSA - if you believe the latter, downloading the last stable build to allow encryption is probably about the most secure you can get.
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Jul 10, 2014 02:23
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Gah. I received my new hire "packet" from my new employer today - it was actually an email with 34 attachments (variety of PDF and Word docs) and the vague "Fill these out ASAP" instructions. Most were the standard employee forms, but drat me if they didn't do their best to make the rest of that poo poo as annoying as possible. It took me 5 hours to fill them out, then I had to scan all of them and email them back. I sent back a single attachment with 26 pages and the comment "I may have missed some forms, so let me know if I did and which ones." Seems kind of stupid to me, quite honestly - my old company had everything digitized and online, and filling out the forms and selecting benefits, withholding, and deductions was a snap. Hell, you could even compare benefit plans side by side to make an informed decision. New company has a single plan and it's either you take it or leave it. Doesn't offer a 401(K) match, but they tried to drum up some excitement by finally offering a Flex Spending Account this year. My coworkers told me the benefits meeting today was less-than-stellar, and the HR people seemed a bit peeved that folks weren't swooning from excitement and were in fact so tactless as to ask about when they were going to start getting better benefits that pretty much every other company out there offers. The nerve! I knew all this going in, so it's not a big shocker. Plus, we're all very much convinced that the contract is going away by August of next year. I can handle 13 months of stupid poo poo so long as it gets me what I want.
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Jul 10, 2014 04:26
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Also Bitlocker is 7 Enterprise or Ultimate only, if you're still on 7. anthonypants posted:On the other hand, the people behind TrueCrypt are so confident in their product that latest and final TrueCrypt release removed the ability to encrypt drives. I still believe that was either a ragequit or a canary and in either case not to be taken at face value.
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Jul 10, 2014 04:28
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I know, I know, this topic again.sfwarlock posted:I still believe that was either a ragequit or a canary and in either case not to be taken at face value.  .
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Jul 10, 2014 04:34
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:That said, I do think the Truecrypt takedown was a canary. I'd say more but They went out of their way to be obvious, how could anyone think it's not? Truecrypt posted:WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues.
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Jul 10, 2014 05:50
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We do managed services for, funny enough, a company that specializes in printers. Scratch your back, I'll scratch yours kind of thing. So I call out to a technician on their time in the office so that I can talk with him about his computer, as we've had some flags in our monitoring software that point to a possible serious infection. Just going to remote on, confirm everything's legit, start some basic cleanup, that kind of thing. I ask their receptionist to transfer me over "Oh, I can't give you a direct line to a technician, sorry" "I understand, but I'm not calling because I have an issue. We manage your IT services, I am doing work on his machine" "We aren't allowed to connect people direct to technicians, sorry sir" So I ask her name, take it down, hang up. Ask one of the other guys what that technician's work cell is, they pass on the info, I call that number and talk with him. I remote on, find the problem, wipe it out, start scans just to make sure, pretty easy. aaaaand find out that the person I spoke to before does this all the time. She takes the "no direct lines to technicians" thing to heart, and won't patch people through. I guess she's done this to the technician's supervisor before she knew who he was. 
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Jul 10, 2014 06:25
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Whizbang posted:They went out of their way to be obvious, how could anyone think it's not? You probably believe that there are secret messages from the illuminati on currency, too.
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Jul 10, 2014 06:58
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death .cab for qt posted:Receptionist Good. I want this receptionist where I work. The people who need to contact me directly know how, everyone else goes through the Helpdesk phone.
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Jul 10, 2014 07:09
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Comradephate posted:You probably believe that there are secret messages from the illuminati on currency, too. No we're not nearly that sneaky.
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Jul 10, 2014 07:12
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Comradephate posted:You probably believe that there are secret messages from the illuminati on currency, too. Considering the ongoing torrent of disturbing stuff we've been finding out about the NSA, that comment makes you look like you've got your head stuck pretty far in the sand dude.
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Jul 10, 2014 07:39
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Sir_Substance posted:Considering the ongoing torrent of disturbing stuff we've been finding out about the NSA, that comment makes you look like you've got your head stuck pretty far in the sand dude. Guys I found the secret message, Sir_Substance is trying to tell us he's a fed and to not listen to him. See, I can bold things and make it look like an encoded message too. Also how can you not see that the non-stop flood of documents that the NSA wanted to keep a secret supports my position, and not yours? People cannot keep secrets.
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Jul 10, 2014 07:49
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death .cab for qt posted:I guess she's done this to the technician's supervisor before she knew who he was. A colleague of mine closed the door in the face of our CEO (~1200 person company) because he thought he was trying to sell something.
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Jul 10, 2014 09:08
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Mr. Clark2 posted:Today? Truecrypts insistence that I burn an .iso of their "Rescue disk" while encrypting a drive. The machine has no burner so I had to install Virtual Clonedrive and then mount the .iso in order to fool Truecrypt into thinking that I had actually burned a disk. For Pete's sake just let me save the .iso and spit out a warning about the world ending if I dont ever actually burn it to disk code:
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Jul 10, 2014 13:40
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I'm getting bitched at by a department head who can't be bothered to have a a conversation with me because I didn't have a new computer for one of his people set up. I was alerted to its presence the day before while at an offsite meeting. As I've mentioned previously, my team is running at 50% staffing at the moment, I am the sole point of contact for my primary site right now, and I am doing three different people's jobs, two of them supervisory and leadership-related. Currently he is pitching a fit and threatening to complain to my boss if I don't meet an artificial deadline he's made up. Everything I do right now is triage-based because we lack the personnel to do otherwise. If this guy couldn't work he'd jump way up my list, but he has all of his data, a laptop, and is working just fine from a desktop in an office belonging to someone who's out, and setting up a third computer for a non-VIP user is just not making my top priority list compared to people having more urgent issues. I was going to talk to the guy, I have a decent working relationship with him, but after talking to some others I've tentatively decided to let it go rather than pick a fight that I would gain nothing substantial by winning. Also, I met his end-of-day fake deadline, only to find that the guy left early. I'm glad this was such a loving priority. Privately I suspect this pissing and moaning has two root causes, neither of which I can really bring up without stirring up drama. First, I suspect that this user was using this as an excuse to not do any work, and scapegoating me for it. Second, to me this issue is one day old, because that's when the replacement computer arrived; I suspect he thinks of it as a much older issue, because his previous computer has been out of commission for a week. The delay was because they had to decide whether to put money into the older machine for parts, or just replace it. EDIT: Did I mention that the day it arrived -- which, again, is one day before the whining began -- I was in meetings til half past noon, then had a three hour window -- including time to eat lunch before I was in meetings again until 9:00pm? I've been so angry about this that I only got a few hours of sleep, because every time I thought about it I got too keyed up to sleep, and woke up still pissed off at 3:30am, and have been up since then. guppy fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 14:17
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guppy posted:I'm getting bitched at by a department head who can't be bothered to have a a conversation with me because I didn't have a new computer for one of his people set up. I was alerted to its presence the day before while at an offsite meeting. As I've mentioned previously, my team is running at 50% staffing at the moment, I am the sole point of contact for my primary site right now, and I am doing three different people's jobs, two of them supervisory and leadership-related. Currently he is pitching a fit and threatening to complain to my boss if I don't meet an artificial deadline he's made up. Don't be a doormat. Tell your boss, whoever THAT is, that your workload is unsustainable and that you won't be able to continue performing at this level unless you get help. I assume that you have metrics to back this up.
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Jul 10, 2014 15:51
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Volmarias posted:Don't be a doormat. Tell your boss, whoever THAT is, that your workload is unsustainable and that you won't be able to continue performing at this level unless you get help. I assume that you have metrics to back this up. That's the thing. One of the three jobs I'm currently doing is my boss', because he retired. So depending on how you look at it, my boss is either me or the CIO, and I would feel ridiculous calling the CIO to tell him that I'm having a slapfight. I am not able to punch at the weight class of the guy I'm having a conflict with on my own, though. My boss' retirement is part of the reason my workload is what it is, but I'm hoping that by stepping up I can prove myself to the CIO and maybe move into that role "for real" or otherwise advance. If not, I need to leave the organization for reasons of career growth. Not only is this sort of thing too small potatoes to bring to a member of executive leadership, but I don't want to give him the impression I can't handle my business. I've already had the staffing conversation with him, and for budgetary reasons I'm not getting any more staff right now. His suggestion was to bring in help from another team (the specifics on the organizational setup are a little too revealing to post publicly), but for political reasons I also don't want to give any ground that might get my more specialized team absorbed into a larger team. The workload is nuts but should improve over the next few weeks; the bigger issue is redundancy, in that if anyone is out for any reason (vacation, sick) a primary site is going to go uncovered. And them's the breaks, I can staff the higher priority sites and leave the other ones hanging until everyone is back. Edit: I do absolutely have the metrics to back this up, and he knows it. Edit 2: And, frankly, it's busy and stressful but I can handle this level of workload as long as I'm allowed to triage as I feel is appropriate. And the CIO isn't giving me poo poo about it or anything. The only reason this is a problem is that someone who doesn't understand the situation is attempting to jump the queue. guppy fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 16:20
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Calling this right now: You are being the work bitch; even if you get a new title it will be in name only, and there's no way you will get a salary/power even remotely worth what you are putting/ going to put up with. If you get it, congrats, but start looking for a new job like the day of.
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Jul 10, 2014 16:40
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guppy posted:That's the thing. One of the three jobs I'm currently doing is my boss', because he retired. So depending on how you look at it, my boss is either me or the CIO, and I would feel ridiculous calling the CIO to tell him that I'm having a slapfight. I am not able to punch at the weight class of the guy I'm having a conflict with on my own, though. Use SET as a way to cover your rear end. Support: I understand that you need X being done by Y, and I want to help. Empathy: I appreciate it's frustrating to not be able to do Z Truth: However due to [insert high priority ticket here] I'm not able to complete your request. However it's in our ticketing system and will be dealt with in accordance with the priority of other tickets in the queue. (You DO have a ticketing system, right?)
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Jul 10, 2014 16:55
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Wozbo posted:Calling this right now: You are being the work bitch; even if you get a new title it will be in name only, and there's no way you will get a salary/power even remotely worth what you are putting/ going to put up with. If you get it, congrats, but start looking for a new job like the day of. Oh, don't worry, I'm already looking. It's hard to make the jump I'd prefer to make, though. Edit: And I more or less like my employer most of the time, and would be happy to stay if they'll give me room to grow. But I've badly outgrown my current title. DrAlexanderTobacco posted:Use SET as a way to cover your rear end. Yep, don't worry, the metrics I'm talking about are things like ticket count, response times, etc. I have all that and they back me up. guppy fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 17:16
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This is basically several hundred words of excuses as to why you have no spine. If the CIO is your effective boss, then he or she is the person to talk to about the fact that you're overloaded. If you are able to (by their perception) handle all 3 jobs, why the gently caress would they hire somebody else? You're saving them upwards of $100,000 and you're not even complaining about it. You're practically a gold mine.
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Jul 10, 2014 17:28
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Comradephate posted:This is basically several hundred words of excuses as to why you have no spine. I wouldn't say that it makes him spineless. Sounds like it might just be a temporary lovely thing he has to deal with for a little bit. Sometimes I feel like the pendulum has swung to far the other way around here. A lot of times at the sign of any trouble everyone's first response is to jump ship, and while I agree and studies back up that it is helpful and a viable solution, I don't think that should be the first step for everyone. Sometimes company reorganizations and HR take a while to get things moving. I had to wait on a promotion for a few months just because we had to wait for our new fiscal year to start. Things happen. It sounds like he has all the metrics and paper trail to CYA and doesnt want to go to the CIO for what amounts to one guy being a loud mouth whiner. Maybe he sticks it out a few weeks, gets the promotion and can start making some real changes.
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Jul 10, 2014 17:57
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