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Dick Trauma posted:I'd just put my earbuds in and as the Cpanel page appeared the Star Wars main theme started blasting. Made me wonder what it would be like if all mundane tasks were accompanied with a fanfare, like when you're switching out a waste toner bottle. What the hell, a few weeks back a colleague called up our franking machine company and their hold music was also the Star Wars theme; lovely rear end company but hearing that on loudspeaker was a thing of majesty. One of these days its going to be too tempting to stick some Iron Maiden hold music on my ACD applet, or a funky chiptune ringtone for my IP phone.
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Jul 29, 2014 19:10
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Lordy... the only time I've ever bought stuff for the company was raiding the petty cash to walk out and pick up some bolts. And paying £90 in an Apple store for a bunch of charging plugs/cables, and I got them to wire me the money first before going out.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:27
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I live on a cramped bank of desks against a glass wall, so a whiteboard is out of the question. I sorta used Outlook tasks but it's way quicker to jot stuff down using windows sticky notes.
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Sep 7, 2014 13:50
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Misogynist posted:Can't you just use the glass wall? As much as I'd love to screen my boss away from me, that's a negative 
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Sep 7, 2014 23:03
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I'm not sure how its set up in a business environment; but having Teamviewer running in the background on my PC's and my families at the other end of the country are all just a double click away from complete control, there's even a mobile app. Now back to Monday and investigating mystery bloated outlook profiles, I asked our support for advice about infrastructure expansion to cope when poo poo gets overloaded like this as well as general expansion; they gave a Recommendation for additional server hardware. Awwww yeah shiny new expensive tech, can't wait to drop that on management 
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Oct 13, 2014 19:12
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AlternateAccount posted:"I don't have a cell phone." When explaining to the MD how bad of an idea nuking remote access permissions and a mass password reset at the end of the day on a Friday without telling anyone was a bad idea; he asked what my number was, I said the back office line, then he asked for my personal and I just zipped my lip. Companies can get hosed calling me unless they provide a phone and call out payment. I've only given my number to two lovely ladies I'm on great terms with who work the out of hours service in case of a big emergency.
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Nov 4, 2014 20:40
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An interview came in; Junior IT Support  During the short telephone interview when asked the expected salary, I threw out £18-22k, they said much lower... like £14-16k (I make this now, still officially contracted as an office bitch)  I said I'd go along anyway, so I'm booked in for next week as I've got a load of holidays to use up anyway. Apparently the interview will consist of; - There will be a brief breakdown of what we do - A review of your CV - A small practical test - Brief Q&A Someone's expectations are off, and I'm not sure they're mine.
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Nov 19, 2014 20:30
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A job came in It's pretty much a helpdesk/generalist gig to free up the one guy running the IT show for £1000 more per month, but I don't entirely want to leave where I am if I can wrangle out a load more dosh with the threat of me leaving tomorrow. It's weird having choice, usually I'm desperate to cling to anything after a string of temp jobs.
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Dec 1, 2014 18:24
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MJP posted:Anyone know how to get these guys in a position where they can self-service and work with SF the way they want to and call the rep/support for Salesforce accordingly? I'm the 2nd tier in a 3-person IT operation, and while this may strike as goonish laziness, we've got enough to deal with as I've gotta run VMware, Citrix Xendesk, normal sysadmin/server admin stuff, plan for moving the office, and get a plan going for our vendor to upgrade our VoIP backend. Unless they want to hemorrhage consultancy money they'd be better off having a dedicated admin handle all that, it's pretty much what I spend most my time doing and there are constant changes small changes always being carried out. If any of them are remotely techy or patient it's not too difficult to teach, as I've trained up someone who was originally in it for business reporting; and has become my living shield to draw fire from lovely little questions and minor page changes while I work on the bigger stuff, like constantly having to figure out how to get away from SF's closed in Apple-like infrastructure. 
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Dec 19, 2014 20:56
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MJP posted:I might mention desk-level power outlets. Less cables to manage under the desk might cut down on the number of surge protectors in use. Holy loving poo poo this has been my entire day today, I had to re-jig the whole half of the office since our poo poo manager was ousted so now everyone is getting properly lined up; - About 30 people this side of the office, all of them need moving, open plan - During work hours - Employment law gig so phones MUST be active - Have to leap frog staff like some kind of puzzle because of the lack of space keeping offline time down - Cabling is an utter nightmare because of the lack of equipment (Really hurting for power and data) and the fact that the cable trays are utter poo poo - Ravaging headache and eye pain all week - VOIP went down right in the morning, managed system so can't do poo poo - Higher ups want me to do customer feedback booklet printing bollocks - Delivery for additional surge protectors and Ethernet switches came in right at the end of the day when most of the cabling has been done - MD's new phone and new starter's kit came in and still untouched in boxes It's awkward and a little frustrating as I do have volunteers to help move stuff, but the problem is they aren't that techy and I don't have the time to explain/show them how networking works, how what should go where, and all the little lovely corners I've had to cut to compensate for the equipment. I also started musing to myself how much it fucks me off being grilled for IT costings when I find the absolute best deals in the time I have, and that they're necessary to make everyone's lives easier. If they gave me weekend pay I'd come in alone and recable the entire lot, armed with enough switches and nuts & bolts to get it nice and tidy. I want to crawl into bed, but I need to cook dinner...
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Jan 16, 2015 20:18
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Daylen Drazzi posted:I prefer to operate in the belief that corporations, comprised of people from all walks of life, are essentially there just to demonstrate exactly how much other people can get away with by screwing over those lower on the totem pole. Not even corporations, but companies in general. Not IT but a friend I helped recruit into the business was worried about her job over christmas, over the holiday party she was assured she's safe and wouldn't let her go in their wildest dreams. January comes and she's made "redundant" the morning we all come back, and told to pack her poo poo and leave; Que everything going wrong afterwards because she organises a ton of stuff with no one to hold the bag. Like mentioned before, treat jobs like a Mercenary; you do stuff for money, you don't owe poo poo to the business, and nice colleagues are a bonus.
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Jan 24, 2015 15:52
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psydude posted:If your only job is to do printers then it's probably not so bad. The reason most IT people hate printers is because they are always breaking in stupid ways and always pulling you away from more important poo poo. The biggest ball-ache is that that they're complex machines with individual parts that have an expected life before wearing out. "Ah yes, I can see the 2nd BTR Roller assembly is breaking down, let me just get one out the cupboard and swap it out then we'll be fixed in a jiffy" SAID NO ONE EVER
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Feb 6, 2015 21:09
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CloFan posted:Switched from the Dell Optiplex desktops and Latitude laptops to HP EliteDesk and EliteBooks last summer. The price difference was significant cheaper for the HPs, same specs and warranty/onsite repair options. You'd never hear me say this about their consumer line, but I enjoy working with their enterprise hardware. Just based on them being cheap as gently caress and to keep things standard I order in HP ProDesk 400 G1 SFF desktops, my only gripe is that they come loaded with bloat which I haven't had time to get around. My to-go laptop was the HP ProBook 450 G2 but the price has gone up and at least one has been cracked at the hinge, so I've got one Dell Latitude 3000 series as a trial which I think will be the new standard; since they look pretty tough, are cheaper, and don't have any crap on them (The provider I rarely order from goofed about availability, so gave me an upgrade at no cost as to not disappoint about using Dell, free Hybrid HDD!).
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Feb 11, 2015 20:34
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mewse posted:That's actually kinda interesting. If anyone other than a salesperson emailed me like that, I'd be deeply unimpressed, but because it's a salesperson his corny schtick actually makes him more approachable. I wish my tech suppliers were like that, our stationary supplier however is completely bonkers; but she gives us free packs of biscuits and sweets, even sent three us who are quite buddy buddy with her some bottles of wine for Christmas! (Even our ISP sent us a bottle of wine as well, but I never saw the delivery...) Bob Morales posted:How do you guys handle the 'only one person in IT should be able to change email passwords and potentially access others email'? It just seems like it would cripple us if someone locked themselves out or forgot their password (we have hosted Exchange btw) Sounds like a fun situation without external support, if I'm not in then at least our provider can step in and have things authorised by a set list of people. Not having access to each others inbox sounds a bit nuts though, a lot of people here are in each others pockets to pickup/cover for people who are unavailable.
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Feb 12, 2015 21:32
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syg posted:Anyone else in an environment with no technical peers? The loneliness... it hurts. It's all well and good to bullshit with colleagues anyway, but it's kind of isolating to not be able to talk shop with anyone; I had a play with PDQ Deploy today and had no one to geek out with
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Feb 13, 2015 19:51
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Japanese Dating Sim posted:That is some seriously slick software... might have to see if I can get the boss to spring for it (license is pretty cheap too). My Excuse to our finance manager; "So yeah I've been needing better tools for awhile, you remember that little problem we had last week? (Salesforce for Outlook got updated with extra features, a few machines had the older version and left in the dust, brought up in management meeting, MASS HYSTERIA) this would enable me to deal with things like that much quicker  "
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Feb 13, 2015 23:36
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Sickening posted:This 40k, entry level job is getting me resumes of applicants with 15 years of experience and more. More resumes are piling in by the minute and I can't find a single person who even close to fitting for the role. This sounds like every job interview I've ever had, the most obvious was a Junior software testing role; final interview was down to me and a dude in his 50's who had been in programming before I was even a twinkle in my old man's eye.
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Feb 18, 2015 20:41
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Docjowles posted:Important rule of email troubleshooting: the chance that the root cause is "user typed the wrong loving email address" is directly proportional to how loudly they declare that they definitely typed the right email address. I screamed in silence reading this. We have a regular occurring problem where newly signed client contracts come in with misspelled E-mail addresses way too often because the dumbass selling it didn't double check or just has the hand writing of a child, on the flip side it's nice to know the automated welcome message system I made works great with bounce backs. meanieface posted:She also told me to pad my time when I give estimates for how long any work will take. I've been doing that, but not to the extent she suggested -- and it's a good point. I'd rather people be pleasantly surprised than me working the unplanned night shift because I opened my big mouth and set a date that didn't have enough contingency. Yep, I try to cut down on the magical "Oh it's only a 5 minute job!" which inevitably turns into an hours work; because when does anything ever go to plan?
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Feb 23, 2015 21:31
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SEKCobra posted:So I was doing some FLS the other day and a Doctor called in and asked to send him someone. Obviously I asked what for, since he seemingly didn't feel like volunteering that info. He told me 'To turn a monitor around'. So I asked him what kind of mount he was talking about, he couln't say. Asked him what kind of tools we should bring, to which he replied 'You'd just need two hands'. As much as it annoys the piss out of me to lug around machines and re-wire things, I wouldn't trust anyone in this office with a potato gun let alone not dropping an all-in-one unit. In other news I got to upgrade a user's laptop with a Samsung EVO 850 because adobe creative cloud runs slow as balls, her manager OK'd it right off the bat so I had an hours worth of fun playing with hardware. Then today rolls around and Premier Pro (loaded for the first time) crashes on every single video import, making it completely useless.
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Feb 27, 2015 19:53
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MJP posted:Work-life balance is given a nice blurb in HR but "what is the status of X? need to know by tomorrow AM first thing" for constant, minor issues is enough to give someone anxiety problems. You don't even need a phone to take work home with you, I was nudged awake this Saturday at about 3am and had a hard time getting back to sleep since my brain was going through the crap that happened during the week and what to get ready for on the Monday.
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Mar 3, 2015 00:22
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"But Technician, why has my IP Phone stopped working and lost it's address?" "DHCP works in mysterious ways" Also not taking lunch is madness, if someone really needs me to do something I'll do it and extend the time of my break.
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Mar 5, 2015 19:54
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flosofl posted:I get the "when can we follow up with a meeting" emails ALL THE loving time. He also uses a trick like putting a date in the subject "per our convo on 3/8/2015". You bitch, you're referring to the last time you sent me a cold sales email. THAT'S NOT A CONVERSATION. I've got a guy from MaaS360 who just wont FUUUUUCK OOOOOOFF, every time he's called in is just "No nothings happened yet and likely not for a good while, when management gives the go ahead for purchase I'll call you up", short of straight up telling them we're tight fisted bastards there's not much that deters them.
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Mar 11, 2015 00:34
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CLAM DOWN posted:My entire large office's IP phones are all down. Happy Friday. This is like a bi-monthly thing for me, always Friday morning as well.
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Mar 13, 2015 20:49
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Bhodi posted:Double-PURCHASE your power plugs before you buy hardware Quoted for me, when we moved into this office the requests and recommendations for power poles and arranging power sockets were totally ignored. So heaps of 8-way surge protectors are the name of the game, some of them don't stretch far enough and completely bulk up every cable tray.
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Mar 15, 2015 16:38
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Wicaeed posted:Welp, company-wide meeting today at 2:30 PM. Not-boss forcing sick coworkers to come in today. Someone who's been deathly sick for a couple weeks came back with a spring in her step, I get whispered to for preparations to lock things down as she's getting poo poo canned first thing in the morning without notice; boy oh boy I sure love Mondays.  orange sky posted:The market looks at maximizing short term returns and that's most of the times contrary to what is actually beneficial to the company.
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Mar 16, 2015 21:14
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Alder posted:Right. It will be an improvement over family I await the inevitable meltdown  BaseballPCHiker posted:And oh by the way we dont have the budget to outsource. So that means that all of us are going to start getting stuck with more poo poo work. One example: for the two years I've been here we've been trying to get sales off of iPads and on to laptops. Not going to happen because we dont have the budget to buy them laptops so were stuck with iPads. Also "they need to be able to work on excel sheets with macros and go to sites that need flash why cant you IT nerds just make that work"? I mean sure you could argue the use of Office 365 or even remote services, but have you ever used excel with only a touch screen? I just always say they should've had laptops from the beginning.
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Mar 17, 2015 19:49
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I'd use literally anything else, but nope they all have iPads; both before my time and a combination of a contractual incentive.
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Mar 17, 2015 23:23
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Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:Just make a desk that is a desktop. The iDesk. I was going to make fun of this, but then I thought why isn't this actually a thing? (Sans Apple) A purpose built desk with self contained modular components rather than a metal box kicking around, interface and power ports ingrained above and below the desk material. It would be pretty bitchin' compared to stuffing boxes and cables all over the place.
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Mar 19, 2015 19:53
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:I like when the hold music has a brief pause where it sounds like you're getting connected and then a recorded voice lets me know that my call is important. I think it was Blizzard Account Support I was on hold with once, and after so many "Please hold, you are in a queue etc" the moment a human spoke up I panicked, lunged for the phone and fell off my chair sending the phone across the room.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:21
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insidius posted:"I will loving destroy your career. Ill black ball you, ill prevent you from ever working another job in this industry for so long as you live." Holy hell, I don't consider myself much of a brave person but that would've made me me laugh in his face and peace right out the door. I don't know how it works in the states or the quality of company, but you should build a case for work related stress off the back of that post. I mean my wife went to a doctor & consultants about stress and laid it all out, the doc pretty much said "You are not going back into work, and those are my orders", and she works as a contact center supervisor compared to your hellhole. Oh yeah, get out of there now before it swallows you whole. EDIT: Those threats sound like a bunch of horseshit, no one running a business has the time to gently caress someone over, especially if they don't have the dollar to keep on staff.
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May 11, 2015 21:47
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DarkMoJo posted:Am I judging the situation too hard? I see clear and decisive things that would improve productivity but none of it is ever taken into consideration, much less deployed. Essentially they seem to be saying what I want to hear then turn around and do the exact opposite. Am in the wrong if I jump ship and go somewhere where people actually do their jobs and has less stress? This sounds like a mirror image of the company I'm at now, it's not really advice but try and take some time off. If you're loaded with tons of responsibility keeping everything running, everyone gets to see everything go to poo poo around them while you're away. For me it's a very harsh reminder to send out that people rely on me far too much (and that we need to hire new people/train current people to take care of the day-to-day donkey work nevermind the IT poo poo) 
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May 13, 2015 19:03
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fluppet posted:So does anyone have any advice on how to interview graduates since as they mostly have nothing relevant on their cv to ask them about I did an interview where the guy gave me a laptop and told me resolve why; a. The Internet doesn't work on it b. Why aren't certain characters of the keyboard aren't working properly He also prefaced it by saying if I don't get to a point where I need admin credentials the test is an instant fail. It was pretty much a test to find out how you work and what you know, the following gave points; - Ethernet cable definitely plugged in - Trying to resolve an address like google.com with a browser (failed) - Ping said address (failed) - Check network adapter settings (I think the IP and DNS settings were garbage, set it to DHCP and it reconnected) - Try browser and ping again - Check system locale (Set to US) - Check language/keyboard settings (Set UK as default and remove US layout) Running a Tracert would've been a bonus, I was supposed to ask for the static IP to use but the guy was satisfied by this point.
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May 16, 2015 18:19
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Reiz posted:You were supposed to ask him for a static IP for use on a laptop? Really? I forget what the guy said precisely; but it basically boiled down that using DHCP is a good shout to get things moving, but afterwards I was supposed to check with him (Being the IT Manager) to use the proper network settings. It was essentially a philosophy thing about sloppiness I guess; rather than just making something work then dump it, resolve the issue and ensure it properly lines up with company infrastructure so that there's less of a chance of more problems in the future. I actually got then declined that job; between a very minor pay bump and solid experience/leadership, I got my contract renegotiated for a much greater pay bump and the experience of control over everything with no leadership.
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May 17, 2015 14:29
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gooby pls posted:Have a few things in mind but what would you all ask your potential new managers given the chance? If you had to choose in a fist fight would you rather be up against; - One horse sized duck or - One hundred duck sized horses
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Sep 20, 2015 12:31
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Aww man, on Friday a client of ours took me on a field trip to a new Cisco building to show off their telephony tech as we're planning on moving away from our VOIP provider and possibly to this client (B2B woo!). The majority of their stuff is loving fantastic, giant LED monitors, tablets, massive video phones, software; but the king of the crop was the teleconference room which I can best describe as a cross between the starship enterprise and the SHIELD council room. Of course I was with the director at the time who summed up his feelings as "I don't understand this, but I just want cheaper telephones", most likely we'll be sticking with our current phones and probably get some onsite server hardware if we go ahead with these guys.
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Oct 18, 2015 15:09
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Docjowles posted:My coworker spent months off and on fighting various bullshit issues and slowly going insane. We had a wiki page for the project, and at one point he added a preface. It was the Terminator 2 intro voice over, replacing John Conner with himself and "the machines" with the C-series. I got a good laugh out of that one. Wish I had saved the exact wording. This is loving rad
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Oct 20, 2015 19:33
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Toshimo posted:he had noticed the RAM had been "stolen" and that he had gone to the branch chief and they had filed a report with the Federal Police. What the hell kind of place is this? I mean jumping the gun about theft is one thing, but completely bypassing company policy and going straight to the police is loving nuts. I mean I've taken home a soldering iron and tyre pressure gauge and brought them back, I sincerely doubt anyone would've bat an eyelid.
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Oct 22, 2015 20:49
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mewse posted:What if I find nudes in my CEO's My Pictures folder Today's top story: "Power mad CEO forced me to watch his deranged porn collection!"
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Oct 22, 2015 22:23
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Less people in the office means things get boring as poo poo, I threw out a bunch of boxes of assorted plastic technocrap and updated the firmware on a bunch of switches... thrilling.
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Dec 23, 2015 21:45
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TWBalls posted:From my experience, they'll all want you to set the resolution to 1024x768 anyway. We've upgraded a ton of folks to 22" 1080 monitors and they all complain "I can't see the icons, they're too small". I'm not sure what's worse, running a super low resolution or running a super high DPI. Actually the DPI has a funny side effect, it makes Outlook signature images super loving huge to the recipient.
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Jan 12, 2016 20:01
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