(no subject)

[drquuxum.livejournal.com]

One of the joys of working in a scientific/academic environment is that many individuals are enlightened enough to ditch Windows in favour of OS X or Linux. One of the drawbacks is that they have little experience with those GUIs, and thus they expect me, at least at first, to do some of the excruciatingly simple tasks. The following user, however, seems to either regress and forget even the basics of computer usage, or is just too lazy to do anything herself.

She uses Linux/Gnome (keep your flamewars to yourselves, please ;-) and for some reason her Desktop Switcher and Window List applets disappeared. My message to her was as follows:

"Right-click in an empty part of the Panel (the large light gray bar along the bottom or top of the screen). In the menu that appears, click `Add to panel'. A window with a list appears. Scroll to the bottom of the list and click on `Window List', then hit `Add'. Repeat this process for the `Desktop Switcher'."

Her reply, paraphrased:

"No, this is too complicated. Please come do it for me."

Okay now. The hardest part of that whole set of instructions was finding out what "Panel" is, which I spelled out for her. Everything else is either clicking, right-clicking, scrolling, and reading. She's been doing these for years now. Either she's so unconfident in her skills that she requires constant spoon-feeding, or she's purposely trying to give me an aneurysm. The latter looks like a decent bet.

Paco is no longer allowed....

[the-paco.livejournal.com]

I fight impulses every day, some of them subtle, some less so. I just have to tell myself not to do it... anymore. Who knew working in a callcenter would have so many rules?
( Every day... )

This makes the 3rd time I've talked to this guy today about IE

[katyism.livejournal.com]

Scenario: Talking to elderly professor on phone. Determined he needs to set his IE default home page to something other than MSN.com because MSN's web search is sucking right now, but he depends on it to find the URLs he types in.

Me: Are you aware that you can type those URL addresses into the address bar instead of the search box? The address bar is that long white area spanning the top of the screen. It usually has http:// something or other in it, you've seen that right?
Elderly Prof: Yes, and I always forget that it's there so I just type in the search box. It shows up in the middle of the screen and it's very easy to find.
Me: Okay...well, the search box in the middle comes from a Microsoft website, and their website is having problems today as you saw when you did that last search. We can't help out with that. But I can show you how to change it so that it comes up with a Google search box instead. Do you know about Google?
EP: Yes, I usually use Google on other computers but I don't know how to make it come up on this one so I just forgot about it.
Me: OK, well here's how... Click the Tools menu at the top part of the screen, go to Internet Options, there will be a box to type in, labelled Home Page... and you can just type in Google's address there or any address you want, really. It will be the site that comes up every time you go on the web from now on.
EP: See this is the problem. I don't know Google's address. I would have to search for it to get to it normally.
Me: thinking "Oh no, he depends on search engines to find his search engine of choice..." Uh... that would be www.google.com sir.
EP: Whoa! How did you know that?
Me: I have it memorized.
EP: Do you have a lot of those memorized? When I talked to you earlier about the National Institute of Health site that the government runs, you were quoting the address nih.gov back to me right away. That's amazing.
Me: Yes...well, I spend hours a day on the internet, and thus I have a lot of website addresses memorized. It's no different than remembering a phone number that you call a lot.
EP: You never know about phone numbers. Wow. Just...wow. I would never have remembered something like www.google.com. I am going to have to bookmark it right, because I'll forget, right?
Me: No need to bookmark it. Typing it here will make it be your home page, and if you ever get away from your home page you click the little "home" button that looks like a house on the toolbar, and it will take you back to your Google home page.
EP: Oh neat. You know sometimes I even get lost going to the cigar store from work on my way home because of the new bypass highway they built outside of town in 1997, were you here for that?
Me: No sir, I wasn't. Click OK now, then click that house button. There's Google. I wish I could make a "Cigar Store" button for you, but I can't. Good day.
EP: Heh *click*

Not bad, at least he knows he's forgetful....

Lose the battle, lose the war?

[omg-teh-funnay.livejournal.com]

I've made some posts recently, both here and in my blog, about some of the absurdity of my job. I'm a fairly experienced technician, I've done deskside and call center work, client systems and servers for the last decade. My current gig is mainly routing tickets to technicians and queues, and wrangling said techs. It's WAY beneath my skillz, but it a) pays more than my last job, and b) is a good path into management, which is where I wanna be.

I often say I'm more like an admin assistant than anything else, and though it started as a joke, it's getting weird.

Last week, I won a victory when the secure cabinets for hard drives came in, the drives are no longer stored in my cube and the walk-though traffic has plummeted.

One of my two direct bosses just put a shredder in my cube. And delivered about 1700 software CDs that need to be shredded. Not snapped, not microwaved (I asked), they have to be shredded. SHREDDED. INDIVIDUALLY

I have been promoted from technical coordinator to office bitch, I'm pretty sure. I'll have to check my next pay stub.

What. The. Fuck?

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

For the past week and more, we've been completely hammered by incoming calls at work, because of the stupid series of other team's fuckups detailed here. We know exactly how screwed over were are because we have monitors hanging from the ceiling displaying the incoming call queue length and number in 4-bit colour. A long line of red is bad. No red is good.

The red line for the past week has been so long they had to increase the maximum software display limit to show how badly we were being reamed.

This afternoon, management came up with a BRILLIANT solution to the problem.

They turned off the monitors.

Unlimited budget, limited imagination

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

After really good business office graphic designer left, IT put a stipulation that we would have input on the new hire. VP of college, meanwhile, has friend/designer take care of work on the side. Job opens and guess who's suddenly in that position, without proper process? I'm given the job of ordering top-line Mac and PC for user, before meeting her. I call around to graphic designers I know and start ordering. I have unlimited budget. Soon, there's a pile of shiny kit stored in my office; 4 21" monitors (two per system), two 6x9 tablets, 2 Kensington track balls, 1 tabloid scanner, 1 GB ram each (2001), large format Epson, HP colour laser and full Adobe/Macromedia suites.

I get office set up, designer shows up and complains that there's too much equipment in there. All she really wants is a pc. Doesn't want printers, scanners, Mac, etc. Too many monitors, too.

First call after clearing most gear out of office is, "where do I send things to be scanned?"

I explain that graphic designer does scanning. Turns out she's never scanned anything before. Sigh. A day later, scanner is reinstalled, user explained her job.

"Where do I get clip art from?"

Explained last two designers created their own on paper, scanned into draw program, etc. Ended up purchasing clip art CD.

"Where are all the fonts?"

Explained previous designers used Macs exclusivly and we had Adobe Library available for Mac. Could not be used on PC. Told user to find fonts she wanted and I would order them.

"What fonts should I get?"

blink-blink. I'm an art school drop out, who's specialty was fonts but I'll be damned if I do her job for her ($45k/salary her-$27k hourly me). "What fonts do you use at home?"

"I don't have a computer at home."

blink-blink. Never known a designer who didn't have their own rig at home. I dig deeper. Turns out she worked as a 'graphic designer' as a production house, where everything was decided for her and she was actually just a layout jocky. D'oh!

So, it's not what you know but who you know. Damn my anti-social geek ways! Will never get ahead.