Sometimes, beign a geek ISN'T the awesomest thing EVAR

[omg-teh-funnay.livejournal.com]

I just got called "a beautiful human being" after fixing a guy's cluster. And I was flattered. But then I remembered, that's what Han calls Jaba in the cut scene in "Star Wars" - and I'm pretty sure that's not how he meant it, but still...

anybody had a good-natured lawl recently?

So, your pictures tell a story?

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

Courtesy of a workmate.

( Cut for length )

argh...when will they learn?

[falnfenix]

we have quite a few IT departments within the company-who-pays-my-bills' large umbrella. many of them (and their corresponding patient care/education depts) use the medical imaging software my department maintains.

we will gladly assist these users in installing said software, gaining access to said software, and learning how to use said software.

we cannot, however, fix problems that do not exist. "search too large for criteria" is a user error stemming from not entering ANYTHING in the search field...they know this, they've been told this, and it's in the FAQ they were required to read and sign before getting their login ID. still, after all that, the same users call. all. the. time. for this particular issue, no less. then, because it "doesn't work" they want us to uninstall and reinstall for them. we are offsite in the super cushy office, and explain this regularly. they want us to remote into their computer - when we have no access to computers outside our department - and won't take no for an answer. apparently being told "i CANNOT do this because i CANNOT bend reality for you" (in much gentler terms, unfortunately) lands on deaf ears.

sometimes, i truly wish i had a cluebat that worked through the phone...

Idiots, Buffoons, and the Schmucks Who Work for Them

[klytus.livejournal.com]

>>Cross-posted to my LJ<<

Ya know, when the movers-and-shakers decide they want to implement a new policy that involves technology, common sense dictates that one should run things by the tech department before they actually implement the policy.

Last Wednesday (8/29), it was decided that all laptops must be encrypted before being deployed. A sensible thing to want to do with laptops that have proprietary, and sometimes private, information. However, there are many problems with this:

1) Until today, only one man was able to actually able to do the encryption, and he was out on Friday, so we had just 2 days of him doing this.
2) The encryption process adds at least 4 hours of prep time to each laptop - longer for older, slower models with less RAM.
3) Attempts to encrypt two laptops today failed because, unknown to us at the time, it will not work on hard drives with hidden partitions.
4) Removing hidden partitions without blowing away data on the drive requires installing and running Partition Magic.
5) Even after doing that, the encryption still would not run on those laptops.
6) It is not possible to uninstall the encryption software until after it has finished encrypting the hard drive, so those laptops need to be erased and re-imaged again.
7) Even after removing the partition on other drives the encryption had not yet been loaded on, there were still problems getting it to run.

Result: We now have seven laptops that are late in being deployed because this policy was stupidly implemented before testing was done. More such delays will follow until we get the bugs worked out, and working on fixing those bugs is slowing down all the other work we also need to be doing.