No overteching...

[the-hunter.livejournal.com]

It seems that it is possible to spend so much time in a tech environment that you begin to lose sight of the easy option.

For example...last weekend my girlfriend and I were at a motorbike show, with a friend of ours. We're all from heavily geek backgrounds...
Having looked at lots of motorbikes we came across a stand selling hats. Ordinary leather hats. My girlfriend picked one up and tried it on, and it looked stunning. So friend and I reached for our mobile phones to take a picture so she could *see* just how fabulous it was.

Then the stall owner shamed us by producing the most wonderful piece of geek equipment.

He held up a frame, made, it seems, from wood. The frame contained within it a sheet of optically precise glass, with a backing of a silver material. Yeah...not one of us thought of the simple solution of looking in a miror...

(no subject)

[mix-hyenataur.livejournal.com]

Why do you keep complaining that "Everytime you say something to me, it's like I'm stupid or something?"

I'm getting sick of hearing it.

I never implied it, but I start to worry when I slooooooooooowy repeat myself, and you still get frustrated that you can't follow along.

(no subject)

[mix-hyenataur.livejournal.com]

What does everyone think of the protests today over the "Clean-Feed" Act?

Anyone know the outcome of the trial?

http://nocleanfeed.com/

(sorry if its against this comm's rules)

Colour confusion

[alchemon.livejournal.com]

One of our clients had a problem with their printer. Minor issue, that was caused by them being out of Magenta toner and not noticing. No problem you say.....

While one of our techs was talking them through changing it, there was an idle comment made about not being able to print stuff in Black and White. They wanted this as one of their suppliers keeps sending them emails on a Yellow background.

Their solution to save on all the Yellow ink they'd use when printing these out: Print it on Yellow paper!

*headdesk*

The customer now knows how to print in Black and White. I'm sure whatever goes into the making of Yellow ink will thank us for avoiding any further needless sacrifice.

one of my co-workers just forwarded this to me

[lolotehe]

JOKE:
The candidate must be comfortable with working within a structured environment involving regulatory guidelines and documented process flows. Attention to detail and excellent oral and written communication skills are critical to this position. Candidate must have knowledge of Windows Operating Systems, web-server (IIS) configuration and installation, basic SQL, Microsoft .Net, and remote access tools (Remote Desktop, VPN, Citrix).

PUNCHLINE:
Hourly rate of $12.50/hr.

(no subject)

[mix-hyenataur.livejournal.com]

My boss told me I should join in on the weekly conference calls. Monday, 8am. I made the first one, where I just dial in, sit on the couch for an hour with my dog and browse 4chan, youtube, and myspace, while listening to other techs and clients go at it, then they let me off as they continue to talk about issues that don't concern me or my company.

For the past month, I've been missing the weekly conference calls.

It seems that after they let me off, they changed when they were going to have the next meet.

They said they changed it to a Fri at 8.30am, and I missed it. Common sense lead me to take the call at Fri at 8.30 from now on.

But they changed it to Wednesday at 8am during that call, too. So I miss it.

As I wait for Wednesday, I get complained at why I missed Tuesday's meeting.

They pushed the meetings back to Monday.

faseparm

[pikaporeon.livejournal.com]

I work in a server colocation facility. For those not familiar, you bring in a server, we hook it up to the internet and you host a website on it.

Generally there are dozens of servers on a rack, all hooked up to network and power.
We got a series of angry phone calls from someone claiming our remote reboot KILLED his server, and it wont come up now.

His problem? It was set to not boot if there was no keyboard.


Posted to techsupport and customers_suck

Old Job Blues

[preserver3.livejournal.com]

So, I left my old job as a Senior Developer/Senior Admin/Architect type guy almost 3 months ago and I get a call from old boss.

Old Boss: Hey, how's it going, do you remember how to deploy to production?
Me: Yeah, I wrote it down as handouts for everyone, put it in the Wiki and trained OtherEmployee1 and OtherEmployee2 how to do it in a big training session my last week.
OB: Can you send it real quick.
Me: Sure, I remember it, it's like 5 steps, including checking out the code, building with the scripts I left and deploying with same. As long as you're QAing on the QA boxes first should be fine.
OB: Thanks this is a big help
Me: You mean there's been no releases since I left?
OB: >>>long pause>>>> No.
Me: what about OtherEmployee1 and OtherEmployee2? What about the notes? What have all of the other programmers been doing? What happened?
OB: We haven't been getting much done since you left.



The biggest head desk for me is that it means I fundamentally failed as an architect. I didn't make a system that would run without me. The next head desk is that I still remembered the stupid names of all of the servers in the process.

There is no escape from old projects except new phone numbers.