The Vent and Rant Thread

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I got an adult card at the local library while still a kid. I blitzed through the stuff in the Children's department, and the sorts of things I wanted to read were upstairs in the Adult sections. (I read beyond my grade level from the beginning.) I do recall having to get a signed form from my parents saying it was okay by them.

And I recall getting accused of having a book report I did for school ghost written by mom or dad. No, sorry, but I really do have that vocabulary and write at that level...

In later years, I was introduced to Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings by an English teacher who decided that if I was going to read books not part of the assigned curriculum in her class, they should at least be good, and handed me the Ballantime PB editions of LoTR.. It took about 100 pages for the story to kick in and grab me, but once it had I finished the trilogy over a weekend. (And became one of the folks who spent more time in the Appendices piecing out the back story of the earlier Ages, and reached a point of doing passable Quenya calligraphy.)

A chap elsewhere described getting praise for how hard he must have worked to achieve his grade level and academic accomplishments in school, and looking at those praising him with blank incomprehension. He hadn't worked at all. He was simply one of those bright kids who got it, immediately, and remembered it. I understood, because that had been me, if I was interested in the topic. If I wasn't, it was a very different story. I spent time and effort in later years finding ways to get myself interested in various things and find mental hooks on which to hang my attention in consequence.
______
Dennis

I was reading chapter books at age 4.
When I was 3, the librarian put up a sign warning parents not to disturb children that were reading. (In hindsight, I think that was more because the librarian couldn't laugh when said 3 year old would tell the disturber to take care of their own children and let me get back to my book.)

As to the interested, in college I took medical terminology self paced. I took the last 6 out of the 7 tests in 2 hours. Yes, I aced them. Studied over Christmas break. Someone commented to me that there was a very smart person taking medical terminology when the grades were posted at the end of the week.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hemmi

I always wanted to be a librarian but, sadly, that never worked out for me. I would have been quite happy there, surrounded by books all the time.

A late former girlfriend was a librarian, and was happy at it. But she worked as a civilian employee of the Department of the Army, and had some odd postings. One was Enterprise, AL, noted for a statue of the boll weevil. It seems the original settlers in the area tried to grow cotton like everyone else. The boll weevil cleaned them out, so they shifted to peanuts, and did pretty well, thank you. They decided in retrospect that brother weevil had done them a favor in forcing them to change crops, and put up a statue to commemorate it.

A long time male friend got his graduate degree in library science, but never reallly practiced the trade.

His first job out of school was as a high school librarian on Grenada in the Virgin Islands. His daily routine began when a student would shinny up a tree, and bring him a coconut for breakfast. He'd stagger to his office, and fall asleep behind his desk till lunch, when everyone went out for food and a couple of drinks. Back to the office, and sleep again till 3PM when school was out, and everyone would go out for dinner, parties, and more drinks.

Actual librarianship? There wasn't any. The school library had no books.

He realized that if he stayed there he'd become yet another drunken sot, and best to return to the US. That was complicated by the fact that a hurricane had destroyed the building where local records were kept, and he dropped off the IRS radar screen. (I don't think he's ever quite decided whether to forgive his brother for pushing him to go through the trouble to get himself reestablished...)

Back in the states, he was a consulting librarian to various law firms, helping to maintain their law libraries, but as that increasingly went on line, he dropped it. For some years, he was a chimney sweep in the area where he chose to settle. These days, he makes a comfortable living investing in the stock market. I've had the odd conversation where I said "Bill, you should get this concept. You got your Masters in Library Science!" "Yeah, but when was I an actual librarian? I wasn't! I don't get it!"

(These days, I'm a director of a small company he formed to try to bring written SF and fantasy to the screen. My title is Director and Factotum. My actual function is "Guy Bill calls whenever he doesn't know something, figuring I will know it." That's generally true, but some of the things he doesn't know have resulted in surreal conversations. How he managed to attain his current age and do all of the things he's done and not know them is a source of bemused wonder for me.)
______
Dennis

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Hemmi

"Where The Red Fern Grows"

I read the plot on Wikipedia. Then I skipped through the (very bad quality) 1974 movie that's on YouTube and watched the last 20 minutes.

Now I hate you forever. Those old movies are dusty, and bad quality and watching that on a modern screen makes my eyes water.

*Hmpf*

Now I'm going to pound some Decepticons into the ground in War of Cybertron.

[orlok]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

A late former girlfriend was a librarian, and was happy at it. But she worked as a civilian employee of the Department of the Army, and had some odd postings. One was Enterprise, AL, noted for a statue of the boll weevil. It seems the original settlers in the area tried to grow cotton like everyone else. The boll weevil cleaned them out, so they shifted to peanuts, and did pretty well, thank you. They decided in retrospect that brother weevil had done them a favor in forcing them to change crops, and put up a statue to commemorate it.

[/b]

So that's what Tom Lehrer was singing about in I Wanna Go Back to Dixie:

"The land of the boll weevil,
Where the laws are medieval,
Is callin' me to come and nevermore roam.
I want to go back to the Southland,
That "y'all" and "shet-ma-mouth" land,
Be it ever so decadent,
There's no place like home."

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by Blossom

I was denied books as a child and didn't get my own books to read till I was 17. A few people smuggled some books for me to read after mom pulled me from 4th grade when she had a mental break down. While in public school I took advantage of the school library but you could only check out one book at a time. After I was pulled out I would go a long time till I could get my hands on more books to read.

How horrible. I'm sorry you had to experience that. Books were the blessings of my youth.

Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer

Today my favourite English teacher in secondary school visited our store. Even after 18 years he still recognised me. He was the only teacher who himself showed his enthusiasm of reading for fun. He was always telling us about the books he'd read. He was also the one teacher who didn't mind it if you wanted to read a book that wasn't on the school's reading list as long as he had read it himself or was interested in reading it. He was the one who motivated me to read in English.

I told him this and that he's the reason I now have a 100+ book a year reading habit. He really liked hearing this and he told me that was the reason he was always telling us about the books he read and the fact that it made me a reader was worth the effort.

I think many of us had such a teacher. Mine was ninth grade. He apologized to us at the end of the year because he had only taught us 1,200 new words. But he also had us reading Shakespeare for fun.

My very first job (at age 14, the minimum age allowed in my state) was as a library page. Shelving books, repairing spines and being generally useful. I got to know the Dewey Decimal System quite well. By that age, I was a confirmed reader of everything I could get my hands on. I had already read virtually everything even vaguely age appropriate in both the school and public libraries, and was working my way through most of the non-age appropriate books.

[Hitch]

Not to be all Grinchy...

And, yes, I know that this isn't my free-research department, but does anyone here use a large file-xfer service, like Hightail (formerly YouSendIt), that doesn't suck?

And it's not the file sending, that sucks, to be fair. My issue is this:

1. We send out a LOT of instructional forms to clients.
2. When Hightail was YSI, I could send a folder to myself, and obtain a URL
3. that I could then share with the clients.
4. When they clicked the link and went to the folder on YSI,
5. I could track WHICH files they specifically downloaded.
6. I was able to do this WITHOUT having to send the same damn files over and over and over again, to each client.
7. However, in their infinite wisdom, Hightail has "improved" itself,
8. becoming Hightail Spaces.
9. They are patently attempting to compete with Dropbox, which is, let's face it, laughable.
10. And the net result is, I can no longer track individual downloads with that granularity,
11. UNLESS I send the same folder of files, over and over, to each client.
12. WHICH, no, silly me, I don't wanna do.

To top this off, we switched to doing this with Dropbox, for the last 18 months, which was one of the stupidest ideas I ever had.

In using Dropbox, either:

• The clients CONSTANTLY try to fill out the goddamned forms, IN Dropbox, instead of downloading them, despite written instructions in the transmitting email telling them NOT TO DO THAT;
• or--unbelievably--they cannot figure out HOW TO DOWNLOAD THEM (no, I'm not kidding), and,
• They DO NOT read the file marked READ ME FIRST, in the Dropbox, which not only says, "don't try to fill out forms in here," but has PICTURES SHOWING THEM HOW TO DOWNLOAD THE G-D FILES,
• But, even if they do figure it, they complain about how UNREADABLE the files are--from the view in Dropbox. And say that they can't use the forms, because they are unreadable. Having never actually downloaded them or opened them on their own computer.

I am at the end of my rope with this s**t. (I've spent 6 HOURS making videos, this week alone, for various clients, trying to get them to a) download files from Gmail; b) download files from AOL; c) download a file from Dropbox, and now I can't even remember the other s**t I've had to deal with.)

Does anyone here use a large-file-xfer service, or (anything like that) where I can lodge individual files, in a folder (sorta is okay), where I can use a SINGLE link *and* track who downloaded what?

What I liked about the original HT situation was that if I gave a link to John Doe, to go download this folder of files, I could see if he downloaded them all, or, if he did NOT download the instruction sheets. Yes, it's true that one of the reasons that I switched to using Dropbox was because I became so enraged over seeing numbers like "Proof form, downloaded 100x, instructions for completing the proof form, downloaded 3x." But not knowing is worse.

Anyone have ANY service that allows that? We use the paid plans, obviously, so I'm not looking for FREE.

MERRY BLOODY CHRISTMAS, Happy Hanukah, Cheerful Kwanzaa (anyone know the "right" terminology there?), Season's Greetings, and Happy New Year to you all. </grinch>

TIA,
Hitch

[CRussel]

I use OneDrive for Business. With a basic, online only, Office 365 account (Office 365 Business Essentials, ~$6CDN/user/mo) you get 1TB of storage per user. Plus email and Office Online. I personally have an Enterprise E3 plan, but I doubt you need anything even close to that.

[Blossom]

Update: I got my books from the book exchange today. Five gently used romances. I thanked her and wished her a Merry Christmas. So all is well that ends well.

I don't think it would have happened without me posting about it. Thank you all for giving me that push to stand my ground when every one else told me to forget about it.

Sent from my Nexus 7

[Katsunami]

Hitch, wouldn't it be a good idea to install a wiki or forum onto your website, where you put all the video's and instructions? Maybe you already have something like that, I don't know.

And with regard to instructing users on how to use computers: I know where you're coming from. I'm never ever going to work in support ever again. I'd rather go work in a factory or go stacking crates or something.

My parents always told me:
"If you don't know how it works, you either learn it, or stay away from it."

Most people seem to not have gotten this memo with regard to computers.

[Toxaris]

Hitch, when I need to sent large files, I use WeTransfer. However, with the regular version you need to re-upload every time you want to sent the files (you do get a confirmation though). There is also a paid version, but I do not know if that allows you to sent a link without uploading them again and again.

A solution might be, not a very friendly one for you I think, is put the files on your own server and have a system that sents the links to anyone you want. Depending on your actual usecase this can be a lot of work or relative simple.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by CRussel

I use OneDrive for Business. With a basic, online only, Office 365 account (Office 365 Business Essentials, ~$6CDN/user/mo) you get 1TB of storage per user. Plus email and Office Online. I personally have an Enterprise E3 plan, but I doubt you need anything even close to that.

Charlie, my sweet: I have just asked over at the ODB forums. I poked around a bit, but although they are quite verbose about sharing folders and files, within one's own organization, it SEEMS that the functionality is much like Dropbox. Someone gets a link, and then, from that point, they might dl, might not...you can't tell.

I can't face the idea of Sharepoint. I mean, come on, kiddles. If my clients' heads explode because they can't download files from DROPBOX, can you IMAGINE an FTP solution? Yeeeeaaaaaaaah, no.

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Hitch, wouldn't it be a good idea to install a wiki or forum onto your website, where you put all the video's and instructions? Maybe you already have something like that, I don't know.

And with regard to instructing users on how to use computers: I know where you're coming from. I'm never ever going to work in support ever again. I'd rather go work in a factory or go stacking crates or something.

My parents always told me:
"If you don't know how it works, you either learn it, or stay away from it."

Most people seem to not have gotten this memo with regard to computers.

We have a VERY large FAQ, with I don't know how many articles. What I don't have is an FAQ that says "this is a file. This is a downloads folder. This is how you download a file from..." I mean...how could I? I already have special instruction canneds for "downloading from AOL." "Downloading from Hotmail." "Downloading..." Where does it end?

We TELL our clients, in B&W, in our T&C (terms and conditions), which we insist that they read (and sign a document stating that they have), BEFORE they accept our quote, which is effectively executing their end of a contract. I have an entire SECTION of the T&C, titled "What A client Needs to Know/Do:" during the course of production. I tell them that they have to be able to

• Download Word files & PDFs;
• Save and Email Files;
• Review Book in PDF Viewer: (for POD work);
• Download Proof Form;
• Fill Out Proof Form (Word) and Email It Back; (this one, for PODs in PDF);
• Review eBook Files in Reading Software;
• Download eBooks;
• Download E-reading Software;
• Download Proof Form, Fill It Out and Send It Back; (this one for the eBooks); and,
• Download Word files & PDFs.

These are the paragraph headings; I detail each aspect, beyond just a list. I am at wit's end, not knowing what MORE we can do, about alerting them, in advance, what they will be required to do and know. I don't.

I've hired someone--a UI forms expert--to help me with re-doing everything over the Downtime. I'm so fed up, if something doesn't give...well, let's just say that my Expat inquiries are becoming more and more frequent daily. I really am at the end of my rope, in terms of this specific thing.

And, yes, Kats: I agree. People should know what they know, and more importantly, know what they don't know. If a client would just bloody tell me that they are "not techie," upfront, I could build in some support time, and not grind my teeth when it's obvious that s/he can't follow instructions. (Which is actually my bigger whinge.) But what I'm dealing with now is just mind-blowing. I'm tired of having to invest hours and hours of my own time, making CUSTOM videos, to show someone (for example), how to download a file from Gmail.

And before you say, Oh, but the regular video...let me relay this. Just yesterday, I'd sent a screenshot of a dummy email I made up. I sent an email, with two eBook files attached, to my personal email, which uses Outlook, right? I took a screenshot of what and where the files are, with an arrow. "Files are found here." What did I get back? And email saying "what the hell are these? That's not my book name." {sigh}. He couldn't make the necessary mental leap, from "example file" to "my file."

Originally Posted by Toxaris

Hitch, when I need to sent large files, I use WeTransfer. However, with the regular version you need to re-upload every time you want to sent the files (you do get a confirmation though). There is also a paid version, but I do not know if that allows you to sent a link without uploading them again and again.

A solution might be, not a very friendly one for you I think, is put the files on your own server and have a system that sents the links to anyone you want. Depending on your actual usecase this can be a lot of work or relative simple.

Hey, Tox!

I've used WeT. It's a perfectly good GUI FTP. I like it. I'm looking into whether or not I can do what I USED to do, with perfect ease and facility, in Hightail. No doubt why they nuked it; anythign to make my commercial life more of a living hell than it already is.

n.b.: NOPE, it does not. If you do an email xfer--the same as Hightail--sure, you can see who downloaded what. But I can't do a link xfer and get the same info, so...

round and round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows.....

By the way, to everyone:

Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukah! Wonderful Kwanzaa! Season's Greetings, and a Very, Very Happy and Profitable New Year.

[Cinisajoy]

HAPPY HOLIDAYS.

[Hitch]

Update:

Onehub.com will do what I want. Not free, and not really super-cheap, compared to some of the others, BUT, it'll work. Also seems to have a really competent and good CS.

For anyone that comes along, needing something similar. Just thought I'd put that out in the ether, to help those in (some future unknown) need.

Hitch

[Blossom]

Thank you Avira for making my Christmas Eve stressful by suddenly telling me my license is expired and that you no longer support Vista. Couldn't you wait till after the first of the year?!?

Now I'm scrambling to find a free antivirus I trust so my husband doesn't wreck havoc on my desktop while playing his games *sigh*

Sent from my XT1528

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Thank you Avira for making my Christmas Eve stressful by suddenly telling me my license is expired and that you no longer support Vista. Couldn't you wait till after the first of the year?!?

Now I'm scrambling to find a free antivirus I trust so my husband doesn't wreck havoc on my desktop while playing his games *sigh*

Sent from my XT1528

Norton has 30 day free trials if I remember right.