The Vent and Rant Thread

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Great. Well, as soon as one of your users clicks something he/she shouldn't, your toast. Because with XP, if they get in at all, they'll own the whole network.

Well, there's a milestone. You were the 30,000th person to vent and rant around here.

[CRussel]

And I didn't even see that one coming!

And worse, with a horrendous typo.

[Dazrin]

Your write. Thats horrendous.

[cromag]

There are several rants tied up in this, but I don't have time right now. Suffice it to say we just came back from a nearly 7 hour power outage. It's surprising how that'll put a crimp in your evening!

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by wodin

Large organizations don't just take Microsoft's patches on faith, they often have proprietary software or unique architecture that can be broken by a patch.

Typically, when a patch is released they will delay installation until it can be thoroughly tested in their environment, and only then will it be deployed across the enterprise. This will often delay implementation of a patch by days or weeks. I'm not sure if that was the case this time, but...

I once burned the midnight oil at an employer helping to clean out a virus infestation. The employer was not enforcing Windows updates. The virus got in through a vulnerability that had been patched months previous, but the patch had never been applied to the machine that was the vector. They rethought their policy on enforcing patches.

(I wound up being sent home via car service, because commuter rail had stopped running. I just told the driver "Wake me when we get there.")

Somewhat later we got acquired and merged, and new corporate parent provided the budget to do a company wide upgrade. Everyone got a WindowsXP box with a standard image including then current MS Office. Despite it being a pain to do the rollout, I was all in favor. While I was mainly the *nix admin, I supported desktops when I didn't duck fast enough, and I had Win98SE, WinNT Workstation, Win2K, and WinXP in my area of responsibility. The 98SE machine was a special source of pain, because the user needed to access one of my Solaris boxes as part of what he did. "Sorry, can't. Win98SE doesn't support the authentication needed to let his workstation connect via Samba..."

Getting the budget to do the upgrade was amusing. It was implemented in stages, and a lot of it was buried in "merger and acquisition" costs. It was explained that shareholders expected various costs when M&A happened, and it was all about not affecting the stock price, so the amount spent to do a much needed IT infrastructure upgrade was most tucked away in the details of the financial statements. (If I were a savvy shareholder of the parent company, I'd have blanched at the condition of the IT infrastructure in the newly acquired subsidiary, and been all in favor of investing the money to rationalize it.)

And part of the infrastructure issues was a legacy of my employer being the acquirer before the tables got turned, and there was a variety of legacy stuff around picked up when we bought a company with no attempt to fit it in. I raised a fuss at one point saying "We need to draw a line on what we support. When I spend half a day trying to resolve a problem with a program that has one user, there are other more widely used programs in the company that do the same thing, but the user in question wants to do what she's always done the way she's always done it, and doesn't want to make the effort to learn to use the same program everyone else does, and we don't say "Too bad. Life goes on. Things change. You have to change with them.", there's a problem. I have other arguably far more important things to do, and this is a waste of my time."
______
Dennis

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Great. Well, as soon as one of your users clicks something he/she shouldn't, you're toast. Because with XP, if they get in at all, they'll own the whole network.

This is why I won't use my netbook anymore that is XP. Vista I figured is next. I'm not sure what to do with my desktop when it becomes completely abandoned.

Sent from my XT1528

[Rumpelteazer]

They should rename "Google Maps" "Google Adventures". Today I used Maps to navigate us to a nearby town and it send us through the forest. Not just a road through the forest, but sandy paths that are hardly used and impossible to cycle. On the way back we managed to avoid the worst of it, but the route was still interesting.

I think those paths must be marked as mountain bike paths on Maps, but some were marked as walking paths only. It also wanted to send us on paths that were clearly once paths but weren't used as such for years and were completely overgrown.

Google optimistically estimated a travel time of about half an hour. Both times it took us over an hour. The first time because we were off in the wilds and on the way back because it send us up a looooooong hill and we had to get off our bikes and walk.

On the upside: I will sleep well tonight and I won't feel guilty if I take it easy the rest of the week. We changed plans for tomorrow. We wanted to walk or cycle to the restaurant our grandparents took us after a walk in forest. But we'll now take a walk to the restaurant on the vacation park and take the scenic route.

[badgoodDeb]

Google maps driving estimates in the UK are quite laughable. Except when you are the one who has booked B&Bs are places that looked to be 2-3 hours apart ("We'll have to find something to do en route, it's too close!") and it turns out to take 6-8 hours instead, so you spend your whole trip doing nothing but driving!!! I wasn't laughing.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

Google maps driving estimates in the UK are quite laughable. Except when you are the one who has booked B&Bs are places that looked to be 2-3 hours apart ("We'll have to find something to do en route, it's too close!") and it turns out to take 6-8 hours instead, so you spend your whole trip doing nothing but driving!!! I wasn't laughing.

US too. This is why although I love Google and Garmin, I keep a paper map in the vehicle. Usually 2. I have given away several paper maps.

[Katsunami]

Google Maps has been very unpredictable for me since they added the compass last September. It 'recalibrates' if you wave the phone so you'll have to keep it as still as possible in front of your face/chest when walking or suddenly your arrow will go backwards or sideways and eventually, it'll get confused and send you in the wrong direction.

A smallish rant about paying too much:

I've discovered Smoky Earl Grey. I love stuff that has a strong smoky taste (eel, meats, whisky, and so on), and I love Earl Grey. Wonderful combination. Bought a tin at the tea house on a whim.

Then Ifound out it was €4 cheaper online, but it was in stock nowhere.

So I contacted the manufacturer, who didn't have it in stock either, and got the reply that they were facing 'delivery issues' and the tea would be unavailable for some time.

Research led me to the components of this tea: Earl Grey (daaah), and Lapsang Souchong, which I didn't know, of which there seem to be three varieties: Normal, Tarry, and Crocodile, with increasing smoke times.

So, I've ordered 100 grams of Tarry Lapsang Souchong, and 100 grams of Earl Grey, and I'm going to mix my own variety. Blatantly assuming that 50/50 works, the price of 200 grams of tea, a tea sieve, and shipment was €1 less than I paid for the 125 grams tin I bought a few days ago.... if only counting the tea, the price of the the tea is HALF for TWICE the amount; so a quarter of the price of the tin.

Ah well. The money spent on that tin was well worth it because of the rest of the entire day

If this works out (I'll start 50/50 Earl Grey/Lapsang but I suspect to end up somewhere around 70/30 or 75/25, as I want Smoked Earl Grey, and not thinned out Lapsang), I think I'll start mixing my own teas, starting with a simple black/green/white tea and then adding either other teas or herbs and spices.

[Rumpelteazer]

We know that Maps usually isn't good in estimating travel times. When estimating walking time it's usually too optimistic. The route to the town was 8.5 kilometers, and Maps estimated a cycle time of half an hour. Normally this would be too long, at my slow pace I can do 8km in about 20 minutes. But it's hilly around here, so I thought it a fair estimate. I didn't expect to be send over walking, horse, mountain bike and overgrown paths/tracks.

[Toxaris]

Strange, I cannot relate at all. I use Google Maps as my primary navigation and the travel times are usually close to mark. Then again, I use it for traveling by car.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

Strange, I cannot relate at all. I use Google Maps as my primary navigation and the travel times are usually close to mark. Then again, I use it for traveling by car.

Mine was off by 3 minutes the other day, but I think that was due to the speed limit since we were only going 14 miles. The speed limit on that stretch of road is now 80.

[Rumpelteazer]

Yesterday was Ascension Day, which is a bank holiday. Some stores are open, mainly the big ones, some are closed, mostly the small stores like ours. Around noon the owner of one of the nearby restaurants called, the had an electrical problem and needed a couple of things and asked if there was any chance that we could help him. He's a nice guy, always ready to help others, so I didn't mind helping him.

When I opened the door for him and his electrician another customer tried to ride into the store on his bike. It was the jerk I mentioned before, the one always complaining that the colour nail polish I'm wearing is inappropriate and that my crocs/walking shoes/sneakers are inappropriate. He was in the store earlier this week and he got pissed off with me when I wanted 10 euro cents for a plastic bag (that's actually the law now). I told him that the store was closed today and I couldn't help him. To which he said "well, than I order it online". To which I answered "please do", the restaurant owner ane the electrician had to laugh and the customer got angry and cycled off.

Chances are that he'll come by today to complain about my inappropriate behaviour. So I told my father yesterday, who also had to laugh. We are hoping the customer won't come back anymore, though borderline rude behaviour of both me and my father hasn't helped so far. We did agree that that customer will pay for everything, including any shopping bags or smaller ziplock or paper bags we use. Also, he doesn't get any discount (that customer always asks), even if he orders a full box/package of something. Also, if an item he wants to buy doesn't have a price tag I'm now allowed have him pay a bit extra for it.

[CRussel]

Sounds like a plan, Rumpleteazer. You can't quite bar him from the store, but this way at least you get a bit of your own back. And perhaps he'll go somewhere else.