The Vent and Rant Thread - Page 2155

issybird · 07-26-2018, 04:17 PM

Could people remember to use the Technology V&R Thread, pretty, pretty please? Especially some of the repeat offenders?

Bilbo1967 · 07-26-2018, 04:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Problem is, Bilbo1967, that it is not only my example, it's tempestade's example, two of my friend's example, the validation of the design against the real users, something that should be done when we are talking about taylor-made software (or adapted software), it's not a common step.

I agree with you. We know it makes sense, it seems a lot of software development companies don't.

I left a job a few years back because the senior management were all ex-developers who couldn't understand why testing would want to validate the developers "cool" ideas against client needs!

Bilbo1967 · 07-26-2018, 04:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by issybird

Could people remember to use the Technology V&R Thread, pretty, pretty please? Especially some of the repeat offenders?

Sorry

Our posts crossed I think. Please move my post if necessary.

tempest@de · 07-27-2018, 07:45 AM

My apologies, I was fuming and didn’t even remember the other tread would be the right place; I’m going there with the follow up.

PeterT · 07-27-2018, 10:32 PM

Today was the culmination of a challenging week

The agency I work for as a driver used to have two women acting as transportation coordinators. For reasons only known to management they made one of them into a floater who would fill in for other coordinators as needed.

The main woman has been on holiday for two weeks; the floater has next week off but also got an appointment for laser eye surgery yesterday with today being arecivery day.

Fair play she made up the schedules for the drivers for Thursday and Friday on Wednesday and I had to check voicemail yesterday in case there were any last minute cancellations or new bookings.

Oh... I didn't mention our manager was off Monday thru Thursday, and he is relatively new to our team.

Around 10:45 I had a call from a coworker asking if I knew who was picking up a client for a physio appointment; I didn't.

About 11:20 I parked the vehicle I had been using (Dodge Sprinter, 8 passengers) since my next cients would be fine in a mini van, and went to buy some coffee cream. As I was paying my phone rang, the manager. Turned out one of our drivers had arranged to take the day off, but the coordinator wasn't aware and had assigned him various clients including one who had a dialysis appointment at 12:00! Could I take her in?

Quickly I paid and went to the office to grab keys for a van. Had a quick chat with the manager and coworker who had called me who had two clients ready to go home. I agreed to pick one of them up; did the dialysis run (got the client there in time) and then went for one of the clients ready to go home (success).

While this was happening i was also thinking about the congregate dining program (we pick up seniors, take the to a restaurant for lunch, and then drive them home). Two drivers were assigned the pickup, one of them and the driver on vacation were assigned the drive home. Sigh. I called the manager and suggested that for the drive home we could handle it with the one driver if he used the Sprinter. Problem solved.

Back to the office hoping to put the schedule together for the drive home of clients in our Adult Day center. Luckily only 10 clients needing a ride (other clients come in with their families) so 3 drivers would be ok. One in the Sprinter with a support worker, and two in mini vans.

Turns out we couldn't get a third driver. We have a pool of 4 full time drivers (one of whom was on vacation) and a few casual drivers with limited availability. This week I've been on an early shift, 8:15 to 4:15 with the other full timers on a 9:00 to 5:00 shift. The ADC clients are meant to leave between 3:45 and 4:00 meaning the early shift driver doesn't participate due to lenght of work day.

I told the manager I'd act as the third driver.

Then off for another client pickup with heavy traffic both going there and heading back to the office.

Got the ADC clients home and back to the office by 4:45. Sign out and am all set to head out when I realize no cell phone! Check everywhere and realize I must have left it in the van. Back to office, grab keys, find phone on dash, rereturn the keys and finally head out.

Why oh why can't we have a list of vacations on the wall in the office so we all know who's away. Some of our drivers are very reluctant to share ANYTHING with the rest of us, including planned vacation time

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Hemmi · 07-27-2018, 11:06 PM

Yesterday it was, oh I don't think I need that weekend off after all. Today it's, well, if I can't get someone to fill in for me on Sunday I'll just have to bring the 3 grandkids with me to work.

We don't have a business where you can really do that and you can't work and watch 3 children between the ages of 9 and 3. Your husband (the kids' grandfather) can watch them for the 6 hours you have to work. The other set of grandparents live next door to you. And don't tell me your daughter's so disappointed the one weekend in a year she's in town you have to work. You just spent a whole month with her.

I am just so over the entire schedule revolving around you.

Rumpelteazer · 07-28-2018, 01:59 AM

This heat is doing me in. Not only do I have to deal with eczema flare-ups, but flare-ups due to heat means break-outs in some annoying and awkward places.

Yesterday the official temperature was just over 35C, but the thermometer in my friends' yard indicated 42C.

Besides the eczema I have been coping really well, though I was glad I took yesterday off. Until I went to take a shower. Their bathroom is a sauna and I can't cool it down. It's a big bathroom at the front of the house, which gets the afternoon/evening sun. It's got black tiled walls and floor and it's got two big windows. When they replaced the windows a couple of years ago for frosted ones they decides to get windows that don't open. They each have a ventilation strip above it and the bathroom's got a fan which switches on when it gets to a certain humidity. But they don't work against this heat. I keep the door open, but since I can't create a breeze by opening the window that doesn't help either. The temperature is high, the floor feels like it's got underfloor heating and my towel felt like it had been on a radiator all day. Not something you want with this weather. After my shower last night I was extremely fed up with this weather.

During the night we got a thunderstorm, so it cooled down a bit. More rain is predicted for today and temperatures of 24-25C. During the night it will cool down to around 13C. So hopefully I can get the house to cool down a bit and I won't have to turn the fan on in the bedroom to be able to sleep.

From tomorrow until next weekend temperature will go up again, but not as much as the last couple of days. Then they predict it will get a little bit cooler, though we have to wait and see since predictions aren't very reliable over a longer period of time.

Hitch · 08-01-2018, 04:12 PM

I swear...

On occasion, as I guess is to be expected, we have people that simply decide not to go through with projects. They abandon them. They never pay the invoice, don't show up for production, etc.

But what slays me is, this seems to happen to almost EVERY Yahoo.com prospective client. Because we have endless issues with Yahoo, and their spam filters not allowing our production emails through, I created a VERY short PDF, "How to whitelist our email address at Yahoo.com" instruction set.

It's 14 "pages," but each page is a full-page screenshot, with typically a one-line instruction, e.g., "Hover over settings, you'll see the Dropdown menu that you see here." That sort of thing.

Almost 100% of our Yahoo.com contract acceptees simply disappear, after we send them this email, with that PDF. Let's say...98%.

I mean. WHAT the frack is wrong with them? This is so simple that a moron could do it. These are LITERALLY click by click instructions, showing WHERE to click, what to type, etc.

I HATE YAHOO.COM. (And AOL, Hotmail, MSN...)

I am so sick of people, I cannot tell you. Today has been one of those "if it can go wrong, it will go wrong" days, and this past 10 days has been a horror show, with one person after another showing up, getting a quote and disappearing, apparently believing that we'd charge $10, or something.

GOD. A colleague of mine, at a different (but similar) shop, who does primarily high-end print layout, had this conversation with a prospective client, on her online chat:

Spoiler:

This is pretty much what my days are like, too. I had a trade-pubbed author in this week, complaining about how he "just" wanted to give a copy of his printed book on X to "someone" and get back a finished set of eBooks. This means, for those who haven't done it, scanning, OCR, proofing, clean-up, more proofing, exporting to Word, more clean-up, exporting to HTML nad making ebooks. His complaint? He'd had it done on his last two books, and couldn't find anyone who would do it for a "reasonable" price. (Reasonable, no doubt, meaning, they pay HIM for the privilege, I'm sure.) Total disregard for the literally dozens of hours of labor involved, if he wants a decent product. I nearly sent him to $1 Scanning. I mean, hey, you want cheap, right?

It never ends.

Hitch aka

drjd · 08-01-2018, 05:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hitch

Almost 100% of our Yahoo.com contract acceptees simply disappear, after we send them this email, with that PDF. Let's say...98%.

I HATE YAHOO.COM.

Hitch aka

Do you believe in Astrology, Hitch? Apparently, your horoscope doesn't match with Yahoo.

wodin · 08-01-2018, 08:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hitch

...
GOD. A colleague of mine...

God's a colleague of yours? How about putting a word in for me?

Hitch · 08-02-2018, 09:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by drjd

Do you believe in Astrology, Hitch? Apparently, your horoscope doesn't match with Yahoo.

Yeah, no kidding. I should play more attention to those "you're incompatible with Doofus signs" stuff....

Quote:

Originally Posted by wodin

God's a colleague of yours? How about putting a word in for me?

D'ya see a comma there, Wodin???? Don't think so. But the next time he texts me, I'll let him know you're thinkin' of him.

Hitch

Greg Anos · 08-02-2018, 10:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hitch

Yeah, no kidding. I should play more attention to those "you're incompatible with Doofus signs" stuff....

D'ya see a comma there, Wodin???? Don't think so. But the next time he texts me, I'll let him know you're thinkin' of him.

Hitch

Keep you chin up, Hitch.

Remember, Humanity would be fine if it wasn't for all the people. . .

Dazrin · 08-02-2018, 11:22 AM

From another thread:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dazrin

Every year? I suppose some people do that. Personally, I'm on my second device in 8 years. I would still be on my first device if it hadn't failed.

I kinda wish I hadn't said anything yesterday. I have had to charge my Kindle three times in the last 2 days. Thinking I must not have plugged in the cord properly the first time, I charged it a second time last night. After fully charging it over night I was only able to read for 1/2 hour before it had a critically low battery again this morning. DOH!

Hopefully a restart will fix it. Guess I will know in a few hours.

The Paperwhite is not an acceptable alternative to my Voyage so it looks like I will need to get an Oasis but I don't have the money for a new Oasis (plus case, etc.) and it is possible the Voyage is being discontinued since they don't have any new ones available right now. They don't even show the Voyage in the comparison chart on the Voyage product page.

issybird · 08-02-2018, 01:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dazrin

The Paperwhite is not an acceptable alternative to my Voyage so it looks like I will need to get an Oasis but I don't have the money for a new Oasis (plus case, etc.) and it is possible the Voyage is being discontinued since they don't have any new ones available right now. They don't even show the Voyage in the comparison chart on the Voyage product page.

Why not get a refurbished Voyage for $149.99 from Amazon? It comes with the same one-year warranty as a new one. And you've already got the case.

CRussel · 08-02-2018, 01:18 PM

You might be able to pick up a used Voyage or Oasis (1st Edition), rather than go with the new (and larger) 2nd Edition Oasis. But FIRST -- call customer support, and report you are unable to charge your Kindle, or it won't hold a charge. Go through the steps with them. When you're done, they'll tell you your out of warranty, and should, usually, offer you a refurbished replacement at a reasonable price.

One way to get a Voyage, at least.

Another way is to buy from Canada. They're still available there.

OTA: Yeah, what issybird said.

08-01-2018, 04:12 PM	#32318
Hitch Bookmaker & Cat Slave Posts: 11,462 Karma: 158448243 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Phoenix, AZ Device: K2, iPad, KFire, PPW, Voyage, NookColor. 2 Droid, Oasis, Boox Note2	I HATE YAHOO.COM I swear... On occasion, as I guess is to be expected, we have people that simply decide not to go through with projects. They abandon them. They never pay the invoice, don't show up for production, etc. But what slays me is, this seems to happen to almost EVERY Yahoo.com prospective client. Because we have endless issues with Yahoo, and their spam filters not allowing our production emails through, I created a VERY short PDF, "How to whitelist our email address at Yahoo.com" instruction set. It's 14 "pages," but each page is a full-page screenshot, with typically a one-line instruction, e.g., "Hover over settings, you'll see the Dropdown menu that you see here." That sort of thing. Almost 100% of our Yahoo.com contract acceptees simply disappear, after we send them this email, with that PDF. Let's say...98%. I mean. WHAT the frack is wrong with them? This is so simple that a moron could do it. These are LITERALLY click by click instructions, showing WHERE to click, what to type, etc. I HATE YAHOO.COM. (And AOL, Hotmail, MSN...) I am so sick of people, I cannot tell you. Today has been one of those "if it can go wrong, it will go wrong" days, and this past 10 days has been a horror show, with one person after another showing up, getting a quote and disappearing, apparently believing that we'd charge $10, or something. GOD. A colleague of mine, at a different (but similar) shop, who does primarily high-end print layout, had this conversation with a prospective client, on her online chat: Spoiler: CSA: IngramSpark won't accept my book cover. They say the spine needs to be wider. M: OK, we can help with that. Please send me the cover file. CSA: What file? M: The file you uploaded to IngramSpark. CSA: I don't know where it is. The guy who made the cover won't talk to me anymore. I'm not good with computers. Here's my login information to IS. M: Thank you for the login information, but I need the file. CSA: You can get it from IS. M: No, I can't pull files from their system, only upload files to their system. CSA: Can't you just log in and find out what's wrong? M: We know what's wrong. The spine needs adjustment. If you want me to fix the file, I need to have the file. CSA: This is ridiculous. I'll go to 99 Designs instead. M: Um…I'm pretty sure they'll need the file also. CSA: I'll tell them to log in to my account at IS to get it. M: OK. This is pretty much what my days are like, too. I had a trade-pubbed author in this week, complaining about how he "just" wanted to give a copy of his printed book on X to "someone" and get back a finished set of eBooks. This means, for those who haven't done it, scanning, OCR, proofing, clean-up, more proofing, exporting to Word, more clean-up, exporting to HTML nad making ebooks. His complaint? He'd had it done on his last two books, and couldn't find anyone who would do it for a "reasonable" price. (Reasonable, no doubt, meaning, they pay HIM for the privilege, I'm sure.) Total disregard for the literally dozens of hours of labor involved, if he wants a decent product. I nearly sent him to $1 Scanning. I mean, hey, you want cheap, right? It never ends. Hitch aka

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07-26-2018, 04:17 PM	#32311
issybird o saeclum infacetum Posts: 20,232 Karma: 222235366 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: New England Device: H2O, Aura One, PW5	Could people remember to use the Technology V&R Thread, pretty, pretty please? Especially some of the repeat offenders?

07-27-2018, 07:45 AM	#32314
tempest@de Fanatic Posts: 516 Karma: 4442943 Join Date: May 2009 Location: Portugal Device: Kobo Glo, kindle	My apologies, I was fuming and didn’t even remember the other tread would be the right place; I’m going there with the follow up.

07-27-2018, 10:32 PM	#32315
PeterT Grand Sorcerer Posts: 12,168 Karma: 73448616 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Toronto Device: Nexus 7, Clara, Touch, Tolino EPOS	Today was the culmination of a challenging week The agency I work for as a driver used to have two women acting as transportation coordinators. For reasons only known to management they made one of them into a floater who would fill in for other coordinators as needed. The main woman has been on holiday for two weeks; the floater has next week off but also got an appointment for laser eye surgery yesterday with today being arecivery day. Fair play she made up the schedules for the drivers for Thursday and Friday on Wednesday and I had to check voicemail yesterday in case there were any last minute cancellations or new bookings. Oh... I didn't mention our manager was off Monday thru Thursday, and he is relatively new to our team. Around 10:45 I had a call from a coworker asking if I knew who was picking up a client for a physio appointment; I didn't. About 11:20 I parked the vehicle I had been using (Dodge Sprinter, 8 passengers) since my next cients would be fine in a mini van, and went to buy some coffee cream. As I was paying my phone rang, the manager. Turned out one of our drivers had arranged to take the day off, but the coordinator wasn't aware and had assigned him various clients including one who had a dialysis appointment at 12:00! Could I take her in? Quickly I paid and went to the office to grab keys for a van. Had a quick chat with the manager and coworker who had called me who had two clients ready to go home. I agreed to pick one of them up; did the dialysis run (got the client there in time) and then went for one of the clients ready to go home (success). While this was happening i was also thinking about the congregate dining program (we pick up seniors, take the to a restaurant for lunch, and then drive them home). Two drivers were assigned the pickup, one of them and the driver on vacation were assigned the drive home. Sigh. I called the manager and suggested that for the drive home we could handle it with the one driver if he used the Sprinter. Problem solved. Back to the office hoping to put the schedule together for the drive home of clients in our Adult Day center. Luckily only 10 clients needing a ride (other clients come in with their families) so 3 drivers would be ok. One in the Sprinter with a support worker, and two in mini vans. Turns out we couldn't get a third driver. We have a pool of 4 full time drivers (one of whom was on vacation) and a few casual drivers with limited availability. This week I've been on an early shift, 8:15 to 4:15 with the other full timers on a 9:00 to 5:00 shift. The ADC clients are meant to leave between 3:45 and 4:00 meaning the early shift driver doesn't participate due to lenght of work day. I told the manager I'd act as the third driver. Then off for another client pickup with heavy traffic both going there and heading back to the office. Got the ADC clients home and back to the office by 4:45. Sign out and am all set to head out when I realize no cell phone! Check everywhere and realize I must have left it in the van. Back to office, grab keys, find phone on dash, rereturn the keys and finally head out. Why oh why can't we have a list of vacations on the wall in the office so we all know who's away. Some of our drivers are very reluctant to share ANYTHING with the rest of us, including planned vacation time Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

07-27-2018, 11:06 PM	#32316
Hemmi Grand Sorcerer Posts: 9,372 Karma: 15987608 Join Date: Apr 2015 Device: Sonys, Nooks, Kobo Libra, Forma, Mini, Paperwhite	Yesterday it was, oh I don't think I need that weekend off after all. Today it's, well, if I can't get someone to fill in for me on Sunday I'll just have to bring the 3 grandkids with me to work. We don't have a business where you can really do that and you can't work and watch 3 children between the ages of 9 and 3. Your husband (the kids' grandfather) can watch them for the 6 hours you have to work. The other set of grandparents live next door to you. And don't tell me your daughter's so disappointed the one weekend in a year she's in town you have to work. You just spent a whole month with her. I am just so over the entire schedule revolving around you.

07-28-2018, 01:59 AM	#32317
Rumpelteazer Grand Sorcerer Posts: 5,100 Karma: 24047426 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Utrecht, the Netherlands Device: Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition	This heat is doing me in. Not only do I have to deal with eczema flare-ups, but flare-ups due to heat means break-outs in some annoying and awkward places. Yesterday the official temperature was just over 35C, but the thermometer in my friends' yard indicated 42C. Besides the eczema I have been coping really well, though I was glad I took yesterday off. Until I went to take a shower. Their bathroom is a sauna and I can't cool it down. It's a big bathroom at the front of the house, which gets the afternoon/evening sun. It's got black tiled walls and floor and it's got two big windows. When they replaced the windows a couple of years ago for frosted ones they decides to get windows that don't open. They each have a ventilation strip above it and the bathroom's got a fan which switches on when it gets to a certain humidity. But they don't work against this heat. I keep the door open, but since I can't create a breeze by opening the window that doesn't help either. The temperature is high, the floor feels like it's got underfloor heating and my towel felt like it had been on a radiator all day. Not something you want with this weather. After my shower last night I was extremely fed up with this weather. During the night we got a thunderstorm, so it cooled down a bit. More rain is predicted for today and temperatures of 24-25C. During the night it will cool down to around 13C. So hopefully I can get the house to cool down a bit and I won't have to turn the fan on in the bedroom to be able to sleep. From tomorrow until next weekend temperature will go up again, but not as much as the last couple of days. Then they predict it will get a little bit cooler, though we have to wait and see since predictions aren't very reliable over a longer period of time.

08-02-2018, 01:18 PM	#32325
CRussel (he/him/his) Posts: 12,161 Karma: 79742714 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Sunshine Coast, BC Device: Oasis (Gen3),Paperwhite (Gen10), Voyage, Paperwhite(orig), Fire HD 8	You might be able to pick up a used Voyage or Oasis (1st Edition), rather than go with the new (and larger) 2nd Edition Oasis. But FIRST -- call customer support, and report you are unable to charge your Kindle, or it won't hold a charge. Go through the steps with them. When you're done, they'll tell you your out of warranty, and should, usually, offer you a refurbished replacement at a reasonable price. One way to get a Voyage, at least. Another way is to buy from Canada. They're still available there. OTA: Yeah, what issybird said.

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