The Vent and Rant Thread

[Rumpelteazer]

I just tried to make a doctor's appointment for my eye and I couldn't. I can call back when my eye starts hurting again, it did last night, or when it's still infected on Saturday, which means I can't make an appointment until Monday.

My eye is less icky than yesterday, the most annoying thing is that due to the swelling my eyelashes are poking my lower eyelid when I blink.

I'm going to get some eye drops, hopefully it'll help keep my eye clean longer. Luckily today and tomorrow I have to work until 2pm.

[GrannyGrump]

@Hitch --
Dear goddess. That reads like a thriller movie. I am imagining John Malkovich (I don't keep up with these young punk actors any more) as the crazed writer.

I don't know how you kept your cool, but glad it had a happy (if all too geographically close) ending!

[orlok]

And who said publishing was boring...?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by GrannyGrump

@Hitch --
Dear goddess. That reads like a thriller movie. I am imagining John Malkovich (I don't keep up with these young punk actors any more) as the crazed writer.

I don't know how you kept your cool, but glad it had a happy (if all too geographically close) ending!

Y'know, I don't think that nowadays, that type of thing would even surprise me. Publishing, it turns out, ain't what I thought it was. At ALL. People are very, very weird, and weirder yet about the books they've written. Most, thank heavens, aren't like Beelzebub, but...

Originally Posted by orlok

And who said publishing was boring...?

As the kids say, IKNOWRIGHT?

Hitch

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by GrannyGrump

@Hitch --
Dear goddess. That reads like a thriller movie. I am imagining John Malkovich (I don't keep up with these young punk actors any more) as the crazed writer.

I don't know how you kept your cool, but glad it had a happy (if all too geographically close) ending!

I can see Jack Nicholson .... except maybe he's too smiley wicked, and not enough ranty evil. (I've never actually seen him in a film. Don't do terror. Huh - he was in a 1960 version of Little Shop of Horrors? Ohhh - pleased dental patient.)

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

And I've had conversations with technical peers where I've said "We are techs, but we report to non-technical managers. If we do our job well, we're invisible. Everything Just Works. We only become visible when something breaks. We need to educate our bosses about just what is involved in seeing that things Just Work, so they can fairly evaluate us when performance reviews occur."

It's an uphill battle.

Indeed. I've often been asked: "Do you have a portfolio?"

A what? Do you think companies are going to GIVE ME code that runs a €100.000+ machine to show to competitors when applying for a job?

It's embedded software. Apart from a few hardware switches and/or a touch panel on a somewhat bigger machine, you won't ever see this thing. (If a very big machine has an interface on a computer, I probably won't be the one writing that interface; except for maybe the low level code to interface to the machine.)

As you said: if it works, it's invisible. If you're seeing the embedded software somewhere, something has crashed.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Indeed. I've often been asked: "Do you have a portfolio?"

A what? Do you think companies are going to GIVE ME code that runs a €100.000+ machine to show to competitors when applying for a job?

A chap I ran across elsewhere jumped ship from his previous employer to a competitor. The first thing his new manager asked for was a copy of the source code he'd worked on at his previous employer. Apparently, the rationale for hiring him wasn't to get him, it was to get access to the competitor's code. When he told the new manager that would be theft and he didn't do stuff like that, she was displeased...

On a different line, another chap I ran across had a contrarian approach to applying for tech jobs. His application lists capabilities, with a line saying "This is what I can do. I you would like me to do it for you, let's talk." He does not provide job history or references. If the prospective employer wants those, they can be provided, but they aren't offered up front.

Other folks who hear are horrified at the way he doesn't follow accepted procedure. He just smiles and says "I get two to three sit down with the hiring manager interviews a week doing it my way."

It's embedded software. Apart from a few hardware switches and/or a touch panel on a somewhat bigger machine, you won't ever see this thing. (If a very big machine has an interface on a computer, I probably won't be the one writing that interface; except for maybe the low level code to interface to the machine.)

As you said: if it works, it's invisible. If you're seeing the embedded software somewhere, something has crashed.

Yep. Another thing I made a point of doing was to try to identify stakeholders and sit down with them and say "I'll be your sysadmin today. Tell me what you do and what support you need so I can do a better job of support you.

Sometimes it even works.
______
Dennis

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

A chap I ran across elsewhere jumped ship from his previous employer to a competitor. The first thing his new manager asked for was a copy of the source code he'd worked on at his previous employer. Apparently, the rationale for hiring him wasn't to get him, it was to get access to the competitor's code. When he told the new manager that would be theft and he didn't do stuff like that, she was displeased...

On a different line, another chap I ran across had a contrarian approach to applying for tech jobs. His application lists capabilities, with a line saying "This is what I can do. I you would like me to do it for you, let's talk." He does not provide job history or references. If the prospective employer wants those, they can be provided, but they aren't offered up front.

I think you've said this before in this thread, on job-related posts, because I'm having a déja vu

[Katsunami]

Sometimes I wonder what designers are thinking.

Because I'm getting back into chess, I took out my electronic DGT chessboard. It's a beautiful piece of kit, but at 54x54 cm, it's also huge. When positioning the clock and a 15.6 inch laptop beside it, you'll need a table of around a meter long.

I went to see if there are smaller alternatives nowadays, and i found this:

Square Off

A self-moving chess board, connected through bluetooth to a phone. It seems brilliant! The king is 2.5 inches high (6.35 cm) as opposed to the normal 9.5cm. That's a third smaller, so the entire board should be smaller. I like this.

But then... you see this...

Image

It's a beautiful board. But... what kind of an designer IDIOT positioned that tacky, huge "Square Off" plate right smack dab in the middle of the rim?! Why F*** defile an otherwise beautiful piece of kit by doing this? Couldn't this name have been put discreetly on the side, like DGT does?

And why the WHITE and BLACK sides? Just leave the indices off, and make the board auto-rotate automatically, depending if you set up black or white on your side. (The DGT board does this; but if you have a board with indices, they will be the wrong way around, or you'll have to rotate the entire board if you want to switch from white to black. Having OCD to the point of being unable to bear wrong indices, with a lack of desire to rotate a 54x54cm board each time I switch sides, I think the indices-less Walnut version is the only usable option.)

(Another product that suffers from exactly the same design problem is the Casio Celviano GP500 digital piano. Such design elements that attract the eye have no place on a device/furniture that should get out of the way and be understated in appearance.)

[Hemmi]

Work, quit calling me on my weekend off.

Family, quit answering the damned phone when they call. We have Caller ID for a reason so don't answer it when I say don't answer it.

[Katsunami]

Oh... bigger rant. Other people's passwords and general computer illiteracy. They cause me a lot of stress.

Computer, Wifi, E-Mail, Google, and mobile carrier website, internet subscription website... whatever. Nobody seems to be able to tell them apart. Everybody has "some" password set somewhere, but nothing noted down. Nothing works.

*I* have to do stuff like set up a new phone, and the Google password is gone. So I need to reset it. You receive a verification by e-mail, so I need to log into the e-mail through webmail... but they don't know the password. And so on, and so on. In the end, you end up resetting everything.

And *I* get the **** blame and being hated upon that I'm 'making stuff so hard.' The phone we're talking about has been ordered in a round-about way, because said person won't do internet payments. Still jacking around with cheques ("acceptgiro"). Those will be completely abandoned somewhere in 2019-2020.

"So how do the old people do their business then?! With all those passwords and internet banking and all?!"
- "Well, you're 60. You've had internet and e-mail since you were 40. Online banking is a thing in the Netherlands since 2002 or so, which is 15 years. You COULD have looked into this stuff somewhere in the last 15 years. I understand an 80 y/o to be out of touch with this because they were 65 already when this started, but you had 20 years to understand this, and you didn't."
"SO NOW IT'S MY FAULT EVERYTHING IS SO DIFFICULT?!"

Well, you've been "old" since you were 40! Because you willingly and knowingly ignored stuff you KNEW would be the order of the day in 10 years, let alone 20! Jacking around with a payment method you *KNOW* will be abandoned in another 1-2 years, and you STILL refuse to stop doing things like it's 1997!

I'm not 40 yet, but I'm not too far off. (Close to 40 than 30 actually... so now you know.) I can't imagine I just "quit", and in 20 years, come to the conclusion that I'm floundering around like a **** analphabetic incompetent!

Frack, I'm angry again, now that I think of this.

Oh, and I can't tell the specific person to go and *** ***, because she's my mom.

Do I expect people to be computer experts? Hardly. However, I do expect them to keep something like a notebook with up to date passwords, and to know and use everyday digital stuff like internet, online banking and e-mail properly, especially if said people were only in their early 40's or even late thirties when this all started back in the 90's.

My sister is exactly the same, by the way. Except for basic internet and online banking using her phone, she doesn't know _anything_ about digital stuff, and she's younger than I am. In some respects, she already behaves like a 60 y/o. So, if you have to take 'old people' into account before changing anything, some things could never change, because some people just REFUSE to go with the times.

[cc_in_oh]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Sometimes I wonder what designers are thinking.

Because I'm getting back into chess, I took out my electronic DGT chessboard. It's a beautiful piece of kit, but at 54x54 cm, it's also huge. When positioning the clock and a 15.6 inch laptop beside it, you'll need a table of around a meter long.

I went to see if there are smaller alternatives nowadays, and i found this:

Square Off

A self-moving chess board, connected through bluetooth to a phone. It seems brilliant! The king is 2.5 inches high (6.35 cm) as opposed to the normal 9.5cm. That's a third smaller, so the entire board should be smaller. I like this.

But then... you see this...

Image

It's a beautiful board. But... what kind of an designer IDIOT positioned that tacky, huge "Square Off" plate right smack dab in the middle of the rim?! Why F*** defile an otherwise beautiful piece of kit by doing this? Couldn't this name have been put discreetly on the side, like DGT does?

And why the WHITE and BLACK sides? Just leave the indices off, and make the board auto-rotate automatically, depending if you set up black or white on your side. (The DGT board does this; but if you have a board with indices, they will be the wrong way around, or you'll have to rotate the entire board if you want to switch from white to black. Having OCD to the point of being unable to bear wrong indices, with a lack of desire to rotate a 54x54cm board each time I switch sides, I think the indices-less Walnut version is the only usable option.)

(Another product that suffers from exactly the same design problem is the Casio Celviano GP500 digital piano. Such design elements that attract the eye have no place on a device/furniture that should get out of the way and be understated in appearance.)

Why do you need a clock? Wouldn't the laptop or phone do the clocking?

In the Square Off video at about 0:28 there's no emblem on the rim - maybe you can attach it yourself if/where you want it? The fixed white/black orientation could get pretty annoying though...

[BetterRed]

@Katsunami - Get your mother and sister a password manager such as KeePass, LastPass whatever, configure it to generate strong passwords, install it on all their devices and then show them how it works, and how they should use it etc.

Expecting anyone to keep a list of passwords on a scrap of paper somewhere, such as under their keyboards on an old dance card, or in their little black name & address book went out with button up boots.

This you will like.

Today I went to a shop (I found it online) than sells casual clothes which have no external branding or such like. The t-shirts come in different weights and colours (I bought eight), they had pants that you can slip into, rather drainpipes with the crutch hanging down around your knees that seem to be de rigueur elsewhere, and shorts that don't have 20 baggy pockets nor look as if you just tromped through the night across the Serengeti.

Incongruously the music playing was rap, the staff were low twenties with tattoos a plenty, and their mother's silverware in their noses and eyebrows etc. Yet they were polite, one young man complimented me on my shoes, and they had a sense of humour, that's to say they laughed at my bon mots.

Needless to say I will be going back there. The prices were reasonable too, and quality much better than most places including up-market brands with astronomical prices that fall apart after a few wear-wash-and-iron cycles. I suspect you're only supposed to wear them once

BR

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@Katsunami - Get your mother and sister a password manager such as KeePass, LastPass whatever, configure it to generate strong passwords, install it on all their devices and then show them how it works, and how they should use it etc.

Expecting anyone to keep a list of passwords on a scrap of paper somewhere, such as under their keyboards on an old dance card, or in their little black name & address book went out with button up boots.

This you will like.

That's a good idea. Wait, let me think about this.

Bwhahahaha....!!! *aaarrgghhlll, cough, cough* hehehehe.... Teach them something?! *dies with laughter*

Sorry. Tried this like... 10 years ago already. It was an even bigger disaster. They don't even want to learn how to use it. If an explanation takes longer than like 30 seconds, and a program has more than one option (like swiping when playing Bejeweled or something), they don't even want to look at it.

*I* have been using a password manager almost since the day Keepass exists. (And before that, I used a password protected Excel sheet.)

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

Why do you need a clock? Wouldn't the laptop or phone do the clocking?

In the Square Off video at about 0:28 there's no emblem on the rim - maybe you can attach it yourself if/where you want it? The fixed white/black orientation could get pretty annoying though...

You need the clock to see the moves when playing against the computer, so you don't need to look at the screen.

Two other design peeves: one with DGT and their DGT XL and DGT 3000 clocks. You're selling beautiful boards and pieces, costing between €450 for the cheapest set, up to somewhere around €1000 for the most expensive, and then you pair it with a fracking plastic piece of *** clock costing €69 for time keeping and move generation.

Beautiful DGT Board
Piece of *** creaking plastic crap clock

Why not pair it with a digital version of an old classic, with adjustable clock face plate? One of the best known clocks is the Garde Classic. And yes, they have a digital version, so it can be done. DGT could even just have put their DGT 3000 into a nice wooden box, and use better quality buttons, and they'd be done.

Another product that makes the same mistake is the Millennium ChessGenius Exclusive (which includes, for the first time in 20 years AFAIK, Richard Lang's Chess Genius program). It gets raving reviews everywhere, except for the plastic control unit that looks, sounds, and feels like something straight out of 1985.

One of the most beautiful chess computers of recent years is the Revelation II (actually created in the Netherlands as a hobby project, based on a DGT board, and now produced and sold by DGT. It's a bit smaller than a tournament board). But yeah... it costs like €2800.

If I don't want a laptop beside the board, I'll just connect a Raspberry with PicoChess on it, or if it has to be even cleaner, the DGT Pi (Raspberry Pi and DGT 3000 clock integrated, although they've changed the clock electronically to connect it to the Pi, and adapted the software, so you'll have to use their version of PicoChess and have to wait for them to integrate updates).