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03/26/2006 08:18:00 AM · #51 |
Originally posted by eschelar:
Perhaps also the small possibility of getting into a situation where you blow up innocent people and have to live with that for the rest of your life? PTSS anyone? |
Innocent people die all the time (and not because of war).
I think this whole thread is funny (from a non techie point of view). |
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03/26/2006 08:38:16 AM · #52 |
| I worked at a computer store in college, with my husband back in tech support. One customer returned something like three new computers saying that they were all defective. They finally figured out that the problem was that the computer had never been plugged in...the guy thought you could just take it out of the box and go wireless! Ooh...so many more stories...cockroaches, smoke, video cards. |
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03/26/2006 09:09:53 AM · #53 |
Originally posted by NathanW:
Originally posted by eschelar:
Perhaps also the small possibility of getting into a situation where you blow up innocent people and have to live with that for the rest of your life? PTSS anyone? |
Innocent people die all the time (and not because of war).
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But not presumably at your hand? It's a different experience going to a city and blowing up a bunch of people, then finding out later that it was a false target. We all make our own decisions and like so many people say, someone's gotta do it right? |
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03/27/2006 11:12:32 PM · #54 |
hmmm - i didn't plan to turn this into a battle about blowing people up stuff. But how can anyone be too critical of the military?
How many times has the military been called in during a natural disaster? Such as Hurricane Katrina and right this second as we speak many people from my unit are busting their butts to help out the victims of Cyclone Larry (Far North Queensland Coast - Australia).
There are cases of the navy rescuing yachts and ships thousands of km's out to sea. Or the army carrying out search and rescue for lost bushwalkers... and and and.. I could probably go on for ever..
The military is not all bad and most of us join with all intentions of making the world a better place. Unfortunately it isn't always the case - but in the end it balances out.
As for Iraq... I came from there two weeks ago. Unless you have been there dont go into it. Everyones view has been heard - and right or wrong it happened. And any discussion now should be how to reconstruct and rehabilitate Iraq into a peaceful community that we all may wish to visit as a tourist one day.
SO HOW ARE THOSE LAKERS !!!!!! Good game yeah.. |
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03/27/2006 11:19:22 PM · #55 |
6.) Crash the servers periodically so as to remind the boss why you're on the payroll.
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03/27/2006 11:28:33 PM · #56 |
Especially the email server!!! That gets everyone's attention!!
Originally posted by yanko:
6.) Crash the servers periodically so as to remind the boss why you're on the payroll. |
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03/28/2006 01:41:11 AM · #57 |
Our IT guys are all in India now. They all pretend that they have an American name, like Steve. I don't know why they do that. Just tell me your real name, who cares if I can't pronounce it?
They are a lot better now than they used to be, when they first switched over, it was not unusual to have to call 3 or 4 different times to get someone on the other end whose English was understandable. They were all very nice, but it's not very helpful when you can't understand them.
They track everything by ticket numbers, if they don't fix your PC the first time or you need to add something to the repair list you have to get another ticket number. It's not uncommon for someone to rack up 10 or more ticket number to fix one issue. Of course the agency that our IT work is subcontracted to gets paid based on how many tickets they resolve.
As for the PC's themselves, if I could find the SOB who bought the pieces of crap that we have to use at work, I could have an angry mob at his office door looking to get his head on a pike. I have never had a more unreliable POS and I'm not alone.
The lone on-site support guy has about 1500 users to support. He's really a great guy, but he's REALLY busy.
I miss the old days when we had our own IT department and they knew how stuff worked, how to fix it and did so in a reasonable amount of time. |
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03/28/2006 01:52:01 AM · #58 |
Originally posted by eschelar:
Originally posted by NathanW:
Originally posted by eschelar:
Perhaps also the small possibility of getting into a situation where you blow up innocent people and have to live with that for the rest of your life? PTSS anyone? |
Innocent people die all the time (and not because of war).
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But not presumably at your hand? It's a different experience going to a city and blowing up a bunch of people, then finding out later that it was a false target. We all make our own decisions and like so many people say, someone's gotta do it right? |
What about all the people who are killed in traffic accidents because someone lost control, was drunk, distracted by yapping on their phone while reading the paper or whatever? Those people are just as dead and just as undeserving of that death as any civilian casualties in a warzone.
Accidents happen, both in peace and in war. I'm sure that no soldiers intentionally gun down, blow up or otherwise kill innocent civilains, any more than some driver intentionally crosses the median and drives head-on into that family headed the other way on vacation. |
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03/28/2006 01:54:31 AM · #59 |
Heh. Shortsighted boss makes a change to save a few bucks on hourly wages, but misses the point and loses huge cash due to lost productivity. Smart guy.
Seriously, with 1500 employees, 1 on-site Tech support staff is embarrassingly stupid.
Let me guess, all your computers are Celerons? ;)
I get a kick out of the fact that my computer is an Acer, my sister's computer is also an acer, and both are excellent machines.
My school buys 2 laptops and 3 desktops, every one of them is a Celeron.
Cold boot times of 4-8 minutes. I can't do anything about it because they are Chinese OS and it's really hard to deal with that. The laptops are better at 1 minute, but everything is breaking on them. Problems I never encounter with my fairly heavily worked machine. They could have spent 100 dollars more and got a machine that worked right. Cheap crap is cheap crap. Yech.
Re the 2nd post by spaz. Yeah, I realize that people die. A slightly older friend of my family back in Canada had an incident when his Doctor accidentally mixed some contra-indicated medications on his prescription list and he fell asleep at the wheel. The victim died and I seem to recall it was a bride... It was quite horrible, and while there's nothing intentional about it at all, he lives with that burden every day. It still weighs heavy nearly 15 years later.
I already PM'd this so it wouldn't further jack the thread, but I guess I'll post anyhow to avoid confusion. My point was not about the tragedy of war, but about the fact that there's more at risk than just your own personal safety when joining the military as was stated on the previous page. I found the comment distasteful for more global reasons, but realizing that this has little relevance to the poster of that comment, I decided to highlight that there is another drawback to the possibility of being part of the slaughter of innocents that might indeed affect you in a way that is slightly more deep than a simple battle-scar or even an amputation.
Anyhow, maybe I shouldn't have said it in this thread and a better choice would have been to PM it in the first place.
And now back to your regularly scheduled IT thread.
Message edited by author 2006-03-28 02:03:28. |
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03/28/2006 03:23:03 AM · #60 |
Perhaps I'm missing the forest for the trees here but from my perspective the term "IT guys" while being gender insensitive is also a "broad brush" kind of term. My job title labels me as a developer meaning my primary job is to write code but currently I have 8 projects where I'm supposedly the technology lead. On any of those systems I have a backup who has varying degrees of understanding both of the underlying code/data/design and of any up-to-the-minute issues that are going on. When I get to work I have project priorities that are scheduled out for me over the next 2-3 quarters (6-9 months) as well as negotiating business requirements for new software or new reports and then there are the break/fixes. At any point throughout the day a ticket from our HelpDesk may be moved into our queue for specialized support and problem solving. If we determine that the problem exists in software configuration we fix that from our desks. If the problem is on the user's computer we push the problem back to the HelpDesk with a set of "next step" items to be done to the user's computer. Our goal is to solve those problems the same day we get them but whoever worked out our contract with the HelpDesk provider was able to negotiate that they have 4 days in which to complete the resolution that we give them. I support thousands of users on several specialized pieces of software and in any given month I never touch anyone else's computer buy my own. My solutions have to be implemented at least 3 times before most users ever get to see them so I spend a decent percentage of my time trying to get the set of computers that I can actually interact with to mimic the work that the users want changed and then I have to write detailed instructions for others on how to implement the solution I've found in the other environments so that these can be tested in environments that are increasingly insulated from my control.
I don't know what other "IT guys" do but in the last 9 months I haven't had time to spit most days. Let's not even get into the home-based photography business after work. Heck, I had to set my alarm for 2:00 just to get up and complete some work so that I can now go back and catch some more sleep before going to my real job. I wish I had a little more breathing room at work and could afford to go snap some pics here and there but our environment has just ratcheted up to being constant work.
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03/30/2006 10:03:34 AM · #61 |
Geez guys after reading your posts I am actully starting to realise my job is not that bad.. Sometimes !!!
Hey Yanko - I must admit I have been guilty of "6.) Crash the servers periodically so as to remind the boss why you're on the payroll." Probably not crash - but cause some kind of stoppage and then explain to them that it was a spectrum anylyser fault and we had to re-align the dish - you get dumb looks which turn to "good job - keep it up". They wouldn't have a clue.
As for my previous posts - I have nothing more to say to those who feel the need to turn it into some kind of issue. Especially the person who sent me a personal email calling me self-centered(wont mention any names will we Eschelar ? - thanks for the personal attack). If departing for Iraq on my sons first birthday for 7mths missing him walking etc etc so that I can assist the people of Iraq to rebuild their devestated lives - all I can say is that I am sorry for only thinking of myself. My greatest moment in the Army was seeing the twinkle of hope in the eyes of displaced children in East Timor when I gave them water and food. Something that we all take for granted. Being a soldier in many ways helps you to appreciate what you have. I am a soldier for the good of the world. And would like to say that it is all well and good to sit on the side line and be critical of others. It is much harder to get involved with the hope that one day you may be able to make a difference. Even if I am the person who makes a single decision in my career that saves one innocent life - it is worth my being there. And I am sure this is the feeling by 99% of soldiers. I hope that I never have to take a life - my dad was a vietnam vet, and it destroyed my family when I was younger - there are no winners of a war. I know that first hand.
For those who would like to know - as for the team of approx. 100 soldiers that I deployed with - not one of them fired one angry shot down range. Even though we had a few headed our direction, there were many times that I looked down to check my legs when a mortar round aimed in our direction or bomb shook the ground (which happened every day). So I hope that proves we are not there too take lives - because many would say that justified opportunites presented themselves, we just made haste and got on with the job at hand.
Anyhow - sorry to those who may feel this thread has been taken over by such an topic. Just because someone wants to take a purely innocent comment and turn it into a huge issue by twisting it and playing on words. Becasue when I said there was a catch - I meant there are also some unfortunate bad points about my job. I was not trying to play down the devestating casualties of war.
Anyhow enough from me.. Once again sorry about the slight hijacking of the thread.
Cheers |
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