The month I worked for DEADHEAD: Yes, that was their job title I nearly choked when I read the email. "Your eBay auction has ended. Your NFT has sold for $1 million." That's about $0.999999 million more than I thought it was worth, hence the surprise. Oh, and becoming comfortably well off was a bit of a jolt, I suppose. You might be wondering what the NFT was. Why? Does it matter? It's …
Every year fewer and fewer sites celebrate April's fools, or so it seems.
And those that do, put less and less effort on it[1]. Not sure if the suits are afraid to be sued, or to offend anyone, or just plainly humorless, but the trend is undeniable.
[1]Don't take this as a dis to today's SFTWS?. It was top quality as usual, but it's kind of sad it is the only article in the site on the topic.
> fewer and fewer sites celebrate April's fools
Problem is today's April's fools are liable to sue for discrimination: It's socially unacceptable to make fun of credulity-challenged fellow citizens, and you risk to be likened to those who consider women as self-propelled sextoys and people of non-Caucasian origin as non-humans. I mean, there is only right and wrong, if you're not with us you're against us, and nuances are for art students. Never forget: All discriminations are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
So, say no to barbaric, non-inclusive April's Fool.
Good Riddance, its a fad that wore out its welcome about several decades if not centuries ago. Ditto workplace "pranksters" hint pranks aren't even funny or appropriate beyond the first years of primary/elementary school. Nothing worse than a workplace with some "comedian" or other who thinks its "hilarious" to sabotage stuff or disrupt your life under the heading of "prank", grow up, act like an adult and if you want to play pranks then find likeminded and equally immature people to bounce them off of.....
Let the rest of us get on with our (already stressful enough) lives without your immature meddling
I can see why you posted anonymously.
An office prank that doesn't get in the way (too much) can do a lot to relieve stress from all concerned. On the other hand, repeated pranks that severely inconvenience from someone who considers themselves a great joker can add significant stress to a work environment and can, at worst, become a form of bullying.
I'm not against practical jokes in general, but they do have their place. I've both played a few and been the victim of a few in my time.
> .... is that all Vulture Central is doing to celebrate this most important day of the year?
We have this discussion every year: everything that Dabbsy puts out is made up, apart from April Fools Day when it's something that really happened.
In this case Red Dwarf fans will know it's true because Dabbsy used to be a script consultant on Red Dwarf and he gave Rob Grant & Doug Naylor the idea for Kryten's "deh-heeeed" speech-impediment when relating this very tale to them over a breakfast meeting.
(The "DEADHEAD" bit was the only bit that stuck, in case you're wondering!)
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Sadly, there is a serious point in there.
Anyone who's had to work for, or even with, a someone who's been put in charge of something they completely fail to understand, by a higher boss who doesn't even understand what it is that sub-boss needed to understand will know the pain and misery this can cause. For starters said sub-boss will not realise they have to facilitate some action or other, or worse, be afraid to do so, so nothing gets done. At least, as with Dabbsy's story, until a shadow system starts working and things like file access get done despite, rather than because of the right authority being (not) given.
I once worked for an organisation that had two of these types in fierce competition to have the largest department. My most significant achievement was filling in every letter "o" in the previous day's (pre-free-sheet) Evening Standard. It's surprising how quickly the money palls in those circumstances.
You put some one in charge that knows nothing just so that they don't look too deeply into questions asked... and would not be able to ask the right questions or understand the answer even if they accidentally asked the right one...
My last place put the head of HR in charge of IT. They could just about use email, browser, word, excel.
Head of HR then filled in cyber essentials not really understanding the questions... result was a pass because they did not consider anything other then the windows pc's and laptops in the front office.... completely ignoring the servers, developers and the huge Linux and Unix network of machines.
Mind you at my current place we are seriously considering giving a similar set of forms to someone that has little background in IT because we think we are overthinking the questions and potential answers ...
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Nobody veered into that zone, I noticed: if a minion had to walk across the space, they'd sort of swerve around the gap to avoid stepping into it. "I assumed it had been mined."
Maybe you and Simon can do a mashup?
Now where is the BOFH for the week?? Especially today!
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Deadheads rule, Dabbsy :-) ....... although the reign of this particular one was very short lived ........ https://www.wired.com/2007/11/new-uk-master-s/
Too radical a departure from Ye Olde Traditional Home Guard Crowd methinks for the appointment to last is one generous interpretation for the short nature of the time in office.
Clowns are great! They are so funny, so _visible_, and so indicative of disfunction higher up the management chain. Coal mines have canaries, national defenses have sirens, political parties have (uhm) partisans, and companies have clowns.
Except for self-employed / startup / CEO clowns, all clowns have hiring managers. If you have the same hiring manager as that clown over there, it's time to start worrying.
I've yet to try Poutine, and admittedly only first heard of it last year. The joke, in case anyone didn't get it, is that Putin is spelt (as well as pronounced) 'Poutine' in French.
Poutine House claims to serve a vegetarian option but I don't trust them. We were once served a 'vegetarian paella' which turned out to be regular paella but the server picking out the prawns and chicken from our plates.
Having partaken of poutine many times, my view is that its cheese component is key. Does Poutine House use Cheddar curds, as is done in la belle province ?
If the dish being vegetarian is non-negotiable for you and/or your better half (I take it that you’re fine with consuming milk products such as cheese), then the only way to be sure is to nuke it from orbit prepare a serving at home, to ensure that the chips aren’t cooked in animal fat and the gravy contains no unwanted ingredients.
"Does Poutine House use Cheddar curds, as is done in la belle province ?"
I live about 20 miles south of Cheddar Gorge.
I've yet to indulge in a Canadian interpretation of Cheddar cheese but I hope it is rather better than some of their southern neighbour's efforts. I've been offered "American, Swiss or Cheddar" several times which seems to translate into "Yellow, white or slightly odd flavoured rubber". That said, I've also tasted cheese from those lands that are absolutely magnificent.
At least they didn't assume that you'd be OK with the prawns (not that there should ever be any in something described as Paella). I used to have to explain more often than not that no, vegetarians don't eat fish, and no, that doesn't make me vegan.
-A.
I'm close to my sixties, and I don't remember it ever being anything other than an aphorism. Just in practical terms, wrapping anything hot and oily in newsprint is going to to result in the hot and oily thing getting covered in ink. Ink which is made principally out of old engine oil and soot. So carcinogenic.
Something resembling cartridge paper, yes. I suppose it's quite like newsprint, just without the actual print. Or news.
-A.
When I was a kid the chipshop would have a pile of newspaper on the counter, cut into single pages (broadsheet in those days, I think). I can't remember if they were ever used direct to chip. The image I have in my head is that they were interleaved with the greaseproof, ready for use, by the time the shop was open.
I am in my 40s and only remember one place that did it in newspaper, and that was somewhere on the Gower Peninsula in Wales.
They must have had a contact at a printing press as the newspaper pages were never complete, often missing photos or whole articles.
I had to visit a customer. The technical team were great. They had an idiot for a manager. He had been an excellent technician responsible for cabling.
The offices had glass walls, (some were opaque). The boss did not realise that the wall behind him acted as a mirror, and we could see that he spent a lot of time playing Ma-jong on his computer.
We presented to him, (and his peers), and his only comment was to ask us to change the header page, as the colours were wrong, and there was a typo.
This was a classic example of The Peter principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle)
"which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.["
Having spent most of my career in hardware diagnostics, system kernels, and such "close to the metal" software, my colleagues at one employer christened me "Lord Parity, Last Count of Register". That was on the outside of my cubicle in lieu of my name for another thirty years at several different employers.
had a consultancy job installing hardware like this once. No onsite infrastructure, no contacts for infrastructure. So often found shadow networks are only way to get real work done. Its who you know. Always be polite to security guards and techs. One day you may need their good graces
Always be polite to security guards and techs
I've said this here before, but my personal mantra is that, but also include secretaries as well.
Those three are the holy trinity, if you get on good terms with them then you can get anything done anywhere. Managers may think they run the place, but almost always it's the secretaries that run the managers...
In education it's the schoolkeeper and the secretary. With them anything can be done, without them on your side you're screwed. School meals staff and break time TAs are pretty useful too if you're doing tech support. At least if you want to make sure the kids are kept safely away.
It's a jolly good thing that Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin's last name (native IPA:/ˈputʲɪn/) is pronounced by the French as IPA /pu.tin/ and not IPA:/py.tɛ̃/ . I suspect he would not be amused.
(I discovered this when a Belgian friend told me how Tintin's name was pronounced in Belgium (IPA: /tɛ̃.tɛ̃/ . I naturally thought the -tin ending in Vladimir Putin's name would be pronounced in the same way. Alas, it was not.)
...I have stopped going in any takeaway where there is someone with a blue nylon tea crate strapped on their back hanging around inside or out.
Because you'll be waiting around for ten times longer than usual to get anything thanks to the 'delivery dudes on bikes'.
McDonalds' food is not exactly hot when you get it straight from the grill in the first place. And a Big Mac has a tendency to fall apart if subjected to any sort of movement, including picking it up (actually, it's capable of that even if left alone). Fries are good for five minutes, then they need a dose of Viagra to harden them up. So God knows what it must all be like when it's been on a five mile journey involving annoying a lot of motorists and pedestrians to get to you.
Mind you, I also have a tendency to avoid takeaways where there is a queue of more than one person (and if it's KFC, even that guarantees a minimum 20 minute wait).
I must admit up front that I rarely use "fast food" takeaways these days. Back in the early days of being on the road, I used MacDonalds a couple of times a week until one day I realised that this new fangled "fast food" is often not very fast at all. A traditional fish'n'chip shop, although not called "fast food" is invariably quicker than than MacDs. I get the feeling "fast food" was a US marketing term invented by the likes of MacD's/BK/KFC, possibly because to them it was a new concept, while here in the UK we've had that sort of thing for many, many years without needing to label it as such.
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