* Posts by The Northerner Up North

13 publicly visible posts • joined 27 May 2022

Senior engineer reported to management for failing to fix a stapler

The Northerner Up North

Can you mend my washer pls

Just before Christmas 2021 sat at work on the phones when said phone line rang and I answered it.

I introduced myself and said I was from the IT Service Desk etc etc.

"Hello," said a friendly Irish voice, "Can you mend mi washer for me"

For 30 seconds I must have looked like goldfish swimming round its bowl, I explained that we supported IT issues not washers and eventually off she popped to try another number.

Kicked myself - missed the opportunity to say, 'Have you tried turning it off and back on again?'

Since then I've had another washer and a tv. Somebodies support telephone number must be very close to ours is the only reason for these calls i can come up with.

No, working in IT does not mean you can fix anything with a soldering iron

The Northerner Up North

Family and Friends...

I've done a lot of work for family and friends and friends of family and friends of friends in the past - its calmed down now to be fair but over the years I've driven miles to somebody's house and getting home at midnight or there abouts wasn't unusual.

I've upgraded a Windows 7 machine to W10 remotely - absolutley hammered on a friday night - all worked out - for a 'friend' 300 miles away who was in the same facebook group at the time - turned out he was an electrician and saved me a packed and is now a good friend.

I've also been in a position where I could walk round my estate and pick up various routers (when data was tight in the day) with no issues. Saved my data :-)

But here's the thing. To me this was giving back to the community, family and friends and freinds of friends - if I got paid in beer it was nice but it was and still is my way of giving back to those who don't have a clue and need a little help.

Its tanginble and it has its own feel good factor

Commercial space station Orbital Reef's design phase passes NASA review

The Northerner Up North

Business Park In Space?

Hell of a daily commute and can you still work from home 2 or 3 days a week?

NASA selects 'full force' for probe into UFOs

The Northerner Up North

There are experts on UFO's and Aliens?

We missing something here? Bringing together experts? How can you be an expert unless you have extensive knowledge of something. Is NASA admitting there are Aliens in UFO's nipping around our sky's? and the 'experts' have been studying/working with them for years?

Businesses should dump Windows for the Linux desktop

The Northerner Up North

Where Linux fails - MS Office 365 + Addon's to start with

I would like to see Linux as an OS being used in business but sadly what is holding it back is lack of Office 365, support for addon/ins, applications that integrate with a O365 and then DMS support that's before enterprise finance applications, the comes MFD printer support... ...all just tip of the iceberg to drive software companies to produce their applications to run under Linux.

I can see why MS don't want O365 to work on Linux, Millions of machines running Zorin/Elementary/Pop OS! visually appealing (looks like a mac), stable, reliable would soon be in test in many corporates around the world and if rolled out MS would lose billions in OS licencing eventually without gaining much in O365 licences.

Even if WINE or something like it - was released that supported it it would probably not support all the addon/ins that a lot of companies use and that is a show stopper. Assuming MS didn't throw a number of law suits around they could simply rewrite the installer to detect where its being installed and computer says no...

So Windows is here to stay. At least in the business world for now. Or is it? Imagine somebody like a tour de force like Elon Musk released is own Linux distro with a way of running ALL windows apps.... Or MS brought their own Linux distro that runs all windows apps - and it cost £20 - I would buy it! Even with these two options the world would change and I really hope that will happen - not because I dislike Windows - I've support it since something like windows 3. But because we should be allowed choice in this day and age.

Is the Apple car real? These patents suggest yes

The Northerner Up North

Battery Life....

Wonder if the battery life will suddenly deteriorate for all the cars of a certain age for no apparent reason?

..and battery replacement will be eye wateringly expensive.

...and lets not talk about servicing which will only be available at an Apple Servicing Centre. Probably a couple of hundred miles from where you live.

Get over it: Microsoft is a Linux and open source company these days

The Northerner Up North

Its a business - that's what they do? If another company was more dominant that MS do you think they would be any different? Hell no, making profit year on year is all that companies what at any cost is the name of the game - unfortunately.

It's interesting that Google, Amazon or Apple haven't brought out their own desktop O/S or servers to the PC world - why would they? MS do a good job (by market share) and everybody else make good money for web/telemetry services. All happy.

The Northerner Up North

Re: 'The Evil Empire' hasn't been evil for about eight years now

Lipstick on the pig - interesting comment and always evil? ALL business want to make a profit - be it £/$ 1.00 or £/$ 100 million a year. There is absolutely no difference between any company that sets out to make a profit year on year - So all by definition ALL are evil.

As for telemetry data - we need to grow up - it's the world we live in, all and every company are harvesting data - wherever they can - the use and usefulness of said data is debateable but there are several ways on windows to limit the data that leaves your machine but the easiest way?

Create a fake Windows/Google/Apple/Any other company who want's your info - login with said account and click away and feed the data monster - cos that data isn't you is it?

Microsoft cloud exec accused of verbal attack on staff exits

The Northerner Up North

Re: Sounds like a good boss.

I took a job only to find out that the guy I was replacing had died at work through a heart attack after being balled out by his raging manager, unfortunately said manager had created a process only he could manage and refused to hand over, so the firm turned a blind eye to his behaviour.

After I left (he was one of the reasons for doing so) he lambasted one of my former colleagues to the point where said colleague had a full on mental breakdown and I believe never returned to work there as a result.

That manager had serious anger issues and unfortunately back in the late 90's there was little in the way of company policies to protect employees from managers of this type - you either lived with it, moved on, or died at your desk...

Everyone back to the office! Why? Because the decision has been made

The Northerner Up North

Re: We're not all British

Rees-Mogg is an idiot - but a very clever idiot - his 'image' and everything he does is carefully crafted. He's after Boris' job (understandable now covid is out the way), and in a world where image is king he's pretty much cornered market in the Tory camp.

A man with a plan - and he's been working on it for years.

The Northerner Up North

Had the ability to work from home since 2005. Broad band was a but limited back in the day but generally only felt the 1mb down and 0.4 up when connecting to vm's around the world.... ...it was, well sluggish to say the least... ...But things got a lot better with fibre...

The problem with employers who want staff back in the office is twofold - 1) managers needing to 'manage', 2) the long-term rents on buildings. A lot of companies will be looking at the company structure following covid and will be asking the obvious question - do we need all these managers when most staff WFH for two years with little supervision? A lot of middle managers will be sweating over the coming year.

The second point speaks for its self - where companies didn't have the business sense to renegotiate its rental agreements during covid and many are still paying stupendous rents on buildings with nobody in them - so bodies on site please we need to justify the cost. Simple as that.

The fallout from this going forward will be a change in the job market that offer hybrid working as standard - This will filter down into employees forced back into offices - eventually.

NOBODY PRINT! Selfless hero saves typing pool from carbon catastrophe

The Northerner Up North

Re: I haven’t found them in Germany yet…

A Scottish friend of mine often likes to remind me that Yorkshire people (like my good self) make the Scottish look generous!!

Personally, I can't see what's wrong with buying the wife a new hoover as a Christmas present, especially as it had 20% off :-)

BOFH: Where do you think you are going with that toner cartridge?

The Northerner Up North

Stack of money

Many many years ago I worked for a time for a very small company. In summer the server room door would be propped open to cool the surrounding office... ...to keep the automatically closing door open was a stack of several 'old' laptops. On enquiring these laptops had been bought over a five year contract and were so low spec they were unusable a couple of years later but the company were still paying thousands every year demanded by the contract - so probably the most expensive door stop ever.