Re: "over-zealous yank"
No, you aren't. I immediately started to compile a mental list of former colleagues who fitted the description, being careful, of course, to omit the Good 'Ole Boys from Texas who didn't appreciate being called Yankees.
1013 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Oct 2008
I once had the task of decommissioning any server in the estate that didn't run to its owner when I came swinging my axe. After sending a seemingly endless stream of file servers called Gandalf to a well-earned rest, I was relieved to find a development team that had named theirs after the Second Stage Lensmen.
"It's one of the major reasons enterprises dont use say Chrome on Windows 10."
And yet we have IE-specific apps that won't run in Edge no matter what we do. After the last Win10 update came down the wire even IE would just sit there sullenly refusing to pick them up and run with them. The current workaround is an IE compatibility extension to Chrome.
I kvetched a little about the last reformatting and this makes one of my complaints worse - even more white space shining into the echoing void of my workplace - but really, it doesn't get in the way of reading the content so it's not a problem.
If you want to delight me, get rid of the float-over ads.
If you want to really piss people off, go full-on late 90s Gociities with a floral border and an autoplay .wav of something plinky-plonky.
I've been in software long enough to have written software for Windows 3.1.
My first post-mainframe code was a Win 3.11 client/server development and I agree that the simplicity of the interfaces we designed then, driven by the limitations of the available resources, has an appeal that goes beyond mere nostalgia. When there are no distractions you can focus on how best to help the user best satisfy their needs.
Of course, I would never admit to having wasted hours playing with the GUI after years of staring at a green screen when I was set loose with a PC rather than a terminal. I would, however, state that returning to a green screen and the mainframe after many years of GUI-ing was like slipping between cool cotton sheets once more - refreshing and relaxing in equal parts.
"I really hop not."
Rimmer: I never agreed with my parents’ religion but I wouldn’t dream of knocking it.
Lister: What were they?
Rimmer: Seventh Day Advent Hoppists. They believed that every Sunday should be spent hopping. They would hop to church, hop through the service and hop back home again.
Lister: What’s the idea behind that then?
Rimmer: Well, they took the Bible literally. Adam and Eve, the snake and the apple, everything. Took it word for word. Unfortunately their version had a misprint. It was all based on 1 Corinthians 13, where it says “faith, hop and charity, and the greatest of these is hop.” So that’s what they did every seventh day. I tell you, Sunday lunchtimes were a nightmare. Hopping around the table serving soup. We all had to wear sou’esters and asbestos underwear.
I was thinking exactly the same thing. Having been to both several times down the years I have been mystified at the way that two complimentary organisations can be at loggerheads in such a mutually disadvantageous way. People, eh? Funny buggers at the best of times.
Half Man Half Biscuit have had this covered for a while with National Shite Day.
They have also suggest holding an awareness week for awareness weeks.
Disappointingly, the Virginian Pilot seems to have embraced the spirit of the Battle of Yorktown with respect to GDPR. My Virginian news is being denied.
We were offered free training on the software package being proposed, for the whole team and the training to be conducted in the US, flights from the UK to be picked up by the vendor. Our boss said yes. which was greeted with great joy and we prepared for our team jolly. Then we were told that out of the two sites where we could do the training, Palo Alto had been rejected by our boss as being, "too far away", and that we would be heading for Malvern, Pa. In February. Very friendly people at the Malvern facility, but boy was it cold.
IKEA furniture is easy enough to assemble correctly, after all it is designed that way. The benighted contraption that my sister bought from Next and asked me to sort out after she took one look and ran away gibbering was another matter. That thing still haunts my nightmares.
Legend had it that back in the 80s a major bank had the idea of targeting their major personal investment clients with directed marketing. The requirement went out to the DP department (this was the 80s) and after testing, the extract/print/mail run was kicked off and everyone was happy ... until the phone calls started coming in.
Due to lax testing and/or cross-fertilisation of live and test data the bank had sent a letter to each of its top 5% of personal banking clients addressed to, "Dear Rich Bastard".
I enjoyed life in the 80s.
, but I still have the dent in my tongue from biting it when a colleague assured that the new laser printers would be a direct replacement for their impact printers and that they could still use their three-part stationery with no changes.
I shuffled myself sideways onto a different project sharpish as soon as I got out of the room.
The mis-use of data is a definite problem and in this instance can be laid at the feet of the appropriate data controller, whoever that may be. The root cause of creeps is more difficult to solve. My personal low point was the Yodel delivery driver who asked for a kiss and a look at my tits. Fortunately he didn't have my phone number, but he did, obviously have my home address. The IT angle? Social media was very quick to pick up the story once tweeted and spread the news.