I'm one of the lucky ones I guess-My job as IT admin and helpdesk manager went a couple of months after lockdown, but found a job working for a med-tech startup - and a promotion and salary increase to boot-conversely my wife's job as cabin crew vanished over-night.
Posts by fran 2
60 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jun 2009
'It takes a hell of a mental toll' – techies who lost work due to COVID share their stories
Words to strike fear into admins' hearts: One in five workers consider themselves 'digital experts' these days
Wow, you guys have so much in common: Oracle hotly tipped to power TikTok’s operations as Microsoft deal rejected
Long-term Linux Mint: 19.3 release unchains the Gimp, adds HiDPI, is kind to your older, less-beefy kit
Re: Introduction to Linux for Windows refugees
"When Linux doesn't work, don't worry, because there is a forum somewhere in this Galaxy that might have the answer on the 156th page of a Linux Troll/Nerd fuck fest of a discussion."
Chill man, it is a new year, no time to be getting angry on the intrewebs
Microsoft, GitHub staff tell Satya Nadella: It's time to ice ICE, baby. Rip up those tech contracts
Veteran vulture Andrew Orlowski is offski after 19 years at The Register
Sure, we've got a problem but we don't really want to spend any money on the tech guy you're sending to fix it
Hipster horror! Slack has gone TITSUP: Total inability to support user procrastination
Microsoft's latest Windows 10 update downs Chrome, Cortana
Post-Facebook fallout: Americans envy Europeans' privacy – top EU data watchdog
Hawaii Live-Go! Microsoft launches Honolulu admin tool for cloud and on-prem
Airbus ditches Microsoft, flies off to Google
Facebook smartmobe app's pre-ticked privacy settings violate German data protection law
Another AI attack, this time against 'black box' machine learning
Shiver me timbers! 67cm Playmobil pirate ship sets sail for Caribbean
User asked help desk to debug a Post-it Note that survived a reboot
Apple Cook roasted for Chinese app takeaway
You can't find tech staff – wah, wah, wah. Start with your ridiculous job spec
No, the FCC can't shut down TV stations just because Donald Trump is mad at the news
Manchester plod still running 1,500 Windows XP machines
Facebook posts put Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli in prison as a danger to society
How the CIA, Comcast can snoop on your sleep patterns, sex toy usage
Hell desk to user: 'I know you're wrong. I wrote the software. And the protocol it runs on'
Tanks for the memories: Building a post-Microsoft Office cloud suite
Re: Whilst I'm no fan of Microsoft..
I just migrated our office to G Suite from MS, we ended up giving 1/3 of the users office back as a standalone as we couldn't prise Excel from some cold dead hands.
That being said, most people prefer the Team Drives over SharePoint, but the ability to share sub-folders in Teams is causing some angst among G suite users.
G suite Vault is pretty good for archiving, holding and search, though annoyingly deleted users' data is also removed from the vault.
G Suite is still quite immature compared to O365, however for SME's it is a cheaper and easier to manage offering
PC rebooted every time user flushed the toilet
Don't click that Google Docs link! Gmail hijack mail spreads like wildfire
Sources: Misco sold to Hilco Capital, care home for the distressed
Stop the press: Journos not happy losing jobs to journo bots, say journos
GoDaddy DNS has gone diddy
Reimagine with us, the FT's printed virtual reality guide to Dublin
Big Music goes mad for chat bots and AI
Trump's plan: Tariffs on electronics, ban on skilled tech migrants, turn off the internet
Oh God, here comes the artificially intelligent boss bot – look busy!
Ireland's govt IT: Recession and job cuts forced us to adapt
Re: Hmmm...
Most IT jobs are in Dublin, but Limerick is a sizeable enough city by Irish standards, so there should be opportunities, Shannon is a 15 minute drive from there, it is a "new town" and to be frank pretty boring, but the Airport is well served and the industrial zone around there has plenty of jobs going.
You are also within a fairly short drive of Cork, Kerry and Galway, and some of the beautiful Atlantic coast. chech out monster.ie eolas.ie and computerjobs.ie for vacancies
Re: Hmmm...
Not in the public sector at the moment, however in the private sector there are a huge amount of both established and start-up companies requiring skills across the IT board, in all sectors, a quick look at monster.ie will show you how many positions are available. I put my CV out on various recruitment sites at the weekend and have already been asked to attend 4 interviews.
On the down side property in Dublin is at a premium and rents very expensive
Boffins decipher manual for 2,000-year-old Ancient Greek computer
How to not get pwned on Windows: Don't run any virtual machines, open any web pages, Office docs, hyperlinks ...
Ransomware now using disk-level encryption
Google UK coughs up £130m back taxes. Is it enough?
The Police Chief's photo library mixed business, pleasure and flesh

had a call to reset a locked out user account:
"I have forgotten my username"
Me: "ok, your username is X and the password will be the same, you will be prompted to change it at login"
5 Minutes later, another call: "I'm still locked out"
Another rested
"I am still locked out"
Eventually discovered user was typing in "the same" for the password
Merry Christmas all us on call support gnomes!