Posts by John 110 708 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Aug 2009
Once had a user hunting round the keyboard for a key that he liked. Finally I got bored and reached over his shoulder and hit "A" key at random.
As a footnote, I got into the habit of waking my PC at home (running Wn 95 I think) with a quick spacebar prod. At work we were all upgraded to Windows 2000 which required woken up then a password. Which always failed for me until the penny dropped that the damned thing was putting the space into the password box as the first character...
"Instead of mucking about with unenforceable social media bans, the government should be working on these sales practices."
What, you mean stop their cronies scamming every penny they can out of unwary punters? That sounds like a great idea. I'm sure that would be popular with government...
Our virology lab was given an Amstrad PC1512 and a modem as part of an AIDS surveillance system. It ran a bit of proprietary software and had a GEM desktop option. I installed Protext (from Arnor) so that I could write my book reviews in my lunchbreak and carry them home to my 3.5inch floppy equipped CPC to polish and post to BSFA in a jiffy bag. Happy days.
Firing is never the right option unless it's the only option.
This cavalier firing thing is obscene. You know that waitresses on minimum wage are getting fired for calling a bloke in a skirt "sir" don't you? That's where this sort of thing leads.
If your life and your family's life depends on someone being employed, then the family-friendly option is to work together to make sure the screwup never happens again, keeping the scorched earth option for something worth scorching for.
Maybe you guys live in a different universe to me, but my opinion is that losing someone their job for one mistake is the worst thing you can do to someone. Getting re-employed is hard. Losing a job like that can devastate a life, not just "teach a lesson". There are other ways to teach lessons.
I'm all for firing continual screwups, but people always deserve a chance to make amends. Always.
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Sometimes you just have to buy their equipment. I used to be responsible for a whole chain of Virology testing systems. Mostly test packages that would only run on the manufacturer's equipment. You are definitely at the mercy of the suppliers then.
The procurement was based on testing by Lab people who knew what kind of result accuracy they wanted/needed. The question of will it work with future iterations of operating system was way down their list. Mainly because if the companies wanted us to keep buying test kits then they would have to meet our conditions.
Which sounds naive, but in this field our previous expectation was that companies would work with us to provide patient care. Several takeovers later and suddenly the company is owned by venture capitalists out for profit instead of the idealists that developed the technology.
The NHS Trust I worked for tried to save a bit by switching to Open Office.
Several objections included:
[fake issue]
- It looks different, I cannae use it.
[legitimate issues]
- The specialist software I use requires a connection to real Excel /Access/etc and won't accept a substitute.
- We extensively use Access databases/Excel macros that are untranslatable.
The fake issue could have been easily solved by training and just telling users to get on with it if it wasn't for the quick solution for the real issue.
Which was to allow deployment of real MSO for those people who needed it to carry out their tasks.
This led to "how come he gets real Office and I only get Mickey Mouse Office?" from users at the next desk and documents round-tripping through OO and MSO becoming unreadable.
Note that this was before LibreOffice and when the ideologists in the Open Office camp thought that interoperability with MSO was evil to be avoided.
The real solution, of course was what they actually did after the great Internet Explorer 5 to 6 debacle when many web-based apps needed to be re-written to be standards compliant (when that was a thing) and spend the cash to get it done. But as the object was to save money, this was vetoed and user satisfaction plummeted.
What they should do now is use the mix option, but mandate (force?) adherence to Open Document standards throughout, even if Microsoft needs to be given a swift kick to bring them into line. Allow the use of MSO only where it's absolutely necessary (same as they currently do for COBOL (see other article)) and only for those purposes, NOT for general office work.and tell dissenters to just shutup and get on with it.
I was once filmed moving coloured liquid (picked randomly from our stock of culture medium) from one microtitre plate to another with a Gilson pipette for a local tv news spot about HIV testing. It was filmed in a spare bit of lab because the camera crew weren't allowed in the Cat 3 lab. I did wear all the protective gear though.
(and my mum taped the segment off the telly to show to my aunties etc.)
--> me changing out of my howie coat into a green gown and plastic apron -->
....just CGI it.
"Store" it in a huge tank to "protect it from the environment" and add "viewing windows" along the side.
Not glass of course, that would let in "harmful UV". I'm sure Monitor technology could supply something...
Then you sell the real thing to a supervillain who's looking for something to steal satellites with.
@gosand
I would think about giving Pale Moon another go. The arse-hole-est developer (who wasn't really a developer) picked up his toys and left ages ago, and the push lately has been trying to keep up with Chrome's buggering about with web standards.
I've been using it daily for years and only revert to Vivaldi for a couple of sites..
Back in the good old days, I had to liaise with our Infection Control team who were told they had to have software to replace their two filing cabinets full of folders. (A short aside--people underestimate the utility of paper in a job where folk are required to nip off and audit a Ward for IC compliance at a moments notice. Irene could find the folder for a ward and be out of the office in about 20 seconds. Ward visit over, her notes were typed up by her secretary and stuck back in the file. The same job using their paperless system involved them hunting and pecking at a keyboard for 20 minutes till yhey'd found the file and last report, then printing that out to take down to the ward... Nightmare. We did try PDAs, but the screens proved to be two titchy for our Nurses to read...)
Anyway, the project included daily downloads from the labsystem to generate a textfile (using an SQL query) which was then imported into the fledgling Infection Control software. (another sidenote: we were all learning as we went along. I did the SQL, Computer Services managed the export of the file with a cron job and the IC team struggled to get to grips with with the commercial software which, lets face it was extremely specialised and cobbled together by a very small company who only had a rudimentary grasp of Infection Control issues to a specification dreamt up by a nurse somewhere who knew what they wanted but had no idea how to get a computer to achieve it. Oh, and it was a DOS-based system)
All of these steps required logging in to various bits of software to run the SQL on the Lab System and to access the server to export the file and the new server to import the file. The solution turned out to be fake users at each stage and for each server (no-one seemed to have heard of service accounts, I certainly hadn't. I fell into the IT role as a Biomedical Scientist who knew which end of an RS232 cable went into which socket (NOT the VGA socket--good grief!))
The trial actually worked (to everybodies surprise, personally I never thought Irene would get the hang of it...) and the system was rolled out and functioned for a couple of years, as various changes made to the IC software made it actually useful (Evolution in action)
Then Computer Services were audited and it was noted that they didn't have a security and access control person, so they appointed one. Their first job as they saw it was to tidy up user access to all their systems by getting rid of all these pesky fake logins. Cue complete system failure.
(Last sidenote, I promise: NHS computing especially round the edges of the major apps was a bit of a wild west. Our Apple //e and later our Windows 3.1 PCs were showing people what computers could do, while our Computer Services department had cut their teeth on Big servers storing data. It was all a bit tricky. And we were all flying by the seat of our pants.)
When I worked in a diagnostic lab, we needed to use the live system for those specimens that had to go through the automated analysers (no-one has two sets of those, useful though it might have been.) Therefore my colleague in the lab upstairs (we shared a patient database) created a patient with a plausible sounding, but unlikely name with an unused Patient Index Number. (Nothing rude or questionable was allowed after a set of results were erroneously sent out to a GP surgery for an unfortunately-monikered test patient.)
We used Linda [lastname redacted] as a test patient for years until the trialling of a system that allowed lab results to be sent from reference labs to the home lab. The first thing that happened was that their IT department complained that Linda already existed on their system as a real person and could we please use their carefully chosen fake patient instead.
a bit further north in the sunniest place in Scotland
Our Health and Safety rep had a constant running battle with University staff over wearing gloves outside the lab. They insisted there was no hazard, but we were a Microbiology lab and gloves were forbidden in the corridor!!
I worked in a diagnostic virology lab in a teaching hospital. The corridor we were in was partially stolen from us in a land grab by the University. The corridor was also a handy thoroughfare to distant parts of the hospital. Then came the Ebola scare (we're all going to die!!) and the Health and Safety people coughed up for card swipe locks on the ends of the corroiodr to stop joe public wandering through "looking for radiotherapy" (this was common ploy for scrotes looking for handbags to rummage through). The University refused point blank to use them. "It's so inconvenient sob, sob".
It turned out to be extremely convenient for a scrote on the prowl, as did the nifty Apple iMac with the handy carrying handle moulded into the case. Somebody's PhD thesis went with it...
The doors were activated and cards issued the next week.
Many moons ago (before remote fobs) a colleague explained to me how to lock a car without the key if your hands were full of child picked up from the back seat. You lean through the back door, over to the front door and press the locking button, then when you close the back door (using a portion of your anatomy not encumbered) the car locks.
When I had occasion to try this trick (getting a cardboard box off the back seat), I managed to shut my tie in the car door (I know, I know). I had the keys in my pocket, but not the flexibility to get my hand into the required pocket without dropping the box (obviously full of fragile valuables). I ended up propping the box between my goulies and the car door while I wormed my hand into my offside trouser pocket and freed myself. "where have you been?" says the wife...
Sort of the opposite problem. Software designed (not by us -- we just configured it) in the days of 640x480 screens when expanded to full-screen on an 800x600 monitor had a whole load of empty space. When the users wanted more options on the screen, we had to tell them that the empty space was imaginary and couldn't be used.
Those iMac handles proved handy for the scrote that walked into the university lab round the corner from ours and walked off with a computer and somebody's PhD thesis.
What's a "backup"?
Footnote: that's when we finally activated the security doors that the NHS had fitted, but the university refused to use...
If you've ever worked in a diagnostic healthcare setting, you'll be aware of the difficult path that you have to tread between privacy and having the data you need to carry out your analyses and diagnoses.
Not having correct and full data is as much of a nightmare for us as the privacy issues are to data people. (I've worked both sides as a medical technologist who shifted to data services)
""Moonchild" and his minions have created such a toxic dumpster fire on their community fora"
Not been there for a while, have you. They're generally quite helpful these days after the most toxic guy threw his toys out of the pram and went home a year or so ago.
Like somebody above, I use Pale Moon on a daily basis and generally don't have any trouble.
When I did IT support in a Bacteriology Lab, I used to have a stick with a nail in it* (an implement a boss was given as a joke man management tool) that I inherited from a retiring boss. It turned out to be most useful as a device for fetching wires from under desks and lab benches.
*essentially a broom handle with a three inch nail driven an inch into it, H&S assured by the head of the nail being uppermost.
I once got called to a Microbiology lab PC that wouldn't turn on, to find the user vainly stabbing at the big silver DELL "button" instead of the tiny recessed power button that Dell helpfully supplied.
(a few years earlier, the same user didn't realise that the monitor power switch was different from the computer power switch, although in her favour, she was really computer-phobic and had managed to avoid using them for ages.)
In my role as general IT support for a diagnostic lab in a teaching hospital in the 90s, I was asked to give a talk to our BSc Honours students to show them how to use the two DOS-based PCs that we had for general Word processing use. (Prior to acquiring those, our lecturers did papers by longhand and one of the office girls would type them up). I chatted to one of them a couple of days before I gave the talk and realised that they mostly knew the stuff like how to start and close Word, but they didn't have a clue about saving and backing up their work. They each had a floppy disk...(5.25, so genuinely floppy.)
I re-jigged my talk to start with me holding up a floppy and saying "this is a disk". I then crumpled it up and said "and now it's corrupt and your thesis is gone..."
Only then did I give them the talk about closing Word AFTER saving and BEFORE taking the disk out...
