* Posts by Hazmoid

261 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Mar 2014

Page:

Tech CEO: Four-day work week didn't hurt or help productivity

Hazmoid

Experience a friend had with 4 day week

A friend who worked a 4 day week found that the option was either Monday or Friday. This gave them a 3 day weekend. Regarding the extra hours, I find that I am working those long hours anyway so a day less of them would be a God send. Who in IT does not grab a coffee on the fly and eat at their desk while still taking calls? So technically we are doing those longer hours anyway.

Dev loudly complained about older colleague, who retired not long after

Hazmoid

Re: Inverse problem, kinda ...

Was like that when I worked for a Stockbrokers in the late 90s, early noughties. It was expected that we would wear suit, shirt and tie in the office. After wearing the knees out of 2-3 pairs of suit trousers, I asked the boss why we, as IT, had to wear business shirts and ties ( where the shirts would end up with toner on them and the ties ran the risk of being caught in fans) when we were never in the public eye.

He being the awesome boss he was, went to management and explained that IT from now on would be wearing polo shirts with the company logo. From that day on, we were the trendsetters in the office when it came to men's clothing.

How do you explain what magnetic fields do to monitors to people wearing bowling shoes?

Hazmoid

Re: Not a magnet but...

When setting up training sessions I would do that with the mice to ensure that they worked on the shiny desks we had. Users got all shirty about the sticky tape residue on their shiny desks :)

Hazmoid

Re: Just needed to scroll down a bit

"If you liked our service, please mention us to your friends"

"Not if I want to keep them!"

With apologies to DNA and HHGTTG when talking about devices with "GPP" (Genuine People Personalities)

Hazmoid

Re: Ones Aurora

The ability for a user to say " It will only take 5 minutes" is enough to ensure that the job should be delayed until you have a full day to look at it.

Tech support session saved files, but probably ended a marriage

Hazmoid

Back in the mid 90s I worked for a stockbroking firm and we had recently rolled out Netware servers to a number of our remote sites, along with user personal directories.

We were getting alerts regarding storage on one of the remote sites, ran a scan across the user directories and found that one of the brokers had taken it upon himself to place his complete p*rn library in his user directory, complete with catogory filing under different directories. He was quickly warned that if we could see it, HR could as well. They disappeared a week later, and our server stopped complaining about low storage.

We also implemented surfcontrol at one stage, and my job was to scan the blocked items and send a form email to the recipients that continued reception of prohibited items would result in HR being informed, i.e. tell your buddies to stop sending you p*rn at work otherwise you may not have a job.

BOFH: Have you tried forcing an unexpected reboot?

Hazmoid
Joke

Re: dear god yes

Sounds like the start of "The 4 YorkshireMen" skit

HP ditches 15-minute wait time policy due to 'feedback'

Hazmoid

Try calling Centrelink in Australia (for users in the UK and US, this is our central social security and job search government department), I've heard of people calling and waiting on hold for hours.

Fortunately with mobiles and portable phones you can still get stuff done while waiting.

Hazmoid

unfortunately the contract will be written in such a way that they could take a shotgun to their machines, divert their phones to the talking clock and still fulfill their "contract obligations".

With less than a month to go on the contact you are better waiting it out, taking all the schmoozing their sales drones apply and still tell them to "Go F%ck off" at the end of the schmoozing.

Insurance giant finds claims rep that gives a damn (it's AI)

Hazmoid
Joke

One of the agents KPIs is probably value of claims denied.

Where as AI will not have any arbitrary KPIs to meet and therefore will treat each claim as genuine until proven otherwise. Human agents will have KPIs and don't tell me that one of them isn't minimising claims paid by any means possible.

I'm reminded of Mr Incredible finding ways to circumvent the arbitrary rules of Insuricorp to make sure people get paid :)

Hazmoid

Re: "Thank you for your message. I understand your concern,"

I started following the Post Office debacle from reading about it on el Reg, mainly because I am in Australia and we usually don't get much news from the UK unless it involves the Royal family.

Until some of the instigators of the complete technical and policy stuff up are jailed, both from Fujitsu and the Post Office hierachy, there is never going to be an apology that makes up for the ruined lives created by this farce.

BOFH: Engage Hollywood Protocol – because nonsense always looks legit

Hazmoid

Plaigiarism is so 20th century. Now it is called a "Creative re-imagining of a classic"

Hazmoid
Coat

Re: Auditors...

Insert Monty Python Quote

"No-one Expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

Shove your office mandates, people still prefer working from home

Hazmoid

During covid shutdowns, I actually came to the office because there were 4 adults in my house trying to work remote. This resulted in internet bottlenecks (thank you Libs FTN NBN :( ) and I usually work in the office by myself, so there was no difference except I was not having to deal with the other adults in the home. Bonus was that when I came home, I could instantly switch off.

Short-lived bling, dumb smart things, and more: The worst in show from CES 2025

Hazmoid

Re: In-car ordering for takeout

Hey google, where is the nearest "takeout of choice" ?

once that displays, pick one and then hey google call this takeout .

If I'm driving the last thing I want to be doing is picking things off a touchscreen menu and being distracted.

There are already enough idiots on their mobiles on the road and I do not see the car manufacturers move to touch screens reducing that.

Tech support warrior left cosplay battle and Trekked to the office

Hazmoid

Scout uniform count?

Had to run the local Joeys section for my Group ( As Group Leader, sections that do not have a qualified leader often fall to the GL to run) so made sure to bring my Scout uniform to work and would change before I left.

Also back in the dim distant past I worked for a stockbrokers in Western Australia and as I lived closest to work, I got the on call job of being first into the office each morning. Because of Daylight savings in Australia, that meant I needed to be at my desk by 5am (8am East Coast time) during summer. I would frequently get calls while riding the bike to work and would go straight into the office in my cycling clothes. So people saw me a few times wandering around in skin tight lycra ;) although in those days I like to think I was reasonably fit.

BOFH: Printer's festive bips herald a merry mystery for the Boss's budget

Hazmoid
Pint

have one of these for your HHTTG reference :)

Watchdog deep-sixes job ad that was actually pay-to-play training course

Hazmoid

Re: All over cv-library

of course they did nothing about it, they are getting paid to put it on their platform.

Once some of the job boards get slapped with fines for promoting misleading training course advertisements, then we will see if they start cracking down on it.

Network engineer chose humiliation over a night on the datacenter floor

Hazmoid
Stop

getting stuck with no way out.

I used to work the early shift for a Stockbrokers based in Perth WA, and we worked East Coast hours, so during summer we needed to be in the office 3 hours before normal people, i.e. the market opened at 10am AEDST so we needed to be in the office before 7am WA time. I would usually get there about 5am, have a shower and catch the elevator to our floor before 5.30 to answer calls from the Eastern States offices if there were any issues.

One morning, the lift broke down between floors. Fortunately the security staff were on call, and answered the telephone quickly but could not get anyone from the lift company until 8 am so I was stuck in the lift for a few hours. That was ok, I laid down and tried to get some sleep which would have been fine except security kept checking every 15 minutes that I was still ok :( After the first couple of times I told them that I was going nowhere, so they could just call me when the lift maintenance people got there.

As with any IT person, getting on with building security and maintenance is essential to ensuring that things go well, so we had a running joke about shutting down lifts so that we could have a catnap during the day.

Hardware barn denies that .004 seconds of facial recognition violated privacy

Hazmoid

Hammerbarn is go

I'm a bit biased here having had a son working in retail who was abused and told to F off when he asked the customer to pay for the stuff loaded in their trolley.

Based on the video shown on the news last night in relation to this story (various scum attacking staff and customers), I feel that Bunnings Duty of care to their customers and staff overrides any qualms I have about my face being recognised. I think the area they fell down on was not having signs up saying that you agree to be filmed on entering the premises. Having setup up surveilance systems for a number of clients, I'm sure that having FR would be a boon as in most security systems, the video is stored and re-visited after the event.

If this prevents someone with a known proclivity for theft and violence from entering a store, myself as a customer welcome it. It saves me money ( not having to pay more to allow for "leakage") and prevents me being placed in a situation where I may be injured.

https://7news.com.au/news/bunnings-shares-cctv-of-attacks-on-staff-after-facial-recognition-cameras-breached-privacy-c-16802827

That hardware will be more reliable if you stop stabbing it all day

Hazmoid

Re: Am i old in knowing about SSADM?

More likely H&S would ban it due to the chance of users slashing them selves when using the scanner

BOFH: Don't threaten us with a good time – ensure it

Hazmoid

Our sons ipad was smashed days after his time at school had come to an end and the insurance policy ran out. We had just opted to pay out the school to keep it too :( instead of returning it.

Relocation is a complete success – right up until the last minute

Hazmoid

Used to manage a network for a national stockbrokers, and we had VMs set up so we could vmotion them between sites. An electrical contractor was finishing up some work in our Melbourne computer room and removing his gear. Unfortunately, he leaned his ladder on the wall next to the door, right on top of the electrical isolation switch which did not have a molly guard. We found out that day what equipment was not protected by UPS. Cue screaming from the trading floor that this was "costing millions". A shutdown for power redistribution work and mollyguard installation was programmed shortly after.

That position you just applied for might be a 'ghost job' that'll never be filled

Hazmoid

Re: Solution 1

Exactly! I have had enough of these to know that after 2 weeks you can write off the job.

However, I do know some companies are slow to send rejections because they want to make sure that the chosen candidate accepts their offer and actually starts before writing off all the unsuccessful candidates. This way they can avoid re-doing advertising and interviews by going to their 2nd and 3rd choices.

I made this network so resilient nothing could possibly go wro...

Hazmoid

Re: 6509 was a chassis switch not a router

have an upvote for obligatory "Hitchhikers" reference :)

BOFH: The Boss pulled the plug on our AI, so we pulled the pin on him

Hazmoid

Re: Sun (and printers)

My first sysadmin role was managing a Sun system containing a major herbarium database . At the time, all the specimens had labels printed ( from the sun system) with bar codes for ease of cataloguing.

I was constantly tweaking the form for the labels to allow for different fields and lengths of information.

So long ago I have forgotten most of it and the building is no longer standing.

Yes, your network is down – you annoyed us so much we crashed it

Hazmoid

Re: Important word

I suspect that if the provider specifically disables the user connection to the internet through their services, then they would be well within their rights. i.e. by resetting the router they were wrong, but if they reset the user connection password at the provider end, thus preventing connection from the client router, they are covered ( it would be similar to removing access for disabled accounts, a security requirement)

Hazmoid

Re: Important word

have an upvote for Obligatory Python reference

One-year countdown to 'biggest Ctrl-Alt-Delete in history' as Windows 10 approaches end of support

Hazmoid

Re: Hardware is not the issue

And another HHGTG reference :) Must be Douglas Adams day

Hazmoid

Re: no seriously please reboot

Upvote for the HHGTTTG reference :)

Bank of America app glitch zeroes out people's balances

Hazmoid

Re: "Checking" account?

See that is why Australians lead the world in being ripped off by scam artists ;)

With paypass, tap 'n' go and other world leading tech, I think the last time I opened my wallet was to check the 3 digit code on the back of my card for an online transaction.

As an Australian, checks are a Pain In The A$$ (PITA). You have to physically attend a branch to deposit them and often the funds are not available for 3 days. Nowadays actually finding a bank branch that is open nearby is nigh on impossible.

So we are being forced to use cash or electronic, with our supermarkets being defacto banks.

Google gamed into advertising a malicious version of Authenticator

Hazmoid

alternate authenticators

Getting users to download an authenticator is hard enough without bad actors getting into the action. I have seen a number of people caught out with the Microsoft Authenticator being spoofed and then being asked for account details to pay for the software. There is a product in both the play store and the appstore that is very similar in design to the MS authenticator logo.

Facebook prank sent techie straight to Excel hell

Hazmoid
Thumb Up

Upvote for the Douglas Adams reference :)

CrowdStrike file update bricks Windows machines around the world

Hazmoid
Facepalm

Apparently affecting MS worldwide.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-19/global-it-outage-crowdstrike-microsoft-banks-airlines-australia/104119960

appears this is world wide. I suspect this company is going to be in a world of hurt when the washout of this comes out. Fortunately it is late Friday afternoon for the East coast in Australia so I suspect there are going to be a lot of early marks taken. However you may be struggling to get a beer unless you have cash as a lot of banks and POS machines have been hit as well.

BOFH: Why's the network so slow?

Hazmoid

I'm surprised the BOFH didn't ask for the boss to spring for a decent dinner at the local curry house, instead of just a takeaway. And possibly a hotel room because it was too late to go home after fixing the problems , with room service.

Techie installed 'user attitude readjustment tool' after getting hammered in a Police station

Hazmoid

Re: User attitude readjustment tool

And even managed to beat one of the world heavy weight teams in Pakistan ( and Canada) however up agains South Africa tomorrow? I think they might be in for a shock.

Broadcom’s VMware strategy looks ever more shaky - and less relevant

Hazmoid

small cllients

I've been playing around with proxmox and for the small users that I support ( that only need a Domaincontroller/dns/dhcp server and maybe a file and print server) this could be ideal. Of course if using Microsoft it may be nbetter to use HyperV

Even moving them to Microsoft 365, and using Azure connect is better than relying on VMware now.

55 years ago, Apollo 10's crew turned the airwaves blue

Hazmoid

My introduction to swearing

On the Dairy farm where I grew up, the afternoon milking was not complete until a cow had kicked the cups off into the cowsh!t and followed with the bluest language I ever heard. I think if there were an Olympics for swearing my dad would have been a contender.

Hazmoid

Re: In some ways, we haven't progressed much

"Thunderbox"? asks another Australian

We never agreed to only buy HP ink, say printer owners

Hazmoid

Re: It’s about the use case

Agreed, anything that needs to be referred to in the field where it can get wet or dirty can be printed and laminated for longevity. Even taking mobiles into the field needs a rugged case and access to power which may not always be available.

We recently held a camp in Western Australia where we had ~5000 participants camping out for a week. The amount of paper generated was extraordinary, but only as it was the easiest way to ensure all participants saw announcements that were needed.

I've said it before, but printers are the bane of my life (small MSP) because they always break down at the most inconvenient time and will try to find the most convoluted way to break.

Techie saved the day and was then criticized for the fix

Hazmoid

Re: Locks.

Lol, locked my car keys in the office one day so had to jemmy the lcok using my Leatherman. Basically levered the door latch back into the door.

Do not touch that computer. Not even while wearing gloves. It is a biohazard

Hazmoid

Re: Radio Daze

We rented a unit that had previously housed an unrepentent indoor chain smoker. We had to take down and wash all the curtains, wash all the walls with Triclenium and have the carpets shampooed 3 times before we could move in. I still got a whiff of cigarette tar when we opened unused cupboards.

Hazmoid

Re: What happened to the truck or its driver?

There is a brilliant video of Richard Hammond sitting in a car while it was being hit by simulated lightning strikes. The Car died because the lighting destroyed the electronics but inside the car, Richard was fine . also Airplanes are regularly struck by lightning.

Britain enters period of mourning as Greggs unable to process payments

Hazmoid

Re: McDonalds

30 years ago when I visted Austria for a ski trip we were told that if we needed a loo, go to a Maccas because if nothing else their toilets were clean and had toilet paper.

Microsoft's February Windows 11 security update unravels at 96% for some users

Hazmoid

Re: "Something didn't go as planned. No need to worry – undoing changes.

At least it doesn't complain about the "pain in all the diodes down the left side" and "Life! Don't talk to me about Life"

Australia passes Right To Disconnect law, including (for now) jail time for bosses who email after-hours

Hazmoid

For many years, I was used to being on 24/7 access, being as I was the only IT support on staff and working for a 24/7 organisation. I expected that I would get calls after hours as work paid a premium to make sure I was available. We had an MSP as a backstop that was used when I went on leave. However whenever I have gone to subsequent organisations, I have insisted on a separate phone and PC. These have been turned off when I get home.

Now I am working for a small ISP I expect calls after hours but they are booked as billable hours.

Snow day in corporate world thanks to another frustrating Microsoft Teams outage

Hazmoid

Maybe they could beam a version of the scout logo, after letting all the local groups know that they are required to attend their local DR centre for allocation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_Scout_Emblem_1955.svg

WTF? Potty-mouthed intern's obscene error message mostly amused manager

Hazmoid
Joke

Re: stroke rates

or a visit from HR!

How governments become addicted to suppliers like Fujitsu

Hazmoid
Coat

Or the old standby, "piano player in a bordello" :)

Tech support done bad sure makes it hard to do tech support good

Hazmoid

Having dealt with dealers in the "Wild West" (Perth Western Australia) I can confirm that every minute the system is down or not available results in dealers banging on the roor with their very expensive custom keyboards. We were fortunate that we organised the security systems and had a lock on our door that only it staff and certain senior staff had access to.

Unfortunately that did not extend to the phones, and one day I resorted to the, "the longer you tell me how much money you are losing, the longer it takes me to get off the phone to fix it" line whilst my boss was in earshot. He told me to ignore the phone and fix the issue, there were enough others in the office who could answer the phone. A great boss and one I miss. He looked like the PHB from Dilbert but was the exact opposite.

Page: