Posts by cob2018

Tech support world record? 8.5 seconds from seeing to fixing

Re: 8.5 seconds...

Well, let's be fair. The Rubbish from Redmond is clueless about SO MANY THINGS that it's easy for one to get lost in the shuffle.

Microsoft pulls Windows 11 24H2 from Insider Release Preview Channel

Re: rust in the kernel?

Why not ? Don't you believe in the "truth in advertising" practice that is claimed by so many nations ??

Microsoft slammed for lax security that led to China's cyber-raid on Exchange Online

"Microsoft doesn't do that any more"

Just for the record .... WHEN DID THEY EVER ???

Someone please enlighten me.

Microsoft embraces its inner penguin as sudo sneaks into Windows 11

Re: Hands Up Those Who ...

Umm ...... no.

The correct form ( for me, at least ) is "sudo su -"

BOFH: Nice air conditioning system. Would be a shame if anything happened to it

Just curious. In this case, what's the cost for the "SPIKED rusty pole" upgrade ??

While we fire the boss, can you lock him out of the network?

This is a first for me. I don't think I have ever before seen a single individual described as "the most incompetent people" before today.

Useful turn of phrase there.

Re: Dead mans shoes career progression

While your observations are correct ( most times ) I must point out that BOFH and "normal worker" are in the mathematical class known as "disjoint sets".

Microsoft suggests command line fiddling to get faulty Windows 10 update installed

Thank you for today's belly laugh

"Microsoft's legendary quality control"

Need I say more ??

Bizarre backup taught techie to dumb things down for the boss

Praise $DEITY that I'm retired

... and don't have to deal with this level of idiocy any more.

Oh, and it seems to help when dealing with the ( much smaller ) user community that I support these days. They get Linux Mint on their systems, or they find another sucker to provide ( free ) support.

XFCE desktop with Thunar file manager: Folder named "Trash" that has icon of a deskside rubbish can ( yeah, it does have the 3-arrow recycle icon on it )

Evolution email client: Same as previous line ( hmm ...... wonder exactly how THAT came to pass ........ but I digress )

Thunderbird: Folder named "Trash" that has icon of an old-fashioned galvanized steel rubbish can ( complete with lid )

Gmail: Same as Thunderbird

If any of my users have had issues similar to those discussed here, they SOMEHOW have enough sense to avoid coming to me to whine and cry about it. Therefore, these days my "support" activities are pretty much minimum stress, and this is accomplished with pretty minimal training for some non-IT savvy users.

Rigorous dev courageously lied about exec's NSFW printouts – and survived long enough to quit with dignity

Re: Art of War

Well, to be precise, I have never left a job *because of the boss's character*, however, *the boss's LACK of character* is a very different situation.

Microsoft begs you not to ditch Edge on Google's own Chrome download page

reconcile "the added trust of Microsoft"

Two things:

1) ABSOLUTELY FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2) Made me laugh so hard I nearly fell out of the chair.

Oh, and I also recommend that the person who created the phrase I'm using as a title here seek counseling immediately. The mind that can generate such a concept is in desperate need of help.

Ubuntu Advantage is being wired deeper into the distro

Short attention spans

From TFA:

"One might have thought that Canonical would have worked this out after the first such revolt, a decade ago."

Yeah, but this skates very close to the common error of applying logic to management/marketing decisions.

Obviously, what has happened here is that the Canonical manglement/marketing staff has had enough turnover to think that they can follow Mickey$not's lead about monetizing every possible part of their releases.

To those who might be considering alternate scenarios such as the aforementioned manglement/marketing staff thinking that their loyal user community has had time to forget the previous iterations of similar approaches, I ask you to reconsider the absurdity of notions like "manglement/marketing staff thinking" and head out for the week-ending beverage.

New IT boss decided to 'audit everything you guys are doing wrong'. Which went wrong

Manglement relations

Back in the age of the dinosaurs ( early 90s ) I was the one-person sysadmin staff for a small software house. In the first full year handling the position, I had multiple vacation requests denied, and had to go to HR finally to get a resolution on either allowing vacation at year-end, or deferring it to the following year. Strangely enough, I did learn something useful from the experience.

The following year, I scheduled two weeks of time off late in the year ( November ) and made arrangements for alternate support of normal operations while I was absent. All personnel involved with the alternate support were given VERY SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS about when it was appropriate to call me. After these were made clear, it was also plainly stated that since the minimum increment of vacation time was 1/2 day, any call to me that was made would result in a MINIMUM charge of 1/2 day vacation returned to me.

During the two weeks off, I was called twice, spent about 15 minutes total on the phone, and turned in a time sheet listing 9 days vacation expended and 2 half-days of work. This timesheet was APPROVED without a murmur from anyone.

Take heart, people. It CAN BE DONE.

Microsoft axes 10,000, already breaking bad news to staff

Re: Any of these in QA?

I can't say exactly why, but my first reaction is to bet that when making these 10,000 unfortunates "redundant" manglement NEVER considered beefing up the QA staff.

Just my $0.02 (US) worth for the day.

Microsoft rolls back default macro blocks in Office without telling anyone

"substantive response"

Just for the record, El Reg, please tell us how often this actually happens, vs how often it does not.

Inquiring minds want to know.

Windows 11 usage stats within touching distance of... XP

Re: When is an upgrade and upgrade?

Pardon me for the inquiry, but ..........

What universe do you live in ??

In this one, the words "Microsoft" and "think***" when combined in the same sentence yield incomprehensible gibberish pretty consistently, especially when related to their "customers" ( or is that "victims" ) requirements.

Microsoft's problem child, Windows 11, is here. Will you run it? Can you run it? Do you even WANT to run it?

Answers to questions

No.

No.

F*** NO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm one of the cantankerous old b???ards who left the Rubbish From Redmond behind years ago. The last iteration of the virus masquerading as an OS that I dealt with was Windoze 7 ( forced upon me by the final employer before retirement ) and then, no more than absolutely necessary.

I rode the RedHat/CentOS train for years ( through version 5 ) and when that went EOL moved over to Linux Mint. My computers come out of recycle bins and such ( eBay at times ) and do everything that I want while leaving the hassle and pain behind.

Of course, YMMV, but if you don't look you won't see the alternatives.

There are two sides to every story, two ends to every cable

Re: Idiot Boasting Mob

What ever happened to "It's Better Manually" ??

Mate, it's the '90s. You don't need to be reachable every minute of every hour. Your operating system can't cope

Re: Win3.1

If there was EVER a time when the Rubbish From Redmond was NOT "behind the curve" I must have blinked and missed it.

Please provide date, time, location, and supporting documentation. ;^>

'Literally a paperweight': Bose users fume at firmware update that 'doesn't fix issues'

Speaker Choices

Once upon a time I received some training in electronics and sound performance at government expense ( US Navy ) and that led me to the viewpoint of evaluating audio gear by manufacturer's performance specs AND observed performance. Even when Bose DID publish specs on their gear, my comparisons led me to products that had better performance and prices. Even 30 years after doing performance comparisons I still re-run the process to confirm that the conclusions are still valid with current equipment. The most recent example is that when upgrading to home theater setup last year I picked up 3 Polk Audio speakers to go with the existing two Polk column speakers. Good prices with performance that satisfies ME, and the fact that the logos match on all of the speakers is just a cute little bonus.

BOFH: Judge us not by the size of our database, but the size of our augmented reality

This is why I don't drink when using the computer

This is the Bastard that we all know and love. So glad to see him back in full form, especially in this ridiculous age of "non-offensive" nonsense.

BRAVO !!!

Behold the perils of trying to turn the family and friends support line into a sideline

A bit surprised

I was expecting to see more claims of the solution that I use for the family/friend support requests. I tell them that I provide Linux support, and if they want me to care for their computer, that's what to use. Requests to support the Rubbish from Redmond are either silently ignored, or provided with a suggestion to find someone conversant with that mess because it conflicts with my stress management program.

I have no mouth and I must scream: You can add audio to wobbles in latest Windows 10 patch

Re: Windows 10 audio _never_ works properly

You seem to be having what is hopefully a SHORT mental lapse. If history has taught us ANYTHING about the Rubbish from Redmond, the very last thing to expect from M$ is consistency.

Devs slam Microsoft for injecting tech-support scam ads into their Windows Store apps

Re: "Avoid Redmond..."

No problem. Last month I visited some relatives and got my VERY FIRST contact with the Rubbish from Redmond in calendar year 2019.

Yes, I'm a Linux head. Been one for 20+ years now, and DAMN PROUD OF IT.

BOFH: Tick tick BOOM. It's B-day! No we're not eating Brussels flouts...

Re: My OCD is firing up

I think that "stopped" is a reasonable option. In this context, I prefer the interpretation of "stopped" as the sudden deceleration experienced at the end of a fall from a 3-4 story slide.

Just my $0.02 (US) worth on a fine spring Friday.

Hold horror stories: Chief, we've got a f*cking idiot on line 1. Oh, you heard all that

Re: Help desk

Excuse me, but what is this "training" you speak of ?

Microsoft yanks the document-destroying Windows 10 October 2018 Update

Backups

After nearly 30 years in the Unix/Linux world, I still rely on the old way. The "dump" and "restore" commands still work quite well for my modest needs, and the only issues I've had seem to always end being media-related crap such as bad tapes. The old simple approach works for me.

Microsoft Azure: It's getting hot in here, so shut down all your cores

Re: Reputation Damage

Not to my knowledge. However, I think that it is possible for them to go from bad to worse.