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There are a bunch of networked drives to which each CAD person gets selective access.  Today, these permissions were done… apparently.

Tech Guy: Done, sir.  Each of your CAD workers has read/write/modify access to all drives.
Boss:  Whoa… They shouldn’t.  I sent a document outlining each person’s access.
Tech Guy:  *Checks Blackberry, sees missed message* … Well, wouldn’t you want your workers to have total access…
Boss: No.  *Hands tech 2″ binder outlining CAD permission policy*
Tech Guy: But each of these permissions’ll take 15 minutes to do, you sure you don’t want…
Boss: Now.
Tech Guy: You should learn to trust your technicians.

I’m confident that his final statement wouldn’t have made it out had my boss possessed laser vision.

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My office has been migrating from one backend to another as we depart from our previous corporate mothership.  The transition has gone as smooth as the breakup of the British Raj in India and my boss delayed our team’s rollout a week as we’re effectively useless without both a functioning printer and web access.  We expected the tech person to arrive at 9 AM today and he rolled in around 4 PM:

Tech Guy: Sir, I’m here to do your migration.
Boss: Ok, who do you want to start on?
Tech Guy: I was told there was one system.
Boss: There is, one system consisting of 7 users using 13 computers.
Coworker: And three printers!
Coworker 2: And the big scanner!
Coworker: And our phones!

Then, like a recently potty trained child that just pooped themselves, the tech support guy let out an “uh oh” that could have been used in a Pampers commercial.   He kinda shuffled a bit and then left to “get help” which I assume gave him time to change his pants.  He came back empty handed so it looks like our office will have to wait a week to be crippled by his incompetence.

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The rollout of Outlook has been a bit closer to a stumbleandtripabitout and I had to call into the help desk to have them do some juju to push the install to my computer. To do this, he remoted into my computer, and accessed the Novell admin panel and went about his business. The install process was tedious as my computer is a spot underpowered. After about ten minutes I think he got board and started looking around my stem tray and desktop. He’d mouseover my portable app suite icon, and the Wakoopa tracker and spent more than a few seconds trying to figure out what the blinking Digsby icon was. To “monitor progress” he opened Task Manager and slowed down as he saw Keepass running as a process. After a few minutes he broke the silence held by staring at the installing and finally asked “so do you really like FoxIt Reader to Adobe Reader?” I replied “I do. It skips Adobe’s checksum which based on start time consists of calculating the 512K digits of pi.” I got a “hmmm…” out of him. I’m glad he didn’t find CCleaner, as I think the registry cleansing I ran caused the Outlook problem in the first place.

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The office tech support provider has been changed from a delightful group of midwestern folk to the standard East Asian fare.   Today, I discovered that this group only offers basic technical support and should you have a trickier question it goes elsewhere.  The real gem is if you have an FTP or remote access issue; from our best guesses one gets to talk to Newark’s finest.

It’s refreshing to hear a corrupted databased referred to as both “whack” and “fubar” compared to a “dope” Oracle setup.  The operator knew his stuff and shant be fronting and recommended we opt for the safer VPN option rather than the FTP/Remote Desktop.   <white circle 1997>I’m not exactly sure in what hood he rolls his non-hoopdie ride but he was so helpful I wished not to get all up his grill about it.</white circle 1997>

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The Office 2007 interface has been much maligned despite what I think is its GUI splendor.  Despite having some installation problems, I’ve come to love the way the ribbon interface rewards exploration and cuts click-paths from 1-7 clicks to 2-3.  At the lodge executive board meeting, the uphill battle faced by UI designers hit home as I was trying to help someone change some things about the lodge minutes.  He’s a normally sharp kid but apparently had been enraptured by the hatred of the ribbon.

Him: How do I change the margins this way?  Everything’s so hard.
Me: Click over a tab.
Him: What tab?
Me: See that thing at the top.
Him: Yeah.
Me: Where there’s a bunch in a row that correspond to large categories of document modification.
Him: Yeah.
Me: Where if you hit tab you move over one.
Him: Yeah.
Me: That’s a tab.
Him: Oh.  Okay.  So how do I change the margins in this “print tab” (he actually used air quotes)
Me: Click margin.  And pick the one you want, you can even preview what it’ll look like by doing a mouse-over.
Him: Oh.  Why didn’t I know this before.
Me: Fear.  Fear of the unknown, fear of the new.  Embrace it, and you shall become an Office Ninja.
Him: One day, Terry.  One day.

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Two lodge members were attempting to get access to the Totem Wireless and both were having some difficultly.  After about 20 minutes of trying one threw his hands into the air saying “HPs can’t get onto the network”.  The other person who was trying to get on closed the lid of his HP and slinked away.  I helped the first person get online with some software-fu and all was right in the world.

Later, the 2nd person returned to me-
2nd person: Hey, Terry.
Me: Yeah?
2nd person: I know there’s rules on who can get online, but can you please lift the rule that stops HPs from going online?  I really need to do my homework.
Me: That makes no sense, why would I place a rule to stop certain types of computers and even if I did, I couldn’t possibly implement it, you’re re-… Yes, I will, but I’ll have to do something to your computer first.
2nd person: Ok.
Me: *Takes computer, clicks “Connect to network” in lower right hand corner of screen*
2nd person: What was the problem?
Me: A PEBKAC error.  I can’t fix it, but I made it go away.
2nd person: One day I hope I can fix them myself.
Me: Me too….

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Until I get a computer account at work the scanner that’s my current partner must be accessed by a co-worker.  The computer automatically logs after 15 minutes of use.  I tried right-clicking and going to the Screensavers tab to adjust the time and couldn’t, so I called tech support and asked if there was an alternative.  For security reasons, they apparently tightly control the log-in period.  But there’s a back-door.  Despite spending millions on setting up a Group Policy and having IT bees buzz around and secure it, I have somehow have unmitigated access to the registry.  I promptly set the key ScreenSaverActive to “0” to disengage it and started looking around.  Every major security feature can be manually disabled through the registry.

I told my manager about this problem and he began looking around in confusion until his eyes lit up after seeing the key that sets the screen saver.

Manager: So I can finally change the screen saver I’ve been forced to stare at for 5 years with a picture of [a pretty lady].
Me: Yes, yes you can have [a sequence of nice ladies] as your screen saver.  But I’ve been told it’ll reset each night as the magical computer gnomes reset the group policy.
Manager: It’s worth it.

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The Team Fortress 2 clan in which I participate has undergone a bit of a coup de etat after the forceful ejection of someone who was considered a loudmouth so I’ve been participating in the efforts to find a new server our group.  I started looking at servers and found one that had a special deal based on participation size and I asked a question of their tech support.  Apparently, to prove their gaming chops, each agent puts his gaming handle in his name.  I shortly received a response from Jack “spyder” Bauer about issue and I had a follow up question which was answered by Tanner “7hoR [GS]” Dunnings.  I had a payment question that was answered by Peggy “d()()m m41d3n” Clark.  While I find it funny that they had a payment person named “doom maiden” this in no way encouraged me to use their product.  In fact it did quite the opposite.

I eventually purchased a server space elsewhere through a guy named Jim from Cleveland.  Knowing that he was neither a leet hackzor nor someone who frequently  pwned n00bs vastly increased my confidence.

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7:00 AM – no one in, edit wikipedia entries for improper use of the word ‘momentarily’
8:00 AM – 1 person in, edit wikipedia when she’s not in the office
9:00 AM – everyone in, stare at inbox
10:00 AM – Told tech support would come to fix computer, fear struck into heart.
11:00 AM – While waiting for tech support, eat 1/4 of a birthday cake left in hallway
12:00 PM – Bacon!!!
1:00 PM – while waiting at PC for tech support, I realize that my drink is next to a very expensive computer and that I should move it before I accidentally knock it open.
1:23 PM (I checked) – Awake suddenly from nap because I realized I was falling asleep and didn’t move drink.  In process of waking, flail wildly searching for drink to move causing drink to spray over desk.  And god do I mean spray… Run to bathroom to get paper towels, realize paper towels only come off one at a time, rip paper towel dispenser off the wall and run past housekeeping holding paper towel dispenser.

Wow, I made a mess, things I had to remove Diet Cherry Coke from:
Phone
Phone cord
Phone receiver (there was a little pool in there)
Right speaker
Speaker Power supply
Keyboard (I actually drained it out)
Between buttons of wireless mouse
CAD navigation device
Around desklamp

Interestingly, after the soda largely soaked into the carpet it started seeping under the clear plastic floor mat.  The soda started to evaporate making little coke-colored clouds and rain drops.  Amazingly, I was able to clean all of this with only the housekeeper seeing.  He was glad I cleaned my own workstation but wanted the paper towel dispenser back.

On the plus side, I was quite awake after that micronap.

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7:00 AM – no one in, edit wikipedia entries for improper use of the word ‘momentarily’
8:00 AM – 1 person in, edit wikipedia when she’s not in the office
9:00 AM – everyone in, stare at inbox
10:00 AM – Told tech support would come to fix computer, fear struck into heart.
11:00 AM – While waiting for tech support, eat 1/4 of a birthday cake left in hallway
12:00 PM – Bacon!!!
1:00 PM – while waiting at PC for tech support, I realize that my drink is next to a very expensive computer and that I should move it before I accidentally knock it open.
1:23 PM (I checked) – Awake suddenly from nap because I realized I was falling asleep and didn’t move drink.  In process of waking, flail wildly searching for drink to move causing drink to spray over desk.  And god do I mean spray… Run to bathroom to get paper towels, realize paper towels only come off one at a time, rip paper towel dispenser off the wall and run past housekeeping holding paper towel dispenser.

Wow, I made a mess, things I had to remove Diet Cherry Coke from:
Phone
Phone cord
Phone receiver (there was a little pool in there)
Right speaker
Speaker Power supply
Keyboard (I actually drained it out)
Between buttons of wireless mouse
CAD navigation device
Around desklamp

Interestingly, after the soda largely soaked into the carpet it started seeping under the clear plastic floor mat.  The soda started to evaporate making little coke-colored clouds and rain drops.  Amazingly, I was able to clean all of this with only the housekeeper seeing.  He was glad I cleaned my own workstation but wanted the paper towel dispenser back.

On the plus side, I was quite awake after that micronap.