Although it's not Tech Support, I work Inside Sales and we're under strict rules not to hang up on a customer. There are certain cases where it is accepted, though: A. Customer asks a laundry list of questions but has shown no intention of purchasing products, even when prompted to place an order. B. Customer is verbally abusive. The fun of it is that in situation B, I'll just hit transfer and send them to the Customer Care line, where they can't hang up on anyone./hate my second job, need it to pay the bills
Check your state's laws for mobile scanner legality. I know I've got to be careful when I'm out and about. If I decide to cross the river into Kentucky, I've got to pull my scanner down. They're legal in Ohio, not in Kentucky.
Currently I work in a biological diagnostic production facility. We manufacture testing kits for the diagnosis of enteric and fecal parasites. All the components must be tested in-house for FDA compliance. This means that the labs stink like poo. Imagine working at a bench setup in a public restroom, and everyone that came in to use the can had an intestinal problem. That's what it's like.
DISH Network, DirecTV, PrimeStar... they all work just fine. I've built a couple of them (one from a DirecTV, one DISH Network) and I was able to get about a 5 mile direct shot with only minimal adjustments.
Now to email my old housemate and see if he saved his 12' Orbit dish when he switched to DirecTV...
As for an actual (albeit non-science) job, I had a friend that worked for a legal firm specializing in class action cases. He was their mailroom/photocopy clerk, and had to make admissable copies of all the evidence used for a court case. One case involved a sanitary napkin manufacturer, and his job involved making photocopies of used maxi-pads (sealed in plastic bags, but still gross) to be submitted as court evidence.
I work in a diagnostics lab that deals with enteric parasites for one of its mainstay products. The in-house testing is done with fecal samples that are from known positive or negative individuals. The samples must be homogenized in a diluent before they are used with the kit. It is one person's unfortunate job to request, and process the samples into a 2 litre specimen master lot. It involves asking our in-house negative patient to crap in a collection container and bring it back to the lab, then taking said sample and placing it in a laboratory mixer (industrial blender) with the diluent, then filtering that mess into a 2L bottle. I'm just glad I work in the isolation lab, where I don't have to smell it.
My wife and I have found a reasonable solution to the problem of paying back student loans. It's sort of our own version of a "permanent deferrment" plan. The loans that she had taken out for college are listed as due for beginning payments in 6 months after she is no longer a full time student. This 6 month time period resets itself if she is a full-time student at any point within those 6 months. Since the loan payments would be more per month than a single quarter of full-time classes once every six months, she just takes a full load of courses twice a year. We pay for the courses, and then only owe the interest payments on the loans. Yeah, the interest is piling up, but until she's gainfully employed we can't really afford the loan payments on top of all our other expenses, so this is a good solution.
I worked at a Kinko's as a second job for a brief stint, and while I'll agree with you on the wages, I can't say as much for the training that most employees receive. The general guidelines that are given to employees are that the self-serve machines are just that: Self-serve. Don't spend a lot of time trying to explain things on the machines. If someone wants a job done, and can't figure it out on the self-serve machines, they can get it done behind the counter. The same rule holds true for the computers. It's part of the self-serve area. Help people only to the extent of not being discourteous, but the copy associates are not there to tell people how to work their email or perform tasks on Photoshop.
The majority of the training goes into learning how to work the supplementary process machines (folders, tape and coil binders, bookletizers, etc.) because those are the large batch jobs that bring in the most money. Very few employees, depending on the location and the shift, will actually know how to set up specialized features on the large DocuCenter machines. Day shifters and second shifters will typically run the small batch jobs that need to get out that day, and leave the rest of the work for the night shift. If you want the job done right, bring it there at 3am for a morning pickup. The night shift is usually only 2 people, many times just one (as was the case when it was my shift) and they need to know how to work everything in the shop.
The computers, however, are not upkept by the individual branch employees. There are regional network engineers who do the initial installation at a branch. After that, there is a Kinko's central hub help desk to take care of any questions that the manager/employees have, and a central station for remote administration of branch networks for a region. The managers are expected to be able to follow a colour coded wall chart in the network closet if they want to move equipment or add machines. Ours was an absolute nightmare. Serious technicolour spaghetti, and totally misconnected according to the wall chart. The managers and employees receive zero training on any network essentials, so don't expect them to know anything about security measures. The manager at the branch I worked at couldn't tell you the difference between a keystroke logger and a timber logger.
For installations where you need to run multiple cables and can't route them internally, those zip ties with the screw-mount ends work really well. I've used those on all my long cable runs in my house, since there's no way I can do internal routing on a plaster over brick wall.
Some people do, some people don't. My wife is a music geek, and sometimes buys a CD just because of the cover art. She's got a cabinet full of records (we don't have a record player) because she likes the art on the albums. There's bunch of those mid 80s - early 90s long CD boxes that she's kept around. For her it's having the visual aspect of the recording that is important. I'm the opposite way: I ripped all my CDs to mp3s, backed 'em up on some CDs and my entertainment server, and sold the originals. Couldn't care about the art or the liner notes or the lyrics sheets. I have my music, I'm happy.
Also depends on what kind of dependants you have. If I was supporting a wife and a kid, for example, I imagine I'd put up with an awful lot before cutting off that income.
True 'nuff for that. I'm experiencing that one first hand right now. No kids, but my wife isn't employed right now due to some recurrent medical disabilities. On a bad day at the lab, I'd love to tell my boss to shove it, and then just walk out. But the lapse in insurance, coupled with the medical bills and lack of employment would be destructive.
Yeah, things may suck at work: Passed over for supervisory promotion, boss treats others' opinions like crap in front of peers, workload is piling up... But with the job market as crappy as it is, I'll stay with my job rather than risking unemployment, loss of insurance, and inability to pay bills.
There are so many things that can be seen as a 'waste of time' that I have learned. Yet I use each one of them, mostly as a relaxation from my everyday hectic schedule. I could always go to the corner market and buy beer. I'd save myself the time of having to wash and sterilize bottles, measure and cook ingredients, wait on the fermentation, take even more time out to bottle the stuff and clean the fermenter vats... Wow! What a waste of time and effort it is to trudge into my kitchen and spend an hour or two relaxing, knowing that in 2 weeks all my effort will have resulted in nothing more than 40 pints of beer.
I could go to the same store where I can purchase beer, and buy a pack of cigarettes. Instead, I take the scrap leaves (those not purchased at auction) from a friend who has a tobacco farm. I hand mill shred them and roll my own smokes.
There's just a level of appreciation that you can gain for something if you've built/prepared/grown/designed it yourself. Putting it into tech terms: Would you rather get a prebuilt computer package with most of what you want and a lot of what you don't, but you can have it right now... or build a system to your exact specifications with exactly the parts you want/need, except that you'll have to work on it for 3 hours to get it built?
I could be horribly wrong, (and quite often I am,) but I would think that most people that use the term 'hacking' to describe what they do as a pasttime (except maybe for golfers) would have a higher appreciation for something that they took part in building themselves.
Running the cable along the baseboards is the only solution that I have in my present home. It was built in 1912, and the entire construction is plaster over brick. Aside from the ancient electrical wiring that the house was designed with, there's no way to make any nice, neat, internal cabling runs. Even the phone lines are tacked to the top edge of the baseboarding and have external box jacks.
Normally, I'd have no problem with making the long runs in the house up in the ceiling (attic, in my case,) but I don't want to have to go climbing around in the attic every time a raccoon or squirrel decides to gnaw through one of my cable runs.
Ah, the joys of low-income living...
I work in a lab with no windows, and I can't see the clock from my fume hood. On really busy days, my 11:00 watch alarm is the only reason that I remember to eat. I've also had our Validations department calibrate the stopwatch function on my watch using a NIST traceable timer so I can use it as an ISO approved assay timer. I like my watch. Damned if I'd spend 100K+ on one though...
That was the standard for a major (30%) layoff with the company I work for. Most people knew they were gonna get it by day's end because their logins wouldn't work. Some knew it on arrival at the lab because their key-fobs had already been deactivated. You didn't happen to work at a biotech production lab in Cincinnati, did you?
I may not be as technically proficient as a full-time system administrator, but I'd still like to consider myself as one who is "in the know." I've only got one machine in my aresenal that would be classified as 'high end equipment'. The rest are scrapped together franken-systems built from what I could scavenge from the neighbourhood trash, stuff my company was throwing out, and parts collected as donations to my junk heap. Nothing stronger than a PII-233 amongst all of them. Yet I've gotten each of them up and running on some *NIX system, and performing tasks on my home network, (even if it is just as a.txt log dumpster, it still works!) Don't underestimate what can be done with a bunch of seemingly underpowered junk.
Is connecting it via 802.11b really the best idea? Is this thing smart enough in its development cycle to defend itself against a WiFi hijacking? I just get amusing images in my head of someone's robot going on a rampage, knocking over stuff in their house, and some kid with an iPAQ and a waveguide can down the street laughing his ass off.
There's a place here in Cincinnati called Smitty's. The window display in that place is an advertisement for the 'dress code revolution.' Management wants you to wear a suit? Smitty's has 3 piece suits in every neon colour imaginable, with matching mock-alligator shoes to go with 'em. See how long management wants you showing up in a 'corporate dress code' when your suit blinds people from 100 meters.
The labour unions may not kill their own when they screw up, but I'd be willing to argue that the amount withdrawn for 'Union Dues' on members' paychecks would qualify as protection money.
Personally, I just set up a new mail folder for all the mail that I actually want. Then run a few filters, screening the incoming messages against my 'acceptable' list of senders, (friends, family, work, etc...) and toss those into the new folder. I can sort thru the junk in my inbox at my leisure, but all the filtered mail is in the new folder.
I'm not in IT, but I can vouch for some truth to what's said here. I'm in BioTech, and with all of the layoffs and cutbacks in our field (much like what I've seen in IT recently) you've got to watch out for yourself.
The most recent round of layoffs in my lab took out 12% of the tech staff. Those of us that were left noticed that the list of casualties was comprised mostly of the individuals that hung out together all weekend, and had a couple of 'nights out with the crew' during the week.
Maybe it's just where I work, (but I doubt it,) that it seems productivity backslides when co-workers are too close of friends in off hours time.
This isn't to say that you can't be sociable and hang out occaisionally with people you work with. It just seems to hamper work effots when people are involved in making weekend plans when they ought to be concentrating on work.
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Although it's not Tech Support, I work Inside Sales and we're under strict rules not to hang up on a customer. There are certain cases where it is accepted, though: A. Customer asks a laundry list of questions but has shown no intention of purchasing products, even when prompted to place an order. B. Customer is verbally abusive. /hate my second job, need it to pay the bills
The fun of it is that in situation B, I'll just hit transfer and send them to the Customer Care line, where they can't hang up on anyone.
Check your state's laws for mobile scanner legality. I know I've got to be careful when I'm out and about. If I decide to cross the river into Kentucky, I've got to pull my scanner down. They're legal in Ohio, not in Kentucky.
Currently I work in a biological diagnostic production facility. We manufacture testing kits for the diagnosis of enteric and fecal parasites. All the components must be tested in-house for FDA compliance. This means that the labs stink like poo.
Imagine working at a bench setup in a public restroom, and everyone that came in to use the can had an intestinal problem. That's what it's like.
DISH Network, DirecTV, PrimeStar... they all work just fine. I've built a couple of them (one from a DirecTV, one DISH Network) and I was able to get about a 5 mile direct shot with only minimal adjustments.
Now to email my old housemate and see if he saved his 12' Orbit dish when he switched to DirecTV...
As for an actual (albeit non-science) job, I had a friend that worked for a legal firm specializing in class action cases. He was their mailroom/photocopy clerk, and had to make admissable copies of all the evidence used for a court case. One case involved a sanitary napkin manufacturer, and his job involved making photocopies of used maxi-pads (sealed in plastic bags, but still gross) to be submitted as court evidence.
I work in a diagnostics lab that deals with enteric parasites for one of its mainstay products. The in-house testing is done with fecal samples that are from known positive or negative individuals. The samples must be homogenized in a diluent before they are used with the kit. It is one person's unfortunate job to request, and process the samples into a 2 litre specimen master lot. It involves asking our in-house negative patient to crap in a collection container and bring it back to the lab, then taking said sample and placing it in a laboratory mixer (industrial blender) with the diluent, then filtering that mess into a 2L bottle. I'm just glad I work in the isolation lab, where I don't have to smell it.
My wife and I have found a reasonable solution to the problem of paying back student loans. It's sort of our own version of a "permanent deferrment" plan. The loans that she had taken out for college are listed as due for beginning payments in 6 months after she is no longer a full time student. This 6 month time period resets itself if she is a full-time student at any point within those 6 months. Since the loan payments would be more per month than a single quarter of full-time classes once every six months, she just takes a full load of courses twice a year. We pay for the courses, and then only owe the interest payments on the loans. Yeah, the interest is piling up, but until she's gainfully employed we can't really afford the loan payments on top of all our other expenses, so this is a good solution.
I worked at a Kinko's as a second job for a brief stint, and while I'll agree with you on the wages, I can't say as much for the training that most employees receive. The general guidelines that are given to employees are that the self-serve machines are just that: Self-serve. Don't spend a lot of time trying to explain things on the machines. If someone wants a job done, and can't figure it out on the self-serve machines, they can get it done behind the counter. The same rule holds true for the computers. It's part of the self-serve area. Help people only to the extent of not being discourteous, but the copy associates are not there to tell people how to work their email or perform tasks on Photoshop.
The majority of the training goes into learning how to work the supplementary process machines (folders, tape and coil binders, bookletizers, etc.) because those are the large batch jobs that bring in the most money. Very few employees, depending on the location and the shift, will actually know how to set up specialized features on the large DocuCenter machines. Day shifters and second shifters will typically run the small batch jobs that need to get out that day, and leave the rest of the work for the night shift. If you want the job done right, bring it there at 3am for a morning pickup. The night shift is usually only 2 people, many times just one (as was the case when it was my shift) and they need to know how to work everything in the shop.
The computers, however, are not upkept by the individual branch employees. There are regional network engineers who do the initial installation at a branch. After that, there is a Kinko's central hub help desk to take care of any questions that the manager/employees have, and a central station for remote administration of branch networks for a region. The managers are expected to be able to follow a colour coded wall chart in the network closet if they want to move equipment or add machines. Ours was an absolute nightmare. Serious technicolour spaghetti, and totally misconnected according to the wall chart. The managers and employees receive zero training on any network essentials, so don't expect them to know anything about security measures. The manager at the branch I worked at couldn't tell you the difference between a keystroke logger and a timber logger.
For installations where you need to run multiple cables and can't route them internally, those zip ties with the screw-mount ends work really well. I've used those on all my long cable runs in my house, since there's no way I can do internal routing on a plaster over brick wall.
Some people do, some people don't. My wife is a music geek, and sometimes buys a CD just because of the cover art. She's got a cabinet full of records (we don't have a record player) because she likes the art on the albums. There's bunch of those mid 80s - early 90s long CD boxes that she's kept around. For her it's having the visual aspect of the recording that is important. I'm the opposite way: I ripped all my CDs to mp3s, backed 'em up on some CDs and my entertainment server, and sold the originals. Couldn't care about the art or the liner notes or the lyrics sheets. I have my music, I'm happy.
Never mind just *know*ing it, I'm fairly certain that's one of the reasons my wife married me in the first place.
Also depends on what kind of dependants you have. If I was supporting a wife and a kid, for example, I imagine I'd put up with an awful lot before cutting off that income.
True 'nuff for that. I'm experiencing that one first hand right now. No kids, but my wife isn't employed right now due to some recurrent medical disabilities. On a bad day at the lab, I'd love to tell my boss to shove it, and then just walk out. But the lapse in insurance, coupled with the medical bills and lack of employment would be destructive.
Yeah, things may suck at work: Passed over for supervisory promotion, boss treats others' opinions like crap in front of peers, workload is piling up... But with the job market as crappy as it is, I'll stay with my job rather than risking unemployment, loss of insurance, and inability to pay bills.
There are so many things that can be seen as a 'waste of time' that I have learned. Yet I use each one of them, mostly as a relaxation from my everyday hectic schedule.
I could always go to the corner market and buy beer. I'd save myself the time of having to wash and sterilize bottles, measure and cook ingredients, wait on the fermentation, take even more time out to bottle the stuff and clean the fermenter vats... Wow! What a waste of time and effort it is to trudge into my kitchen and spend an hour or two relaxing, knowing that in 2 weeks all my effort will have resulted in nothing more than 40 pints of beer.
I could go to the same store where I can purchase beer, and buy a pack of cigarettes. Instead, I take the scrap leaves (those not purchased at auction) from a friend who has a tobacco farm. I hand mill shred them and roll my own smokes.
There's just a level of appreciation that you can gain for something if you've built/prepared/grown/designed it yourself. Putting it into tech terms: Would you rather get a prebuilt computer package with most of what you want and a lot of what you don't, but you can have it right now... or build a system to your exact specifications with exactly the parts you want/need, except that you'll have to work on it for 3 hours to get it built?
I could be horribly wrong, (and quite often I am,) but I would think that most people that use the term 'hacking' to describe what they do as a pasttime (except maybe for golfers) would have a higher appreciation for something that they took part in building themselves.
Running the cable along the baseboards is the only solution that I have in my present home. It was built in 1912, and the entire construction is plaster over brick. Aside from the ancient electrical wiring that the house was designed with, there's no way to make any nice, neat, internal cabling runs. Even the phone lines are tacked to the top edge of the baseboarding and have external box jacks.
Normally, I'd have no problem with making the long runs in the house up in the ceiling (attic, in my case,) but I don't want to have to go climbing around in the attic every time a raccoon or squirrel decides to gnaw through one of my cable runs.
Ah, the joys of low-income living...
I work in a lab with no windows, and I can't see the clock from my fume hood. On really busy days, my 11:00 watch alarm is the only reason that I remember to eat. I've also had our Validations department calibrate the stopwatch function on my watch using a NIST traceable timer so I can use it as an ISO approved assay timer. I like my watch.
Damned if I'd spend 100K+ on one though...
That was the standard for a major (30%) layoff with the company I work for. Most people knew they were gonna get it by day's end because their logins wouldn't work. Some knew it on arrival at the lab because their key-fobs had already been deactivated.
You didn't happen to work at a biotech production lab in Cincinnati, did you?
I may not be as technically proficient as a full-time system administrator, but I'd still like to consider myself as one who is "in the know." I've only got one machine in my aresenal that would be classified as 'high end equipment'. The rest are scrapped together franken-systems built from what I could scavenge from the neighbourhood trash, stuff my company was throwing out, and parts collected as donations to my junk heap. Nothing stronger than a PII-233 amongst all of them. Yet I've gotten each of them up and running on some *NIX system, and performing tasks on my home network, (even if it is just as a .txt log dumpster, it still works!) Don't underestimate what can be done with a bunch of seemingly underpowered junk.
Is connecting it via 802.11b really the best idea? Is this thing smart enough in its development cycle to defend itself against a WiFi hijacking? I just get amusing images in my head of someone's robot going on a rampage, knocking over stuff in their house, and some kid with an iPAQ and a waveguide can down the street laughing his ass off.
There's a place here in Cincinnati called Smitty's. The window display in that place is an advertisement for the 'dress code revolution.' Management wants you to wear a suit? Smitty's has 3 piece suits in every neon colour imaginable, with matching mock-alligator shoes to go with 'em. See how long management wants you showing up in a 'corporate dress code' when your suit blinds people from 100 meters.
The labour unions may not kill their own when they screw up, but I'd be willing to argue that the amount withdrawn for 'Union Dues' on members' paychecks would qualify as protection money.
Personally, I just set up a new mail folder for all the mail that I actually want. Then run a few filters, screening the incoming messages against my 'acceptable' list of senders, (friends, family, work, etc...) and toss those into the new folder. I can sort thru the junk in my inbox at my leisure, but all the filtered mail is in the new folder.
I'm not in IT, but I can vouch for some truth to what's said here. I'm in BioTech, and with all of the layoffs and cutbacks in our field (much like what I've seen in IT recently) you've got to watch out for yourself.
The most recent round of layoffs in my lab took out 12% of the tech staff. Those of us that were left noticed that the list of casualties was comprised mostly of the individuals that hung out together all weekend, and had a couple of 'nights out with the crew' during the week.
Maybe it's just where I work, (but I doubt it,) that it seems productivity backslides when co-workers are too close of friends in off hours time.
This isn't to say that you can't be sociable and hang out occaisionally with people you work with. It just seems to hamper work effots when people are involved in making weekend plans when they ought to be concentrating on work.