The link to the HP "Service Enhancement" (gotta love marketing) saved my butt. I had a DV2000 laptop do exactly this, just a week or so after reading this article on The Consumerist.
I called HP and, after convincing the tech support guy that removing Vista and installing XP on the laptop did NOT cause the problem, sent it off for repairs in the middle of June. I was given a 2 week time period for it to be finished.
After a week and a half they sent me an e-mail saying that parts were on order and it might be another week. So July 8th was the new date.
After the 9th I called HP again and again was told parts were still on order. I was given a new date of July 22nd! I e-mailed HP's CEO and was contacted a few days later. HP said that they had been authorized to replace this series of laptop and asked me to fax in the specs from the broken one, which I did. About 2 weeks later a laptop was shipped to my old address (after having given HP the new one on 3 occasions: when I first called tech support, when I e-mailed the CEO, and when the case manager contacted me).
The laptop arrived and so far the only thing that doesn't work is DVD burning. Sure, it gets about 92% done, then dies. I've given up though and decided to just not buy HP products anymore.
To those who are having the problems mentioned for HP I strongly suggest sending an e-mail to Mark Hurd, the CEO. He doesn't write back personally obviously but someone contacted me just a day or two later.
It's just too bad HP has come to this (whether it's nVidia's fault or not is open to debate) but after an issue arises it is up to the manufacturer to take responsibility for their products. Man, I remember the days of HP meaning quality, the 2, 3, 4, and 5 series of laser printers were slow, sure, but they were steel and lasted forever. Now they sell these plastic pieces of crap that die after a year and, when contacted, all HP will do is give you $50 off of a new one. Wow, did Carly destroy HP or what?
I am actually experiencing a climb through the helpdesk system, albeit with 2 different companies.
I started out as a workstation helpdesk jockey, driving from school to school doing basic workstation, network, and server duties. Nothing too fancy, just repairing older PIIs and PIIIs, adding users into a Novell environment, and patching/unpatching ports as needed. The nice side was being able to drive locally, get reimbursed for mileage at a decent rate, and getting close to the staff members and faculty at each of the 5 schools I had. The downsides were the two inept helpdesk managers (one who had an inferiority complex coupled with a bad Chinese accent that no one could understand).
Their manager was even more inept. Imagine an entomologist who couldn't find work in his field so he joined IT management. He loved bugs and he would have made a damned fine entomologist given a chance, but his IT skills were pretty bad and his interpersonal skills were even worse.
I left the school district after a year and a half after I got a position as a helpdesk manager for higher education. The helpdesk was fairly new and I was given free reign to do what I needed to do to make it better. For my first year and a half things were great - desktop and phone support were being handled well and the network admin decided to show me the ropes of Active Directory. I first started out with DHCP and printer setups with static IPs, then as I progressed I started doing rights assignments and creating shares on our network for people. Things were handled very well - a call to the helpdesk was generally resolved within a few minutes.
Then, one afternoon, someone decided that the giant beast that comprised a different aspect of local higher education thought the state had a similar mission as us and, as a cost-savings measure that has yet to save any costs, we were merged with The Beast. The Beast had a relatively enterprisey helpdesk system (read: unempowered and unknowledgeable), a server admin (Mordak) with an ego that would allow no-one access to anything, a policy that completely disabled DHCP within the building, thus crippling customer service and support when a machine was upgraded or a NIC was replaced (because, of course, I could not add a static IP to their system. I might make a mistake).
The Beast, under the direction of a new CIO, has now a semi-fixed ITIL-based desk being built now. Their helpdesk is taking over my roles and I am being promoted (with due difficulty, jealousy, and lack of guidance) to manage an new helpdesk that focuses simply on our online program and, at the same time, manage the file server and LAN at our soon-to-be own building. None of this happened without a fight from me however: The stigma of 'helpdesk manager' simply meant (to these feeble IT folk) that I could never be trusted to do anything important as, say, order and manage a file server, construct a basic LAN, work with outside contractors and electricians, and construct a small but well-designed server room. No, instead, they (including the CIO and the Mordak wanna-be) tried to block the acquisition of a server and said that all of the servers we'd need should be centralized and that they'd handle everything. This coming from the people who left a critical enterprise web server offline for an entire weekend despite knowing about the issue on Friday! After the server situation was sorted out I ams till expected to adhere to 'guidelines' that are specifically directed at us and not at the other campuses we have spread across the state. I think, to finally make the transition, I'll need to be out of sight (site), out of mind.
My point is, if you are in a helpdesk position and you want to grow out of it, be prepared to stand up for what you need and what you know. IT folks, for some reason, get very territorial and hate to see any plebe who has actually talked to customers and displayed human empathy go into a world dominated by crass badasses who'd rather lock themselves in a server room and caress a Cisco 6505 all day. I am in the middle of all of this now and I can't wait to just be done with it and do my new job without constant harassment and degradation.
A few other minor observations - it won't install any add-ons unless they update securely. So far the only add-ons I've been able to install successfully are GMail Notifier and Adblock Plus. I'm not complaining (since it is a beta release specifically for developers and testers). I just can't wait for development and support of my favorite add-ons to take place!
One nice thing I noticed is that if you are installing add-ons from a site that is not in the exceptions list you can just accept it via the title bar now instead of having to open the settings, add the site, reload it, and wait again.
When I was working for a small Midwestern university as a network consultant we had a lab machine disappear. It would seem that, the last time the hardware was placed back in the lab, another consultant forgot to run the security cable through the PC's security plate.
At this particular university the networking equipment we had (DEC repeaters) didn't have the subnetting capabilities to split nthe "business" side of the network from the "student" side of the network. Thus, until the network equipment was to be upgraded over the following summer, students were required to have an Intel, 3Com, or Xircom NICs to reduce the chance of some off-brand card storming the network. Of course, this rule was unpopular with students since these cards tended to cost a bit more than the PowerPipes cards available at Best Buy's bargain bin for $4.99. We kept track of the MAC addresses of students' cards to avoid the "Hey, let me borrow your MAC address" and also had a table that we updated with the first 3 pairs of octets in the MAC address. So, to say we enforced this policy with due diligence is an understatement.
The machines we had for the people who conducted university business were also equipped with 3Com cards. We always inventoried these machines upon arrival and saved the MAC addresses in the database as well to keep people from borrowing one from the lab machines. Yes, the process was annoying and, as I said, it was eliminated once the network equipment was replaced.
My boss, the helpdesk manager, tried in vain to search the repeaters for the missing lab machine's MAC address. Finally, one Friday about 2 weeks after the computer disappeared we decided to try again on a lark.
Bingo! We found the machine coming off of a port in one of the residence halls. A quick call to the university police and we were on our way over to the room where the MAC address was currently being used.
The guy who was in the room at the time denied having stolen anything and granted the officer permission to search. The officer gave me the go-ahead to open the student's machine and, lo and behold, there was the NIC with our MAC address on it (3Com does an excellent job of putting it top-center for easy reference). The student said that he purchased the card from a store and that it was his and that this whole thing was a huge misunderstanding...
...right up until the point where we broke out the UV light and found our university's security stamp on about 3 places on the card.
After that the student was arrested on the spot. Last I heard he was expelled and was ordered to pay back the $1500 cost of the machine (he had taken a few choice parts and tossed the rest. It was a Gateway; I would have done the same).
It just goes to show that even the smart ones get caught from time to time. If you're going to steal technology it's probably best to get the hell out of dodge after doing so and NOT call tech support or, in this case, plus a stolen NIC into the network.
We have a chance to stop this disease, or at least cut it down by quite a bit. Why the hell is this an issue?
When the polio vaccine came out were we all wanting to go out and get infected with polio? Of course not! People celebrated the end of a debilitating disease. Why can't we see it like that now?
Oh yeah, that's right. Polio didn't involve sex. And God knows anyone who has sex without procreation in mind is just plain wrong.
Guys, it's the 21st century. Shouldn't we be past this shit?
Let's get real. This is life, not religion. If religion cured warts I'd be all for it.
I also run a small help desk (me & 5 students) that has a lot of turnover (can't keep the students forever) and very few overlapping shifts. What this means is that automation has become our friend. Help the users to create their own tickets and it'll save your staff a bunch of time.
We do this in several ways:
-E-mailing our help desk opens a ticket and fills in as much detail as it can from the e-mail address. It attempts an AD lookup as well if the domain is ours.
-Web forms. We have a couple of.asp scripts in place on our web server. One of these scripts is hooked into AD and sits on the Outlook Web Access login page. If someone needs help, their name/dept/phone/etc is all filled in for them and all they have to do is say what's not working. This keeps the person from having to fill in too much (which means they'll sometimes spend a bit more time on details rather than just saying "e-mail don't work."), it gives us accurate information, and it's conveniently located right below the login box!
-Calls are harder, of course, but I always ask my staff what ticket they are working on. If I get a blank look, they go back and go create a ticket, then resume work.
-Desk stop-bys. If possible I ask people in the offices to just create a ticket and we'll pick it up from there. If they e-mail me or a staff member directly, I'll open one for them if I have time, otherwise I ask them to do it.
-Voicemails are sent to us by our phone system as e-mails which, when sent to the desk, open their own ticket. So not only is the entire VM archived, but it is accessible even if it gets deleted or is purged from VM after 15 days. Plus we can send the VM ticket to others as necessary.
We use Numara Footprints for our system and I like it. It's pretty easy to use, customizable, and pretty expandable.
My final thought to all of this is to embrace automation. Anytime a computer or another person can make a ticket for you saves you a bit of time (excluding those with the "it doesn't work" phrase in the details).
...in Guelph Canada. I'm typing this in a session about the new features in 8.1:)
The CEO of D2L, John Baker, wrote this LMS while a grad student enrolled at the University of Guelph in Ontario Canada. The facts scream "prior art" and Blackboard really has no case IMHO. I think the strategy here, as John put it, is to sue D2L to a point where it'd be in D2L's best interest to avoid expensive litigation and just get taken over by Blackboard. The hidden backstory here is that Blackboard wants so badly to take over D2L but D2L doesn't want any part of that. So Blackboard takes the other, more scenic route: sue them into oblivion.
I can almost guarantee that Blackboard will lose this suit. The fact that D2L existed before Blackboard was even a gleam in the eye of its writer is 98% of the case.
In any way, John was so confident about his ability to win this suit he gave us all extra drink tickets!:)
...but I do applaud their willingness to at least show a hint of taking responsiblity for these problems. If there is a hint of them refusing to help people affected by this condition I haven't seen it yet, not out of ignorance but for not Googling it.
Today I got a letter in the mail from my old insurance agency who is being sued in a class-action lawsuit regarding discrimination based on credit reports against the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Of course, the class action settlement included the phrase "xxx is admitting no wrongdoing in this case..." Maybe there wasn't any wrongdoing; I don't know. But this damned phrase has become so commonplace it was the first sentence I looked for when opening the letter with the details of the settlement.
For once I'd like to see someone step up and take responsibility. The problem is these people read the same headlines I do every day in which some dumbass can sue for whatever reason they deem applies to them and win millions in a settlement.
We can't have companies exposing themselves to such litigation (excepting that there is no real negligence there) and getting sued into obliion. But just once I want to see a company take the high road and say "Yeah, we fucked up. Sorry. What can we do to make it better?"
Dell gets a smiley face in my daily repoirt card for this.
When IE doesn't work with SSL anymore, when the computer will only start in Safe Mode, when a repair installation doesn't work, when the customer has deleted important system files, when a machine has so much "trialware" from the factory, when a machine needs a new hard drive, when the last Windows Update made Windows all but unoperational, when System Restore is malfunctioning, when the spyware and malware is so piled on the anti-spyware programs crash, when the user has a particularly bad virus that has already caused a significant amount of damage to files...
There are PLENTY of times when reformatting and reinstalling are required. You obviously haven't done any real desktop support on Windows systems lately.
Well let's try a reasonable business price then. Paying $500 for Windows and Office to a man who has billions of dollars at his disposal is ludicrous. $300 for writing PDF files is insane. Paying $1,000 for a code to have 25 more users log on to a server is just nuts.
I will continue to dismiss people who cry about piracy and the companies that then raise the prices. Yes, I know about the laws of supply and demand, but I liken it to gas prices - we gotta pay what is asked in order to get along.
I will pay $50 for a well-written game with good graphics. I will NOT pay for an OS that has 2 service packs AND 55 additional updates in order to run securely. Maybe you will, maybe some programmer will change his mind and become a gardner. All I know is that price models are not fair to people in the software industry and it's getting crazier. Wait til the Microsoft subscription OS. I bet it will flop hard core because people don't want to have to pay for buggy or featureless code. It's just that simple, but it seems a lot of people just don't get it.
...is to work closely with people who already know the stuff. Let me explain:
I went to college for psychology and criminal justice. Since I was paying my own way, I went around looking for jobs. I tinkered in PCs before and was willing to learn anything, so I applied for and got accepted to a job with our ResNet (Residence Hall Network) department. All I knew at that point was installing Windows, some network stuff, and other odds and ends with computers.
We had a small team, probably 14 students in total and had a non-techie but very nice and open supervisor. We were given specific areas to work in given our strengths but there was absolutely no problem with teaming up to learn something new.
When one of the students left, leaving a half-finished VB project, I decided to try and tackle it. Working closely with my friend Sean, we worked out what was done and what needed to be done. Any resources I needed were supplied by other staff members or my gracious supervisor. In the end, I learned a whole new programming language (albeit, not the one that many Slashdot geeks are friends with). I worked with our web dev guy to try and learn PHP and Perl (I failed miserably) and worked with another guy to learn about imaging. I talked with the university's network admin about how routing worked, Novell stuff, whatever.
In the end I picked up so much that I decided to pursue a career in IT. Now I am a helpdesk manager, I love my job, and I try and emulate my old supervisor as much as possible. I learn a lot from my students (my latest challenge is ASP) and I try and teach them what I know in return.
Just like the OSS community I feel bound to take what I've been given and pass it on to others. I'm not certain what your particular situation is, but I think surrounding yourself with people who know the technology, languages, or protocols goes a long way to staking out your own learning experince.
Don't be afraid to hit the local library either. They usually have the latest books (for some reason the latest PHP/MySQL book is always available!) Ask a lot of questions, and don't be afraid to set up a sandbox and just play. Last bit of advice: Don't get frustrated. I can recall many times when I was against a wall with some weird configuration problem or what have you only to find the solution after using Google or taking a walk.
To all of the people who complain about the stunts, the immaturity, the panic, the idiotic ideas...lighten up!
I hate to generalize (Ok, I love it, but pretend for a second I don't) but our society today needs some humor. We hear "terrorist this" and "gas prices that" and "x troops killed today in Iraq by insurgents..." every day. We seem so drenched in sadness and tragedy sometimes we forget what we are: free!
As long as a flash mob/stunt doesn't injure innocent bystanders and cause undue distress to officials I don't see the harm. The way that these people carry out "missions" with their "agents" is harmless. I admit that there is no screening process and no, I wouldn't want to be a manager on duty that day at Best Buy. But these stunts are things that you can look back upon 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months, or 2 years later and grin. We need humor! I give my props to the people who have the audacity to go out there, do something very strange while surreptitiously documenting it, and post it for the rest of us to enjoy later! Way to go!
In a world filld with bad news, depressing ideas, and bad people, it's enlightening to smile at the deeds of others without having read it on Fark or the Darwin Awards.
I know I enjoyed the missions (the pantsless ones are priceless!) and I think that they have a great way of making people laugh. If you don't enjoy, that's fine. I don't get British humor and I hate Monty Python. Some humor isn't for everybody. But lighten up!
This reminds me of the security company commercial where the guy is feeling around his bald head for a strand of hair to login to his laptop.
To be honest I'd rather just pay a $500 deductible for the damned thing when it gets stolen than have to put up with a 15 minute ritual to open the door and turn the car on. Besides. what's to keep someone from ignoring those kinds of cars and just taking my neighbor's '78 Chevy Malibu Classic?
Before I found Real Alternative and its necessary companion Media Player Classic I stayed far, far away from anything that used Real Player. I didn't want messages about Brittney Spears in my system tray, I didn't want to click 4 different links to bypass their premium player, and I certainly shied away from the massive load time.
I found out about it only after Click and Clackswitched back to Real Player's format after having temporarily using Windows Media Player. Their reasoning was similar to mine; many older folks were having trouble locating the free Real Player. Despite the fact that Tom and Rau were able to make nice with Real Networks, I was never able to. But, thanks to my friend Sean, I shall never have to go through 4 different option menus to disable a message center again.
Besides, the Real Alternative codec seems better able to stream than Real's own player software. I assume the codec is just the "guts" of the player with no fluff...perhaps all of the extra system resources are being used by, oh, the message center checking on the latest dirt about TomKat or something.
CN is doing a huge thing here for their fans. I think it's great that they are doing this for their fans. Just goes to show that some great ideas DO, in fact, make it to reality.
Adult Swim is (arguably) the best thing that CN is noted for, and by doing this they are making themselves a wider audience. Good for business, good for fans. Good job guys!
Many of her pieces would be a perfect gift for...that cute girl in the IT department....
Somehow I think that giving a cute girl (whether she works in an IT department or not) a capacitor necklace would make for a pretty awkward moment. Especially if they weren't totally discharged....
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I agree with that. The 4200/4300 series we have are, I think, the last palatable printers that HP has released.
I called HP and, after convincing the tech support guy that removing Vista and installing XP on the laptop did NOT cause the problem, sent it off for repairs in the middle of June. I was given a 2 week time period for it to be finished.
After a week and a half they sent me an e-mail saying that parts were on order and it might be another week. So July 8th was the new date.
After the 9th I called HP again and again was told parts were still on order. I was given a new date of July 22nd! I e-mailed HP's CEO and was contacted a few days later. HP said that they had been authorized to replace this series of laptop and asked me to fax in the specs from the broken one, which I did. About 2 weeks later a laptop was shipped to my old address (after having given HP the new one on 3 occasions: when I first called tech support, when I e-mailed the CEO, and when the case manager contacted me).
The laptop arrived and so far the only thing that doesn't work is DVD burning. Sure, it gets about 92% done, then dies. I've given up though and decided to just not buy HP products anymore.
To those who are having the problems mentioned for HP I strongly suggest sending an e-mail to Mark Hurd, the CEO. He doesn't write back personally obviously but someone contacted me just a day or two later.
It's just too bad HP has come to this (whether it's nVidia's fault or not is open to debate) but after an issue arises it is up to the manufacturer to take responsibility for their products. Man, I remember the days of HP meaning quality, the 2, 3, 4, and 5 series of laser printers were slow, sure, but they were steel and lasted forever. Now they sell these plastic pieces of crap that die after a year and, when contacted, all HP will do is give you $50 off of a new one. Wow, did Carly destroy HP or what?
I started out as a workstation helpdesk jockey, driving from school to school doing basic workstation, network, and server duties. Nothing too fancy, just repairing older PIIs and PIIIs, adding users into a Novell environment, and patching/unpatching ports as needed. The nice side was being able to drive locally, get reimbursed for mileage at a decent rate, and getting close to the staff members and faculty at each of the 5 schools I had. The downsides were the two inept helpdesk managers (one who had an inferiority complex coupled with a bad Chinese accent that no one could understand).
Their manager was even more inept. Imagine an entomologist who couldn't find work in his field so he joined IT management. He loved bugs and he would have made a damned fine entomologist given a chance, but his IT skills were pretty bad and his interpersonal skills were even worse.
I left the school district after a year and a half after I got a position as a helpdesk manager for higher education. The helpdesk was fairly new and I was given free reign to do what I needed to do to make it better. For my first year and a half things were great - desktop and phone support were being handled well and the network admin decided to show me the ropes of Active Directory. I first started out with DHCP and printer setups with static IPs, then as I progressed I started doing rights assignments and creating shares on our network for people. Things were handled very well - a call to the helpdesk was generally resolved within a few minutes.
Then, one afternoon, someone decided that the giant beast that comprised a different aspect of local higher education thought the state had a similar mission as us and, as a cost-savings measure that has yet to save any costs, we were merged with The Beast. The Beast had a relatively enterprisey helpdesk system (read: unempowered and unknowledgeable), a server admin (Mordak) with an ego that would allow no-one access to anything, a policy that completely disabled DHCP within the building, thus crippling customer service and support when a machine was upgraded or a NIC was replaced (because, of course, I could not add a static IP to their system. I might make a mistake).
The Beast, under the direction of a new CIO, has now a semi-fixed ITIL-based desk being built now. Their helpdesk is taking over my roles and I am being promoted (with due difficulty, jealousy, and lack of guidance) to manage an new helpdesk that focuses simply on our online program and, at the same time, manage the file server and LAN at our soon-to-be own building. None of this happened without a fight from me however: The stigma of 'helpdesk manager' simply meant (to these feeble IT folk) that I could never be trusted to do anything important as, say, order and manage a file server, construct a basic LAN, work with outside contractors and electricians, and construct a small but well-designed server room. No, instead, they (including the CIO and the Mordak wanna-be) tried to block the acquisition of a server and said that all of the servers we'd need should be centralized and that they'd handle everything. This coming from the people who left a critical enterprise web server offline for an entire weekend despite knowing about the issue on Friday! After the server situation was sorted out I ams till expected to adhere to 'guidelines' that are specifically directed at us and not at the other campuses we have spread across the state. I think, to finally make the transition, I'll need to be out of sight (site), out of mind.
My point is, if you are in a helpdesk position and you want to grow out of it, be prepared to stand up for what you need and what you know. IT folks, for some reason, get very territorial and hate to see any plebe who has actually talked to customers and displayed human empathy go into a world dominated by crass badasses who'd rather lock themselves in a server room and caress a Cisco 6505 all day. I am in the middle of all of this now and I can't wait to just be done with it and do my new job without constant harassment and degradation.
Community Owned Fiber Network, or COFN (coffin) for short.
It fits because it'll be the death of you!
YMMV - I was not a marketing major.
It seems Firefox 3 also passes the Acid2 test.
A few other minor observations - it won't install any add-ons unless they update securely. So far the only add-ons I've been able to install successfully are GMail Notifier and Adblock Plus. I'm not complaining (since it is a beta release specifically for developers and testers). I just can't wait for development and support of my favorite add-ons to take place!
One nice thing I noticed is that if you are installing add-ons from a site that is not in the exceptions list you can just accept it via the title bar now instead of having to open the settings, add the site, reload it, and wait again.
So far I'm impressed! It's fast and smart.
At this particular university the networking equipment we had (DEC repeaters) didn't have the subnetting capabilities to split nthe "business" side of the network from the "student" side of the network. Thus, until the network equipment was to be upgraded over the following summer, students were required to have an Intel, 3Com, or Xircom NICs to reduce the chance of some off-brand card storming the network. Of course, this rule was unpopular with students since these cards tended to cost a bit more than the PowerPipes cards available at Best Buy's bargain bin for $4.99. We kept track of the MAC addresses of students' cards to avoid the "Hey, let me borrow your MAC address" and also had a table that we updated with the first 3 pairs of octets in the MAC address. So, to say we enforced this policy with due diligence is an understatement.
The machines we had for the people who conducted university business were also equipped with 3Com cards. We always inventoried these machines upon arrival and saved the MAC addresses in the database as well to keep people from borrowing one from the lab machines. Yes, the process was annoying and, as I said, it was eliminated once the network equipment was replaced.
My boss, the helpdesk manager, tried in vain to search the repeaters for the missing lab machine's MAC address. Finally, one Friday about 2 weeks after the computer disappeared we decided to try again on a lark.
Bingo! We found the machine coming off of a port in one of the residence halls. A quick call to the university police and we were on our way over to the room where the MAC address was currently being used.
The guy who was in the room at the time denied having stolen anything and granted the officer permission to search. The officer gave me the go-ahead to open the student's machine and, lo and behold, there was the NIC with our MAC address on it (3Com does an excellent job of putting it top-center for easy reference). The student said that he purchased the card from a store and that it was his and that this whole thing was a huge misunderstanding...
After that the student was arrested on the spot. Last I heard he was expelled and was ordered to pay back the $1500 cost of the machine (he had taken a few choice parts and tossed the rest. It was a Gateway; I would have done the same).
It just goes to show that even the smart ones get caught from time to time. If you're going to steal technology it's probably best to get the hell out of dodge after doing so and NOT call tech support or, in this case, plus a stolen NIC into the network.
"The people" have been infected with HPV for a long while now. In fact, the CDC says 80% of women will be infected by age 50.
That's an epidemic.
We have a chance to stop this disease, or at least cut it down by quite a bit. Why the hell is this an issue?
When the polio vaccine came out were we all wanting to go out and get infected with polio? Of course not! People celebrated the end of a debilitating disease. Why can't we see it like that now?
Oh yeah, that's right. Polio didn't involve sex. And God knows anyone who has sex without procreation in mind is just plain wrong.
Guys, it's the 21st century. Shouldn't we be past this shit?
Let's get real. This is life, not religion. If religion cured warts I'd be all for it.
I can't agree with this more.
.asp scripts in place on our web server. One of these scripts is hooked into AD and sits on the Outlook Web Access login page. If someone needs help, their name/dept/phone/etc is all filled in for them and all they have to do is say what's not working. This keeps the person from having to fill in too much (which means they'll sometimes spend a bit more time on details rather than just saying "e-mail don't work."), it gives us accurate information, and it's conveniently located right below the login box!
I also run a small help desk (me & 5 students) that has a lot of turnover (can't keep the students forever) and very few overlapping shifts. What this means is that automation has become our friend. Help the users to create their own tickets and it'll save your staff a bunch of time.
We do this in several ways:
-E-mailing our help desk opens a ticket and fills in as much detail as it can from the e-mail address. It attempts an AD lookup as well if the domain is ours.
-Web forms. We have a couple of
-Calls are harder, of course, but I always ask my staff what ticket they are working on. If I get a blank look, they go back and go create a ticket, then resume work.
-Desk stop-bys. If possible I ask people in the offices to just create a ticket and we'll pick it up from there. If they e-mail me or a staff member directly, I'll open one for them if I have time, otherwise I ask them to do it.
-Voicemails are sent to us by our phone system as e-mails which, when sent to the desk, open their own ticket. So not only is the entire VM archived, but it is accessible even if it gets deleted or is purged from VM after 15 days. Plus we can send the VM ticket to others as necessary.
We use Numara Footprints for our system and I like it. It's pretty easy to use, customizable, and pretty expandable.
My final thought to all of this is to embrace automation. Anytime a computer or another person can make a ticket for you saves you a bit of time (excluding those with the "it doesn't work" phrase in the details).
Hope that helps!
...in Guelph Canada. I'm typing this in a session about the new features in 8.1 :)
:)
The CEO of D2L, John Baker, wrote this LMS while a grad student enrolled at the University of Guelph in Ontario Canada. The facts scream "prior art" and Blackboard really has no case IMHO. I think the strategy here, as John put it, is to sue D2L to a point where it'd be in D2L's best interest to avoid expensive litigation and just get taken over by Blackboard. The hidden backstory here is that Blackboard wants so badly to take over D2L but D2L doesn't want any part of that. So Blackboard takes the other, more scenic route: sue them into oblivion.
I can almost guarantee that Blackboard will lose this suit. The fact that D2L existed before Blackboard was even a gleam in the eye of its writer is 98% of the case.
In any way, John was so confident about his ability to win this suit he gave us all extra drink tickets!
...but I do applaud their willingness to at least show a hint of taking responsiblity for these problems. If there is a hint of them refusing to help people affected by this condition I haven't seen it yet, not out of ignorance but for not Googling it.
Today I got a letter in the mail from my old insurance agency who is being sued in a class-action lawsuit regarding discrimination based on credit reports against the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Of course, the class action settlement included the phrase "xxx is admitting no wrongdoing in this case..." Maybe there wasn't any wrongdoing; I don't know. But this damned phrase has become so commonplace it was the first sentence I looked for when opening the letter with the details of the settlement.
For once I'd like to see someone step up and take responsibility. The problem is these people read the same headlines I do every day in which some dumbass can sue for whatever reason they deem applies to them and win millions in a settlement.
We can't have companies exposing themselves to such litigation (excepting that there is no real negligence there) and getting sued into obliion. But just once I want to see a company take the high road and say "Yeah, we fucked up. Sorry. What can we do to make it better?"
Dell gets a smiley face in my daily repoirt card for this.
Try THAT on a sound stage in a desert!!
Beautiful video. I imagine the part after it separates would be awesome drunk.
When IE doesn't work with SSL anymore, when the computer will only start in Safe Mode, when a repair installation doesn't work, when the customer has deleted important system files, when a machine has so much "trialware" from the factory, when a machine needs a new hard drive, when the last Windows Update made Windows all but unoperational, when System Restore is malfunctioning, when the spyware and malware is so piled on the anti-spyware programs crash, when the user has a particularly bad virus that has already caused a significant amount of damage to files...
There are PLENTY of times when reformatting and reinstalling are required. You obviously haven't done any real desktop support on Windows systems lately.
Well let's try a reasonable business price then. Paying $500 for Windows and Office to a man who has billions of dollars at his disposal is ludicrous. $300 for writing PDF files is insane. Paying $1,000 for a code to have 25 more users log on to a server is just nuts.
I will continue to dismiss people who cry about piracy and the companies that then raise the prices. Yes, I know about the laws of supply and demand, but I liken it to gas prices - we gotta pay what is asked in order to get along.
I will pay $50 for a well-written game with good graphics. I will NOT pay for an OS that has 2 service packs AND 55 additional updates in order to run securely. Maybe you will, maybe some programmer will change his mind and become a gardner. All I know is that price models are not fair to people in the software industry and it's getting crazier. Wait til the Microsoft subscription OS. I bet it will flop hard core because people don't want to have to pay for buggy or featureless code. It's just that simple, but it seems a lot of people just don't get it.
I went to college for psychology and criminal justice. Since I was paying my own way, I went around looking for jobs. I tinkered in PCs before and was willing to learn anything, so I applied for and got accepted to a job with our ResNet (Residence Hall Network) department. All I knew at that point was installing Windows, some network stuff, and other odds and ends with computers.
We had a small team, probably 14 students in total and had a non-techie but very nice and open supervisor. We were given specific areas to work in given our strengths but there was absolutely no problem with teaming up to learn something new.
When one of the students left, leaving a half-finished VB project, I decided to try and tackle it. Working closely with my friend Sean, we worked out what was done and what needed to be done. Any resources I needed were supplied by other staff members or my gracious supervisor. In the end, I learned a whole new programming language (albeit, not the one that many Slashdot geeks are friends with). I worked with our web dev guy to try and learn PHP and Perl (I failed miserably) and worked with another guy to learn about imaging. I talked with the university's network admin about how routing worked, Novell stuff, whatever.
In the end I picked up so much that I decided to pursue a career in IT. Now I am a helpdesk manager, I love my job, and I try and emulate my old supervisor as much as possible. I learn a lot from my students (my latest challenge is ASP) and I try and teach them what I know in return.
Just like the OSS community I feel bound to take what I've been given and pass it on to others. I'm not certain what your particular situation is, but I think surrounding yourself with people who know the technology, languages, or protocols goes a long way to staking out your own learning experince.
Don't be afraid to hit the local library either. They usually have the latest books (for some reason the latest PHP/MySQL book is always available!) Ask a lot of questions, and don't be afraid to set up a sandbox and just play. Last bit of advice: Don't get frustrated. I can recall many times when I was against a wall with some weird configuration problem or what have you only to find the solution after using Google or taking a walk.
Good luck!
To all of the people who complain about the stunts, the immaturity, the panic, the idiotic ideas...lighten up!
I hate to generalize (Ok, I love it, but pretend for a second I don't) but our society today needs some humor. We hear "terrorist this" and "gas prices that" and "x troops killed today in Iraq by insurgents..." every day. We seem so drenched in sadness and tragedy sometimes we forget what we are: free!
As long as a flash mob/stunt doesn't injure innocent bystanders and cause undue distress to officials I don't see the harm. The way that these people carry out "missions" with their "agents" is harmless. I admit that there is no screening process and no, I wouldn't want to be a manager on duty that day at Best Buy. But these stunts are things that you can look back upon 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months, or 2 years later and grin. We need humor! I give my props to the people who have the audacity to go out there, do something very strange while surreptitiously documenting it, and post it for the rest of us to enjoy later! Way to go!
In a world filld with bad news, depressing ideas, and bad people, it's enlightening to smile at the deeds of others without having read it on Fark or the Darwin Awards.
I know I enjoyed the missions (the pantsless ones are priceless!) and I think that they have a great way of making people laugh. If you don't enjoy, that's fine. I don't get British humor and I hate Monty Python. Some humor isn't for everybody. But lighten up!
This reminds me of the security company commercial where the guy is feeling around his bald head for a strand of hair to login to his laptop.
To be honest I'd rather just pay a $500 deductible for the damned thing when it gets stolen than have to put up with a 15 minute ritual to open the door and turn the car on. Besides. what's to keep someone from ignoring those kinds of cars and just taking my neighbor's '78 Chevy Malibu Classic?
Besides the obvious, of course...
Before I found Real Alternative and its necessary companion Media Player Classic I stayed far, far away from anything that used Real Player. I didn't want messages about Brittney Spears in my system tray, I didn't want to click 4 different links to bypass their premium player, and I certainly shied away from the massive load time.
I found out about it only after Click and Clack switched back to Real Player's format after having temporarily using Windows Media Player. Their reasoning was similar to mine; many older folks were having trouble locating the free Real Player. Despite the fact that Tom and Rau were able to make nice with Real Networks, I was never able to. But, thanks to my friend Sean, I shall never have to go through 4 different option menus to disable a message center again.
Besides, the Real Alternative codec seems better able to stream than Real's own player software. I assume the codec is just the "guts" of the player with no fluff...perhaps all of the extra system resources are being used by, oh, the message center checking on the latest dirt about TomKat or something.
Adult Swim is (arguably) the best thing that CN is noted for, and by doing this they are making themselves a wider audience. Good for business, good for fans. Good job guys!
Anonymous FTP access. Saves the hacker a lot of time and trouble, ya know?
Don't forget the perfect pick-up lines when giving your "cute IT girl" her jewelry:
"I want to give you a RAM."
"Can I discharge on you...with my big capacitor?"
"IDE like to get into that belt. Get it? IDE?"
"I'll help you flux that capacitor."
"Here's some RAM so you can always remember me. Yup, all 2 megs of it."
"Hey baby, wanna create some ESD and ruin a few chips? (wink wink)"
"I like it when you talk SCSI."
"I wanna C my P on U."
Ok, I'll stop....
Uh huh, that's what it wants us to think....
Morse code takes way more talent than I've got. I give the guy props.
"Sup g/f? U can txt all ur homies 2 tell dem wats da haps and wut u waring"
"But..but...Slashdot said it was free comic book day!"