Dear Users… (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people) Part 10 - Page 22

arthwollipot · 4th April 2022, 09:11 PM

"Your business case is not detailed enough. We need to know what you require, what business functions you intend to use it for, and why this needs to be done in this way and not by another already existing method."

"I don't understand. I've already sent that to you."

"The business case you have sent is not detailed enough."

"But I don't know what other business case you are asking for. I've told you what I need it for."

"This request I'm looking at says just 'we need this for procurement'. That is not detailed enough. We need to know what you require, what business functions you intend to use it for, and why this needs to be done in this way and not by another already existing method."

"We just need to have a single phone line set up that we can send out in our communications for the public to call about our procurement process, and so that any members of our team can pick it up."

"There you go, we just need that in writing."

"But I've already sent you that."

"No, what you've sent is 'we need this for procurement'."

"I don't understand what you're asking for."

Norman Alexander · 4th April 2022, 09:41 PM

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

"Your business case is not detailed enough. We need to know what you require, what business functions you intend to use it for, and why this needs to be done in this way and not by another already existing method."

"I don't understand. I've already sent that to you."

"The business case you have sent is not detailed enough."

"But I don't know what other business case you are asking for. I've told you what I need it for."

"This request I'm looking at says just 'we need this for procurement'. That is not detailed enough. We need to know what you require, what business functions you intend to use it for, and why this needs to be done in this way and not by another already existing method."

"We just need to have a single phone line set up that we can send out in our communications for the public to call about our procurement process, and so that any members of our team can pick it up."

"There you go, we just need that in writing."

"But I've already sent you that."

"No, what you've sent is 'we need this for procurement'."

"I don't understand what you're asking for."

Seriously. go sit with this dillbrain in a face-to-face. Make sure they know you spent the time and effort and taxi fare to do that. Offer to answer each and every query they have, provided that at the end of the meeting, your request can proceed unhindered. If they baulk at that then they are just stalling. Call their manager. Tell them you are going to do this.

zooterkin · 5th April 2022, 01:16 AM

Originally Posted by Norman Alexander

Seriously. go sit with this dillbrain in a face-to-face. Make sure they know you spent the time and effort and taxi fare to do that. Offer to answer each and every query they have, provided that at the end of the meeting, your request can proceed unhindered. If they baulk at that then they are just stalling. Call their manager. Tell them you are going to do this.

I think you just called arth a dillbrain.

arthwollipot · 5th April 2022, 01:34 AM

Originally Posted by zooterkin

I think you just called arth a dillbrain.

No, he called the person I was talking to a dillbrain.

zooterkin · 5th April 2022, 02:07 AM

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

No, he called the person I was talking to a dillbrain.

Oh, you're the person requesting the phone? Apologies.

TragicMonkey · 5th April 2022, 06:46 AM

Dear User: I appreciate that some users want to "just look through the data" themselves, but no, I'm not going to export four hundred million records to Excel so you can "browse" it. Think of what you're looking for, what questions you have, and we'll let the computers do the work, okay?

catsmate · 5th April 2022, 08:58 AM

Originally Posted by TragicMonkey

Dear User: I appreciate that some users want to "just look through the data" themselves, but no, I'm not going to export four hundred million records to Excel so you can "browse" it. Think of what you're looking for, what questions you have, and we'll let the computers do the work, okay?

So four hundred worksheets at a million odd rows each? That should be fun....
Why not just use Excel to analyse the data source?

gnome · 5th April 2022, 09:30 AM

Originally Posted by TragicMonkey

Dear User: I appreciate that some users want to "just look through the data" themselves, but no, I'm not going to export four hundred million records to Excel so you can "browse" it. Think of what you're looking for, what questions you have, and we'll let the computers do the work, okay?

Preach it

gnome · 5th April 2022, 09:33 AM

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

"Your business case is not detailed enough. We need to know what you require, what business functions you intend to use it for, and why this needs to be done in this way and not by another already existing method."

"I don't understand. I've already sent that to you."

"The business case you have sent is not detailed enough."

"But I don't know what other business case you are asking for. I've told you what I need it for."

"This request I'm looking at says just 'we need this for procurement'. That is not detailed enough. We need to know what you require, what business functions you intend to use it for, and why this needs to be done in this way and not by another already existing method."

"We just need to have a single phone line set up that we can send out in our communications for the public to call about our procurement process, and so that any members of our team can pick it up."

"There you go, we just need that in writing."

"But I've already sent you that."

"No, what you've sent is 'we need this for procurement'."

"I don't understand what you're asking for."

Along with that, if an organization has a team of people that all use a resource for the same reason, have some standard language established and put it in the onboarding instructions as what should be filled into the request when there's a new person on staff. Otherwise you get "Because my new boss said I needed this to do my job right." (of course, that's not IT's job to write the onboarding instructions)

a_unique_person · 5th April 2022, 04:17 PM

Originally Posted by TragicMonkey

Dear User: I appreciate that some users want to "just look through the data" themselves, but no, I'm not going to export four hundred million records to Excel so you can "browse" it. Think of what you're looking for, what questions you have, and we'll let the computers do the work, okay?

That's what they want, though. They want the whole terabyte database in Excel.

a_unique_person · 5th April 2022, 05:49 PM

Introduce them to power bi.

Little 10 Toes · 5th April 2022, 07:29 PM

Give it to them as a text file without headers and a carriage return delimiter.

arthwollipot · 5th April 2022, 07:34 PM

Originally Posted by TragicMonkey

Dear User: I appreciate that some users want to "just look through the data" themselves, but no, I'm not going to export four hundred million records to Excel so you can "browse" it. Think of what you're looking for, what questions you have, and we'll let the computers do the work, okay?

I'd be inclined to just do it. Let them see the absurdity of what they're asking for.

arthwollipot · 5th April 2022, 07:35 PM

Originally Posted by zooterkin

Oh, you're the person requesting the phone? Apologies.

I think we may have a disconnect here. I was the one asking for a business case. I was talking to the dillbrain.

gnome · 5th April 2022, 09:40 PM

Originally Posted by a_unique_person

That's what they want, though. They want the whole terabyte database in Excel.

"And could you put it on one page please?"

JoeMorgue · 6th April 2022, 05:35 AM

Originally Posted by gnome

"And could you put it on one page please?"

"But the text can't be too small."

JoeMorgue · 6th April 2022, 05:36 AM

"Hi a very important website that I need to use my job is down. I could access it yesterday. Could you please look into this. I use this website routinely in my job."

Yeah great, don't ya know mention the URL or even the website name or literally any information in the ticket.

Darat · 6th April 2022, 06:15 AM

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue

"Hi a very important website that I need to use my job is down. I could access it yesterday. Could you please look into this. I use this website routinely in my job."

Yeah great, don't ya know mention the URL or even the website name or literally any information in the ticket.

But how can you not know something so important? This is the most important website in the world! Call yourself an IT bod!

Darat · 6th April 2022, 06:17 AM

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue

"But the text can't be too small."

I have unfortunately been faced with that paradox many times.

Blue Mountain · 6th April 2022, 08:11 AM

Originally Posted by gnome

"And could you put it on one page please?"

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue

"But the text can't be too small."

An A0 sheet is a "page," right?

catsmate · 6th April 2022, 11:47 AM

Originally Posted by Blue Mountain

An A0 sheet is a "page," right?

One project I worked on had a weekly "status" report that was (In Ye Beginning) printed out on eight A3 pages and stuck on a handy wall.
People kept the idea up until it needed an A00 continuous feed plotter (i.e. 1.188 metre wide roll paper that came in massive [and extremely heavy] rolls) and took the length of a corridor. It took much of Tuesday for a team of people to print it, remove the previous iteration, and stick the new one up, especially as there were two rows of paper, so around 2.3m high and around fifteen long).

Pretty much pointless and a terrible waste of paper, ink and time, but the lead PM thought it was impressive.

Filippo Lippi · 6th April 2022, 12:48 PM

I haven't been able to access the timesheet system for over a month. It's one bright spot...

CORed · 6th April 2022, 05:15 PM

Originally Posted by Filippo Lippi

I haven't been able to access the timesheet system for over a month. It's one bright spot...

My mentour in software development had a story he used to tell about some massive report he used to run, and asked the recipient what he did with it, and went through a chain of people who said, "I give it to X.". When he got to the final person in the chain and asked him what he did with it, he just pointed to his wastebasket.

CORed · 6th April 2022, 05:23 PM

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue

"Hi a very important website that I need to use my job is down. I could access it yesterday. Could you please look into this. I use this website routinely in my job."

Yeah great, don't ya know mention the URL or even the website name or literally any information in the ticket.

Yeah, it would be nice to know which website. The other question is, is this particular website something you can actually do something about (i.e. either it's your own website, or it's being blocked by your firewall or other security software), or is it somebody else's website that has gone down (possibly for good) over which you have no control whatsoever?

In a somewhat related matter, I don't know how many times I had to explain to someone that, if a link on our website to an external website quit functioning, that I had no control over whether somebody else's website (or a particular page on it that was linked form our website), continued to function. The most I could do was remove (or maybe update) the links that no longer referenced an existing website.

arthwollipot · 6th April 2022, 06:27 PM

Originally Posted by Filippo Lippi

I haven't been able to access the timesheet system for over a month. It's one bright spot...

My online HR system calculates my leave accrual down to 1/100th of a second and displays it in decimal time. An online conversion calculator tells me that right now I have 6 days, 14 hours, 9 minutes, and 41.18 seconds of annual leave accrued.

I find this fact amusingly absurd.

arthwollipot · 6th April 2022, 08:41 PM

"Oh hi I'm just giving you a quick call because I had an issue with payroll and I'm not sure if this is you because I'm new and my supervisor told me to fill in a form so I did that and I just got a notification that it was resolved but it's not resolved and my supervisor suggested that I get in contact with you to follow up but like I said I'm new and this is just a quick call so I'm not going to give you an opportunity to say anything not even to tell me the proper number to call because I'm new and my supervisor suggested that I give you a call to see if we can work out where it's at because I really need to get this sorted out and I'm not sure if I'm calling the right area but my supervisor suggested that I call this number and..."

The above is exaggerated only a little bit.

arthwollipot · 6th April 2022, 10:31 PM

This place has some of the strangest conversations.

"Who's on koala? Are you on koala?"
"I'm not on koala yet. Are you?"
"Yeah, I got koala last week."

The above exchange makes perfect sense to me.

Gord_in_Toronto · 6th April 2022, 11:09 PM

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

This place has some of the strangest conversations.

"Who's on koala? Are you on koala?"
"I'm not on koala yet. Are you?"
"Yeah, I got koala last week."

The above exchange makes perfect sense to me.

Obviously an acronym!

Knowledge Order Australian Language Agreement?

Blue Mountain · 6th April 2022, 11:10 PM

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

This place has some of the strangest conversations.

"Who's on koala? Are you on koala?"
"I'm not on koala yet. Are you?"
"Yeah, I got koala last week."

The above exchange makes perfect sense to me.

"Koala" sounds like the name of a server.

Several years ago I was chatting with a friend who at the time was working for a local university. During the conversation he mentioned a server named "Io" and later another named "Callisto." So as a joke I asked him about the Ganymede server. My friend went silent for a few seconds, then asked, "How do you know about that system? It's not even on the internet!"

arthwollipot · 6th April 2022, 11:31 PM

Close. It's actually the unofficial title of the new version of the SOE. Each SOE update gets an animal mascot. So far we've had wombat, kookaburra, cockatoo and now koala. I'm on koala - it's what I was talking about here. Koala has more security, including multi-factor authentication and no password managers.

lauwersw · 7th April 2022, 01:22 AM

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

This place has some of the strangest conversations.

"Who's on koala? Are you on koala?"
"I'm not on koala yet. Are you?"
"Yeah, I got koala last week."

The above exchange makes perfect sense to me.

We used to have a server called "god". Always amusing when it went down:

Code:

# ping god
god is unreachable

Yalius · 7th April 2022, 05:17 AM

I miss the server names we used to have at work. Zeus, Hera, Hermes, Apollo... now we're stuck with DC1, DC2, ZFS01 through ZFS06, etc. Borrrrring.

Dr. Keith · 7th April 2022, 05:26 AM

Originally Posted by Yalius

I miss the server names we used to have at work. Zeus, Hera, Hermes, Apollo... now we're stuck with DC1, DC2, ZFS01 through ZFS06, etc. Borrrrring.

PC labs in college had the same sense of humor. And the names would change theme based on type and generation. All the old pcs were on one theme while the macs were on another. The newer pcs would come in with a completely different theme and of course the handful of Unix boxes were a theme onto themselves.

That was much more fun.

JoeMorgue · 7th April 2022, 05:34 AM

Originally Posted by CORed

Yeah, it would be nice to know which website. The other question is, is this particular website something you can actually do something about (i.e. either it's your own website, or it's being blocked by your firewall or other security software), or is it somebody else's website that has gone down (possibly for good) over which you have no control whatsoever?

My user base makes zero distinction between that or I'm not kidding when I say a lot of them don't know the difference.

Part of this is because we do have a lot of web based, or applications through a web browser that we do sorta (all that way in some cases, part of the way in others) have control over.

(The website came back up literally before I could email the user back to get more info if anyone cares.)

a_unique_person · 7th April 2022, 08:59 AM

Originally Posted by CORed

My mentour in software development had a story he used to tell about some massive report he used to run, and asked the recipient what he did with it, and went through a chain of people who said, "I give it to X.". When he got to the final person in the chain and asked him what he did with it, he just pointed to his wastebasket.

The report at the insurance company I worked for was more massive than that report.

a_unique_person · 7th April 2022, 09:03 AM

Or there was the massive report printed each night that was a trace a programmer hadn't turned off.

TragicMonkey · 7th April 2022, 12:24 PM

Why is it that the most ridiculously complicated requests are always prefaced by "can't you just...."? No, I can't just reconcile two numbers derived from entirely different datasets obtained using radically different logic, particularly when one of them does its selection in a way that hinges on when the query is run -- run it a day later and the data changes because it's deliberately meant to be a snapshot. And no, I can't just do one set of numbers as they are now and make them match a slightly different set of numbers acquired using a different method at several different points in the past! As long as people are allowed to update a database with new or changed information then no, everything will not always match everything previously acquired! Argh!!!!!!

JimOfAllTrades · 7th April 2022, 03:13 PM

Originally Posted by CORed

My mentour in software development had a story he used to tell about some massive report he used to run, and asked the recipient what he did with it, and went through a chain of people who said, "I give it to X.". When he got to the final person in the chain and asked him what he did with it, he just pointed to his wastebasket.

We ran into this a lot when we would install our accounting package in place of an existing one. One thing we always went through was make sure everybody had the reports they needed, and that usually involved a custom report or two.

But we almost always found one or more reports printed daily/weekly/monthly that had been used for years but were no longer looked at by anyone, and usually no one really knew when they started or why.

TragicMonkey · 7th April 2022, 03:48 PM

I'm getting pretty tired of people trying to be sneaky by timing their emails. No, sending your request at 5:01 pm is not going to fool anybody into thinking you've "been waiting a whole day". We're working from home, 5:00 isn't some magical time any more. And the company tries to do the same thing by sending out company-wide emails late on Friday afternoons. Will it really have less of a bad morale effect if everyone actually reads them Monday morning?

arthwollipot · 7th April 2022, 06:13 PM

Originally Posted by TragicMonkey

I'm getting pretty tired of people trying to be sneaky by timing their emails. No, sending your request at 5:01 pm is not going to fool anybody into thinking you've "been waiting a whole day". We're working from home, 5:00 isn't some magical time any more. And the company tries to do the same thing by sending out company-wide emails late on Friday afternoons. Will it really have less of a bad morale effect if everyone actually reads them Monday morning?

Well, there's something to be said for not sending out bad news right before a weekend. I'd much rather get a kick in the head on Monday morning, when I'm already getting plenty of kicks in the head, than on Friday afternoon and have it potentially ruin my weekend.

4th April 2022, 09:11 PM	#841
arthwollipot Observer of Phenomena Pronouns: he/him Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Ngunnawal Country Posts: 76,877	"Your business case is not detailed enough. We need to know what you require, what business functions you intend to use it for, and why this needs to be done in this way and not by another already existing method." "I don't understand. I've already sent that to you." "The business case you have sent is not detailed enough." "But I don't know what other business case you are asking for. I've told you what I need it for." "This request I'm looking at says just 'we need this for procurement'. That is not detailed enough. We need to know what you require, what business functions you intend to use it for, and why this needs to be done in this way and not by another already existing method." "We just need to have a single phone line set up that we can send out in our communications for the public to call about our procurement process, and so that any members of our team can pick it up." "There you go, we just need that in writing." "But I've already sent you that." "No, what you've sent is 'we need this for procurement'." "I don't understand what you're asking for."
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4th April 2022, 09:41 PM	#842
Norman Alexander Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Nov 2014 Location: Gundungurra Posts: 11,792	Originally Posted by arthwollipot "Your business case is not detailed enough. We need to know what you require, what business functions you intend to use it for, and why this needs to be done in this way and not by another already existing method." "I don't understand. I've already sent that to you." "The business case you have sent is not detailed enough." "But I don't know what other business case you are asking for. I've told you what I need it for." "This request I'm looking at says just 'we need this for procurement'. That is not detailed enough. We need to know what you require, what business functions you intend to use it for, and why this needs to be done in this way and not by another already existing method." "We just need to have a single phone line set up that we can send out in our communications for the public to call about our procurement process, and so that any members of our team can pick it up." "There you go, we just need that in writing." "But I've already sent you that." "No, what you've sent is 'we need this for procurement'." "I don't understand what you're asking for." Seriously. go sit with this dillbrain in a face-to-face. Make sure they know you spent the time and effort and taxi fare to do that. Offer to answer each and every query they have, provided that at the end of the meeting, your request can proceed unhindered. If they baulk at that then they are just stalling. Call their manager. Tell them you are going to do this.
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5th April 2022, 01:16 AM	#843
zooterkin Nitpicking dilettante Administrator Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Berkshire, mostly Posts: 52,426	Originally Posted by Norman Alexander Seriously. go sit with this dillbrain in a face-to-face. Make sure they know you spent the time and effort and taxi fare to do that. Offer to answer each and every query they have, provided that at the end of the meeting, your request can proceed unhindered. If they baulk at that then they are just stalling. Call their manager. Tell them you are going to do this. I think you just called arth a dillbrain.
	__________________ The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.Bertrand Russell Zooterkin is correct Darat Nerd! Hokulele Join the JREF Folders ! Team 13232 Ezekiel 23:20

5th April 2022, 01:34 AM	#844
arthwollipot Observer of Phenomena Pronouns: he/him Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Ngunnawal Country Posts: 76,877	Originally Posted by zooterkin I think you just called arth a dillbrain. No, he called the person I was talking to a dillbrain.
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5th April 2022, 02:07 AM	#845
zooterkin Nitpicking dilettante Administrator Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Berkshire, mostly Posts: 52,426	Originally Posted by arthwollipot No, he called the person I was talking to a dillbrain. Oh, you're the person requesting the phone? Apologies.
	__________________ The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.Bertrand Russell Zooterkin is correct Darat Nerd! Hokulele Join the JREF Folders ! Team 13232 Ezekiel 23:20

5th April 2022, 06:46 AM	#846
TragicMonkey Poisoned Waffles Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Monkey Posts: 63,223	Dear User: I appreciate that some users want to "just look through the data" themselves, but no, I'm not going to export four hundred million records to Excel so you can "browse" it. Think of what you're looking for, what questions you have, and we'll let the computers do the work, okay?
	__________________ You added nothing to that conversation, Barbara.

5th April 2022, 08:58 AM	#847
catsmate No longer the 1 Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 27,079	Originally Posted by TragicMonkey Dear User: I appreciate that some users want to "just look through the data" themselves, but no, I'm not going to export four hundred million records to Excel so you can "browse" it. Think of what you're looking for, what questions you have, and we'll let the computers do the work, okay? So four hundred worksheets at a million odd rows each? That should be fun.... Why not just use Excel to analyse the data source?
	__________________ As human right is always something given, it always in reality reduces to the right which men give, "concede," to each other. If the right to existence is conceded to new-born children, then they have the right; if it is not conceded to them, as was the case among the Spartans and ancient Romans, then they do not have it. For only society can give or concede it to them; they themselves cannot take it, or give it to themselves.

5th April 2022, 09:30 AM	#848
gnome Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Aug 2001 Posts: 13,035	Originally Posted by TragicMonkey Dear User: I appreciate that some users want to "just look through the data" themselves, but no, I'm not going to export four hundred million records to Excel so you can "browse" it. Think of what you're looking for, what questions you have, and we'll let the computers do the work, okay? Preach it
	__________________

5th April 2022, 09:33 AM	#849
gnome Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Aug 2001 Posts: 13,035	Originally Posted by arthwollipot "Your business case is not detailed enough. We need to know what you require, what business functions you intend to use it for, and why this needs to be done in this way and not by another already existing method." "I don't understand. I've already sent that to you." "The business case you have sent is not detailed enough." "But I don't know what other business case you are asking for. I've told you what I need it for." "This request I'm looking at says just 'we need this for procurement'. That is not detailed enough. We need to know what you require, what business functions you intend to use it for, and why this needs to be done in this way and not by another already existing method." "We just need to have a single phone line set up that we can send out in our communications for the public to call about our procurement process, and so that any members of our team can pick it up." "There you go, we just need that in writing." "But I've already sent you that." "No, what you've sent is 'we need this for procurement'." "I don't understand what you're asking for." Along with that, if an organization has a team of people that all use a resource for the same reason, have some standard language established and put it in the onboarding instructions as what should be filled into the request when there's a new person on staff. Otherwise you get "Because my new boss said I needed this to do my job right." (of course, that's not IT's job to write the onboarding instructions)
	__________________

5th April 2022, 04:17 PM	#850
a_unique_person Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Waiting for the pod bay door to open. Posts: 44,251	Originally Posted by TragicMonkey Dear User: I appreciate that some users want to "just look through the data" themselves, but no, I'm not going to export four hundred million records to Excel so you can "browse" it. Think of what you're looking for, what questions you have, and we'll let the computers do the work, okay? That's what they want, though. They want the whole terabyte database in Excel.
	__________________ *Continually pushing the boundaries of mediocrity.* Everything is possible, but not everything is probable. “Perception is real, but the truth is not.” - Imelda Marcos

5th April 2022, 05:49 PM	#851
a_unique_person Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Waiting for the pod bay door to open. Posts: 44,251	Introduce them to power bi.
	__________________ *Continually pushing the boundaries of mediocrity.* Everything is possible, but not everything is probable. “Perception is real, but the truth is not.” - Imelda Marcos

5th April 2022, 07:29 PM	#852
Little 10 Toes Master Poster Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Directly above the center of the Earth Posts: 2,495	Give it to them as a text file without headers and a carriage return delimiter.
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5th April 2022, 07:34 PM	#853
arthwollipot Observer of Phenomena Pronouns: he/him Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Ngunnawal Country Posts: 76,877	Originally Posted by TragicMonkey Dear User: I appreciate that some users want to "just look through the data" themselves, but no, I'm not going to export four hundred million records to Excel so you can "browse" it. Think of what you're looking for, what questions you have, and we'll let the computers do the work, okay? I'd be inclined to just do it. Let them see the absurdity of what they're asking for.
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5th April 2022, 07:35 PM	#854
arthwollipot Observer of Phenomena Pronouns: he/him Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Ngunnawal Country Posts: 76,877	Originally Posted by zooterkin Oh, you're the person requesting the phone? Apologies. I think we may have a disconnect here. I was the one asking for a business case. I was talking to the dillbrain.
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5th April 2022, 09:40 PM	#855
gnome Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Aug 2001 Posts: 13,035	Originally Posted by a_unique_person That's what they want, though. They want the whole terabyte database in Excel. "And could you put it on one page please?"
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6th April 2022, 05:35 AM	#856
JoeMorgue Self Employed Remittance Man Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Florida Posts: 39,970	Originally Posted by gnome "And could you put it on one page please?" "But the text can't be too small."
	__________________ "If everyone in the room says water is wet and I say it's dry that makes me smart because at least I'm thinking for myself!" - The Proudly Wrong.

6th April 2022, 05:36 AM	#857
JoeMorgue Self Employed Remittance Man Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Florida Posts: 39,970	"Hi a very important website that I need to use my job is down. I could access it yesterday. Could you please look into this. I use this website routinely in my job." Yeah great, don't ya know mention the URL or even the website name or literally any information in the ticket.
	__________________ "If everyone in the room says water is wet and I say it's dry that makes me smart because at least I'm thinking for myself!" - The Proudly Wrong.

6th April 2022, 06:15 AM	#858
Darat Lackey Administrator Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: South East, UK Posts: 102,483	Originally Posted by JoeMorgue "Hi a very important website that I need to use my job is down. I could access it yesterday. Could you please look into this. I use this website routinely in my job." Yeah great, don't ya know mention the URL or even the website name or literally any information in the ticket. But how can you not know something so important? This is the most important website in the world! Call yourself an IT bod!
	__________________ I wish I knew how to quit you

6th April 2022, 06:17 AM	#859
Darat Lackey Administrator Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: South East, UK Posts: 102,483	Originally Posted by JoeMorgue "But the text can't be too small." I have unfortunately been faced with that paradox many times.
	__________________ I wish I knew how to quit you

6th April 2022, 08:11 AM	#860
Blue Mountain Resident Skeptical Hobbit Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Waging war on woo-woo in Winnipeg Posts: 6,999	Originally Posted by gnome "And could you put it on one page please?" Originally Posted by JoeMorgue "But the text can't be too small." An A0 sheet is a "page," right?
	__________________ The social illusion reigns to-day upon all the heaped-up ruins of the past, and to it belongs the future. The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd, 1895 (from the French) Last edited by Blue Mountain; 6th April 2022 at 08:12 AM.

6th April 2022, 11:47 AM	#861
catsmate No longer the 1 Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 27,079	Originally Posted by Blue Mountain An A0 sheet is a "page," right? One project I worked on had a weekly "status" report that was (In Ye Beginning) printed out on eight A3 pages and stuck on a handy wall. People kept the idea up until it needed an A00 continuous feed plotter (i.e. 1.188 metre wide roll paper that came in massive [and extremely heavy] rolls) and took the length of a corridor. It took much of Tuesday for a team of people to print it, remove the previous iteration, and stick the new one up, especially as there were two rows of paper, so around 2.3m high and around fifteen long). Pretty much pointless and a terrible waste of paper, ink and time, but the lead PM thought it was impressive.
	__________________ As human right is always something given, it always in reality reduces to the right which men give, "concede," to each other. If the right to existence is conceded to new-born children, then they have the right; if it is not conceded to them, as was the case among the Spartans and ancient Romans, then they do not have it. For only society can give or concede it to them; they themselves cannot take it, or give it to themselves.

6th April 2022, 12:48 PM	#862
Filippo Lippi Illuminator Join Date: Nov 2002 Posts: 3,879	I haven't been able to access the timesheet system for over a month. It's one bright spot...
	__________________ You can't defeat fascism through debate because it's not simply an idea, proposal or theory. It's a fundamentally flawed way of looking at the world. It's a distorting prism, emotionally charged and completely logic-proof. You may as well challenge rabies to a game of Boggle. @ViolettaCrisis

6th April 2022, 05:15 PM	#863
CORed Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Central City, Colorado, USA Posts: 10,479	Originally Posted by Filippo Lippi I haven't been able to access the timesheet system for over a month. It's one bright spot... My mentour in software development had a story he used to tell about some massive report he used to run, and asked the recipient what he did with it, and went through a chain of people who said, "I give it to X.". When he got to the final person in the chain and asked him what he did with it, he just pointed to his wastebasket.

6th April 2022, 05:23 PM	#864
CORed Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Central City, Colorado, USA Posts: 10,479	Originally Posted by JoeMorgue "Hi a very important website that I need to use my job is down. I could access it yesterday. Could you please look into this. I use this website routinely in my job." Yeah great, don't ya know mention the URL or even the website name or literally any information in the ticket. Yeah, it would be nice to know which website. The other question is, is this particular website something you can actually do something about (i.e. either it's your own website, or it's being blocked by your firewall or other security software), or is it somebody else's website that has gone down (possibly for good) over which you have no control whatsoever? In a somewhat related matter, I don't know how many times I had to explain to someone that, if a link on our website to an external website quit functioning, that I had no control over whether somebody else's website (or a particular page on it that was linked form our website), continued to function. The most I could do was remove (or maybe update) the links that no longer referenced an existing website.
	Last edited by CORed; 6th April 2022 at 05:25 PM.

6th April 2022, 06:27 PM	#865
arthwollipot Observer of Phenomena Pronouns: he/him Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Ngunnawal Country Posts: 76,877	Originally Posted by Filippo Lippi I haven't been able to access the timesheet system for over a month. It's one bright spot... My online HR system calculates my leave accrual down to 1/100th of a second and displays it in decimal time. An online conversion calculator tells me that right now I have 6 days, 14 hours, 9 minutes, and 41.18 seconds of annual leave accrued. I find this fact amusingly absurd.
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6th April 2022, 08:41 PM	#866
arthwollipot Observer of Phenomena Pronouns: he/him Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Ngunnawal Country Posts: 76,877	"Oh hi I'm just giving you a quick call because I had an issue with payroll and I'm not sure if this is you because I'm new and my supervisor told me to fill in a form so I did that and I just got a notification that it was resolved but it's not resolved and my supervisor suggested that I get in contact with you to follow up but like I said I'm new and this is just a quick call so I'm not going to give you an opportunity to say anything not even to tell me the proper number to call because I'm new and my supervisor suggested that I give you a call to see if we can work out where it's at because I really need to get this sorted out and I'm not sure if I'm calling the right area but my supervisor suggested that I call this number and..." The above is exaggerated only a little bit.
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6th April 2022, 10:31 PM	#867
arthwollipot Observer of Phenomena Pronouns: he/him Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Ngunnawal Country Posts: 76,877	This place has some of the strangest conversations. "Who's on koala? Are you on koala?" "I'm not on koala yet. Are you?" "Yeah, I got koala last week." The above exchange makes perfect sense to me.
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6th April 2022, 11:09 PM	#868
Gord_in_Toronto Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 22,515	Originally Posted by arthwollipot This place has some of the strangest conversations. "Who's on koala? Are you on koala?" "I'm not on koala yet. Are you?" "Yeah, I got koala last week." The above exchange makes perfect sense to me. Obviously an acronym! Knowledge Order Australian Language Agreement?
	__________________ "Reality is what's left when you cease to believe." Philip K. Dick

6th April 2022, 11:10 PM	#869
Blue Mountain Resident Skeptical Hobbit Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Waging war on woo-woo in Winnipeg Posts: 6,999	Originally Posted by arthwollipot This place has some of the strangest conversations. "Who's on koala? Are you on koala?" "I'm not on koala yet. Are you?" "Yeah, I got koala last week." The above exchange makes perfect sense to me. "Koala" sounds like the name of a server. Several years ago I was chatting with a friend who at the time was working for a local university. During the conversation he mentioned a server named "Io" and later another named "Callisto." So as a joke I asked him about the Ganymede server. My friend went silent for a few seconds, then asked, "How do you know about that system? It's not even on the internet!" The Galilean moons of Jupiter are Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Initially I thought he meant "I/O" when he was taking about the Io server, but as soon as he mentioned Callisto I recognized the pattern.
	__________________ The social illusion reigns to-day upon all the heaped-up ruins of the past, and to it belongs the future. The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd, 1895 (from the French)

6th April 2022, 11:31 PM	#870
arthwollipot Observer of Phenomena Pronouns: he/him Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Ngunnawal Country Posts: 76,877	Close. It's actually the unofficial title of the new version of the SOE. Each SOE update gets an animal mascot. So far we've had wombat, kookaburra, cockatoo and now koala. I'm on koala - it's what I was talking about here. Koala has more security, including multi-factor authentication and no password managers.
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7th April 2022, 01:22 AM	#871
lauwersw Thinker Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 164	Originally Posted by arthwollipot This place has some of the strangest conversations. "Who's on koala? Are you on koala?" "I'm not on koala yet. Are you?" "Yeah, I got koala last week." The above exchange makes perfect sense to me. We used to have a server called "god". Always amusing when it went down: Code: # ping god god is unreachable
lauwersw Thinker Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 164

7th April 2022, 05:17 AM	#872
Yalius Muse Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 793	I miss the server names we used to have at work. Zeus, Hera, Hermes, Apollo... now we're stuck with DC1, DC2, ZFS01 through ZFS06, etc. Borrrrring.
Yalius Muse Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 793

7th April 2022, 05:26 AM	#873
Dr. Keith Not a doctor. Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Texas Posts: 25,050	Originally Posted by Yalius I miss the server names we used to have at work. Zeus, Hera, Hermes, Apollo... now we're stuck with DC1, DC2, ZFS01 through ZFS06, etc. Borrrrring. PC labs in college had the same sense of humor. And the names would change theme based on type and generation. All the old pcs were on one theme while the macs were on another. The newer pcs would come in with a completely different theme and of course the handful of Unix boxes were a theme onto themselves. That was much more fun.
	__________________ Suffering is not a punishment not a fruit of sin, it is a gift of God. He allows us to share in His suffering and to make up for the sins of the world. -Mother Teresa If I had a pet panda I would name it Snowflake.

7th April 2022, 05:34 AM	#874
JoeMorgue Self Employed Remittance Man Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Florida Posts: 39,970	Originally Posted by CORed Yeah, it would be nice to know which website. The other question is, is this particular website something you can actually do something about (i.e. either it's your own website, or it's being blocked by your firewall or other security software), or is it somebody else's website that has gone down (possibly for good) over which you have no control whatsoever? My user base makes zero distinction between that or I'm not kidding when I say a lot of them don't know the difference. Part of this is because we do have a lot of web based, or applications through a web browser that we do sorta (all that way in some cases, part of the way in others) have control over. (The website came back up literally before I could email the user back to get more info if anyone cares.)
	__________________ "If everyone in the room says water is wet and I say it's dry that makes me smart because at least I'm thinking for myself!" - The Proudly Wrong.

7th April 2022, 08:59 AM	#875
a_unique_person Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Waiting for the pod bay door to open. Posts: 44,251	Originally Posted by CORed My mentour in software development had a story he used to tell about some massive report he used to run, and asked the recipient what he did with it, and went through a chain of people who said, "I give it to X.". When he got to the final person in the chain and asked him what he did with it, he just pointed to his wastebasket. The report at the insurance company I worked for was more massive than that report.
	__________________ *Continually pushing the boundaries of mediocrity.* Everything is possible, but not everything is probable. “Perception is real, but the truth is not.” - Imelda Marcos