Continuation Dear Users… (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people) Part 11

[JoeMorgue]

I hate PDFs. It's like people don't get that locking down documents so they can't be edited or only edited in certain fields is the whole point but I have users who can't grasp why they can't just rewrite from scratch every PDF they get.

BECAUSE IF THE PERSON ON THE FAR END WANTED YOU TO BE ABLE TO DO THAT THEY WOULDN'T HAVE MADE IT A PDF!

[TragicMonkey]

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue

I hate PDFs. It's like people don't get that locking down documents so they can't be edited or only edited in certain fields is the whole point but I have users who can't grasp why they can't just rewrite from scratch every PDF they get.

BECAUSE IF THE PERSON ON THE FAR END WANTED YOU TO BE ABLE TO DO THAT THEY WOULDN'T HAVE MADE IT A PDF!

Maybe it's wrong of me but I've always regarded PDF outputs as being the equivalent of fastening mittens to the child's coat sleeves: we want you to have this, but we can't trust you not to mess it up and cry.

[arthwollipot]

We're still getting fallout from yesterday's Intune **** up. I don't think I've ever walked in on a Friday before and seen a 45 minute wait time on calls. Friday is our least busy day. Our staffing models don't take this kind of thing into account.

[arthwollipot]

I may have broken the spacetime continuum. One of my systems is reporting that there are -2 tasks assigned to me.

[catsmate]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

I may have broken the spacetime continuum. One of my systems is reporting that there are -2 tasks assigned to me.

Did it reach its upper limit and roll over? Maybe you really have 10,001 taks waiting for attention....

[The Man]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

I may have broken the spacetime continuum. One of my systems is reporting that there are -2 tasks assigned to me.

So it owes you 2 tasks. Which it will gladly repay when you're all backed up.

[Darat]

Note we haven't heard from him since he posted that, I suspect we won't hear from arthwollipot until yesterday.

[TragicMonkey]

"I don't understand why changing it to pull in three thousand times as much data as before would cause it to run slower."

Uh huh. I don't see any utility in responding to that one.

[Darat]

Originally Posted by TragicMonkey

"I don't understand why changing it to pull in three thousand times as much data as before would cause it to run slower."

...snip...

I agree with them, all it takes is one click to run either report so how can one take so much longer, it just doesn't make sense.

[arthwollipot]

Happy Monday everyone!

[novaphile]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

Happy Monday everyone!

Eddy's in the space-time continuum again!

[arthwollipot]

Originally Posted by novaphile

Eddy's in the space-time continuum again!

Is this his couch?

[jeremyp]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

So we just had a weird issue. Peoples' USB devices suddenly stopped working. Keyboards, mouses, headsets - all their USB stuff. This appears to affect pretty much everybody on Windows 11, and judging from the way our call volumes spiked, all at the same time.

We now have a fix that involves a gpupdate and Intune sync, but damn that was ******* weird.

Was it following an OS update? My Mac had a similar issue. It turned out the operating system had tightened security so I had to specifically grant access to certain USB devices or the computer wouldn't connect to them.

[arthwollipot]

Originally Posted by jeremyp

Was it following an OS update? My Mac had a similar issue. It turned out the operating system had tightened security so I had to specifically grant access to certain USB devices or the computer wouldn't connect to them.

It was something that someone did to the group policy. In the end it was decided not to reverse it, since the InTune synchronisation would resolve it eventually after a while.

And the calls flooded in.

[JoeMorgue]

//Again this is one of those "Not really IT but generic office" complaints not worthy of its own thread//

This is a weird but... if you have an open plan office that's mostly cubicles and other open work space... put some private places people can go to.

In the main office where the bulk of my work is at only a small handful of very high uppers have an actual private office. The bulk of workers, even supervisors and management, are in a cubicle or a shared office or something similar.

And this leads to the not super common but also not like super not UNcommon case of you turning a corner in a hallway or stepping into an room and stepping right into a discussion that obviously isn't meant for me. I'm not talking anything inappropriate for work I'm talking like minor... "dressing downs" managers are giving subordinates or people on phone having obviously emotional personal phone calls.

It's the "Praise in public, criticize in private" rule in a place that only has areas which are halfway private at best.

It just seems sorta unprofessional to force people to have like minor disciplinary discussions in the hallway or for people to not have a place to do any minor decompression.

And it creates another case "clogs" because sometimes I just want to go to the drink machines and there's two people having basically a performance review in the break or the hallway because neither of them has an office.

Basically don't give your people no privacy and still give them job functions that need it.

[Blue Mountain]

Originally Posted by Norman Alexander

Clearly had the wrong test subjects. They probably picked experienced users who would not be overly phased by and capable of dealing with all those fiddly issues you get with a new OS release. They would not be concerned that the Start button is a different colour, and the icons look a bit different, or that Office 365 is a different look to Office 2017, etc.

Does that mean they go only a few degrees off instead of a full 180?

[Norman Alexander]

Originally Posted by Blue Mountain

Does that mean they go only a few degrees off instead of a full 180?

Precisely

[arthwollipot]

And so begins the longest hour and a half of the week.

[catsmate]

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue

I hate PDFs. It's like people don't get that locking down documents so they can't be edited or only edited in certain fields is the whole point but I have users who can't grasp why they can't just rewrite from scratch every PDF they get.

BECAUSE IF THE PERSON ON THE FAR END WANTED YOU TO BE ABLE TO DO THAT THEY WOULDN'T HAVE MADE IT A PDF!

They're also awful for anyone using accessibility tools.

[arthwollipot]

Originally Posted by catsmate

They're also awful for anyone using accessibility tools.

PDFs can be made accessible, but you have to know how, which almost nobody does, so they very rarely are.

[catsmate]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

PDFs can be made accessible, but you have to know how, which almost nobody does, so they very rarely are.

I could introduce you to some people at Inclusion and Accessibility Labs.......

[arthwollipot]

Originally Posted by catsmate

I could introduce you to some people at Inclusion and Accessibility Labs.......

Yep, I did an entire course on it years ago.

The hard part is that you have to take accessibility into account when you are developing your source document. You can't take a non-accessible document, run it through Kofax and suddenly it becomes accessible. Accessibility has to be part of the design at every stage.

Not enough people think about design in their documents in the first place. Hit the ¶ button in your average Word document and see how many people use spaces to shift text. *shudder*

[Dr. Keith]

Most pdfs can be saved as word documents or easily OCRed pretty cleanly. I hate scanned documents with a real fervor. I’ll run a crap OCR on them and leave all the artifacts of the scan for them to clean up when I send back my redlines.

[catsmate]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

Yep, I did an entire course on it years ago.

The hard part is that you have to take accessibility into account when you are developing your source document. You can't take a non-accessible document, run it through Kofax and suddenly it becomes accessible. Accessibility has to be part of the design at every stage.

Not enough people think about design in their documents in the first place. Hit the ¶ button in your average Word document and see how many people use spaces to shift text. *shudder*

[malbui]

Something that still flabbergasts me at work is that people want to include data in a table format in a report but don't think to actually create a table. It's just random tabs and white space.

[catsmate]

Originally Posted by malbui

Something that still flabbergasts me at work is that people want to include data in a table format in a report but don't think to actually create a table. It's just random tabs and white space.

Or format the data in a spreadsheet and paste it in.

[BowlOfRed]

Originally Posted by malbui

Something that still flabbergasts me at work is that people want to include data in a table format in a report but don't think to actually create a table. It's just random tabs and white space.

I remember an old call I got at the university helpdesk.... 30 years ago?

The receptionist/admin for the sports department needed some help with... something. So went over and took a look.

It appeared to be a couple years worth of data that was being tracked and calculated using a spreadsheet. Except they weren't using a spreadsheet app, it was all inside a WordPerfect document. I guess WP tables had some amount of calculations they could do. Tried and tried to get her to move it to Excel. Didn't want to bother. I think a student managed to find some problem and got it moving again. *shudder*

[arthwollipot]

Originally Posted by catsmate

Or format the data in a spreadsheet and paste it in.

It annoys me when people use Excel when they should be using a table in Word.

And when they call that a "database".

[Blue Mountain]

Originally Posted by malbui

Something that still flabbergasts me at work is that people want to include data in a table format in a report but don't think to actually create a table. It's just random tabs and white space.

Originally Posted by catsmate

Or format the data in a spreadsheet and paste it in.

People who learned to write using pen and paper often have difficulty appreciating that a word processing program "thinks" differently than a person. A person starts with a sheet of paper and adds things to it. A word processor wants the user to actively define the page (margins, headers, and footers,) then define paragraphs using styles. For a simple document that's a fair bit of work, although most word processors today have default templates that will set up a decent set of styles for you.

Styles are powerful: you can easily change the look of an entire document by changing the base style to use a different font, line-height, or margins. Or change the layout from block paragraphs with an empty line between them to indented paragraphs with no empty line. But unless they've specifically learned that, either by reading the manual (yikes!) or taking a course, they won't even know that functionality exists.

I'm unsure how many of these concepts are covered in school today. That seems to be the place to introduce these, starting with 12 to 14 year old students.

Much of the above applies to web pages, too: HTML contains the content while CSS tells the browser how to present that content. And don't get me started on how horribly mangled is the HTML generated by both MS Word and LibreOffice Writer.

[arthwollipot]

Things I Wish More People Knew #8967: Styles.

[Norman Alexander]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

It annoys me when people use Excel when they should be using a table in Word.

And when they call that a "database".

technically, it IS a database. A really, REALLY simple, dumb, feature-free database. But even so...

[arthwollipot]

You are technically correct, which as we all know is the best kind of correct...

[catsmate]

Originally Posted by Blue Mountain

People who learned to write using pen and paper often have difficulty appreciating that a word processing program "thinks" differently than a person. A person starts with a sheet of paper and adds things to it. A word processor wants the user to actively define the page (margins, headers, and footers,) then define paragraphs using styles. For a simple document that's a fair bit of work, although most word processors today have default templates that will set up a decent set of styles for you.

Styles are powerful: you can easily change the look of an entire document by changing the base style to use a different font, line-height, or margins. Or change the layout from block paragraphs with an empty line between them to indented paragraphs with no empty line. But unless they've specifically learned that, either by reading the manual (yikes!) or taking a course, they won't even know that functionality exists.

I'm unsure how many of these concepts are covered in school today. That seems to be the place to introduce these, starting with 12 to 14 year old students.

Much of the above applies to web pages, too: HTML contains the content while CSS tells the browser how to present that content. And don't get me started on how horribly mangled is the HTML generated by both MS Word and LibreOffice Writer.

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

Things I Wish More People Knew #8967: Styles.

That's why I developed a few templates with my favoured styles embedded. I've been using them for years.

Originally Posted by Norman Alexander

technically, it IS a database. A really, REALLY simple, dumb, feature-free database. But even so...

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

You are technically correct, which as we all know is the best kind of correct...

[Norman Alexander]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

You are technically correct, which as we all know is the best kind of correct...

Although technically you can't see it, i'm doffing my cap to you.

Also, here's the simplest of databases.

Col1

0

[novaphile]

If you want to really blow someone's mind, explain to them that databases don't have to be stored, read or updated on/via a computer.

[arthwollipot]

Originally Posted by catsmate

That's why I developed a few templates with my favoured styles embedded. I've been using them for years.

Most enterprises have their own, which were originally developed decades ago by people who didn't know what they were doing.

[Blue Mountain]

Originally Posted by novaphile

If you want to really blow someone's mind, explain to them that databases don't have to be stored, read or updated on/via a computer.

But does anyone know what a card catalogue is these days? Or a Rolodex? Or cuneiform tablets?

[malbui]

Originally Posted by Blue Mountain

But does anyone know what a card catalogue is these days? Or a Rolodex? Or cuneiform tablets?

In one of the preliminary chapters of my PhD thesis, many years ago, I discussed how the custodians of the great libraries of antiquity managed their data and metadata. It was really fascinating stuff, for me at least.

[arthwollipot]

Originally Posted by malbui

In one of the preliminary chapters of my PhD thesis, many years ago, I discussed how the custodians of the great libraries of antiquity managed their data and metadata. It was really fascinating stuff, for me at least.

That does sound fascinating, if you're into that kind of thing.

I have come to learn over the last fifty plus years of my existence on this planet that there are no subjects that are inherently uninteresting. Everything is interesting to someone. And if you look hard, you can sometimes see what it is that they find interesting.

[malbui]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

That does sound fascinating, if you're into that kind of thing.

I have come to learn over the last fifty plus years of my existence on this planet that there are no subjects that are inherently uninteresting. Everything is interesting to someone. And if you look hard, you can sometimes see what it is that they find interesting.

Over the years I've done a lot of travelling and I've always made a point of going to museums and galleries and concerts and exhibitions and conferences wherever I've been. It's very unusual for me to emerge without my thoughts going in new directions and without a reading and/or listening list.