TGP Posted June 29, 2020 Share Posted June 29, 2020 17 minutes ago, Pegazus said: Now I want limeade. Had Sonic limeade slushes both coming and going from the cabin. That is the only brand or form of soda / soft-drink / soda-pop I will touch anymore. 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kangaroorex Posted June 29, 2020 Share Posted June 29, 2020 7 hours ago, Gadgetman! said: Is your name Garfield? Garfield was an optimist. 3 hours ago, Crowley said: Up too early, but at least the weather is a little cooler this morning. It won't stay cool, but... at least I wasn't sweating from just stepping out to let the beasts do their business. Monday, work... ugh. Need to keep myself motivated. I've got a 4 day weekend coming up, and my boss is off for 7 work days starting Thursday. Plan for tonight: Write up at least 1 session report (I'm only 17 behind now!), watch 2-3 episodes of Avatar, and work on painting the dreadmere herbalist. For now: COFFEE! I certainly understand the motivation issue. we are in the process of shifting over to outsourced IT support. Currently going through the first of many meetings to transition this. If you can tell, I am so motivated and also I am discovering that I have the wrong job... again. 3 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pegazus Posted June 29, 2020 Share Posted June 29, 2020 47 minutes ago, TGP said: That is the only brand or form of soda / soft-drink / soda-pop I will touch anymore. I find it amazing that somehow the slushes maintain flavor until the last half inch in the bottom. Now if only there were one within a ten mile drive of me, I might get them more often. For our cabin trips, we travel with the wife’s two beagles, so taking them into a restaurant or leaving them in the car won’t happen. So Sonic it is. 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Serenity Posted June 29, 2020 Share Posted June 29, 2020 (edited) RTB Pro Tips! Painting Bone! SKU#77925! began at 11:32 AM. She's painting a bone pile. Lip syncing problem today. Tried a reload, but it didn't help. https://www.twitch.tv/reaperminiatures ETA: A reboot fixed it. The VOD looks fine! Justin came in at the end and said Miniature Monday is happening today at 3:00 PM. Edited June 29, 2020 by Serenity 3 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NebulousMissy Posted June 29, 2020 Share Posted June 29, 2020 1 hour ago, Gadgetman! said: Bring a phone with you into a metal smelting facilty, and they'll toss it in the crucible as a first warning. Many places with dangerous equipment have rules about distracting devices. If they don't have rules it just means no one has gone and maimed themselves while texting there, yet... Our rules are meant to protect you, not me. We have to discuss SSNs all the time along with all of the associated account details. How many Siris do you want listening to your tax details? 7 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werkrobotwerk Posted June 29, 2020 Share Posted June 29, 2020 17 minutes ago, NebulousMissy said: Our rules are meant to protect you, not me. We have to discuss SSNs all the time along with all of the associated account details. How many Siris do you want listening to your tax details? I want zero Siris existing. 11 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gadgetman! Posted June 29, 2020 Share Posted June 29, 2020 42 minutes ago, Kangaroorex said: I certainly understand the motivation issue. we are in the process of shifting over to outsourced IT support. Currently going through the first of many meetings to transition this. If you can tell, I am so motivated and also I am discovering that I have the wrong job... again. You have my deepest and most heartfelt condolences. Have you started looking for a new job, yet? Outsourcing IT is usually done for 'cost cutting' reasons. It almost never works out that way... We outsourced our WAN back in the late 90s, and we were lucky; the company that ook over had a plan... We spent months going over every little subnet and checking servers, printers and everything that went beep. Then they told us how it had to be before they would take over, and we spent weeks fixing larger and smaller issues. Even after that the first switchover was a pain, and wasn't done and verified until 4am... (That site opens for the public at 8am. 5am was the 'elf it! switch back!' ) They even set up a CA Unicenter machine for us to use to see issues. Of course, they implemented the new WAN with Frame-Relay, and we never got the promised training in using CA... And the CA machine may have been able to show us our network, but... the ancient UB Netowrks 'Netdirector' I had kept alive also showed us the complete network structure of their other clients... Our outsourcing contracts are for 4 years, with a possibility for a couple of years renewal. then it's public tender for a new contract. And our contracts are VERY detailed these days... Anyway. There has been talk about outsourcing helpdesk and other services, but it always boils down tp 'are you out of your flippin mind!' Instead, we've built up our own helpdesk(expected to solve 75% or more issues on 'first call'. And not only are we spread all overNorway, but we have 450+ different applications in use... ) and a large WIKI with documentation. Gartner group ranks our helpdesk 'pretty high' in Europe. It's a choice our management took years ago; that our users are best helped by dedicated people in our organisation. Not whoever happens to be yanked in from the street and put behind a phone in a sweatshop somewhere, and who has to deal with users from many companies. No outsourcing company is set up to 'be the best there is' to help users with their issues. They are set up to earn money, nothing else. The only thing worse than outsourcing user support is outsourcing data. As soon as your first DB is 'in the cloud' you have lost control. We still have people with expertise in setting up routers and firewalls. We CAN go and order 200 new routers, and parallell lines to what we have, and do a sudden changeover and 'free' ourself from our WAN supplier with no warning. But if your DATA is on their servers... You probably don't have any way to do an 'insourcing' operation at all. 'Full export? What do you want that for? If you need a report we can make one for you,' There are dark rumors of companies that have done hundreds or even thousand of hours of 'database maintenance', sorting and listing customers, and typing the visible data into a different DB, while pretending to look for customers with more than one entry, just so that they can 'insource' their customer DB from a cloud DB with a restricting front-end that even blocks printouts of single records. 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NebulousMissy Posted June 29, 2020 Share Posted June 29, 2020 (edited) 1 hour ago, Werkrobotwerk said: I want zero Siris existing. If we had zero Siris I wouldn't have to run my "I dare you" routine at work where I dare people to accuse me of using my phone for music and pull out this junky-elf vending machine mp3 player. I may have to get a new one. How does an mp3 player skip? Edited June 29, 2020 by NebulousMissy words 9 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werkrobotwerk Posted June 29, 2020 Share Posted June 29, 2020 15 minutes ago, NebulousMissy said: I we had zero Siris I wouldn't have to run my "I dare you" routine at work where I dare people to accuse me of using my phone for music and pull out this junky-elf vending machine mp3 player. I may have to get a new one. How does an mp3 player skip? bad memory sector? 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kangaroorex Posted June 29, 2020 Share Posted June 29, 2020 @Gadgetman! Yea, that is about what I am expecting. Fortunately we are a manufacturing facility rather than a tech or data facility and we have survived a complete loss of IT support before (Just last year as a matter of fact.) Given the timing and history, I fully expecting a meltdown in March (March and I have not gotten along since 2013 but the last few years gets me to face that month with absolute dread!) On the plus side, we still hold internal control of the process control systems and most of the MIZ (had to give up the historians but the outsourcing company wound up hiring our lead employee who ran that part) My main concern is getting new stuff and interface work done and who is going to handle all the little things that the current IT group handles. when asked who was going to handle the phones, security systems, camera systems, etc, the response was "we're working on that" considering some of these systems are 3 decades old, it will get fun. My group has already stepped forward and stated "not it!" so we will see how that goes. they also have this vaunted tech support system which has a fatal flaw that no one will listen to: its all accessed through your computer, so if you cant get on your computer, you cant access the help services! This ought to be all sorts of fun! I run the company Process controls division so there are a lot of people who would like my group to just handle these functions with no additional people or money. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TGP Posted June 29, 2020 Share Posted June 29, 2020 5 hours ago, haldir said: https://goldenhearts.co/oldest-golden-retriever/ OK, it was dog friendly carrot cake. The chocolate was fake / faux / not:real. Whew! 6 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green Eyed Monster Posted June 29, 2020 Share Posted June 29, 2020 2 hours ago, Werkrobotwerk said: I want zero Siris existing. I view Siri as a real life version of HAL 9000. - It just hasn't had the terminal blowup happen yet, even though people keep getting warnings from the small foulups it commits. GEM 2 hours ago, Gadgetman! said: You have my deepest and most heartfelt condolences. Have you started looking for a new job, yet? Outsourcing IT is usually done for 'cost cutting' reasons. It almost never works out that way... We outsourced our WAN back in the late 90s, and we were lucky; the company that ook over had a plan... We spent months going over every little subnet and checking servers, printers and everything that went beep. Then they told us how it had to be before they would take over, and we spent weeks fixing larger and smaller issues. Even after that the first switchover was a pain, and wasn't done and verified until 4am... (That site opens for the public at 8am. 5am was the 'elf it! switch back!' ) They even set up a CA Unicenter machine for us to use to see issues. Of course, they implemented the new WAN with Frame-Relay, and we never got the promised training in using CA... And the CA machine may have been able to show us our network, but... the ancient UB Netowrks 'Netdirector' I had kept alive also showed us the complete network structure of their other clients... Our outsourcing contracts are for 4 years, with a possibility for a couple of years renewal. then it's public tender for a new contract. And our contracts are VERY detailed these days... Anyway. There has been talk about outsourcing helpdesk and other services, but it always boils down tp 'are you out of your flippin mind!' Instead, we've built up our own helpdesk(expected to solve 75% or more issues on 'first call'. And not only are we spread all overNorway, but we have 450+ different applications in use... ) and a large WIKI with documentation. Gartner group ranks our helpdesk 'pretty high' in Europe. It's a choice our management took years ago; that our users are best helped by dedicated people in our organisation. Not whoever happens to be yanked in from the street and put behind a phone in a sweatshop somewhere, and who has to deal with users from many companies. No outsourcing company is set up to 'be the best there is' to help users with their issues. They are set up to earn money, nothing else. The only thing worse than outsourcing user support is outsourcing data. As soon as your first DB is 'in the cloud' you have lost control. We still have people with expertise in setting up routers and firewalls. We CAN go and order 200 new routers, and parallell lines to what we have, and do a sudden changeover and 'free' ourself from our WAN supplier with no warning. But if your DATA is on their servers... You probably don't have any way to do an 'insourcing' operation at all. 'Full export? What do you want that for? If you need a report we can make one for you,' There are dark rumors of companies that have done hundreds or even thousand of hours of 'database maintenance', sorting and listing customers, and typing the visible data into a different DB, while pretending to look for customers with more than one entry, just so that they can 'insource' their customer DB from a cloud DB with a restricting front-end that even blocks printouts of single records. They are, by design and intent, set up to be just "good enough". And that is "good enough" by their definition, not yours. Come next contract bid cycle, check the financials of the companies placing bids. You might get an unsettling surprise on what the ratio of money spent for sales to money spent for operational purposes is with some of them. GEM 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Serenity Posted June 29, 2020 Share Posted June 29, 2020 Miniature Monday #023 started at 3:02 PM. Josh is painting the Pack Camel #80075. https://www.twitch.tv/reaperminiatures 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green Eyed Monster Posted June 29, 2020 Share Posted June 29, 2020 2 hours ago, NebulousMissy said: If we had zero Siris I wouldn't have to run my "I dare you" routine at work where I dare people to accuse me of using my phone for music and pull out this junky-elf vending machine mp3 player. I may have to get a new one. How does an mp3 player skip? Poor quality data transfer? If it skips on the same point every time it's corrupted data from the original transfer. You can try recopying the data file and see if that fixes it. If it's random, I don't know. GEM 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gadgetman! Posted June 29, 2020 Share Posted June 29, 2020 14 minutes ago, Green Eyed Monster said: I view Siri as a real life version of HAL 9000. - It just hasn't had the terminal blowup happen yet, even though people keep getting warnings from the small foulups it commits. GEM They are, by design and intent, set up to be just "good enough". And that is "good enough" by their definition, not yours. Come next contract bid cycle, check the financials of the companies placing bids. You might get an unsettling surprise on what the ratio of money spent for sales to money spent for operational purposes is with some of them. GEM And 'Good enough' is just shy of 'grounds for contract termination' for most of them. All such contracts needs an SLA, and it must not only specify 'time until work starts', max time for a case to be resolved' and what constitutes a resolution. Some will claim that if they call back the client and he doesn't reply, the case can be closed as resolved. If they take over the running of servers, the contract MUST specify when service windows can be scheduled, and in which cases and when specific servers can be restarted during normal hours. There are 'technicians' out there that will happily remote restart a server with 500 users, serving external customers, just because a print queue is a bit wonky. (We've had a couple of those on our helldesk also. I'v read them the riot act. If they restart one of the servers in my region without asking me first, I will get in the car and come visit them, WITH my 'problem solver'... My 'Problem solver' is a 4lbs hammer... The fact that they're 400Km away just means they get 6hours to flee the country... ) 2 hours ago, NebulousMissy said: If we had zero Siris I wouldn't have to run my "I dare you" routine at work where I dare people to accuse me of using my phone for music and pull out this junky-elf vending machine mp3 player. I may have to get a new one. How does an mp3 player skip? If it's a really cheap Chinesium MP3 player, it's just as plausible that the memory on it is corrupt, particularly if it's a few years old. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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