Reminds me of the conversations I have with my wife sometimes..
BOFH: Putting the commitment into committee
I never cease to be amazed by the seemingly endless possibilities for forming a committee to not do something. It's as though whenever there's a critical mass of deadwood in one room they'll end up creating a committee to legitimise themselves, make some decisions to address the ills of whatever they've talked about, issue …
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Friday 23rd June 2017 12:22 GMT TitterYeNot
"Reminds me of the conversations I have with my wife sometimes.."
Wait, you didn't tell her about the TIGASA list did you? And more importantly, that the pattern on the curtains not quite matching the living room wallpaper is most definitely not on the list?
That way lies darkness, despair & eternal damnation...
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Friday 23rd June 2017 16:06 GMT FeRDNYC
First rule of TIGASA list...
"Wait, you didn't tell her about the TIGASA list did you? And more importantly, that the pattern on the curtains not quite matching the living room wallpaper is most definitely not on the list?"
Agreed. At the very top of my TIGASA list is "Making sure other people don't know which things that they care about are not on this list." It's part of the overall "peacekeeping/cowardice" theme that makes up the bulk of the first dozen or so items.
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Friday 23rd June 2017 13:18 GMT I ain't Spartacus
My sister-in-law once asked me if the kettle and toaster set would match the accent colours in my kitchen/dining room.
All the words are english, it's just what she'd done with them that I objected to. I didn't bother telling her that the kettle and toaster didn't even match each other, let alone the non-existent cushions. I bloody hate cushions! Buy chairs that are comfortable, so you don't need them.
Still, most of us have certain things that we obsess about the details of, and others we couldn't give a stuff about. Some people get really upset about Microsoft Comic Sans, or even have preferences for different flavours of arial fonts.
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Friday 23rd June 2017 14:12 GMT I ain't Spartacus
I worked for a US multi-national. Our logo useage policy document was 19 pages long. I believe the logo had to be at an exact 23° angle. Heaven knows why.
I needed a copy of a logo to sling on top of an invoice. Marketing still gave me a stiff talking to, and made me read the document, before I was allowed a copy of the file though.
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Friday 23rd June 2017 15:58 GMT Sir Runcible Spoon
A Question of style
Many years ago I got fed up with the lack of desktop organisation tools so I cobbled something together so that all the grouped icons on my desktop were contained within sectioned areas with relevant headings etc. and it was all nice and clear and no matter how many icons I had I could find what I needed.
Someone from the web team came along and wanted a copy, which I refused at the time (for reasons which will become apparent). I then got into bother for apparently re-programming the desktop and IT stuck their noses in - then they wanted a copy.
In the end I had to admit that I'd created a picture in mspaint and set it as my background, then just dropped icons into the relevant sections :D For some reason everyone lost interest after that.
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Sunday 25th June 2017 22:52 GMT Marshalltown
Re: A Question of style
Ah - Stardock. I first became acquainted with them when - IIRC - Galactic Civilizations was their few products and the only decent game that ran in OS/2. They also came up with a few really nice utilities for OS/2 that took excellent advantage of things OS/2 did that no other OS did at the time. Sadly, they drifted toward Windows while I was settling into Linux.
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Monday 26th June 2017 13:01 GMT barbara.hudson
Re: A Question of style
You should have taken a screen capture with the icons in place, inverted it, and offered to "install" it. Then flip the screen upside down (well, it WAS back in the days of CRTs). When they complain, tell them it's not your fault their computer isn't compatible. Then watch them try to click on an icon as the mouse goes in the opposite direction.
My first victim was the IT tyrant - you know, the guy who knows nothing, got the job because he knows the boss, and tries to dictate how everyone needs the same standard setup. Because that's all he knows.
15 minutes of saying that I infected his machine with a virus - with a crowd around him by then - when all he had to do was turn the monitor right side up and change the background.
I thought it was funny. So did everyone else who had experience with how he was a real PITA. What he thought was not on my list of TIGASA. And he couldn't complain because it would have shown just how incompetent he was.
For bonus points, my next victim I only rotated the image 90 degrees, then turned the monitor on its side.
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Friday 23rd June 2017 15:57 GMT MJI
TIGASA
My TIGASA list if different to my wifes. No problem, she worries about colours, I worry about the quality and usabilty.
But then at work we all have different TIGASA lists over cars. No 2 owns a kit car I struggle to get in.
Person 1 : is it economical
Person 2 : is it different
Person 3 : is it fast
Person 4 : is it big engined, automatic, and comfy
Person 5 : can they fit all their kids and their friends
Person 6 : is it insurable
So Person 1 gets a cold sweat at the thought of Person 4 getting < 30mpg. Yet Person 4 cannot understand buying a car with a 1 at the front of capacity and only 4 cylinders.
I do tend to upset him a bit by quoting poor consumption and buying fuel because the garage is near rather than cheap.
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Friday 23rd June 2017 20:49 GMT Wensleydale Cheese
Wives, cars, colours
"My TIGASA list if different to my wifes. No problem, she worries about colours, I worry about the quality and usabilty."
I’d just taken delivery of my first proper long distance limo, which I'd bought to be able to do large distances around Europe and not be knackered by the time I got to where I was going.
I picked up the girlfriend and we set off for the weekend.
The car behaved immaculately, nice sound system, air con, heated leather seats, enough oomph to deal with the Autobahn etc etc.
When we got out of the car at our destination, gf pointed at a red Mondeo and said:
"Look, what a beautiful car!"
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Monday 26th June 2017 15:22 GMT Steve the Cynic
Re: TIGASA
""Person 4 : is it big engined, automatic, and comfy"
"Yet Person 4 cannot understand buying a car with a 1 at the front of capacity and only 4 cylinders."
But surely a 2 in front of the capacity is only "big" if it talks about hundreds of cubic inches? And even then it should be at least a 3... (309 ci = about 5.1 litres).
Or have I been spoiled by too many years of the 80s spent in the US?
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Monday 26th June 2017 16:53 GMT Sir Runcible Spoon
Re: TIGASA
"Then watch them try to click on an icon as the mouse goes in the opposite direction."
A mate once asked me to help him sort out a virus on his PC. There was a little information box on the screen, but you couldn't shut it off or even move it. It was also not showing up in the process queue.
It was my experience with the desktop trick that made me check the background image - someone had managed to snap his desktop and overlay the dialogue, then save it back :)
Needless to say I never got any credit for sorting that one out, a more accurate description in the first paragraph should have been 'ex-mate' :)
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Tuesday 27th June 2017 12:35 GMT Kiwi
Re: TIGASA
It was my experience with the desktop trick that made me check the background image - someone had managed to snap his desktop and overlay the dialogue, then save it back :)
Seen that one done..
I saw one better when the animated desktop stuff was available in Windows (XP?) Someone did the nasty dialogue box, with an animated counter.. Text along the lines of "Virus will wipe computer in X:XX, do not restart your computer. Close window to abort", with the X:XX of course being a decreasing time.
Poor guy was just about in tears as he just could not get that thing to close! (Did give me a chance to try to teach him a bit more about backups and if he did them regularly then he wouldn't risk losing a few months work!)
(May not have been "Virus", maybe "format" or something like that)
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Tuesday 27th June 2017 09:43 GMT theblackhand
Re: Wait a minute
I think there are a few points that need to be clarified:
- the cupboard should be FIREPROOF (to protect important things) not AIRTIGHT to prevent any issues with H&S...
- if the manager locks himself in the airtight cupboard and is unable to locate the light switch or the emergency door release or they both turn out to be faulty, then it would be a terrible accident...
- the paper trail showing the manager declining the recommended safety tests in said cupboard may also help in any subsequent inquiries by the local constabulary
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Friday 30th June 2017 09:15 GMT Farnet
Re: acronyms
I usually tell people who have done something really stupid on the PC that they have an "I. D. TEN T" fault / error.
most people just sagely nod their head and carry on, but there was the General Managers PA last year (who for a better idea of what I was messing with, is a 50+ Belfast Irish Potty mouthed fog horn), kept putting stuff on her desk and having it hold down the control key on her keyboard and rant that the system was rubbish etc....
I repeated to her that is was the above error code, so she started telling everyone about it...... until she wrote it down...... " I.D.I.O.T" error......
Still makes me laugh and especially since eventually she found the funny side to it..... and she never rested stuff on her keyboard again.
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Friday 23rd June 2017 11:28 GMT Blitheringeejit
Exactly
"...they want a "good" design and "intuitive" navigation - yardsticks which become weapons in the hands of idiots."
And meaningless bollocks in the hands of sales wonks who commission website designers. Which is exactly why I moved carefully away from "web design", and now concentrate on finding customers who want to have complex data delivered in plain-looking pages from a well-built backend database, with no unnecessary bells, whistles, or JQuery - and especially no JS predictive typing which spends so long searching for predictions that it stops users from actually typing what they want to type.
Company motto: "We'll make it work, but don't ask us what colour it should be."
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Friday 23rd June 2017 11:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Exactly
"Company motto: "We'll make it work, but don't ask us what colour it should be.""
I say to my customers "I'll make it work, get someone else to make it look pretty"
previous experiences include being berated for not being able to match the colour of chrome (the metal), it turned out that no colour would ever match because the customer wanted to be able see their reflection as if it were highly polished metal
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Friday 23rd June 2017 11:54 GMT Stoneshop
Committees
“Ah,” said the marketing girl, “Well, we’re having a little difficulty there.”
“Difficulty?” exclaimed Ford, “Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It’s the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!”
The marketing girl soured him with a look.
“Alright, Mr Wiseguy,” she said, “you’re so clever, you tell us what colour it should have.”
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Friday 23rd June 2017 11:37 GMT Michael H.F. Wilkinson
I see Simon follows the Lord Vetinari school of committology: "What the Iron Maiden was to stupid tyrants, the committee was to Lord Vetinari; it was only slightly more expensive, far less messy, considerably more efficient and, best of all, you had to force people to climb inside the Iron Maiden"
Doffs hat (grey Tilley once more) to the late, great sir Terry Pratchett
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Friday 23rd June 2017 12:10 GMT Chris G
The word committee should be the designated collective noun for a group of people suffering from chronic and profound cranio-rectal auto insertion syndrome.
It's also a place to keep them away from genuinely useful.people.
I assume they understand so little because both sound and visio are muffled.
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Sunday 25th June 2017 21:40 GMT Dr. Ellen
Re: Websites
They didn't bother the website I put together, because I was the only one able to do it -- and good with sarcasm. Besides, every time we got a new boss, he immediately got busy designing the new stationery. Got quite a stack of quality bond second sheets every time that happened.
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Friday 23rd June 2017 12:43 GMT John 110
It's all true...
I had control of the handbook wrested from me* because someone objected to the font I'd used.
Footnote: I say "wrested". In one way I was glad to give it up, it was a bugger of a yearly job because I always made sure I'd checked all the references and hyperlinks in it, and then when it was published to the Intranet, some twonk would say "oh I meant to get you to...".
But my pride was dented by having it removed from me...
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Saturday 24th June 2017 20:24 GMT John 110
Re: It's all true...
"You mean you didn't take revenge by checking every reference and hyperlink and complaining about the errors - one complaint per week."
I considered it, but settled for dropping hints to a nit-picky colleague as to where the errors were. That way I wasn't the petty one...
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Friday 23rd June 2017 14:22 GMT BebopWeBop
Don't get me wrong, I love committees - they're a great way of getting the troublemakers all in one place. A small office with a lockable door and inadequate fresh air supply for instance - or even just up against a heavily pockmarked wall...
Sheer brilliance and good tactical thinking as well.
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Sunday 25th June 2017 00:47 GMT Cpt Blue Bear
A site I used to visit regularly had a door to nowhere.
It was put in by previous tennant some time in the 1970s (by the fittings and paint) to communicate with the building behind. By 2005 that building had been demolished, then the developer ran out of money and the site stood empty. We unlocked it to take a look and it was quite a spectacular drop of 5 floors onto builder's rubble. After than people were regularly told that the solution to their problem was "through the green door".
All it needed was an auto-close and a lime pit at the bottom to make it perfect.
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Friday 23rd June 2017 15:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
You miss the point
Committees exist so that the guys in suits don't have to take responsibility for decisions. Which is why most of the ones I've been dragged into seem to be carefully directed into a forgone conclusion ( usually after about 30 wasted hours ) that the boss wanted to see, but not be blamed for. And sitting in most of these there's been a boss surrogate ( or "toady" to use the technical term), who will redirect the conclusion to the chosen outcome even in the face of absolutely undiluted, incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.
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Friday 23rd June 2017 16:11 GMT B*stardTintedGlasses
Re: You miss the point
Pretty much. I think Auntie Beeb had an article about the HIPPO in the room.
(HIghest Paid Person's Opinion).
And funnily enough, that is what a committee of pathological a*se-kissers is there to validate, even, as stated, despite the actual work done by those who seem to have some actual clue as to the technical requirements of the project.
Wonder what reaction you would get to installing a "HIPPO" klaxon outside mission control, and how long it would take the boss to twig it was about them.... something to mull over during Friday pub o'clock!
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Sunday 25th June 2017 21:48 GMT Dr. Ellen
Re: You miss the point
I was in one of those meetings. It was obvious what the boss wanted -- but he wanted US to want it, too. We didn't. After an hour, I said "It's obvious what you want. We don't want it. You're the boss -- just do it. But stop nudging us to agree." Strangely, I kept my job.
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Friday 23rd June 2017 23:51 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Committees
Second law. If you find yourself drafted onto one argue strongly for something which is so blatantly impossible that even the members of a committee can see it's blatantly impossible (admittedly not an easy thing to find) so you never get invited to any more meetings. Or any other committees.
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Friday 23rd June 2017 19:12 GMT handleoclast
Re: 80 columns
True but...
The reason for 80 columns on a punch card goes back to typographical design rules (which derive from experience of human perception). On a line of more than around 72 characters your eyes have difficulty tracking back to the start of the next line. Add in the 6 columns at the start used by Fortran for label and continuation fields and two for luck and you get 80.
A standard rule-of-thumb used by printers (the people, not the clackety machines) was "Two and a half alphabets." Because tracking problems don't suddenly happen at the 73rd character but tracking becomes progressively harder after around 65 characters and 72 is really pushing it (but OK if most lines are shorter).
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Saturday 24th June 2017 12:18 GMT dajames
Re: 80 columns
On a line of more than around 72 characters your eyes have difficulty tracking back to the start of the next line. Add in the 6 columns at the start used by Fortran for label and continuation fields and two for luck and you get 80.
Don't forget that columns 73-80 were sometimes used for card sequence numbers, so you actually only have 66 columns of actual code after the label and continuation at the start.
Card sequence numbers? If you'd ever dropped a deck of a couple of thousand cards and watched them tumble chaotically floorwards you wouldn't ask!
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Friday 23rd June 2017 21:17 GMT Joe Zeff
A new way to keep the number of committees down.
I belong to a social club that has an interesting way to keep the number of committees at a reasonable level: whoever proposes that a committee be formed automatically becomes the chair. You'd be surprised how good a job this does of keeping things under control.
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Saturday 24th June 2017 17:52 GMT JulieM
Re: A new way to keep the number of committees down.
That is a brilliant idea.
It provides the perfect disincentive against forming a committee for all the wrong reasons (e.g., not taking responsibility for an unpopular decision) without penalising anyone creating one for the right reasons.
Icon, because you deserve one for coming up with it.
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Friday 23rd June 2017 23:46 GMT Doctor Syntax
SWMBO's ladies group have a committee meeting every month. Given that the only thing the group as a whole does is have monthly meetings and given that the entire year's meeting programme has to be drawn up and printed in advance I've no idea what they find to talk about in 11 of the meetings. But they do.
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Sunday 25th June 2017 00:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
Can I borrow the BOFH? Or just some carpet and quicklime?
We are being force-fed "Workplace Social Networking" as the panacea for all ills. So far we have been lumbered with SalesForce, Tibbr and now Yammer. All at once, plus Orifice365.
The guv'nors think it is fantastic.
95% of the rest of us are . . . . somewhat less so.
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Monday 26th June 2017 21:58 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Can I borrow the BOFH? Or just some carpet and quicklime?
At my orkplace we've recently had a Shyte for Business rollout, and they're making horrible noises about Orifice 365.
Then again, if it's all supposed to be web based, maybe I can finally get that Linux laptop - that is of course assuming that 365 is standards-compliant. Knowing my luck, it'll more likely be standards-complaint.
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Wednesday 28th June 2017 10:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Can I borrow the BOFH? Or just some carpet and quicklime?
Oh good grief! The contagion is spreading! We have Shite for Business deployed, Yammer, Despairpoint and Orifice 365 in progress. Yammer is a particular cause of irritation as I don't use "Social" applications at home, buggered if I want to support them in the office.
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Thursday 29th June 2017 05:52 GMT TSM
No need to panic
Just do what we do - roll out a bunch of applications, but keep communicating over email like always.
I think there's only one or two people who have ever contacted me over Lync^H^H^H^HSkype for Business. Our team has a Slack channel which I don't think has been used since the initial test messages. There's a conversations feature in our task tracker, but we don't use it (maybe other teams do).
Meanwhile, email continues to work just fine.
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