Posts by sandman

Re: 100% honesty 90% of the time

I once worked for a company that had a total blame culture (one of the reasons why I suspect it failed later).Not realising this when I started, I made an error when configuring the settings on a new LMS. When it was noticed, the cry went up "Whose fault is this!!!" I turned my chair round and said "Whoops, I screwed up." You could have heard a pin drop... They were so shocked that nothing else was said. :-) Mind you, in the same company I did threaten to defenestrate (from the 9th floor) a colleague who tried to pass the blame for a really critical error on to me.

Re: God Bless written instructions

Documentation rocks - particularly when dealing with directors who could be described as "marginally sane". I once specced out a very large elearning project and sent it to said director for sign-off. (This was something like 140 pages long). It duly came back, signed by his own fair hand. This was a multi-partner project, originally planned to work in pseudo-VR and developed by a third-party company. The great day comes for the first live demo and the director goes utterly ballistic - it simply doesn't do what he wanted. He barks at the whole room, "This wasn't in the specification!" Unfortunately I lost my temper a little bit and snapped back. "Yes it was, I wrote it and you signed it off, did you read it?" Silence... a long silence. My career was floating away in front of my eyes. Luckily he was mad, but fair, and back at base apologised for his outburst - he hadn't read it. This was the day I learnt to provide executive summaries of specifications, in PowerPoint, using a lot of very simple pictures and diagrams.

Re: Merry Brexmas ...

"Haha, suck it up Englanders: you'll be up shit creek, with high unemployment, a fleeing populace and civil unrest like third-world, shit-hole countries under WTO rules like... USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand."

WTO - ha, ha, ha. More like NAFTA, CETA, ANZCERTA and TPP.

Countries sign trade agreements for a reason.

Re: Considering....

I think that perhaps a branch of the US govt (there are many overlapping jurisdictions) would find it much easier to "pick him up" in Ecuador than even in the UK...

Re: Sweet memories...

Yep, that's rekindled a few grey cells. We thought we were on top of it, repeated warnings sent out, 24pt, bold, underlined, bright red, dire threats and all. Then, one person in PR decided to completely ignore all that... When asked, they said, "Oh, I never read messages from IT, you're always just sending out warnings."

Re: "Consumers"... US still utterly unable to understant it.

You seem to be under the mistaken belief that they actually have souls... ;-)

I had the opposite experience. Working for a charity, a nice company (OK, it was Autodesk and I bet you haven't heard them described as "nice" before) gifted us a copy of Autocad (last DOS version). They also threw in three days training for two of us. However... the charity wouldn't buy a machine to run it on. Cue sudden panic when the head of Autodesk UK decided to visit to see how their gift was being used. Which is how I ended up with a 386 and an A2 pen-plotter almost overnight. Of course, in the intervening 6 months my memory of the training was a little shaky. As a side issue, rendering and plotting whole very large buildings took a looooong time on the equipment mentioned - 24 hours wasn't unheard of.

Re: "Israel should stop murdering Palestinians"

Ah, so like Brexiteers and Remainers but with a longer history and more death?

Re: Seems obvious ...

Yep, the first thing I do is buy a case to protect the shiny - one that protects the screen too (Usually before the phone arrives). My phones tend to last until something dies or becomes unsupported...

Why does Beaverton sound more like the sort of hotel Trump might stay in?

Re: Psycho creeps will always be with us.

Giving my age away here, I thought DM meant Dungeon Master (from a game for anyone who thinks it might relate to a predilection for whips, chains, etc) and it took me a second to realise that you meant a disreputable publication.

Re: "I prefer not to answer that but suggest you wear gloves to work."

I had a great boss a while back who said to us: "You all know what you're doing, it's my job to shield you from the political crap." He did - resulting in a happy, productive department while he basked in our success and gained (as we did to a lesser extent, obviously) much in the way of bonuses.

Yes.

Re: Indeed on the pork ...

When I was taking a metal-working course at a local Tech College back in the mid-70s, wearing a tie was compulsory. Of course, you were wearing it under a boiler suit, but one guy nearly did a face-plant into a lathe doing 1500rpm when his tie got free. Moronic policy.

Re: I've got 3 Rolexes!

Been shopping in Thailand, eh?

Um, because it's a huge and fascinating country where the vast majority of people are openly friendly and generous. Yes it's got some horrible problems (racism and misuse of firearms among them) but that's far from the whole story.*

* Disclaimer: I am not an American citizen, but have worked and holidayed there.

Re: Alternatives

Hmm, I always found the the availability of soft drugs led to an increase in alcohol consumption (or was it the other way round, it's hard to remember) ;-)

Re: "not that I'm a member of NatWest or RBS now"

I always vote for the top guy with the biggest cocaine and prostitute habit (with the CoOp that is - God knows what my local Councillors get up to).

Re: Core competence: getting contracts

You missed out an obvious advantage though - any failure can be blamed on the outsourced provider, not the government department. You'll see the same policy with regard to local councils. Central government hives off responsibility for something like social care to local authorities and makes it a legal obligation, but then cuts their grants. This results in other services being cut, but it's the fault of someone else, not the government.

Re: Typical

Sounds about right. I've seen customer software training put under HR - because "It's all just training, isn't it?" Try getting travel budgets to major customers in funny foreign from an HR dept.

Re: Managers?

In one very large company I worked at I had to scan the CEO and CFO's signatures - good job I'm honest! ;-)

Re: Just finger trouble

I had one of those at work. I blame my potty-mouth on the experience.

Re: Software testing?

Don't tramp city streets in Vibram-soled walking boots - they're really made for tracks/mud/rock/grass, etc. I had the same problem with my walking boots - they're due to be sent off for their second re-soling. :-(

Re: If somebody does not understand...

Oh God yes, I've been training/supporting people for more years than I care to remember and some of them seem to be utterly incapable of learning - well, anything new. At one company, I used to hold the chief executives hand and move and click the mouse for them when they were video-conferencing. Because they only did it once a month, they would forget how between sessions (no, the printed (large font and pictures) user guide on the desk next to them didn't help). Possibly they just liked me holding their hand of course. ;-)

Re: Missing the point

I'd love to see a new government taking a look around and saying. "Well, everything seems to be more or less OK, let's just kick back and relax unless something unpredictable happens".