Updates from March, 2010

  • Top 10 Reasons Why Working in IT Sucks

    The Truth 2:04 pm on November 24, 2008 | 4 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Geeks and Nerds, , , Information technology, Library of Congress, , Outer space, Plain English, , , , Shell script, Subcultures, , Weblogs

    I’ve been in the IT industry for over 10 years now, and if theres one thing I’ve learned, its that IGNORANCE IS RAMPANT in today’s typical office setting in regard to general computer use. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Who is this guy, why doesnt he just find another job if he hates it so much?.” Well my name is Ben, but many know me as Dacks. I’m a life-time nerd, and I LOVE computers and technology in general. I consider myself to be quite knowledgable in many areas of IT, and I’m always down for a quick geek-out session with another nerd in close proximity, HOWEVER(!) my patience runs thin whenever someone asks me: “Hey how do I [insert google search query]“. Welcome to office life in the IT department.

    10. You must explain everything, regardless of simplicity, at least 10,000 times

    Sometimes I wish it were actually possible to replace people with small shell scripts. I’m not an alien. I have 2 legs and 2 arms, 1 head, and I speak English. Somehow in that equation, even the most simple explanation is lost in translation when dealing with a Computard. My favorite part is scanning over the poor soul’s ‘notes’ after I’ve just finished oversimplifying how to attach a word document to an email, only to find an entire Library of Congress worth of text just to cover: 1. Click Attach, 2. Find File, 3. Click OK.

    9. At least 3 times a week, someone will say “I can’t print”.

    Nick Burns Anyone? This is one of those comments that drives me bat-shit insane. Printers, possibly the most low-tech device in the whole office, somehow manage to foil your 36 kill streak in Quake just about every hour, on the hour. How is it, that a device with a average of 3 buttons, 1 blinking light, and PAPER can be so confusing to the common user? Forget trying to explain what a driver is…

    8. You get the same emails, 500 times.

    Here’s the scenario. You’ve actually done your job! The website’s traffic is through the roof thanks to you brilliant S.E.O. tactics and semantic code. The problem? “OMG THE SITE IS SLOW” echoes out from the nether regions of your cubicle circus. The first wave of emails from the marketing department come raining in. As soon as you’re done hitting DELETE on the bunch, a second department feels its nessicary to alert you with an individual email from each employee, all stating their own nifty hypothesis as to why the site is so slow. After about 9 waves, you start recieving the “Did you get my email” email, followed up by the “Did you get my email about my email” phone call. Mass murder ensues shortly after.

    7. You’re the first to show up, and the last to leave.

    God forbid anyone decides to learn how to turn their own machine on or off. Having a ’schedule’ might seem like a good way to decide when to arrive and depart, however your time as an IT administrator does not enter the mind of the co-worker who’s late for Greys Anatomy re-runs. People will leave you the most ridiculous list of tasks to rush through, usually in the last 10 seconds of the work day. You can expect to be bumped up 1 notch on my hitlist for this infraction.

    6. Nobody ever saves you any coffee.

    Leave it to the advertising team to lick the pot clean, occasionally saving you the smallest, coffee-ground soup-ish, coldest drop of sludge. I broke down and bought a coffee pot which sits right next to me, guarded by a pair of rabid doberman pinchers with sniper rifles.

    5. The dreaded “What are you working on?”

    Nothing pisses me off more than some idiot poking their head into my office and blurting out “Hey, What are you working on?” I usually approach this question with a deep breathe, followed by a brief moral struggle over whether or not to turn this moron’s brain into an even more viscous mush. Answering this question honestly will often result in your coworker’s head exploding. There is a reason why I am paid to understand these things, and you are not. If you truly don’t care to understand, then by all means, have a nice helping of shut the fuck up and let me do my job.

    4. For every hour you spend trying to make things easier, you’ll create 10 more hours of explanation

    Forget trying to make these fools’ lives easier. It will only result in further frustration. Let them slink into their anti productive work flows. The more company time they piss away doing things ‘how they’ve done them for 10 years’, the less time they have to bother you. Something as small as moving an icon can have terrible butterfly-effect results. Expect questions like:
    “DROOOOOOOOOL…….DERRRRRR……FGGGGGGGGGHHHHNNNNN….UMMMM….WHERE IS MY WINDOWS?”

    3. Updates from outer space!

    Somewhere along the line, a developer had a brilliant idea that would in fact forever degrade the patience of future developers and administrators: Updates. First of all, don’t get me wrong, updates are great (if you can wrap your head around this astronomical concept). My major gripe here is the fact that a perfectly well written dialogue box, in plain English, will undoubtedly read “PLEASE CALL SOMEONE INTO YOUR OFFICE, FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BUILDING, TO CLICK ‘OK’ ” to the average grunt. The update might as well read “I am an idiot, Click Yes, Ok, or Uh-Huh”.

    2. Do you think you can _____ ?

    Unless your name is Boss, or Manager, I never want to hear this come out of your mouth. Ever. This phrase, as innocent as it seems, is a portal to another dimension where every second of your personal life is sucked dry by the things that will “only take a second.” Accept no side jobs from co-workers. You WILL be underpaid and overworked due to your ‘working’ relationship, with no possibility of actually getting what you’re worth. Unless they’re willing to pay you double what you’re making at the gig, walk away. I don’t “think I can” do anything, I know what I can do, and I know how much its going to cost you, and you probably can’t afford it.

    1. You are everyone’s personal Google-er.

    My mind was blown away the other day by my friend James, who sent me what I feel is the best invention since Google. It’s called LetMeGoogleThatForYou. Basically, its the most passive aggressive way to let someone know that what they just asked you, when typed into Google, will probaly give you a better explination than I can ever give. To some, this may come off as an insult, but others will be wisked away to the magical land of AJAX where an invisible pink elephant will dance into their office and type their question into Google for them. It even hits the search button for you. A dyslexic retard with 1 hand and a lazy eye can usually take it from here. Either way, they’re out of my hair.

    Do you have any ridiculous office-related stories you’d like to share with us? Till then, try and keep the high powered weapons out of plain site. They might catch on to your plan…

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  • Obama says he and Bush are 'united' to fix economy

    The Truth 12:25 pm on November 24, 2008 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Bush administration, , , , , ,

    New York Stock Exchange, New York City.

    Image via Wikipedia

    President-elect Barack Obama on Monday called the financial crisis one of “historic proportions” and said that he and the Bush administration are “united” in their efforts to get the economy back on track.

    As Obama unveiled his economic team, he said there isn’t “a minute to waste” when it comes to rebuilding the economy.

    “My commitment is to do what is required. President Bush has indicated that he has the same approach, the same attitude,” Obama said at a news conference in Chicago, Illinois.

    Obama’s remarks came just hours after the federal government announced a massive rescue package for Citigroup — which President Bush said he’d spoken about with Obama before it was announced.

    Obama said Monday that he has asked his newly formed economic team to develop recommendations for his economic plan, which he outlined Saturday, and to consult with Congress, the current administration and the Federal Reserve on immediate economic developments over the next two months.

    In selecting his economic team, Obama said he sought leaders who share his fundamental belief that “we cannot have a thriving Wall Street without a thriving Main Street.”Video Watch Obama call the economic crisis one of ‘historic proportions »

    CNN.com

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  • Police dash cam of Meteor over Edmonton, Canada

    The Truth 10:49 am on November 24, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Alan Hildebrand, , Canadian Space Agency, North Battleford, Saskatchewan, , University of Calgary, Western Canada

    Scientists are today searching for remnants of a meteor that brilliantly lit up the sky in western Canada before breaking into pieces.

    Alan Hildebrand, a University of Calgary planetary scientist, called it one of the largest meteors visible in the country in the last decade.

    Video images showed what appeared to be a speeding fireball over Saskatoon which became larger and brighter before disappearing as it neared the ground.

    Mr Hildebrand said that he received about 300 e-mail reports from witnesses to the event.

    “It would be something like a billion-watt light bulb,” said Mr Hildebrand, who also co-ordinates meteor sightings with the Canadian Space Agency.

    Tammy Evans was woken up by her 10-year-old daughter who ran into the bedroom of their home in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, last Thursday. “She said there was a flash of light, the house shook twice and it sounded like dinosaurs were walking,” Ms Evans, a nurse, said. [Times Online.co.uk]

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  • Cha-ching-Seth Green Commercial

    The Truth 3:19 am on November 12, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , AlysonHannigan, , cha-ching, , , Herb Adderley, , , rallys, , Seth Green, ,

    Seth Green’s commercial for Rallys Hamburgers was featured during an interview with on his show tonight with Mr. Green. On the show they talked about how the phrase ‘Cha-Ching’ caught on with an NFL football team and skyrocketed him into the spotlight of fame and fortune.

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  • John McCain Doll on Conan O'Brien

    The Truth 2:46 am on November 12, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Action figure, , , , , , ,

    mccain doll given away on conan obrien

    mccain doll given away on conan obrien

    Tonight on Conan, he announced that a doll company had given them their entire surplus of John McCain Dolls. Seeing how Obama won, they had no use for the dolls and decided to give them to the show. He started giving out giant bags of action figure goodness to the audience members and it hit me, these dolls are going to be worth a small fortune on ebay tomorrow.

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  • Unemployment rate hits 6.5%, a 14-year high

    The Truth 4:03 pm on November 7, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Economic Policy Institute,

    Unemployment rate for US states in 2004

    Image via Wikipedia

    Reporting from Washington — Employers slashed jobs from one end of the economy to the other, pushing the unemployment rate to 6.5% — the highest in 14 years — and making a deep recession a virtual certainty.

    The Labor Department reported today that the economy lost 240,000 jobs in October, the steepest one-month decline in a contraction that began last January. It also revised downward the number of jobs lost in September, to 284,000 from an initially reported 159,000.

    Normally, the economy must create about 100,000 jobs a month just to keep pace with population growth. So far this year, the economy has shrunk by over 1 million jobs.

    The stock market, which fell over 400 points on Thursday in anticipation of a dismal jobs report, rose over 90 points in early trading in relief that the numbers weren’t even worse.

    Peter Kretzmer, senior economist at Bank of America in New York, said that job losses were only likely to accelerate in coming months and the unemployment rate could rise to near 8% by the end of next year.

    “The October employment report indicated that businesses sped up their layoffs as the financial crisis deepened in September,” Kretzmer said in a note to clients. “With the economy in recession and GDP declining at about an average 3% . . . we expect rapid payroll declines to continue well into 2009, before gradually abating.”

    Jared Bernstein, a labor economist with the Economic Policy Institute, said the deteriorating conditions for U.S. workers are likely to intensify calls for Congress to pass another economic stimulus package.

    “Job loss is very pervasive right now across industries,” Bernstein said. “It’s hard to find industries that are creating jobs, other than health care and government . . . and not coincidentally, those sectors both have heavy government involvement.”

    “When the private sector engine stalls, the public sector engine needs to kick in,” Bernstein said.

    The unemployment rate soared 0.4% in one month, rising from 6.1% in September to 6.5% in October — a sign that employers, facing slackened demand for their goods and services, are responding by cutting jobs.

    “A consumer-led recession is upon us, and it promises to be a serious one,” said Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at MFR Inc., a New York economic forecasting firm.

    The last time the unemployment rate was so high was in March 1994, when the economy was still struggling to recover from a recession.

    The unemployment rate is a survey of those who have lost employment and are actively looking for new work. It does not include people who are working part-time because they can’t find a full-time job, or workers who have become so discouraged that they have stopped applying for jobs.

    Read more at LATimes.com

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  • Escapee convicted of killing judge in courtroom

    The Truth 4:02 pm on November 7, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Brian Nichols, Fulton County Courthouse

    Brian Nichols

    Image via Wikipedia

    ATLANTA (Reuters) - A jury convicted a man on Friday of murdering a judge in a courtroom and killing three other people during his escape from custody in a spree that gained him instant notoriety, the court said.

    Police and the FBI launched a huge manhunt for Brian Nichols in March 2005 after he committed a string of crimes while escaping from the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta, where he was being tried for rape.

    Prosecutors want the death penalty for Nichols, 36, who was convicted of 54 counts including murder, kidnapping, robbery, aggravated assault and carjacking, a court official said.

    He could be sentenced to execution by lethal injection or life in prison. Nichols pleaded not guilty on the basis of insanity.

    While being prepared for a court hearing in 2005, Nichols overpowered a security guard, took her gun and entered the courtroom where he shot dead Judge Rowland Barnes and a court reporter in front of several witnesses.

    Read more at Reuters


     

  • Same-sex marriage issue back to state top court

    The Truth 7:02 pm on November 6, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , California Constitution, , , Same-sex marriage, Same-sex marriage in California, San Francisco California, State supreme court, , , United States Constitution, United States Supreme Court

    (11-05) 18:16 PST SAN FRANCISCO — A day after California voters approved a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, the incendiary issue returned to the state Supreme Court, where gay and lesbian couples and the city of San Francisco filed lawsuits Wednesday seeking to overturn Proposition 8.

    And Attorney General Jerry Brown, who represents the state in court, said he would defend the legality of the thousands of same-sex marriages conducted in the 5 1/2 months leading up to election day - even though sponsors of Prop. 8 say the measure was intended to invalidate those marriages. That controversy is also likely to end up before California’s high court and could reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

    “It is my belief that the courts will hold that these same-sex marriages entered into are valid,” Brown said in a statement. He said he would defend Prop. 8 against legal challenges, but would also defend “the marriages contracted during the time that same-sex marriage was the law in California.”

    A research institute at UCLA has estimated that 18,000 same-sex couples have married in California since the state Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing such marriages took effect June 16. In a victory statement Tuesday night, the Yes on 8 campaign asserted that from now on, “only marriage between a man and a woman will be valid or recognized in California, regardless of when or where performed.”

    Campaign manager Frank Schubert said Wednesday, however, that his organization has no plans to challenge any of those marriages in court. The question will have to be decided by “the court that created that problem” by refusing to suspend its ruling until after the election, he said, without describing how it might reach the court.

    Prop. 8 would overturn the court’s 4-3 ruling May 15 that declared same-sex couples had the right to marry under the California Constitution on the grounds of privacy and equal protection. Backers of the measure made the court a focus of their campaign, accusing “activist judges” of thwarting the will of voters who had approved a similar measure as an initiative statute in 2000.

    Three lawsuits were filed directly with the state Supreme Court on Wednesday, seeking orders immediately blocking enforcement of Prop. 8 and ultimately striking it down as a violation of fundamental rights in the California Constitution.

    The plaintiffs are six unmarried same-sex couples and the advocacy group Equality California; another couple who married shortly after the May 15 ruling took effect; and the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles, joined by Santa Clara County.

    Although their lawyers would not discuss their strategy publicly, each suit seeks to overturn Prop. 8 on the basis of state law and avoids federal constitutional claims that could send the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Gay-rights advocates have tried to keep such disputes away from the nation’s high court, out of fear that the justices would issue a nationwide ruling rejecting any right of same-sex marriage under the U.S. Constitution.

    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/05/BA3B13UM63.DTL

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  • Suddenly, it may be cool to be an American again

    The Truth 7:00 pm on November 6, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Military of the United States, Politics of the United States, , ,

    Barack Obama

    VIENNA, Austria – She was a stranger, and she kissed me. Just for being an American.

    It happened on the bus on my way to work Wednesday morning, a few hours after compatriots clamoring for change swept Barack Obama to his historic victory. I was on the phone, and the 20-something Austrian woman seated in front of me overheard me speaking English.

    Without a word, she turned, pecked me on the cheek and stepped off at the next stop.

    Nothing was said, but the message was clear: Today, we are all Americans.

    For longtime U.S. expatriates like me — someone far more accustomed to being targeted over unpopular policies, for having my very Americanness publicly assailed — it feels like an extraordinary turnabout.

    Like a long journey over a very bumpy road has abruptly come to an end.

    And it’s not just me.

    An American colleague in Egypt says several people came up to her on the streets of Cairo and said: “America, hooray!” Others, including strangers, expressed congratulations with a smile and a hand over their hearts.

    Another colleague, in Amman, says Jordanians stopped her on the street and that several women described how they wept with joy.

    When you’re an American abroad, you can quickly become a whipping post. Regardless of your political affiliation, if you happen to be living and working overseas at a time when the United States has antagonized much of the world, you get a lot of grief.

    You can find yourself pressed to be some kind of apologist for Washington. And you can wind up feeling ashamed and alone.

    I’ll never forget a ride in a taxi in Vienna when the world was waking up to the abuses wrought by U.S. troops at the detention center for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

    My driver, a Muslim, was indignant. “You are American, yes?” he asked in that accusatory tone so familiar to many expats.

    “Uh, no, Canadian,” I said.

    And it wasn’t the first time I fudged where I was from. I speak three foreign languages, so I have a bit of flexibility when it comes to faking. At various times, I’ve been a German in Serbia, a Frenchman in Turkey, a Dutchman in Austria.

    I’m not proud of it. But when you’re far from home, and you’re feeling cornered, you develop what you come to believe are survival skills.

    Last spring, after the Bush administration recognized Kosovo’s independence, a Serb who overheard my American-accented English lobbed a beer can at me in central Vienna. He missed, but spat out an unflattering “Amerikanac” and told me where to go.

    On another occasion, an Austrian who heard my teenage daughter chatting with a friend pursued her, screaming, “Go Home!”

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081105/ap_on_re_eu/eu_election_an_american_abroad

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  • Palin Didn't Know Africa Is A Continent, Says Fox News Reporter

    The Truth 6:56 pm on November 6, 2008 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 2008 Election, Carl Cameron, Fox News Channel, Fox News Reporter On Sarah Palin Video, , , North American Free Trade Agreement, , Palin Africa Video, Palin Fox News Reporter Africa Video, , Politics News, , Sarah Palin Africa Continent Video, Sarah Palin Didn't Know Africa Continent,

    Fox News Channel

    Image via Wikipedia

    Now that the 2008 election is over, reporters are spilling all the juciest, and previously off the record, gossip from the campaign trail. Much of it is about the infighting between Palin and McCain’s staff, as Newsweek’s treasure trove of post-election gossip reveals.

    However, perhaps one of the most astounding and previously unknown tidbits about Sarah Palin has to do with her already dubious grasp of geography. According to Fox News Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron, there was great concern within the McCain campaign that Palin lacked “a degree of knowledgeability necessary to be a running mate, a vice president, a heartbeat away from the presidency,” in part because she didn’t know which countries were in NAFTA, and she “didn’t understand that Africa was a continent, rather than a series, a country just in itself.”

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/05/palin-didnt-know-africa-i_n_141653.html

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