Minor rant thread. Post your rants o' the day here!

First of all, watching other people type makes me want to scream at them.  Use the tab key for autocomplete and searching.  Use the up and down arrows to repeat old commands.  Use the shortcuts, for crying out loud.

Also, I am aware that we're going to need this to work soon.  But the fact that it needs to be working soon doesn't mean that I will suddenly know how to do it.  I'm learning as fast as I can.  And, by the way, this is your job.  The reason I'm learning how to do this is that you are either incapable or unwilling, so blow it out your ass.

1.5 years after initial skin cancer diagnosis and I had to have another mole shaved this morning for biopsy. My doc said he's not concerned and this was an existing mole that grew a tad.  Still. Puts me in a bad mood and makes me worry for what I hope is nothing.

Wear your sunscreen folks. Better yet, make sure your kids are protected. By the time your kids can be responsible enough to apply sunscreen, the damage can be done. 

wae said:

First of all, watching other people type makes me want to scream at them.  Use the tab key for autocomplete and searching.  Use the up and down arrows to repeat old commands.  Use the shortcuts, for crying out loud.

Yeeesssss!!!! 

In reply to Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) :

I thought that was a pregnancy test for a second and I was *CONFUSED*

CAinCA said:

wae said:

First of all, watching other people type makes me want to scream at them.  Use the tab key for autocomplete and searching.  Use the up and down arrows to repeat old commands.  Use the shortcuts, for crying out loud.

Yeeesssss!!!! 

Hard to learn what you're never taught.

Appleseed said:

CAinCA said:

wae said:

First of all, watching other people type makes me want to scream at them.  Use the tab key for autocomplete and searching.  Use the up and down arrows to repeat old commands.  Use the shortcuts, for crying out loud.

Yeeesssss!!!! 

Hard to learn what you're never taught.

Hard to be taught what you never take the opportunity to learn

In reply to wae :

I'm not a computer person, I'm a bus driver. A couple years ago I was stuck  in an administrative spot where I have to figure out pretty much everything in office on the fly, while also working outside managing routes and incidents. They're lucky I figured out as much as I have. After a 10-12 hour day I'm not going home and learning this to stop annoying someone else. They can look away. 

In reply to Wally (Forum Supporter) :

Yeah, that makes sense.  This is this guy's chosen profession that he's been doing for 20+ years.  It would be more analogous to you having to have someone explain how to turn off the turn signal if it didn't auto-cancel.  And then every time after the first that it didn't auto-cancel, you called that guy on the phone and said "I know we did this before but...."

Most valuable class I have ever taken was a blow-off class in High School taking us through the Microsoft suite. Spent a solid 15 minutes learning how to use alt+tab to switch windows. Most boring class in the world. Easiest A I've ever gotten. And also the only class that I use every day in my job. 

wae said:

In reply to Wally (Forum Supporter) :

Yeah, that makes sense.  This is this guy's chosen profession that he's been doing for 20+ years.  It would be more analogous to you having to have someone explain how to turn off the turn signal if it didn't auto-cancel.  And then every time after the first that it didn't auto-cancel, you called that guy on the phone and said "I know we did this before but...."

I read a story about someone who did page layouts by printing out the text, razoring it out, gluing it and the other text to another page, then scanning that in.  20 years and had never heard of copy and paste.

Or the person on a tech support call who had been asked for a screenshot of her computer.  She took a photo, saved it to a USB drive, had that printed at a photo lab, then mailed it in...

One of my bosses is the absolute poster child for this stuff.

He addresses and prints his envelopes in Photoshop, because that's the first way he figured out how to do it 15 years ago, and by Bob he's not about to change.

He'd rather spend extra time on every repetition of every little task, doing everything the hard way that he already knows, rather than actually learn an easier, faster, but different way.  It's not like Word has a whole array of templates for normal business stuff like, I don't know, addressing envelopes or anything.

This attitude is not specific to using computers, but that is a major group divider for some reason.  And it doesn't fall along age lines, either - he is 10 years younger than I am.  Computers are an office mainstay and have been for 30 years now.  If you work in that environment, "I'm not a computer person" is not a valid excuse.

Whether it's a welder or a laptop, I don't see how anyone can use a tool every day and not even accidentally figure out better, faster, easier ways to use it to your own advantage.

Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) said:

 

How I started my day. I'm glad that I'm thrice vaccinated. Very mild symptoms. 
 

The clinical findings for the Abbott BinaxNOW COVID-19 test are 84.6% sensitivity (saying you have COVID when you do in fact have COVID) and 98.5% specificity (saying you don't have COVID when you in fact don't have COVID).  Now, these percents are based on comparisons to PCR tests which have their own sensitivity / specificity percents but they're really accurate (though expensive).  Having said all of this, my immediate work group of four people has received at least one BinaxNOW test per week for almost the last two years (N = ~400) and none of us has ever tested positive therefore we know we couldn't have possibly had even one false positive in 400 opportunities.  Bottom line, if the sample line turns pink, you got COVID. 

Doc, I'm sure you already know all of this...I just thought I'd do a little PSA to let everyone know that a negative result isn't nearly as reliable as a positive result.

I hope you feel better soon.

In reply to Duke :

My dad, who has used computers literally since the 1950s days of punch cards, will print a web site, scan it in, and email it to me.

dculberson said:

In reply to Duke :

My dad, who has used computers literally since the 1950s days of punch cards, will print a web site, scan it in, and email it to me.

I am pretty stunned at this. That takes a serious effort.

Dearest Brantford Home Depot,

Today I take e-pen in hand to congratulate you on a job well done!

It was this morning that I attended your store, merchandise in hand, only to realize that you had only one cashier open. And, watching that cashier not only ask, but then process a credit card application, while I try to balance lumber and paint, it gave rise to the opportunity to watch your other employees at the self checkout chat about their plans for the weekend. As I  considered all the times over the years that's happened, I concluded that it's this level of consistency that's made me realize how dedicated you are to this business model. And while it's beyond me why that is, I only know that your corporate wisdom is surely on a level not attainable by me, and well beyond anything I'm capable of understanding

So it is with that that I congratulate you on a job well done, remaining consistent thought the years, I will look to you with the utmost consideration and respect.

From the Lowes parking lot.

Thank you for your valuable time

I am recovering from Covid. Again. My symptoms were not mild.

I've had it almost exactly a year ago. I'm twice vaccinated , boostered (almost exactly two weeks before this most recent bout), I stay away from people as best I can, and wear a mask as best I can.

I feel ya Doc. Everyone be well. It's a jungle out there.

mtn said:

Most valuable class I have ever taken was a blow-off class in High School taking us through the Microsoft suite. Spent a solid 15 minutes learning how to use alt+tab to switch windows. Most boring class in the world. Easiest A I've ever gotten. And also the only class that I use every day in my job. 

Similarly, I still say that the most useful class I took in High School was typing (early 80's, pre personal computer days).  Yeah, the formatting stuff is long since useless, but the actual typing is used every day.  Ironically, it's the only class in my High School career I didn't get at least an A- in.

tuna55 said:

dculberson said:

In reply to Duke :

My dad, who has used computers literally since the 1950s days of punch cards, will print a web site, scan it in, and email it to me.

I am pretty stunned at this. That takes a serious effort.

Oh good lord you have no idea. Why don't I tell you another fun story. One time, long enough ago that this was a serious problem, he sent me an email with the message body asking "do you have this?" Attached was Outlook. Microsoft Outlook. He had sent this over dialup from Panama. So after it was successfully transmitted to the email server, which required him leaving the dialup connected at least over one night, maybe two, our server saw the email job taking forever and decided there was a problem and killed the task, causing the original email to generate a bounce message, with Outlook attached, sent back to him in Panama. Which also took too long so was killed. And the original email spooled up again, took too many system resources again, and was killed, generating another bounce, ad infinitum. By the time I figured out exactly what was going on, I didn't want to just nuke all the email folders as there was important work emails mixed in with the garbage. And I could not open the email queues in a screen reader like vi because those want to load all of the file into active memory and it was too much for the server. So I had to teach myself how to use ed, the Linux line editor, to edit the mail queue file, and use search to find the unique string that begun each instance of the nuclear message, and select, then search to find the unique beginning of the next message, back up on line, end selection, and delete selection, write out the file, and hope I could do it faster than the mail server program was queuing them up. I succeeded, we didn't lose any important business emails, and the evil pill email was rooted out after only a day or so of work. And I was rewarded for my efforts with a $250 bill at the end of the month for going over storage and traffic.

I will say that my co-loc provider was excellent, saw exactly what had happened, and waived the overage charges. They probably got that much money's worth of amusement out of sharing the story between the tech support folk there.

Some people have a talent for baffling yet totally unintentional IT clownery.

The best classes I took in school wound up being English/History, which is odd, because I work in IT.

However, the ability to write stuff down and communicate ideas in a clear manner is probably 70% of my job. 

Those born between 1940 and 1965 that worked every day with computers, but not programming or other IT, have an uncanny ability to do relatively complex things that even I can't always do (because I never needed to use Lotus or DOS), yet berkeley up attaching a picture in a group email.

In reply to dculberson :

Oh man.  That reminds me of the manager who insisted on setting his vacation-away message to reply to every e-mail received.

He was on several internal mailing lists.

It was basically a ZIP bomb in the e-mail system.  Every message from the mailing lists, including his vacation messages to them, got an auto reply..

OLD PLUMBING !!!!!!

1.  My 1894 museum, I fixed a leak between the 1st & 2nd floors.  Happy.  Now, 15 or so months later; all that yanking and pulling pissed off something 14 feet away- doing it again.  :~ (

2.  My 90 year old mother lives in a 3BR ranch w/attached garage.  Tough old gal's been through 7 kids, breast cancer and colon cancer.  5 of us live within 30 miles and do our part.

Kitchen sink won't drain.  Drain-O, professional acidey stuff, NFG.  Sink snake, buckets and stink, no happy ending.

Call the plumber.  $300 later it's all better.  
 

OK,  all done kvetching .....

The I-95 go bag thread reminded me of this: I had to listen to my BIL rant about the I-95 closure over the weekend. We live in Illinois. Holy cow. How could you make a snowstorm political? 

This dude seriously needs some help.

Sorry, it's ALL political if you want it to be.

Want to listen to SWMBO's friend who spends more on Botox than rent and parties crank about all her medical maladies?

Just smash my nads flat with a rock ....

Duke said:

Whether it's a welder or a laptop, I don't see how anyone can use a tool every day and not even accidentally figure out better, faster, easier ways to use it to your own advantage.

Haha

You'd be surprised how frequently I get called,

I let go of the trigger and it continues to feed wire.... as soon as I strike an arc it stops feeding...

If you're going to berkeley with the feeder, learn the settings and stop calling me