IT BS thread

Been watching the IT Crowd for the first time in the last few days. Pretty hilarious, though the quality went downhill fast after the first season - more about life in general than IT jokes or such. Still interesting though.

 

Season 3 Episode 4 "The Speech" is pretty funny. They convince Jen that a small black box with a flashing light on it is the Internet.

 

hahahaha, yes!

My favorite line is where Roy spends the entire episode convincing a former college classmate that he's not a window cleaner. But he works on Windows! haha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsaEtBo-oYE

(its funnier if you see the entire episode).

 

Anyone have a recommendation on screen recording software?

I've been tasked with creating short training videos on how to use our new website. I was originally just going to use camstudio, but I realized I need either a Ken Burns effect or the ability to highlight a selected portion of the screen

 

http://superuser.com/questions/176692/windows-7-best-screen-capture-video-maker-software

 

W.T.F.!!!
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07/10/us-agency-destroys-computers/

 

I'm glad they don't think computer viruses can be caught by humans.

 

I saw that. Pretty hilarious. and STUPID. wow.

 

Perhaps Adobe Captivate? That's what the training department where I work uses. Unfortunately, Adobe products aren't exactly cheap.

 

Ahhhhh! The stupid! It burns!

Guess it's one way of getting new stuff though.

In other news - I go away for a week and come back to find that we in IT are now expected to provide support for "how do I..." problems on a program that no one in IT has gotten training on and we don't use. Actually, when I started there a year ago, we were doing that but I kept saying we shouldn't be expected to tell users how to use something that we don't use ourselves. This is a clinical application that allows our doctors, nurses and medical assistants chart patient information. My argument was that if the user had a "how to" question they should be referred to Training. And eventually our IT Director put such a policy in place. Well, that was dumped back on us again. Our IT Director has been trying to get authorization to hire more IT personnel since the company has tripled in size the last two years while the IT Department staffing levels have remained unchanged for over five years. So, since this training issue has been dumped back on us (don't know why we HAVE a training department at this point), he has decided that instead of working through issues as quickly as we can when a user calls, we're going to take our time and provide them with the best possible customer service they've ever had. If people have to wait on hold then so be it. I think his ultimate goal is to have people start complaining about having to wait and then maybe those who make hiring decisions will finally see we need more people. At one point yesterday, I was the only person logged into the phone and there were three people on hold for 12 minutes while I dealt with an issue.

 

I got a question for you IT guys - I am pretty computer savvy but I am having a hell of a time deciding whether to attempt a Windows Update or not.

My work computer has Windows 7 and it was installed in January of last year. Since then, I tried one automatic update and it left me with more troubles than I could count: Microsoft Office would not open, my free McAfee Scanner shit the bed, AutoCAD kept crashing, network connection went haywire, etc.

I retored to a previous version after that and have ignored the updates since. I am really shooting myself in the foot by not taking care of this?

 

That's $700. I've pretty much decided on the TechSmith products since they are geared primarily for what I'm doing, and my boss might throw in SnagIt, which I've been asking for for years.

If this is a computer supplied by work, your IT staff should be managing it and should have it on updates parceled out automatically by a server.

McAfee = The Great Satan. It provides no benefit and robs your computer of power. It is basically a virus that you knowingly install. Remove it now. Also, a true work computer should be on more robust virus protection.

Finally, it's rare (in my experience) that an update will cause an issue. I haven't had such a problem since early 2000s. If such an issue is occurring, either the system is horked up from clutter or you have some bad hardware driver going on. We'd need to know the exact update to guess what's the issue.

 

Yeah unfortunately my office contains on average 10 people - I know just enough about networks and servers to be dangerous. I set up the whole server when I got here and used my free McAfee student version (after I graduated) to at least put something on the computers here. This place is full of idiots who think that an email with a strange link from someone they have never heard of before is OK to open (I can't even count the number of hard drive formats I have had to perform).

I have told the boss that I am done doing this because it sets me up for liability - he has agreed and hired an outside IT support guy to come in once a month and address any issues. The guy he uses, while smart, is rather stupid with how he goes about his business. I will try the updates at the end of the day and see how my computer handles them, if it goes to crap I will just restore to an earlier version.

Do you recommend anything better than McAfee that I can propose to the big guy in charge?

 

I liked AVG when I was using Windows. There is a free and paid version.

http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage

 

I like AVG for a home use, but I believe enterprise-level requires a different setup. Our IT manager does a great job around here, probably one of the best overall setups that I've experienced. We used to be on Kapersky, but we are looking for something different. Currently we are trying ESET.
One of the things that really helps is having a good firewall. We have a Barracuda system and it does a lot of the first line defense, plus keeps people out of sites they shouldn't be going to - even if that's just stuff like Facebook.
Another helpful thing that I do for myself is use Firefox with AdBlock Plus and NoScript. AdBlock does its own thing, NoScript requires a bit of constant attention. However, you'd be amazed with the number of sites you end up blocking from even 'innocent' sites like Amazon

 

You may need to be careful with that kind of thing in an enterprise environment. Not that it's bad but it can break things like SAP and employee benefit websites in subtle ways. Further, the requirement to use FF may not fly in some circles (although these days, I would hope not).

Ghostery is another ad blocking tool. It also can be configured to block a variety of other crap too.

Configuring the browser with tools to protect you is a very good suggestion.

 

Indeed, it's a better tool for power users, or nice if you are fine-tuning a site blacklist.

Sadly, I've met such a client. Their IT team was overseas and they came to the conclusion that everything needed to be locked down. Changing your desktop picture was considered too risky. It took us a full week to convince them we needed access to install their ERP software. Funny thing is, one of the many jobs this software did was cut the check for the IT department.

 

ok so i know this isnt exactly computer related but ive searched the internets and cant really find this. this is off of a forceps heater at a lab i work at and it just went out. thats basically a heating pad thats glued to an aluminum block. so nothing fancy. its a 120v, 15w pad. theres an inline they want around $1000 bucks for a new unit (theyre high if they think theyre getting that) im just wondering if yall know where to get one of those pads? let me know if theres any more info yall need.

 

Have you googled on how to make one yourself. Or check the website instructables.com for dyi. I would google the code on the pad, you may luck up & find them at a deal. Check ebay if someone is selling one cheap.