IT BS thread

I have asked. They don't want to implement or pay for anything else. We have to fight to get our Microsoft licensing renewed. We also haven't had a budget for the last 10 years.
We have had a 3 year long on going conversation to just get a guest wifi set up. Still hasn't happened.

 

Same.

I didn't backup anything for the longest time when I was younger. Almost lost stuff to FAT32 problems.

 

IT failures usually are a summation of several failures. He has no defense though. If he's been teaching this long it's not like "backup and backup often!" is an easy to miss mantra.

 

I agree. There is a lot of wrong here. However, it is what it is. He said he was going to retire 2 years ago. I suggested now is a good time

 

Holy shit.

This is hilarious and sad at the same time.

 

I've been lucky that in the time I've been using computers, I've only had one hard drive flat out die on me. Nothing important was lost.

My last close call was with NTFS in the early days of XP. Most of my text based files and bitmaps files were corrupted.

 

I had each of the original Western Digital Raptor and Velociraptor (10krpm and 15krpm) die long ago. I didn't buy them after they failed to outlast so many other older disks that ran so much longer. I was lucky they had nothing critical on them.

 

I've always prefered WD over other brands. I've had Fujistu, Seagate and Maxtor drives fail on my slowly. The one WD drive that flat out died was most likely my fault.

 

No knock on Western Digital. They're the only magnetic media I'd bother to buy. My server at home runs on them.

Solid state I err towards Samsung, Crucial, Kingston, and Mushkin. I trust just about anyone who makes memory to make decent flash storage as well.

 

So far I've had Liteon, Samsung, Kingston and Crucial. The Crucial SSD I have had a bug, where after 1500 hours of accumulated uptime, it would stop responding roughly 30 minutes after power-on. After a firmware update, it's been fine since. It currently has 45000+ hours, and claims only 8% life lost.

Edit: Looks like Western Digital does SSDs now. Might be rebranded Sandisk drives though.

 

By any change, has anyone here upgraded the RAM in a Thinkpad? I hear Thinkpads don't accept any old RAM (or replacement batteries.)

My Thinkpad has 8GB of RAM, and I want to get a 16GB module for it. From what I can find, this module should work. People have reported other brands aren't recognized by Thinkpads.

 

Good to know. From what I've been reading, it's hit or miss with the 16gb RAM modules.

 

Never heard of RAM issues in ThinkPads, but I do know you can't just throw any wireless card into it. They have a whitelist and will only take cards that could have come in the machine from the factory.

 

I get this. I spent most of career in K-12. However if you already have mapped drives setup it's only a GPO setting to enable folder redirection.

 

Back when Macs ruled the demented world of education I almost went in that direction. Glad I didn't, of all the vertical markets working in the field the only one more screwed up would be manufacturing. I have done local machine mapping for user redirection at the published app level for load balancing on Citrix\RDP and also global user setting for more than 100k users. Kind of made me nervous when went to more than 50k users with Citrix Nfuse and asked them how does that work and they said let us know, no one had done it before. But been doing it since Citrix was OS2 so wasn't that worried. If your going to eat an elephant take big bites and put enough horsepower in front and back, just saying.

Still requires a buy in for storage and upper level management. Can beg, borrow or steal but there is so only so much DASD available, and then on the SAN. Just saying no matter how much folder redirection you want to use the end users will use it. It isn't their fault it is the application bloat. Then again we have come a longways from pinning out for memory. I blame the programmers, if it is available or not they will use it LOL.

 

It would be.. however the new boss likes to remove computers from the domain because it's hard for users to sign in... I don't get it either.
But hey, end of this year is my 5 year and I'll be vested in the district. Then I'm out.

 

Yeah I want to say that this is the stupidest shit I have ever heard but the truth is this is the second time I have heard this argument. Its even more stupid now then it was back in 1999.
If I stretch my imagination I can see this up thru Windows XP where there was a drop down box to select the local machine or the domain(s). After that the OS started to default to use domain login (if joined to a domain) for any account with the exception of the username "Administrator" which it then assumed was the local account.

It really concerns me that this line of thinking happens in Education. Even more so when I see my 3 year old take my wifes iPhone, enter her password (because she watched my wife enter it), find the app she wants (YouTube, Photos, Game, etc...) and then proceed to use the device.

Hell even back in the late 90s when computer tech was newish to schools we talk elementary kids to enter their usernames and password to logon to Macs that were managed with "At Ease for Workgroups".



I assume "Vested in the district" actually means vested in CalPERS?
Most of my K-12 time was spent in Charter Schools so unfortunatly I only have 4.5 years in CalPERS. At some point I will need to go spend a year back at a Public job so I can get that last .5 of a year and get the money that has been and will continue to accumulate in my account. Unfortunately the CalPERS system like many public pension systems does not have enough money to cover what they owe people so it may be a moot point by the time I retire anyway.

 

Nothing goes out that isn't joined to the domain here. The only time I'll deliberately disable a PC from AD that is still in service is if it changed hands without our knowledge. Disabling its computer account makes it find its way back to me pretty quickly.

People don't understand that we have auditors who come in with an invoice full of serial numbers and ask us to find the devices listed. If we don't know where they are, it looks bad.

 

Whoops, yeah vested in CalPERS! I hope there will be some left by the time I retire in ~40 years.
So i work at the high school that i graduated at. An interesting shift in students is they have gone form tinkerers to users of technology. Their troubleshooting skills and understanding of what they are actually doing are generally non existent. Students will come into my office saying the computer is broken because they can not sign in. So i asked them, what did it say to make you think this? " It said my password was wrong" or "I didn't read what it said". If the latter I make them go back and come back and tell me what the error said before I will help them.

I understand you completely. We have the same thing with auditors every two years.