Making the most of your IT department

1. When IT say they're coming right over, log out and go for coffee. It's no problem for us to remember 700 network passwords.

2. When you call us to have your computer moved, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals, dried flowers, bowling trophies and children's art. We don't have a life, and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.

3. When you bring us your own no-brand home PC to repair for free at the office, tell us how urgently we need to fix it so your son can get back to playing DOOM. We'll get right on it because we have so much free time at the office.

4. When an IT professional is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and spill your guts out and expect him to respond immediately. We exist only to serve and are always ready to think about fixing computers.

5. When an IT professional is at the water cooler or outside having a smoke, ask him a computer question. The only reason why we drink water or smoke at all is to ferret out all those users who don't have email or a telephone line.

6. Send urgent email ALL IN UPPERCASE. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery.

7. When you call a helpdesk engineer's direct line rather than the helpdesk number, press 5 to skip the greeting that says he's on holiday for a week, record your message, and wait exactly 24 hours before you send an email straight to the director because no one ever returned your call. You're entitled to common courtesy.

8. When the photocopier or fax machine doesn't work, call computer support. There's electronics in it, right?

9. When you're getting a NO DIAL TONE or BUSY SIGNAL message at home, call the helpdesk. We can even fix telephone problems from here.

10. When something's wrong with your home PC, dump it on a chair in IT. Leave no name, no phone number, and no description of the problem. We love a good mystery.

11. When you have a helpdesk engineer on the phone walking you through changing a setting; read the paper. We don't actually mean for you to DO anything; we just love to hear ourselves talk.

12. When we offer you training on the upcoming OS upgrade, don't bother. We'll be there to hold your hand after it is done.

13. When the printer won't print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print jobs frequently just disappear into the cosmos for no reason.

14. When the printer still won't print after 20 tries, send the job to all 68 printers in the office. One of them is bound to work.

15. Don't use online help. Online help is for wimps.

16. If you're taking night classes in computer science, feel free to go around and update the network drivers for yourself and your co-workers. We're grateful for the overtime when we have to stay until 2:30am fixing them.

17. When you have an IT person fixing your computer at a quarter to one, eat your lunch in his face. We function better when slightly dizzy .

18. Don't ever thank us. We love this AND we get paid for it!

19. When a helpdesk engineer asks you whether you've installed any new software on this computer, lie. It's nobody's business what you've got on your computer.

20. If the mouse cable keeps knocking down the framed picture of your dog, lift the computer and stuff the cable under it. Mouse cables were designed to have 45 lbs. of computer sitting on top of them.

21. If the space bar on your keyboard doesn't work, blame it on the network/mail upgrade. Keyboards work much better with half a pound of muffin crumbs, nail clippings, and big sticky drops of Coke under the keys.

22. When you get the message saying "Are you sure?" click on that 'Yes' button as fast as you can. Hell, if you weren't sure, you wouldn't be doing it, would you?

23. Feel perfectly free to say things like "I don't know nothing about that computer crap". It never bothers us to hear our area of professional expertise referred to as crap.

24. When you need to change the toner cartridge, call the helpdesk. Changing a toner cartridge is an extremely complex task, and Hewlett-Packard recommends that it be performed only by a professional engineer with a master's degree in nuclear physics.

25. When something's the matter with your computer, ask your secretary to call the help desk. We enjoy the challenge of having to deal with a third party who doesn't know anything about the problem.

26. When you receive a 30-meg movie file, send it to everyone as a high-priority mail attachment. We've got plenty of disk space and processor capacity on that mail server.

27. Don't even think of breaking large print jobs down into smaller chunks. God forbid somebody else might get a chance to squeeze into the queue.

28. When you bump into an IT person in the supermarket on a Saturday, ask a computer question. We work 24/7, even while at the supermarket on weekends.

29. If your son is a student in computer science, have him come in on the weekends and do his projects on your office computer. We'll be there for you when his illegal copy of Visual Basic 6.0 makes your Access database flip out.

30. When IT send you an e-mail with high importance, delete it at once. We're probably just testing out the public groups.

Just found this post on a newsgroup… i feel his pain.

I'm a network admin for a poor underfunded school. The children would love to use their computers oh yes, but SOME $#@^#@^#@&#@%$$#@ @#%!@^$#@^!#@^#@^$#@^$@$#^ VISTA $#@^$@^@ and some $#@^@##^@$#$#@$#@^$#@ HP BRILLIANT MINDS GOT TOGETHER.
The merging of the HP 6515b and Vista is the most horrific combination ever conceived. I should slay these computers on a sacred altar while covering myself in Holy Water. THIS MODLE SHOULD BE NAMED THE "666." WHAT A PILE.
Ok- now that my blood pressure is returning to normal let's get to my problem.
I too cannot log in on any account unless I go into safe mode. Then I decide to disable the credentials manager - > specifically the fingerprint reader as 23587250723032 kids have used the thing and the HP engineer probably didn't expect that to happen when he programmed that "feature" into this fetid product.
Anyway - I'd love to disable it all, but it keeps giving me errors that "The Security Manager doesn't want to do that right now" or "Can't be contacted." GET THE ****ING THING OUT OF BED GOD DAMMIT IM THE GOD DAMN ****ING ADMIN AND I CANT EVEN LOG IN MY OWN ****ING COMPUTER YOU PIECE OF ****. **** YOU HP AND **** YOUR MOTHER BILL GATES. WE WERE BETTER OFF WITH XP BUT NOW WE CANT EVEN BUY IT BECAUSE YOU IDIOTS WANT TO FORCE US WITH THIS ****.
**** **** **** **** **** IM GOIN TO GO PISS ON THIS COMPUTER
/SLAM.
PS: **** YOU

L4D2 is here and it’s better than sex!

After months of waiting, and hardcore practicing on L4D1, finally it’s here.  The game that somehow improves on the genius that was L4D.  More zombies, more gore, more weapons & more special infected.

The difficulty has certainly been ramped up in this one… on a full play through last night, normal difficulty, realism off, only 2/3 of us survived all 5 campaigns… strangely it was the same 2 every time. Yes @fatmankev I'm looking at you with your female boomer fetish.

One level had us walking through a witch infested sugar mill… and when i say infested i don’t mean the standard 1 maybe 2 witches, i mean we encountered at least 8, and as it was set in the day, they’re walking around making it MUCH harder to avoid them.

The special infected, now joined by the Spitter, the Jockey, and the Charger work together far better.  So many times we were jumped by 3 different specials at one time working as a team to screw you over. For instance, near a witch, a jockey will jump on you and ride you into the witch causing you to startle her… think you can back into a corner and punch to survive? NO! Apart from the stamina bar now appearing in ALL game modes, the charger and Spitter are there to stop this completely.  Stay still in a corner too long, here comes a Spitter hocking up acid at your feet, the longer you’re in the acid, the quicker you take damage, you can easily be incapacitated in under 10 seconds.  Maybe a charger will get you, running head on into your corner scattering your team and grabbing one of you repeatedly slamming you into the ground until either you or he is dead.

The director (now Director 2.0) is dramatically improved, it will change the level design depending on how you are doing, it will change the weather (Hard Rain campaign, heading back to the boat the storms force you to stick together or lose each other.  Storms = Horde btw, Heavy rain, reduced visibility, flooding which slows you down, and hundreds of zombies).

Thankfully we have new weaponry… melee… I’m a huge fan of melee kills anyway and one of my first achievements in L4D2 was the “decapitate 200 zombies with a melee weapon” achievement.  The Katana and Machete are fantastic for slicing through hordes, and the frying pan is so satisfying!  The only one I'm not keen on is the night-stick, it just doesn’t feel powerful enough (in fairness, it is accurate, i would rather take on the zombie horde with a Machete or Katana than a nightstick anyway).

So our first full play through was awesome despite the power cuts during 2 campaigns forcing our Xboxes to reboot.  We will be doing another quick run through a couple of campaigns tonight before the pub, and then to test it’s drunken appeal afterwards…  More soon.  For reference the players were Gazmo81, Fat Man Kev48, and Vryolaka.  Waiting for Deadly Dink and BennyK23 to join the fun.

XBox 360 Live Dashboard Beta

Just been accepted as a Beta tester for the XBOX Live dashboard update!  Link to the new features is below.

https://connect.microsoft.com/content/content.aspx?ContentID=13143&IsDraft=False&SiteID=719&wa=wsignin1.0 

No facebook or twitter yet though :-(

Off Topic – No IE Bundled in Windows 7 for Europe

Click this link, and you’ll see what I'm talking about in the rest of this post.  Oh and before anyone says anything, I'm not a MS Fan boy! I

No IE in Windows 7 in Europe

It was only a matter of time, I’ve been following the anti competitive cases against MS for a while now. They had to back down eventually. Despite the fact that their biggest competitors in the browser market are Mozilla with Firefox and as that is a completely free web browser developed as open-source (i.e. you can download the raw code, and do what you like with it… it’s a public project, that’s the whole point of Mozilla, a company run by users creating software for users). The only other competition is Google chrome and safari, safari has no leg to stand on as they own the Mac market being developed by Apple (internet explorer cant run on an apple Mac… where’s the anti-competitive law suit against them?) and Google are less concerned with the browser wars than the search engine wars now that Microsoft have made Bing live (their new, very pretty and quite good search engine­­). It just makes me laugh that everyone hates Microsoft so much that they are the ones having to bow to everyone.

Nobody else makes a worthwhile operating system. Surely it’s their prerogative to put their own software in the bundle?? Anyone who wants to use a different browser can easily download one and use it… but apart from the main couple of competitors, the rest lack any functionality!

The scary thing is, that I’ve always been quite anti-MS but now I’m defending them… perhaps it’s the fact that recently they’ve excelled themselves with Windows 7 being their best and most stable operating system yet… even though it’s still in the testing phase it’s great! Their new search engine is definitely worth using as a Google alternative, and their announcements at E3 were fantastic…

I honestly don’t feel that IE is forced on me, I don’t feel that windows media player is forced on me, I don’t feel that windows as a whole is forced on me. I choose to use IE because it works, and Firefox has become increasingly slow. I use winamp over windows media player because it had the functionality I wanted YEARS before windows media player, and I’m now comfortable with it, but WMP is now a viable alternative, and finally I use Windows because I really cannot be bothered to learn Linux and I hate MacOS, not that it runs on a PC anyway (well, I just don’t like anything made by apple, iPhone?? NO! Give me a Nokia N Series any day, IPod? NO! I use my mobile, Quicktime? NO! How many adverts and crap can you fit in one bit of software without being real-player! iTunes? Why do I want to use that when I can use winamp and rip my own mp3s??)

Rant over :-)

It’s all about the Saints…

Well as mentioned yesterday, I’m back on Saints Row 2. Really getting into it much more this time around, just shows the difference between Solo and Co-Op play on some games.  I still love my PS3 (I'll love it a whole lot more when i get my HDMI cable back up from the living room and can actually use it) BUT the game is just so much better when there’s someone else to play it with co-operatively. 

The diversions… I've actually finished some of them now, not so much because of the help, more for the fact that if Gazmo81 can do it, so can I!!

The cut scenes are fantastic, the fact that my character (a man, bright green Mohawk, moustache, mutton chop sideburns, all over tattoos) is wearing his little black dress and red stilettos in every cut scene and NOBODY bats an eyelid :-D.

It’s not a game for easy achievements, although going through the story in co-op earns you around 200G (40G for the campaign, 25G for doing it Co-Op, and then another achievement for finishing all 3 campaigns, plus probably another for doing all 3 Co-Op).

There’s so much to do in the game too, diversions and mini games, unlockables that aren’t linked to achievements at all, most that are un-documented and just appear after doing certain things.

The best distraction so far has to be “Fight Club”.  The joy of standing in a room with 6 NPC’s (more if co-op) and having only Melee attacks to defend yourself with is fantastic.  Yes you get weapons thrown in but there’s nothing more satisfying than a good old fashioned beat-down :-)

Anyway, progress so far… Gazmo81 and myself have taken down the Ronin and Sons Of Samedi… we are well on our way to taking out the Brotherhood too.  I now own and have fully pimped out every crib in the game, I've finished the fight club distraction and managed to find around 16 stunt jumps… My character keeps singing along to Aha – Take On Me (hmmm.. 10G for the first time he does that) and I'm working on the Nut Shot achievement.

Should be getting Prototype at the weekend, that looks to be an ultra-violent crackdown style game… SWEEEET!

P.s. FMK48’s card is shown just to show how far behind he now is… despite the 1000G from TMNT lol :-)

Left 4 Dead 2!!!

E3 the awesome games expo it is has had a fantastic surprise for us all recently with the announcement of Left 4 Dead 2! Due for release on 17th November 2009.... Bring it on!!

In the mean time Gazmo81 and myself have been steaming through...

Rainbow Six Vegas
Rainbow Six Vegas 2
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
Crackdown
Saints Row 2
Halo 3
Gears Of War
Gears Of War 2
and hopefully if i can track down a cheap enough copy, Mercenaries 2 - World In Flames (i have it on PS3 just need it on 360).

Other than that the only other game i've played worth mentioning is Bionic Commando.

On another note I have managed to overtake Fat Man Kev 48's gamer score, helped slightly by 1000 pointing TMNT (courtesy of Gazmo81 buying it and lending it) and 750 pointing NBA 2K6 (i'm still trying for that last 250pt achievement). King Kong is the next to get the 1000G treatment, once Gazmo81 has finished it himself.

Saints Row 2 is the latest in a long line of Co-Op conquests, so far we've taken down the Ronin, just the Brotherhood and Sons of Samedi to take down next (then of course the DLC).