Tech Juggler

If you are trying to describe the query in a couple of sentences, then you can right click on the query itself and use the properties to add a SHORT description.  Looks to be only about 256 characters or so (4 lines).  Or, you might as well use your database skills and create a data-dictionary table within the database itself, listing the query name and a memo field that could hold your comments about the query.

HAHAHAHA.... Sounds like the Marc and Paul syndrome that I have...

JP

You know there are automated tools for self service password change. Ms. Brown could go to another users computer, log onto an Intranet site and change it herself.

Brilliant!!!

You forgot the part where your users have a hidden camera pointing at your desk so they know the second you sit down and start calling you.

I would bet you get paid a lot of money to keep your users in the dark. Are they still running Windows 98? Ever heard of date and time synchronization? You complain about these unskilled users but the reality is if they knew any better you would be out of a job for keeping them so far behind in technology. Some of us have real IT jobs offering real value to our customers.

To the latest poster berating the guy for doing his job and "keeping his users in the dark..." -

You, sir, sound like a PHB!

Perhaps you should step back and consider that you may not know all the facts. You don't know what kind of environment this guy has to live in, nor do you know the company culture. How do you know that he isn't miserable and looking to better himself somewhere else? Maybe he has personal obstacles preventing him from living the perfect life you seem to think is so easily attainable.

I feel sorry for your direct reports. I bet their lives are just swell trying to keep your impossible standards. You sound like a twenty-something punk who hasn't had to work your way up through the IT ranks. I wonder if you've ever lost a job and tried to support a family.

Perhaps you'll get smacked upside the head and get your pride checked before berating someone without the facts. So-called "managers" like you are such weasels.

You, sir, sound like a PHB!

Perhaps you should step back and consider that you may not know all the facts. You don't know what kind of environment this guy has to live in, nor do you know the company culture. How do you know that he isn't miserable and looking to better himself somewhere else? Maybe he has personal obstacles preventing him from living the perfect life you seem to think is so easily attainable.

I feel sorry for your direct reports. I bet their lives are just swell trying to keep your impossible standards. You sound like a twenty-something punk who hasn't had to work your way up through the IT ranks. I wonder if you've ever lost a job and tried to support a family.

Perhaps you'll get smacked upside the head by life someday and get your pride checked before berating someone without the facts. So-called "managers" like you are such weasels.

What??  No calls from the "power user" secretary who insisted on having full control of a multi-user database that she has now corrupted without making a backup?  Your day is hardly complete, in that case, but there are another 10-12 hours left afterall.

Another spin on being a tech juggler:

7:55pm After another grueling day of tech support for an ISP, a twenty-something geek gets ready to log off the phones for the evening. He's had lots of calls that taxed his soul and conspired to steal his will to live. Just as he reaches to put the phone on night mode, that one last call comes in. *brrRRrrng* He's doing the dance from having WAY too many cups of coffee earlier to keep him going. Should he walk away? Or should he subject himself to yet another repetitive, dopey end-user question when it's time to bail?

7:56pm Underappreciated tech guy answers the call, doing the right thing, putting his best smile into his voice, even though he's done this very thing a hundred times today. The girl on the other end of the line is cute and somewhat of a flirt. They quickly resolve the issue and she's a very satisfied customer. She is amazed and impressed with his technical expertise.

10:00am (the next day) Inspired tech support guy (who is feeling a little more cheery this morning) sends a follow up email to make sure the customer from the night before is no longer having any computer problems. She is so appreciative of his caring and concern, she sends back a cute and inspiring email.

2:00pm (a year and a half later) Greatly appreciated tech support guy walks down the aisle as he marries the cute girl.

Moral of the story: Tech support guys are ALWAYS underappreciated by those who use them, but are ALWAYS appreciated by those who love them. :)

--signed The Girl

I think ole R.W. needs to see that eh???  HAHAHA!!!!

For advanced email replying techniques, once one gets the hang of
Tech Juggler's instructions above, I recommend checking my new blog
post reply intelligently to email.

Hi Folks,

Though this is "Instructing with Style" it does cross the borders towards Sarcasm a bit :D
I personally do not find anything wrong with it though .. There are some (Human) objects in this world who do not ever care to reply to mails :)

Thanks a lot for a gr8 msg to send across to such objects.

Cheers

Pendantic.

This is a common issue with programmers, who tend to think in binary terms.

English is a more flexible langauge than say, COBOL( a very unstructured language to be sure).

Rush to judgement, is a term that has come to mean something specific over the course of decades. It relates more to the word Judgmental:

1. Of, relating to, or dependent on judgment: a judgmental error.
2. Inclined to make judgments, especially moral or personal ones: a marriage counselor who tries not to be judgmental

It has a negative connotation - in other words, rush to judgement without examining all the facts, or considering other perspectives.  I understand exactly what they are trying to say with that guideline. You are to withhold any judgemental comments and respond to the issue. If there is to be any (negative)judgements, resolve the issue first, then deal with the consequences.

Your reaction strikes me as something like a game I like to call "silly bugger", in that you are chosing to be obtuse and difficult. And yes, thats judgemental

James 

Too funny!!!  I love the last part... 'Apparently she was indisposed as well...'

Thanks for giving me a good laugh!!

JEPott

Deja-vu! (except about being indisposed! lol)

Software is not as good as we technicians know it to be. It is only as good as the end users perceive it to be. Most of the people on this planet do not have the aptitude, disposition, training, or interest to be technicians. In particular, they don't share our automatic joy at the thought of something familiar changing into something that promises to be better. For them there is no fun in wrestling with things they've come to view as tools and appliances in order to make them do the job they've always done. For them it means that a task they've always been able to execute with no conscious effort suddenly becomes something that requires considerable attention.

I'm sure even the most unreformed propeller-heads among us can think of something we take for granted that would distress us if tomorrow it became substantially different, even if everyone tells us it will be better. The first thing I would outlaw if I were king is daylight saving time. It takes me weeks to get used to it and then the ptaaks change it back. Renumbering my cable tv channels once or twice a year is right up there. These are things that supposedly make my life better like your new software.

No matter how much we enjoy change, it is hard for all of us, and it is much harder for normal people than it is for us geeks. That is why the Change Curve starts off with a steep drop and goes into the Valley of Despair before it (hopefully) climbs back to benchmark and (hopefully) continues to rise.

That said, Ms. Wagner is doomed because she is a minority of one. If everybody else was able to adapt to the new system she'll have to do it. But that doesn't mean her objections are frivolous. (Although she could just be a lazy whiner.) Some people just have great difficulty adapting to change. They don't get jobs in IT so we're not used to dealing with them, but they're real people.

I appreciate the sharing.  I've have always wondered.  I hope you love your job, sounds like quite a feat.

Thanks again. 

Great blog!!  Ya just gotta hate those "and other duties" part of the job!!

JEPott

..."I read an article (no link this time, I didn't bookmark it and forgot where it was) about a security flaw. That is not encouraging. "

"This, of course, is to be expected in Beta versions"

Which one is it???

I installed IE 7 to play with it but I still prefer Firefox. IE 7 can be removed by doing the following:

Click Start, click Run, type appwiz.cpl, and then click OK.

Click to select the Show updates check box.

Scroll through the list of installed programs to the Windows XP ? Software Updates section.

In the Windows XP ? Software Updates section, click Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview, and then click Remove.

In the Software Update Removal Wizard dialog box, click Next..

Click Finish when the process has finished, and then restart the computer.

Cheers,

Vawns

I installed IE 7 to play with it but I still prefer Firefox. IE 7 can be removed by doing the following:

Click Start, click Run, type appwiz.cpl, and then click OK.

Click to select the Show updates check box.

Scroll through the list of installed programs to the Windows XP ? Software Updates section.

In the Windows XP ? Software Updates section, click Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview, and then click Remove.

In the Software Update Removal Wizard dialog box, click Next..

Click Finish when the process has finished, and then restart the computer.

Cheers,

Vawns

I strongly prefer to let is run and see about this one before I install this software in my computer.  The major parts of beta softwarea (are beta) and bring their lots of problems and who needs more computer problems ?

Not me, Firefox in my pc is not in danger at the moment :-)

I downloaded the IE7 beta, but then I got cold feet, too. I was about to install it on my production machine when I realized that, if I ran into trouble, I'd be hard-pressed to justify the install (it's only a beta, after all). I'll likely try it out on a test machine, instead, and go from there.

The only negative I've heard so far regarding the use of the IE 7 beta is that some secure web applications are not recognizing it. Specifically, I spoke with an Internet banking user who, when logging into his bank account online using the beta browser, received an error stating that his browser version is old and needs to be updated. So just be prepared for web apps which are not yet updated to recognize IE 7. If you have Firefox installed as backup that may help, though some apps require IE.

I can't believe we're even talking about the bugs as a reason not to try it.  THIS IS A BETA.  I have yet to try a beta that didn't have bugs or security flaws.  Also, any user that demos beta software on their daily use computer is asking for trouble.  Every noob knows to use a test machine.  IE7 beta 2 will potentially screw up your registry.  There is no doubt.  Especially if you've demoed IE7 beta 1 on the same machine.  Make sure you do your system restore points and try out the software.  Its actually a nice interface and nice features.  You will have trouble with sites that used CSS hacks, because all of that is fixed in this version.  Which is one of the reasons why MS released it, so that webmasters will have time to update their code.  Also, png images are flaky, its a bug they know about and are going to fix.  Thats what's great about beta's...

The only negative I've heard so far regarding the use of the IE 7 beta is that some secure web applications are not recognizing it. Specifically, I spoke with an Internet banking user who, when logging into his bank account online using the beta browser, received an error stating that his browser version is old and needs to be updated. So just be prepared for web apps which are not yet updated to recognize IE 7. If you have Firefox installed as backup that may help, though some apps require IE.

I'm running Firefox at home after trying it before and ending up going
to Mozilla Suite. Every once in a while it freezes - I think it stays
running in the background when not being used and not responding to
reactivation clicks. I've re-installed it twice on that account. Do you
FF fans have any similar problem ? Mozilla doesn't do that.

Yet another example of delusional IT press bias againt anything MS, and pro Firefox... The old saying is still true today: You get what you pay for... If Firefox was *SO* much better, why hasn't there been a huge push to install it on corp desktops, or integrate popular applications? Perhaps its just a coincidence that many online banking services refuse to work in Firefox...

I had no problems with IE7, and it uninstalls fine too. I've been using Vista for months now, and I find many of its features indispensable and hate using my other "old" XP computer now..

All software has bugs in it, we just haven't found them all yet. But its beyond me why people get down on IE, which is undeniably the gold standard in browsers. It seems as though its become fasionable to trash anything MS puts out jsut to have a reason to complain about something...

"The code for IE 7 was posted online.
How this happened, I do not know, but just the prior availability would make malware easier to write"

Now, here one thing that I don't understad. There are so many open source projects out there, and lots of people are saying that this is a good thing, that for these kind of projects there are no security risks involved, since having many programmers work on the code will have as result a more secure application. Now, when the source code of a Microsoft's product goes online (being it with their consent or not... I'd rather say it's without their approvel), some will say that this will sure pose a security threat, that it will "make malware easier to write..."   Hmm...  Now, how do you call that?   And, anyway, this is a beta product, and do I have to say what beta means?

I've installed IE 7 beta on two personal PCs and my office PC. I've noticed a few things that I'm not happy with that I have notified Microsoft about. But I have to say that this is the move in right direction that Microsoft needs to stay in the browser race. I've yet to attempt an uninstall, but at this point I'm not feeling a strong need to do so. I'm happy with the application and although not for everyone as it is a beta I think this will be a welcome improvement over past releases.

Given their past attempts at creating a secure browser environment for the general population I applaud them for their efforts this time around. Keeping in mind that this is a beta and most of the issues get worked out at this stage I feel that once all is said and done they will have a good competitor to other Tab based browsing environments.

I look forward to the next release.

Like the original blog says, I like to be on the cutting edge, but I don't want to shoot myself in the foot.  Well....I shot my foot. I downloaded and installed IE 7 and am not happy with it.  I'm wondering if anyone else has had these basic UI problems.  IE7 seems very heavy.  My browsing time has almost doubled.  Every 30 minutes or so, it stops responding and I have to close and reopen.  Some "buttons" take you to places other than where you wanted to  go.  i.e. I clicked on my Home Page icon and it closed IE7.  I have some flash graphics on my home page and IE7 will not display them.  I use Yahoo! email and it has changed the layout there. There are absolutely no graphics.  I might as well be writing in notepad.  Thanks Vawns for your removal instructions. 

For all you users of IE7.

Before you download the beta, create a restore point.

There is nothing else to do to after installing IE7.

One note here. If you intend to do online bankind, Most sites do not recognize IE7's format. I have read that Wells Fargo and my own bank does not accept IE7.

Getting back to uninstalling IE7. Simply go to the restore point you created before installation of IE7 and your original browser will be right where you left it.

WT

I installed IE 7.0 Beta while leaving Firefox as my default
browser. An odd side effect was that all hyperlinks in email messages, received
in Outlook Express, when clicked on opened the 'My Documents' folder. I did not
initially realize that IE 7 was the problem, however after a fair amount of
troubleshooting & web searching, I came to the conclusion that it must be.

It was not listed in the add/remove programs list, even with updates being
shown, but finding the solution on the MS site was not difficult.

Once it was removed hyperlink functionality was restored to Outlook Express and
both Firefox and IE 6 appear to be functioning normally.

Ok, I installed the beta version on a test PC and by far the biggest problem we have had is it crashes when you have too many bookmarks in your Favourites. We had about 100 entries in ours when hell overflowed and our system crashed. Each time we re-booted and hen tried to acces the favourites through IE7, the system froze and then crashed. Thinking it was the fault of a junior SA, he was roundly mocked by all of us (a guy who cant install a M$ app must be on drugs!) and we proceeded to install it ouselves on another test pc and we copied all the old bookmarks into the new machine and then tried again... to our shock (and embarassment as the junior SA was now mocking us) the system crashed as well. Worse still, we ended up with a huge warning box popping up on the machine telling us that a critical file had become corrupted and then the machine died. Upon restarting, the machine was no longer running like a pc, it was running slower than a toddler can crawl. We tried to uninstall IE7 (which we now call "Bills evil toy") but found that it further resulted in our machine tipping closer to the gates to hell. In the end, we had to format the machine and reload everything again.

My advice: DON'T TRY IE7.

"Yet another example of delusional IT press bias
againt anything MS, and pro Firefox... The old saying is still true
today: You get what you pay for..."

And an even better example of people not paying attention and only hearing (or reading) what they want to hear.  At no point in my blog did I trash MS.  If I wasn't interested in IE7 and MS, I'd have never written this blog.

I would say this, I love the new IE7 interface which is altogether different from Internet Explorer 6.
Should you download IE7, be prepare for problems like backward compatibility to Internet Explorer 6 when visiting
secure web sites which still uses Internet Explorer 6.  Secondly, Windows favorite Live generates an error message, that it cannot sign in. And finally when I notice when you go into Internet Explorer add-ons under tools, some add-ons were disabled. Other than that Internet Explorer 7 has a lot capability to becoming the best by far as security goes when it's fully integrated into Windows Vista. 

I have to disagree. I have been using IE7 for about a month now and would never use anything else. I love the tabbed interface. Yes there are some layout changes but that is a small price to pay considering all you are getting. I have run this browser through its paces to see what she could do. A full burn in I opened the maximum number of tabs in one window which happens to be 70. and there was no crash I even opened 10 instances of IE7 which you guessed it is 700 webpages at one time. She held strong. If I tried to do that in IE6 It would have crashed way before. The setup is easy as pie and the features included are awesome. I love tha anti-phishing utility and the spyware blocker and the pop up blocker is so much better than the one in IE6 I have had no poups at all. All in all IE7 is an excellent addition to the Microsoft Family. KEEP THEM COMING BILL.

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have simply created a subconscious mind from the sounds of it. I can sit awake and only puzzle over something, yet go to sleep and find the correct answer. I, too, do my best work when I am not working. Now, if only I could convince someone to pay me to sleep!

Thanks. Most of my best thoughts come to me in cartoons or with punch lines. Life in the fourth dimension is full of good humor. Until a computer can laugh, I will always be one up on technology!

"So, what was the problem?"

"Ummm... ID10T error."

"Oh, OK - thanks for fixing it."

JPott

Clasic

I think you have a real good one there, & they think the oil level in their cars moter never needs checking if a little light don't come on. (Don't they do that at the factory?)  And, where does electricity from? It comes out of a socket in the wall silly.

I got that one beat.

A young lady called me the other day and said her screen is blank and that she couldnt get the computer to do anything. I asked if the computer was on and she said "YES, the green light on the screen is on". I had to laugh I know right alway what was going on.  

I had a lady customer who had all the unused sockets in her extension cord filled with those dummy plugs, you know the ones that stop small kids from sticking their fingers in the sockets. Out of curiosity I asked why as their were not not any small children around and nor would there be. She replied that if nothing was plugged into the sockets the electricity would fall out!!!!!!!!

I got dragged into a critsit (critical situation) where a service center that handles calls from thousands of customers across the country was reporting that they were all down, nobody able to work, 100+ people sitting idle, potentially causing loss of lotsa money, and potentially incurring the wrath of the IT director and all his direct reports.

Duty analysts from all the application teams and their supervisors were called in, along with the network services people, who were calling in the corporate network guys, and one of them was contacting the communications vendor to check on the leased lines. I was only involved because I supported a proxy server that occasionally gets involved in transactions that had not yet been migrated off the proxy.

After finally getting someone to repeat for me what the error message was, I asked how many users were actually affected, and suggested they get someone at the site to check the network cable on the PC of the guy who had called in the problem. Sure enough, the cable had been knocked out of the wall jack for this one guy, and nobody else was onsite yet, as the service center wasn't due to open for another 30 minutes.

I thought it was just me. wow.  I gave up a long time ago. I tried everything too. Now, I find it best to just smile like it's a secrect and I can't tell it. (leave it a mystory) It works.