W tee Eff?!

Yes I work in IT as well, I have had users 'delete' a program. I once had a department head (someone with admin access to their local file server) call me up in a panic because they deleted the server! I rush over there. Nope, you deleted the folder icon to the server on your desktop. My favorite is I get a call, 'My (program) is not working! Help!' I go to trouble shoot, and there is nothing wrong. Everything works exactly as intended. 'Well it wasn't working when I called you.'

My biggest IT pet peeve is users who use the desktop as their catch all filing system. Learn to use a nested folder structure people!!!! Unfortunately this is all too common. I have more users who do this than dont.

 

I've seen far too many people use the Deleted Items folder in Outlook as an archive.

Phone calls of:
"All my archived mails are gone"
"Where were they stored"
"Deleted items"
"..."


Lawyers...

 

Over here there is a magical place where the new policy is:

• Unlimited access to communal collector bins for glass.
• Weekly door to door collection for cans and plastic.
• 4 door to door collection for general waste per year.

Yes. Four in a year.

Diapers? No problem, we will open a collection point for those!
So people just need to keep them for DAYS, and once they are fully matured they can drop a (miasma) bomb at the collection point. If it is open...

I'm luckily out of this, but many of my friends and my family still live there.
I will be counting the days between Day 0 and D-Day (the "drop diapers to the local government house"-Day)...

 

I have plenty of those. I even have users that work out of their trash. I can't count how many users are entirely unaware of the existence of the downloads folder. I also have one user that navigates through their file system exclusively with Word's Open file dialogue box... they were having issues opening a PDF...

 

Let me reminiscince about IT goodness...

About 30 years ago or so, my father was called to the city's Bus Station, because the printer (one of those old ones with continous paper with punched holes on each sides to allow for big feeding chains) they used to print the people's tickets (we are talking "from here to the center of the country" tickets) was not responding and they were unable to turn it off and on again.

It was unplugged from the power outlet.

As for myself, I'm not "the computer geek that works with the stuff" (back in the day there were no departments), but a humble Lv1 support dude devoted to moving stuff from the development to the production envirnments (and more things long to type here), in a Big Data company, that makes people program in Python and Scala.

Best. Ticket. Ever: "I can't program in Python".
That was the whole body of the ticket, with no mention to why should he be able to program (or know how to!) in Python.

 

On the topic of big data, they (the unknowable minds above) recently decided that admin rights of the powerBI servers and data sources should not lie with the devs, but instead the IT department, because of "security"

This has resulted on everything breaking at least once a week, or whenever a new person with reporting access is hired/fired, and me having to make calls to IT to walk them step-by-step on how to repair the damage they do to a system my team has developed and maintained for the last decade.

On one of those calls the guy actually told me "I don't know, you seem suspiciously familiar with this" and proceeded to revoke my DB access and report me to the compliance department

Me, the guy that built the goddamn thing

I bet he felt pretty smug, the asswipe

 

Remember: Computer User, Non-Technical. Just don't use the acronym in documentation, people will get upset.

Though the really scary ones are the "software engineers" that call in... Everyone who works tech support knows the ones I'm talking about, the guys not smart enough to turn on their computer, but whose job title is Software Engineer, or Server Engineer, or whatever.

 

We have been developing a piece of software within my company for the last year (or 4 years dependent on how you count). after showing a prototype around Easter time another part of the company begins development of a package to get the input data to our prototype from our clients (we have a bad enough time getting data from clients as it is, let alone getting them to sort through the data for us and put it in an online form) and then take the output data and format it for other analysts to use in various other programs... which sounds good up until you realise that that was the designed end point of our package...

To make matters worse... they use our package name but stick an I in the middle... which makes no difference in its pronunciation...

 

fair play I just stretched so hard I winded myself


good job flip

 

Yesterday we decided to play Infinity in a nearby FLGS instead of at the house. Only one table open, behind it were a few people playing Warmachine, apparently demoing/teaching. The gal playing and teaching had her toddlers parked at the table, nothing but a can of juice/soda to occupy them while she played against a noob. What amazed me was how she treated him.

The first thing I heard was "I've already explained the modifiers at the beginning, weren't you listening?" Her opponent was obviously confused, his hand hovering over different piles of tokens, at each she just scoffed or berated him. They had only a fold out paper mat with some indistinct terrain without clear boundaries printed on it, she told him the wall wasn't high enough to provide cover for his models behind it and was too small to climb on to but on her turn declared her much larger based model was on top of the wall and had total cover which meant she could cast and he couldn't fire back. The whole time she vacillated between entitled child and belittling mom, I couldn't believe the guy took it (and no he wasn't her SO).

A gamer so toxic we went elsewhere to play. I hate it when the community is that bad.

 

I hear nothing but bad things about Warmachine/Hordes of late. If that's the level of "teacher" around, no wonder.

Personally, if I was gonna teach someone a game, I'd rig it a little more in their favour, preferably in a way to show off some of the core mechanics and fun stuff. Like, set up both armies myself for deployment, take first turn for me to show off AROs for them (ideally maybe with a total reaction/nuerocinetics unit available), give them a TO camo unit in their list that I happened to have deployed right behind where I just walked my Big Scary Unit, use it to demonstrate that skill, etc.

Because IMO, if your demo game not only teaches you the ropes, but also demonstrates (deliberate) mistakes that can happen, and doesn't turn into the newb getting curbstomped, it's more of a draw to the new player, and more likely to make them keep interest. But if you show me a new game, tell me all I do wrong, and kick my ass? Not a great advert for the game.

 

Yeah, like the Munchkin card game 'rigged demo' (they actually have the cards marked for what order they're supposed to be drawn).

 

I also make some intro games or show some freshmen the robes. I normaly aim for a close game and make some dump moves which the opponent can exploit but at the end of the day, its a dice game :). One time, i had this newcomer who was boasting after he won that he is such a hotshot to win in his first game agains a veteran (just for the record, i don't consider myself a veteran)... he had a ego like Mt. Fuchi... it was hard to swallow and remain polite.

 

Now, that's not fair. Sometimes it's OK to hate the player and not the game.

I spent years playing Warmachine and found the community entirely pleasant. In fact, there's elements of WMH courtesy that I've taken across to infinity that benefit the game. See: Intention, proxy bases, etc etc.

However, yes, that 'demo' game sounds horrific.

The intent of a demo game is to encourage the player to join your community. Be big enough to let them win, better than scaring them off and losing a potentially valuable member of your community.

 

See i don't create demo games or lists so that the other guy wins, they just happen to go that way. Seriously I've never won a demo game of Infinity, the first demo game i ever gave i lost nearly everyone and they lost not a trooper, never going to live that one down.

 

I had an intro WM/H game with a pressganger like that once - it made me put the game aside completely (he ran the only group where people played that game).
That said, I bought my WM starter box when there were only 4 faction boxes, hordes wasn't a thing yet, and neither was a rulebook. It was just QSR that you got in the starters. The pressganger game was a couple of years later, after mk1 came out, iirc.


I've played a lot of demo/intro games for infinity and the ones I win are very rare (even with 8+ years playing the game). I try to give them a good overview, including what happens when your hinge piece gets blown to pieces.

 

And to really round off a day trying to game at the FLGS, someone broke into my car last night, I lost all of my Ariadna figs. That is why I game at home.

 

Damn, dude, that really blows!






You know, it's funny.

If you look at my civvies case, it looks like a pistol case (very old GW hard case with the 40k eagle on it). Yet I actually have significantly more dollars in my civilians alone than I have in my pistols.