BOFH: If you liked it then you should've put the internet in it

Re: Tracking

Oh, that old chestnut.

Assuming the whole building isn't covered in security cameras, it takes less than a week for people to just start hitting the emergency door release switches and leaving all the doors unlocked again - especially when you've left your ID card behind and are now trapped in the toilet.

What also tends to happen in some middle manager decides when people should be "allowed" to pass through certain doors based on building opening times etc and comes up with some convoluted schedule of when doors can be used. I have seen:

- Someone get trapped between two sets of doors as he walked through the first set just as the clock hit 8pm and both sets locked themselves shut.

- Rooms get booked for evening use, but someone forgot to "unlock" one set of doors required to get to the room.

- A room get booked for weekend use, but the building locking itself too early (though all internal doors were fine), trapping everyone inside until they walked out a fire escape, activating the fire alarm.

- "Out by 12 hours" errors in the schedule, unlocking buildings overnight.

It's just not worth it and tends not to last long, especially when some manager gets trapped somewhere, or the only way someone can escape is by activating the fire alarm and evacuating the entire building.

Also, the "no tailgating" rule is impossible to enforce pretty much anywhere outside of a secure mental health unit or a prison.

Re: Tracking

Truly if they're worried about people spending too long in the toilet, they should start by tracking executives, whose time costs the company more than anyone else's? And in the spirit of leadership and transparency, make that tracking data accessible by all company employees?

I think I just figured out my next suggestion box submission...

Re: Ensure people weren't spending too long in the toilet

That's why you clone an HR droids RFID tag...

Or indeed to track a slapper on your boss.

Re: Surely shome mishtake

You'd have to make sure the sensors were sensitive enough to track something approaching mach 1 when the batteries start combusting.

Re: Surely shome mishtake

Just follow the smoke

Re: Parts Sourcing

That or any of several varieties of laptop batteries. Those always work perfectly.

the 'off' button on any video projectors in the building

Many projectors these days - if networked - respond to PJLink (PDF). Unless your admin has been particularly careful and enabled the security feature, this very simple protocol can be extremely useful. Of course, many projectors also have web interfaces, but these are often clunky and buggy and best avoided, and the less said about proprietary systems such as Crestron RoomView, the better.

I speak here as someone looking after a fleet of 30-ish mainly Panasonic projectors that are all started and stopped automatically each day.

M.

'The only thing that needs to be enabled with IoT is the stapler. You can never ever find it when you need it...'

Hmm...

Here's a thing, I usually find at least one stapler per week in the workshop (a woodworking shop) where they've no rights to be (usually lurking on the bed of a saw, precariously positioned near the sharp rotatey-cuttie-chompie-slicie-thingies) and everyone disavows any knowledge as to where they came from or why they're there. Thanks to this, the admin staff here are building up quite a nice collection now, and they're all 'different' (manufacturers, types, age - some are obviously at least a couple of decades old).

If it isn't a complex and pointless wind up being perpetrated by one of the wags here, then obviously your missing staplers are making there way here, by mystic pathways known only to themselves and Biros, in vain hope that someone doesn't notice them and they end their miserable staplery existence by being accidentally knocked into the previously mentioned rotatey-cuttie-chompie-slicie-thingies..

I seriously, seriously need beer...thanks to a bit of a clusterfsck I missed the pub last night..

Tracking the stapler?

I only need to track one red stapler.

Thank you very much.

Re: Crappy power supplies! GAAH

I have found that some good server-class hardware can be miraculously restored to silent operation by replacing the fans, but the system was old enough that the original fans were way beyond their design life, and the overall system was rather sluggish by today's standards.

"Its surprising easy to hide a tracker on someones tracker"

FTFY

Ahhh....

the reason for the expression "shits and grins" ?

Re: Bosses need to be tracked.....

"There's donuts in the break room." Where I worked, this usually worked the best. However, if someone wasn't aware of the message and they happened to be between the boss and the break room, they often times ended up as a grease smear on the carpet.