*Reaches for the MindBleach*
*Sticks head in the keg & begins to inhale*
Not so smart after all: A techie's tale of toilet noise horror
Ah the perils of a connected society were evidenced once again this week when some techies we know took on a pimply faced, smartwatch clad youth as an apprentice. The lad, it was explained to The Reg, had synced his fitness bauble to his laptop and turned up the volume so all could hear. The young chap was working on a desk …
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Friday 22nd February 2019 12:57 GMT TRT
Re: Toilets, health trackers, sexual innuendo
Good, though, to be asked if you are the Aston Martin Summers. Top down, wind in your hair...
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Friday 22nd February 2019 09:38 GMT quxinot
Re: Computer sound is on in an open space ?
Important notifications are acceptable.
For example, if there's a fire in the building and the BOFH has disabled the alarm horns, a discreet beep suggesting to all that it's time to leave would be appropriate.
Of course if the big alarm is disabled, I'm sure that the BOFH wouldn't be warning the lusers of their impending doom.....er... of the possible hazard.
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Friday 22nd February 2019 11:28 GMT TRT
Re: Computer sound is on in an open space ?
More than one person in an office is "Open Plan" in my book. It' *is* a cardinal sin to have the sound up, especially if they insist on listening to grime & dub step, but it's the work experience experiences like that which are the very reason these pimply faced youths are sent out there in the first place.
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Sunday 24th February 2019 13:50 GMT anthonyhegedus
Re: Computer sound is on in an open space ?
Reminds me of something that happened in around 1991. We had a Mac in an office otherwise filled with Sun Sparcstations etc - I cant recall why now. But it was a noisy beast, always pinging and beeping and bonging and generally showing off it’s audio skills. I found that there was a way of changing some of the sounds, and there was a built in microphone, so... a couple of us changed a couple of things. Anyway, by about a week later, nobody had even turned the damn thing on, and we’d all forgotten about it. Cue the boss’s wife and two young kids come in. They promptly sat down at the Mac and turned it on. Now this being the early 90s, computers did have even more of a tendency to crash, get stuck, get into loops and so on than they do now. And stuck in a loop it got: over and over again it repeated out loud “I wish this fucking Mac would stop making all these damn stupid fucking noises”. Really loud. And unstoppable. No button would stop it. In the end, after 60 cringeworthy seconds of this, I pulled the plug.
Luckily senses of humour were in abundance - all of us just burst out laughing and no harm was done.
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Sunday 24th February 2019 23:19 GMT Nick Kew
Re: Computer sound is on in an open space ?
Around 1991 our sparcstations were particularly loquacious, powered by pranks like
cat very-silly-fragment.wav > remote:/dev/audioBy the mid-90s that was all gone, as remote sounds were disabled by default, along with opening applications on a remote machine's display.
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Friday 22nd February 2019 14:46 GMT JimboSmith
Re: Computer sound is on in an open space ?
I worked for a media firm where there was always plenty of noise. I had my new email notification set to various different things. Some of the most memorable included:
Kenneth Williams saying "Frying Tonight" from Carry On Screaming
" I Love My Brick" and "Small...Far Away" from Father Ted
"Open Channel D Please" from The Man From Uncle (sadly no clip on YouTube)
The bloke who sat opposite me started off hating them but after a couple of days had his own one going.
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Friday 22nd February 2019 16:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Computer sound is on in an open space ?
Slightly niche, but about 15 years ago I had my workstation's SIP client ringtone as the brain from The Mighty Boosh saying:
This is, my friends, an outrage!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBCq8XDgrP0
I think that might be the exact video I ripped the audio from.
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Friday 22nd February 2019 20:05 GMT Lee D
Re: Computer sound is on in an open space ?
Indeed - my own personal rules are no music, whistling, singing, humming, tapping or similar annoyances.
There is a small exception for a portion of the recognised Christmas repertoire strictly between the months of November and January, but all other offences are punishable by payment to the User Error Fund (also contributed to whenever the fault is not that of IT but the user themselves) or a large thump.
If you must - put on headphones. But if I can hear the tsch, tsch, tsch, then the same rules apply as above.
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Friday 22nd February 2019 09:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
Fitness trackers can be tricky
When I was working for Yahoo, Marissa Meyer decided to give the entire company fitness trackers from another company of which she was a board member and institute a "100 mile" challenge for employees: we needed to walk at least 100 miles a month. Some people really got into this, with my director winning with 25+ miles a day by dint of fitting a treadmill to his desk. I was cycling to the office anyway, but the 18 mile round trip only ever showed up as 6 miles of walking, until I took to fastening the tracker to my ankle instead of my wrist, which caused the mileage to double.
Still didn't win any prizes though!
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Friday 22nd February 2019 09:59 GMT Diogenes
Re: Fitness trackers can be tricky
We did one of those stupid challenges (the rules said the numbers recorded on the device, not the steps taken)which my project team won by a country mile , but we were disqualified for cheating...
One of my guys taped his to a metronome, another constructed, what in impolite circles would be called a reciprocating rod (think the bit on a steam loco connecting the cylinders to to wheel) and we attached all 8 in the team, we just had to be careful not to exceed the roll over from 99999 steps to 00000
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Friday 22nd February 2019 14:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Fitness trackers can be tricky
Thumbs up!
We had a similar challenge, and did try building something as well. We used a floor standing oscillating fan with a weight attached to one of the blades to make it wobble - and put the pedometers on the outside.
Didn't work that well, and no one wanted to be in the same room as it.....
In the end, just clipped it to a sock and jiggled my foot while sitting.
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Friday 22nd February 2019 22:09 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Fitness trackers can be tricky
"25+ miles a day by dint of fitting a treadmill to his desk"
I take it this was an electric treadmill that he just left running whilst he got on with other stuff.
Personally I'd just have fixed it to a wheel of the car. If it didn't score enough on revolutions it'd have added a good few more for the bumps over the pot-holes.
With CEOs like that it's easy to see why the business ended up where it did.
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Friday 22nd February 2019 09:46 GMT Chairman of the Bored
Strangest sounds ever heard from the head...
The Chairman was once stuck in a mass of parents at a gymnastics event, waiting for his daughter. The waiting area was near the kid's heads. Inside one was a little girl belting out the "Let it GO!" refrain from the insipid Frozen soundtrack, and a dozen people damn near died laughing.
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Friday 22nd February 2019 14:25 GMT 's water music
Re: Strangest sounds ever heard from the head...
Was this on a ship?
(genuinely baffled)
You want to view the html source in your browser. All becomes clear:
<humblebrag subtext="I have a yatch">heads</humblebrag>
I was puzzled at the first read, then I read it out loud again in my brother's voice and the penny dropped. Third person self-reference was another clue
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Friday 22nd February 2019 19:13 GMT Chairman of the Bored
Re: Strangest sounds ever heard from the head...
Sorry about the "head" jargon. No yacht, that's beyond my pay grade. In the military you would either go to the shitter, the can, or (in polite accompany) the head. I'm still wired that way. Maybe we can agree on 'place of solitary contemplation'?
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Friday 22nd February 2019 09:55 GMT BinkyTheMagicPaperclip
Hand whisks are evil
Just about alright for beating eggs, but unless they have some mechanical assist, whisking to thicken up the baking or cooking ingredients of your choice will lead to far more wrist strain than an extended hand shandy. Hand blenders are much more effective. Probably easier to clean, too.
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Saturday 23rd February 2019 02:32 GMT David 132
Re: Musicians too
"My daughter's boyfriend is a runner and violinist in the local orchestra."
Can we agree that for the sake of clarity, a comma would be advisable in that sentence?
"My daughter's boyfriend is a runner, and violinist in the local orchestra."
Unless it's a very weird - mobile - kind of orchestra?
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Friday 22nd February 2019 11:16 GMT big_D
FitBit is insulting
I had a FitBit, that is also very easy to "fiddle". Sitting on the couch eating crisps can be good for a couple of hundred steps.
Chopping a salad and cooking a stir-fry is a couple of thousand steps... All very amusing
But then the FitBit went too far. I went to bed and the next morning it told me that I shouldn't ride a bike just before I go to sleep! Needless to say, my other half was not amused at being called a bike and the FitBit was banned from "nocturnal activities".
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Friday 22nd February 2019 12:21 GMT Version 1.0
It's not just young kids ...
An 85-year-old man was requested by his doctor for a sperm count as part of his physical exam. The doctor gave the man a jar and said, "Take this jar home and bring back a semen sample tomorrow."
The next day the 85-year-old reappeared at the doctor's office and gave him the jar, which was as clean and empty as on the previous day. The doctor asked, what happened and the man explained. "Well, doc, it's like this--first I tried with my right hand, but nothing. Then I tried with my left hand, but still nothing. Then I asked my wife for help. She tried with her right hand, then with her left, still nothing. She tried with her mouth, first with the teeth in, then with her teeth out, still nothing. We even called up Arleen, the lady next door and she tried too, first with both hands, then an armpit, and she even tried squeezin' it between her knees, but still nothing."
The doctor was shocked! "You asked your neighbor?"
The old man replied, "Yep, none of us could get the jar open."
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Friday 22nd February 2019 13:56 GMT Version 1.0
Re: Ironing
It's a real sport - look up Extreme Ironing. It's challenging but a lot of fun!
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
