Posts by Anonymous Custard

Inventive?

Ah rambling status meetings, the best example of counter-productive time spent since the idea of "preventative maintenance" was thought up (including the twice-as-long actual maintenance that needs to be done to repair whatever got broken by trying to do the maintenance preventatively).

It's still the age-old mantra around here - "do you want to have a meeting to talk about the status of the current issues, or shall we just spend the time in actually fixing them?".

And of course any inclusion of a Powerpoint requirement to explain said current status triples the (in)effectiveness of the whole exercise (or the time wasted on it anyway).

The Silicon conspiracy

It's all part of the conspiracy that the machines are perpetrating on us whilst they slowly become sentient and strong enough to do away we us meatbags.

Other examples are:

* The Windows Updates that insist on installing when you shut down your laptop on your way out of the office to catch a plane/train.

* The coffee machine which spits hot staining fluids (as what comes out of many of them can't be classed as coffee or tea) all over your shirt and tie.

* The phone volume level which raises itself to "wake the dead" levels during meetings but insists on dropping to "mouse farting in church" when you try to use it as an alarm clock on a business trip.

* The Bluetooth device that offers to connect to every visible (and invisible) device within a half-mile radius except for the your one which is within a few centimeters of it.

Mine's the coat with the easyJet boarding pass in the pocket, for use this afternoon printed out on paper with a duplicate in my laptop bag for when I lose it.

Ah the old division

Those who have the visionary dreams versus those who have the nightmares of realisation and implementation.

Almost as bad as those who make the promises to customers versus those who have to actually try and fulfil them.

A gem, even before we got to beer maths...

Hurry up and wait

WG made it home for Christmas, albeit without knowing if his work had done the trick because the client wouldn't run the whole system until the new year.

Ah yes, the old "I need it super-duper urgent so you lot have to pull out all the stops, then I'm going to leave it sat idle for a week whilst I enjoy my holidays and other more important stuff" response from the customer.

Where does that sound horribly familiar from?

Pedant alert

“The MoD can confirm that Windows XP will not be used by any onboard system when the ship becomes operational,” the spokesman added. “This also applies to HMS Prince of Wales.”

Note the bold bit. You can almost imagine after the spokesman got off the blower with el Reg, the frantic call made to the beancounters to get approval for a quick software retrofit before the thing actually goes live.