If you are some sort of project manager, and your plan's timetable apparently rests on the assumption that nothing will ever go wrong with testing and that even if everything goes right that processes will run faster than they ever have in any test environment, you don't get to be surprised when you run out of time because things failed and took awhile. You're not allowed. Being surprised in this instance may not be technically illegal, but it is immoral and you should be ashamed. I'm just joshing. I know you have no shame.
Where did the expression "joshing" come from? Every time I see it, I imagine that somewhere back in the depths of time there was a guy named Josh who was the worst kidder.
The origin's apparently unclear, at least according to the 'Word Detective.' After dscounting a couple possibilities simply due to the technicality of the expression being around since before the alleged origin stories (discounting something merely for not being chronologically possible makes it clear that whatever the Word Detective's qualifications are, they're certainly no project manager), there this: So I've just been inadvertently regional-classist. I'll have to complain about city slickers next, to balance things out.
If you ask a project manager to build a timetable for a plan, but you do not allow any additional time in case something goes wrong with testing and insist that all processes run faster than they ever have, you don't get to be surprised when the project manager tells you that they have run out of time.
Elyscape gets a like. You get disdain for not checking first. And for the uh. Snottiness earns no likes! Edit: To be fair to me, I never set or disabled this on either account, so my nerd rage at Google for randomly starting it up on one but not the other stands.
Oh oh oh oh, my biggest nerd rage ever: people who turn thermostats ALL THE WAY UP or ALL THE WAY DOWN to "make it get warmer/colder faster". That's not how it works! This wouldn't bug me so much except of course now that it's cold here, every time I get in the car the thermostat is set to 85 degrees.
I wrote a whole bunch of stuff that was quite cathartic, I'll stick to the title though: Dear Project Manager. I'm going to get you fired.
This isn't really nerd rage (or is it?) but it's something that kind of bugs me and I see it everywhere. You go into a store to look at their display of tech gadgets. They could be smartphones, tablets, ereaders, stuff like that. The displays are meant to be functional -- everything is secured to prevent theft so customers can toy around. That whole try before you buy thing, right? Let's pretend we're checking out ereaders. As we approach the display, we see that the first ereader is showing a screen that says the battery needs to be recharged. The second one, that fancy new model with lighting, is missing entirely. In its place is the peg it would normally rest on. The third one is a 7" tablet. That's all you can discern about it because it refuses to power on. The last one in the row is actually working and is the only model you're not at all interested in. A variation on this is when every device (usually smartphones or music players) has a 'simulated screen' glued over its actual display and is bolted down so you can't pick it up. It's like looking at a 3D screenshot. With someone's baby screaming in the background.
Every broken & nonfunctional display piece at Best Buy & Future Shop causes Amazon.com to lose money. I think you'll need to write Amazon a letter and let them know what's been going down in their showrooms.
If you go to Barnes & Noble to play around with Nooks, they have these half-moon shields over the display stands to cut down the glare from the overhead lights, and there's an employee always stationed nearby to answer questions, so you can let him know if a device is being weird. But whatever you do, do not. Absolutely Do Not. Attempt to pick up the Nook to get a closer look at it. Yes, it's connected to the table by a retractable cord. But it's also alarmed.
First thing my wife does when she gets into the car in winter (which, in her mind, starts in August and finishes in July) is set the climate control to HI and then put the fans on full power. Doesn't matter how many times I tell her that she's just blowing cold air around the car for the few minutes that it takes the CC to kick in, she still insists on doing it.
Also: "you're not putting enough logs on the fire, put more on. More... More... No seriously, you don't realise how cold I am, more... One more. OK." Ten minutes later: "open a couple of windows, it's too hot in here."
OH GOD THIS That absolutely drives me nuts. Also the people who leave the fans blasting and the heat on max when it's a solid 80 degrees in the car and we're all wearing fucking parkas and boots because it's winter in Minnesota.
Right. I have a Mac Mini that I use as an HTPC. It also runs SABnzbd+CouchPotato+SickBeard, to er... rent... things... off the internet, and Asterisk for PBX-type stuff, so it's always on. I also have an HP desktop PC that runs headless and acts as a file server. The stuff that's downloaded by the Mac Mini is stored on this server, so it's always on. My MacBook: pretty much always on. Sometimes I bring my work laptop home at the weekend and when I do, that's pretty much on for the whole weekend as well. I estimate that my personal impact on the bi-monthly electricity bill runs to between €30 and €40 (though I don't really know, because presumably the various 'puters don't run at maximum wattage all of the time). Every now and then my wife goes apeshit about how much electricity I'm using because I go to work and leave the pilot light on the electric shower's power switch on.
Yeah, but that's just by directing the airflow. My car (and I assume many others) have a setting to speed up the fans and direct more air to the windows, for when the car is cold and condensation forms. It doesn't warm up the car any faster.
Or people like my wife, who put the A/C on when it's 2 degrees outside in the middle of November. Just open a window!
In America there's this weird assumption that if there's anything we've got over other life forms it's that we will mold the goddamn environment to suit us, not the other way around. I remember the first time my wife told me to put on a sweater when I bitched it was too cold (it was 66 in the house), and I was like "WTF? Wear a sweater while indoors?" Then I did and sort of sheepishly realized what kind of a dipshit I've been about heating/AC. This is similar to "It's 68 degrees in here, I'm FREEEEEZING!" "Pull up the comforter" "Fine *grumble*" Fifteen minutes later "OMFG IT'S SO HOT IN HERE, TURN ON THE AC!"
It only gets worst when you live with old folks. And worst when where you sit is two steps closer to the thermostat than anyone else's normal seating arrangements. Average "up one"/"down one"/"make the A/C start"/"make the A/C stop" per 24 hours period : ONE MORE THAN ENOUGH TO MAKE ME INSANE
Here old folks remember the war and the oil crisis in the 70's, so they never turn up the heat - so we always bring extra sweaters and slippers when we visit the inlaws.
My parents used to be like that, now they're like, "Fuck it, I'm old!" and they turn the heat up when they get cold. During the holidays I used to go stand out in the driveway to smoke. Now I just do it to cool off.
Me: "Here is the city code you asked about [hands patron a print out]. By the way, if you need these in the future, they are available on the city's website." Her: "I don't do computers." [Looks at me as if I had suggested she strangle puppies.] Huh? I'm not sure if she meant "I enjoy the sensual pleasure of paper in my hands," "I never learned how to use one of those new-fangled things and I'm not going to start now," "I tried to learn and I was never able to," "My tax dollars are paying for you to fetch my copies for me," or "Computers are a government plot to control our brains." We don't read out loud to patrons who can't read. At some point, computer literacy has to reach the same level of assumption. Please let it be soon.
I help to run a computer literacy program for seniors through my work, and honestly all it takes is for somebody* to lead them through the very basics of computing. Some seniors don't have a family nerd to help them with stuff, and their innate human stubbornness kicks in. It also doesn't help that the media continually misreports anything to do with technology, scaring them off even further. I don't remember where I first saw this, but here's how normals view technology: 1) Anything piece of technology that was around when they were born is absolutely natural and perfectly understandable to use and operate. 2) Any technology that appeared in their lifetimes from the age of 0 to 30 is a massive improvement over the old way of doing things, and represents the absolute pinnacle of human achievement. 3) Any technology that appears after they turn thirty is the work of Satan; it will destroy families and babies, rot everybody's brain, and a is massive downgrade from whatever technology it supplants. * Specifically, somebody with more patience than myself.
I don't Think you're right. It's a generational thing, not an age thing. Most people my age my age (40's) still have the mindset that new tech is a godsend and must be embraced. And I owe my living to a generation that is at least willing to try and learn, but find computer stuff rather hard "and why isn't the instructions in plain Danish!" (ie our core reader is a 50+ male)
I think as a general rule it's fine, but there's a huge amount of exceptions. Playing MMOs I've found a lot of guys in their 60s who are retired military. Obviously they had to keep up with technology as part of their career so they're happy to get the best out of new things. Similarly on a sewing forum I'm sort of on, the majority of people there are in their fifties and there's one woman in her 70s who berates people making assumptions about age and technology on the basis that it was her generation who invented most of what's happening now.
Hanzii: That might also be a European thing, as far as that goes. I know that I've seen this disgust with new technology amongst by non-nerdly peers. In fact, I just recently had a rash of emails / Facebook postings that had a misattributed* quote from Albert Einstein** about how technology will turn us all into a "generation of idiots", followed by pictures of people in public places looking at their cell phones. As if to say "See? SEE????" I consider that part of a wider problem many of my non-nerd friends have where they fear technology they do not understand, and do not have the critical capacity to evaluate the terrible technology reporting from the media. The people who, a few years ago, were completely convinced that vaccinations were causing autism, and who are now completely convinced that texting is "rewiring kid's brains". U.S. Millie: You're absolutely correct - it's a huge generalization. * Of course. ** See above.
This particular patron was approx. 50. Most but by no means all of our patrons who can't use computers are a bit on the older side (quite a few 60+ attorneys who started their career dictating to secretaries are having trouble adjusting, quite a few older women who were never in the workforce to learn how to use computers even a little, etc) but lots and lots of them are just regular folks who probably can check email and surf the web but sophisticated things like word processing aren't in their wheelhouse, and they really don't understand what happens when they save a file (like the patron who called us to ask where the files she saved could be found now that she was home. "On your flash drive or floppy disk." "What's that?" She had saved everything to My Documents and then expected to have it at home somehow.) I know everyone needs to learn, but we're a busy library with a specific mission (legal information and assistance to people getting ready for court, usually on deadlines). We don't have staff to instruct people on general computer use. At least, officially we don't. Unofficially, we end up doing terrible just-in-time "instruction" that doesn't stick, i.e. teaching them by doing it for them while they watch. Also: I'm sort of an "old" myself (45), and I'm slowing down on the outright early-adopter enthusiasm of my 20s and 30s (Apple Newton anyone?) but I'm still in love with tech and happy to experiment, so there :p
Yeah, I'm 42 myself. That's why I made a distinction between nerds and normals. One of the great and positive attributes of nerds and geeks is that we do not lose our enthusiasm for the new.
I changed it from "follow new tech avidly" to "happy to experiment" after pondering how long it took me to break down and get a smart phone btw :p
It's not an age thing, it's a question of to what extent you believe the past was better than the future will be. The more conservative or religious or uneducated you are, the more likely you are to believe in a golden age of your youth, when everything was better, and the more likely you are to distrust change and new things, including technology.
Sat down tonight to start catching up on The Walking Dead game by purchasing episode 4. Huh, weird, it looks like it's saying I own episodes 2 and 3, but not ...1? And I can't buy episode 4 and I can't even play eps 2 or 3. I can start ep 1, but it looks like it's a demo. WTFRAGE! Finally realized that it must be because I got episode 1 for free when I subscribed to Playstation Plus, but when my subscription lapsed I lost that episode, along with the ability to play any of the others. Damnit. Now I'm pondering whether I should wait until I can get the whole season on sale (probably through Steam) for around $10 or $12 and have to replay 3 episodes, or just watch episodes 4 and 5 on YouTube. The latter is unappealing for various reasons (chief among them being that TellTale isn't getting my money and it won't line up with the choices I made in the first 3 episodes) but I'm highly annoyed right now.
