Official "Rant Here" thread (Part 1)

cmdlette · 2019-07-10T18:05:48.000Z

General Tsao:

cmdlette:

I never know how to give good answers to questions on my yearly review form. It’s one generic form for the whole company I think, and it’s difficult to answer them from an IT perspective. “What can your supervisor do to help with your career or personal goals?” Personal goals? I want to buy a house and have a kid, but I don’t need or want my supervisor’s help with either of those. My career goals are just to keep my career and hopefully advance but the advancement bit seems like it’ll never happen. I don’t know how to state that without sounding angry.

I like my job a lot of the time but review time always gets me anxious because it’s a mixed bag of criticisms that make me feel like shit, and praise after the criticism that only intensifies impostor syndrome.

I feel like I can’t win. It’s taken me two days so far just to get to the “goals” and “additional comments” portion. :-\

We have to do self evaluations as part of our annual review too…I hated doing the first two, but now I have fun with it. It’s really just a formality in my opinion, someone at one time thought it was a good idea and they continue to do it. On the last one when asked what my goals were for the next year I answered “to survive”. I got as close to a perfect review as you can get here, and the biggest raise I have had in 3 years…coincidence? I don’t think so.

That makes sense. It’s used not only for self-reflection here but as a way to provide some amount of feedback on what the company could do better (yes, it’s an old-fashioned company that cares what its employees think). It’s just stressful for me because I overthink what to say most of the time.

I managed to finish filling it out after my rant, and I think I did a fair job on it. I’m just going to review it tomorrow when I’ll have some distance from it, then send it back to my boss.

imark · 2019-07-10T21:03:30.000Z

Dear Spiceworks,

You are putting on a Spiceworld 2019.

However, your application has not been updated since 2018.

That’s not too spicy if you’re asking.

Unless this product is morphing into more of an online forum - only…(?).

Many questions - but we are still here.

@spiceworks-support-team

Bud-G · 2019-07-10T22:47:40.000Z

6d61726b:

Dear Spiceworks,

You are putting on a Spiceworld 2019.

However, your application has not been updated since 2018.

That’s not too spicy if you’re asking.

Unless this product is morphing into more of an online forum - only…(?).

Many questions - but we are still here.

This was posted recently: https://community.spiceworks.com/product-plans

francois-sw · 2019-07-11T12:25:08.000Z

Thanks for posting this link Bud G. . We are working at making this new page more visible to the community.

@cjgallagher

imark · 2019-07-11T20:39:04.000Z

Francois (Spiceworks):

Thanks for posting this link Bud G. . We are working at making this new page more visible to the community.

Thank you, Francois, and cheers.

My only concern is… Still advertising and providing an application for download and installation…

With several possible bugs reported in the wild - and it has not been patched since 2018.

Many enterprises are still using it.

Are we safe? And why are we safe?

Thank you sincerely for the response.

-Max

francois-sw · 2019-07-12T11:59:54.000Z

Hi 6d61726b, we are tracking vulnerabilties and looking at CVE’s reported to us by security testers. We then assess the importance of releasing a patch for Desktop 7.5, based on the nature of the vulnerability. Should we discover a severe problem, we would release a patch, as indicated in the 4th bullet point of section "Future of Desktop app " of this post: State of Desktop app v8.0

You can see a few examples of this, around Sep 2018, on this page: https://community.spiceworks.com/support/security-center

Hope this helps.

Francois.

@imark

glenn-p · 2019-07-12T16:10:11.000Z

cmdlette:

I never know how to give good answers to questions on my yearly review form. It’s one generic form for the whole company I think, and it’s difficult to answer them from an IT perspective. “What can your supervisor do to help with your career or personal goals?” Personal goals? I want to buy a house and have a kid, but I don’t need or want my supervisor’s help with either of those. My career goals are just to keep my career and hopefully advance but the advancement bit seems like it’ll never happen. I don’t know how to state that without sounding angry.

I like my job a lot of the time but review time always gets me anxious because it’s a mixed bag of criticisms that make me feel like shit, and praise after the criticism that only intensifies impostor syndrome.

I feel like I can’t win. It’s taken me two days so far just to get to the “goals” and “additional comments” portion. :-\

I ask the question in a different way when I do staff evaluations: “What can I do to make your job easier, more efficient and more fun?”

It’s actually one of my favorite parts of the review process. It gives me a chance to reinforce the idea that part of my job is to insure that my staff have all of the tools and training necessary to do theirs. I remind them that it’s not just about software and hardware - I’m also responsible for running interference with other departments and dealing with difficult staff so that my team can stay focused on doing their work.

If you don’t feel that career advancement is going to happen at your current place of work, then I recommend answering their question about what they can do to help with your career by saying “challenge me!”. Then explain how you want to take on more responsibility and learn new skills. That’s a non-confrontational way to make the point.

Sorry that this suggestion may be too late. I have been out of the office for a couple of days for a business meeting in Austin.

@cmdlette

Sean-Spiceworks · 2019-07-12T16:14:35.000Z

Glenn_P:

Sorry that this suggestion may be too late. I have been out of the office for a couple of days for a business meeting in Austin.

ORLY? I don’t recall you stopping by…

@glenn-p

cmdlette · 2019-07-12T16:16:37.000Z

My review is going to be on Monday so I can definitely bring that up.
I’m still waiting on feedback from my boss before the review, so we’ll see where that goes.

glenn-p · 2019-07-12T17:02:44.000Z

Sean (Spiceworks):

Glenn_P:

Sorry that this suggestion may be too late. I have been out of the office for a couple of days for a business meeting in Austin.

ORLY? I don’t recall you stopping by…

Sorry, but it was a “quickie”. Drove in Wednesday afternoon, had a meeting Thursday and drove out about 4:30. Didn’t think I could get down to see you guys before it was too late. Looks like I’ll be in Austin twice next month, so I’ll drop by. As Arnold says, “I’ll be back!”

Fortunately, this is the rant thread, because…

Hopped into the brand new company car to make the trip. Only had 20 miles on it when I left the parking lot. 20 minutes later discovered that it had no CD player! There goes the plan to listen to a new spy novel on CD. There’s a crapload of bad radio between Midland and Austin. UP YOURS auto makers that go cheap on the amenities.

pcarter · 2019-07-12T17:21:45.000Z

Glenn_P:

Sean (Spiceworks):

Glenn_P:

Sorry that this suggestion may be too late. I have been out of the office for a couple of days for a business meeting in Austin.

ORLY? I don’t recall you stopping by…

Sorry, but it was a “quickie”. Drove in Wednesday afternoon, had a meeting Thursday and drove out about 4:30. Didn’t think I could get down to see you guys before it was too late. Looks like I’ll be in Austin twice next month, so I’ll drop by. As Arnold says, “I’ll be back!”

Fortunately, this is the rant thread, because…

Hopped into the brand new company car to make the trip. Only had 20 miles on it when I left the parking lot. 20 minutes later discovered that it had no CD player! There goes the plan to listen to a new spy novel on CD. There’s a crapload of bad radio between Midland and Austin. UP YOURS auto makers that go cheap on the amenities.

Nobody but us geezers listen to CD’s anymore. I still prefer physical media to downloaded content. Now, the Buick LeSabre Custom I used to have had both CD AND cassette! That was a sweet ride. It was a sleeper powerhouse too. That sucker would flat lay rubber if you hit the gas.

I’ll deal with downloaded if I have to but yeah. MP3 format drives me nuts. The compression is unbelievable and the technology itself is still somewhat unreliable.

cmdlette · 2019-07-12T17:22:51.000Z

AnungUnRama:

Glenn_P:

Sean (Spiceworks):

Glenn_P:

Sorry that this suggestion may be too late. I have been out of the office for a couple of days for a business meeting in Austin.

ORLY? I don’t recall you stopping by…

Sorry, but it was a “quickie”. Drove in Wednesday afternoon, had a meeting Thursday and drove out about 4:30. Didn’t think I could get down to see you guys before it was too late. Looks like I’ll be in Austin twice next month, so I’ll drop by. As Arnold says, “I’ll be back!”

Fortunately, this is the rant thread, because…

Hopped into the brand new company car to make the trip. Only had 20 miles on it when I left the parking lot. 20 minutes later discovered that it had no CD player! There goes the plan to listen to a new spy novel on CD. There’s a crapload of bad radio between Midland and Austin. UP YOURS auto makers that go cheap on the amenities.

Nobody but us geezers listen to CD’s anymore. I still prefer physical media to downloaded content. Now, the Buick LeSabre Custom I used to have had both CD AND cassette! That was a sweet ride. It was a sleeper powerhouse too. That sucker would flat lay rubber if you hit the gas.

I’ll deal with downloaded if I have to but yeah. MP3 format drives me nuts. The compression is unbelievable and the technology itself is still somewhat unreliable.

Just FYI we Young Ones™ are all buying vinyls for our digital download rights these days.

glenn-p · 2019-07-12T18:23:09.000Z

AnungUnRama:

Glenn_P:

Sean (Spiceworks):

Glenn_P:

Sorry that this suggestion may be too late. I have been out of the office for a couple of days for a business meeting in Austin.

ORLY? I don’t recall you stopping by…

Sorry, but it was a “quickie”. Drove in Wednesday afternoon, had a meeting Thursday and drove out about 4:30. Didn’t think I could get down to see you guys before it was too late. Looks like I’ll be in Austin twice next month, so I’ll drop by. As Arnold says, “I’ll be back!”

Fortunately, this is the rant thread, because…

Hopped into the brand new company car to make the trip. Only had 20 miles on it when I left the parking lot. 20 minutes later discovered that it had no CD player! There goes the plan to listen to a new spy novel on CD. There’s a crapload of bad radio between Midland and Austin. UP YOURS auto makers that go cheap on the amenities.

Nobody but us geezers listen to CD’s anymore. I still prefer physical media to downloaded content. Now, the Buick LeSabre Custom I used to have had both CD AND cassette! That was a sweet ride. It was a sleeper powerhouse too. That sucker would flat lay rubber if you hit the gas.

I’ll deal with downloaded if I have to but yeah. MP3 format drives me nuts. The compression is unbelievable and the technology itself is still somewhat unreliable.

I hear ya, man. My situation was a bit of a self-inflicted wound. I typically rip the audio book CDs and put them on my iPod, but I was in a hurry the night before and just decided to deal with swapping discs during the trip. For audio books MP3 compression isn’t a big deal.

In addition to the audio woes, I had to deal with severely limited power. There were a couple of times where I considered opening the driver’s door, sticking my foot out and pushing just to get the stupid thing moving. You would have thought that it was a Frickin’ Prius (See my adventures with one of those here .)

But I survived the trip and now I’m off to a weekend of great music at the Tall City Blues Fest. Y’all have a good weekend.

scott696d · 2019-07-12T18:52:55.000Z

Us ‘Old Geezers’ remember Vinyl. I’ve shown up to DJ events and the kids are all like “where’s your turntables?” and my response is at home, in the garage. Records are a horribly inefficient way to store sound, and they’re heavy to boot (and so are my professional turntables). Yes, I still have a lot of it… in crates in my basement. I long ago digitized the stuff I cared about. As for mp3, I love it (at least, compared to .flac or .wav files). I agree that third-party hardware players can sometimes have issues, but so long as I rip at 320 (and I always do) the fidelity is still there enough that even with the big sound systems I use you can’t really tell it’s compressed. Since I always play off a decent laptop (i7 and 16GB of ram, 2TB SSD) with professional software I don’t have any issues. Not that I’m ranting or anything

cmdlette:

Just FYI we Young Ones™ are all buying vinyls for our digital download rights these days.

glenn-p · 2019-07-12T19:28:31.000Z

Scott696d:

Us ‘Old Geezers’ remember Vinyl. I’ve shown up to DJ events and the kids are all like “where’s your turntables?” and my response is at home, in the garage. Records are a horribly inefficient way to store sound, and they’re heavy to boot (and so are my professional turntables). Yes, I still have a lot of it… in crates in my basement. I long ago digitized the stuff I cared about. As for mp3, I love it (at least, compared to .flac or .wav files). I agree that third-party hardware players can sometimes have issues, but so long as I rip at 320 (and I always do) the fidelity is still there enough that even with the big sound systems I use you can’t really tell it’s compressed. Since I always play off a decent laptop (i7 and 16GB of ram, 2TB SSD) with professional software I don’t have any issues. Not that I’m ranting or anything

cmdlette:

Just FYI we Young Ones™ are all buying vinyls for our digital download rights these days.

Yeah, back when I was a radio DJ we used vinyl as well. Professional software? Care to elaborate?

scott696d · 2019-07-13T08:02:26.000Z

Virtual DJ Studio Pro - it’s really designed more for on-air (or on web?) radio work than mobile DJ work, but since that’s my background (yes, I too, got paid to sit in a small room and talk to myself) it works for me. Plus it was less than fifty bucks? A lot of guys use PC DJ or Serrato, but since I’m old-skool I like what I use and I don’t do a lot of scratching and that sort of thing. Heck - if all I’m doing is tracking a playlist I’ll just use Winamp with a plugin that automagically cross fades (mixes) the songs for me. I really don’t miss records (or carts either - the fidelity… shudder). What’s next, Wax cylinders?

@glenn-p

samuelhunt · 2019-07-15T12:49:41.000Z

Scott696d:

Virtual DJ Studio Pro - it’s really designed more for on-air (or on web?) radio work than mobile DJ work, but since that’s my background (yes, I too, got paid to sit in a small room and talk to myself) it works for me. Plus it was less than fifty bucks? A lot of guys use PC DJ or Serrato, but since I’m old-skool I like what I use and I don’t do a lot of scratching and that sort of thing. Heck - if all I’m doing is tracking a playlist I’ll just use Winamp with a plugin that automagically cross fades (mixes) the songs for me. I really don’t miss records (or carts either - the fidelity… shudder). What’s next, Wax cylinders?

I listen to a podcast that recently released a mini episode on wax cylinders, because they can.

fatrix2000 · 2019-07-15T14:35:04.000Z

So I thought I would try out a new VNC app so I went ahead and downloaded the installer and my A/V solution tags it based on reputation (likely company is too new and on SourceForge) - seen it happen with large companies and small.

So I email the vendor just as a “Hey, don’t know if you knew about but thought I’d bring it to your attention” No big deal right?

DRC_response.png800×103 83.7 KB

OK, so I know what dealing with this vendor is going to be like - hard pass…

rockn · 2019-07-15T14:37:46.000Z

Staff that always without fail, every six months, ask for an upgrade to their cell phone. They go into the local Verizon store asking for deals that cannot be accessed with our corporate plan and ask why they can’t get it. Every upgrade/buddy upgrade incurs a 2 year contract. Verizon will never do anything unless it benefits Verizon. Get a freaking clue.

They also somehow think that an S9 or S10 will do something that their current S8 cannot do and they are missing something by not having the latest and greatest…or so they have been brainwashed.

Can you make and receive calls?

Can you send and receive company email?

Can you text or message other staff?

Hells no you are not getting a new phone. Shut up or I will give you a flip phone.

cmdlette · 2019-07-15T14:39:46.000Z

Fatrix2000:

So I thought I would try out a new VNC app so I went ahead and downloaded the installer and my A/V solution tags it based on reputation (likely company is too new and on SourceForge) - seen it happen with large companies and small.

So I email the vendor just as a “Hey, don’t know if you knew about but thought I’d bring it to your attention” No big deal right?

OK, so I know what dealing with this vendor is going to be like - hard pass…

So the AV tagging it sounds pretty similar to what happens with our VNC app. Is it VENM? lol