Undoing the work of the corporate Computer Nazi...

[ufkacbln]

I work in the NHS where we have a small delay in IT.

Our main system went down in the department locking our secretary out. When it came back up she could not access it.

We reported the fault as "urgent" due to the fact that no patient data was being input, no reports on examinations were being entered, and patients including oncology were being affected.

An urgent response to IT is













































15 days!!!!!!!!

 

[Pete]

Been reading people's accounts with some amusement. What can I add, from my many years' remembrances of IT woes...?

A good one was the anti-theft gadgets. This was quite a few years ago - about ten perhaps. The company got suddenly all paranoid about staff walking off with PCs, and decided to make the IT guys 'do something about it'. They got this motion-sensitive thingy installed in all the desktops. Not the laptops - it soon dawned on them that the whole point about laptops is that they get carried around. Just the desktops. Shove your desktop a few inches across the desk, this damn warbly thing would start screeching at you: three warning bursts. Do it again within the minute, it would set off steady like a banshee. The only way to stop it was to insert a special key which the IT bodies kept closely guarded up their asses. Open the case of the PC for whetever reason, the thing would go off. It was battery-driven so pulling out the mains lead didn't work. We worked then - as now - in an open-plan office.

As I said, this all happened about ten years ago. The scheme was kept up for a year or two and then quietly (?) dropped. They took their time about removing the devices, though. Over the years PCs became obsolete and were junked, of course, so the devices gradually disappeared. But I came across an old PC with one still in place, a year or two ago. I still need to use oldish PCs now and again, for running old DOS applications. I took the cover off. Alarm went off true to form (those batteries don't half last well!). I knew exactly what the device looked like, of course. I wrenched it out. I carried it across the shop floor to the canteen, still screeching away. The entire workforce downed tools to watch my progress, with amusement. I got to the canteen. I filled the sink with water. I dunked the contraption in the sink. That foxed it.

 

[Pete]

Back to the OP theme - we got a corporate directive several months ago, no desktop piccies, no screen savers (except the company's official one), no buggerall.

Trouble was, that directive sprung from a major illegal music-sharing ring that was uncovered and busted amongst the workforce of a sister-company of ours within the same multinational - but nothing to do with us whatever, Guvnor, that other company is in a completely different line of the business and we don't interact with them at all. However the top bosses got all panicky about copyrighty stuff, hence the directive right across the group. No pictures, no music, no nothing.

I post various astro piccies of mine on my desktop - galaxies and the like. Been doing so ever since I took up the hobby. I just ignored the ruling and carried on regardless. Any colleague who's asked, I merely reply 'I can prove they're mine. I've even got the original camera frames on CD, with all the blurring, all the noise, all the satellite trails...'

IT haven't got back on to me yet...

 

[Jacomus-rides-Gen]

When our computers were upgraded, e-mails came round asking for us to go to a certain intranet page and fill in the form.

This form was about 3 pages long, and required certain system information, our role, section code etc, any programs we needed that were not included in MS Office - that was 12 programs for me, and many of my colleagues were the same. We also needed to give business justification for each of the programs individually. Then press the send button.

That was a lot of hassle, especially for management as they had to approve a good 12 programs per employee. But I could live with it if it meant when my new unit arrived over the weekend, I could just log on and get on with it come Monday morning.

Of course, that is what should have happened, though despite a five week delay to make sure the roll-out went to plan, come Monday morning no-one had the programs they needed, or if they did, they didn't have access. We had to work in the Emergency Facility - a giant warehouse in the middle of nowhere - for the next 2 weeks as IT sorted out the mess.

 

[bonj2]

that's what i like about my current company, we havent' got HR - just one bloke who does the payroll and finance stuff. YOu don't need it. No 'general' IT department either - just programmers, computer builders, and support. The support folk are there to support customers though, not fellow staff.
A good organised company shouldn't actually need HR. All they're there for is to make rules and generally go Hitlering around.

 

[domtyler]

FF, there are lots of ways round the locking down.
If you keep the laptop at t home most of the time and don't need any of the corporate software on it then just buy yourself a new hard disk and swap them over, swap it back when you need to take it in to work.

Alternatively you could buy an external usb hard disk and install a new instance of Windows on there.

Or, you could change the local administrator password on the laptop by booting into a live Windows or Linux CD and running a utility or deleting the SAM file. I wouldn't recommend doing this if there is a chance of the same IT department get hold it it again in the near future as questions will likely be asked.

 

[domtyler]

that's what i like about my current company, we havent' got HR - just one bloke who does the payroll and finance stuff. YOu don't need it. No 'general' IT department either - just programmers, computer builders, and support. The support folk are there to support customers though, not fellow staff.
A good organised company shouldn't actually need HR. All they're there for is to make rules and generally go Hitlering around.

Kind of depends on the size of the company doesn't it?

 

[andygates]

Cuno, your NHS IT is not our NHS IT. That would have been logged for a 4-hour turnaround here, which is what everything gets that isn't a total systemwide balls-up. And if it was actually affecting patient care, that's an automatic 'priority one' every time.

If there's a delay, it's due to the IT people being swamped with muppets who want special treatment for their bloody backdrops.

Dom, your suggestions would get that person in big trouble. You're suggesting that they run a homebrew machine on the network. I don't know what sort of crappy insecure rubbish you think is acceptable, but for starters there's the matter of being able to show that you've got up-to-date antivirus. No? Feck off then. You are not spreading toxic crap around my thousands of machines just for your pigging screensaver. >

Of course, all of those suggestions would also mean a rebuild; the new instance of the computer on the network would register as different and we just don't allow weird crap like that on at all. Plug it in if you like. Nope, nothing.

I'm sure you love wasting my time. But while you prats with your whining about not being able to sync your ipods or have things just so think you're being clever, what you're actually doing is stopping me from going to that nurse's PC and actually fixing something that she needs which is broken.

*clicks heels, sends Power Users to the work camps*

 

[Noodley]

...IT people being swamped with muppets...
...Feck off then...
...I'm sure you love wasting my time...
...you prats with your whining...

Who says IT people are not "people" people?

 

[domtyler]

Cuno, your NHS IT is not our NHS IT. That would have been logged for a 4-hour turnaround here, which is what everything gets that isn't a total systemwide balls-up. And if it was actually affecting patient care, that's an automatic 'priority one' every time.

If there's a delay, it's due to the IT people being swamped with muppets who want special treatment for their bloody backdrops.

Dom, your suggestions would get that person in big trouble. You're suggesting that they run a homebrew machine on the network. I don't know what sort of crappy insecure rubbish you think is acceptable, but for starters there's the matter of being able to show that you've got up-to-date antivirus. No? Feck off then. You are not spreading toxic crap around my thousands of machines just for your pigging screensaver. >

Of course, all of those suggestions would also mean a rebuild; the new instance of the computer on the network would register as different and we just don't allow weird crap like that on at all. Plug it in if you like. Nope, nothing.

I'm sure you love wasting my time. But while you prats with your whining about not being able to sync your ipods or have things just so think you're being clever, what you're actually doing is stopping me from going to that nurse's PC and actually fixing something that she needs which is broken.

*clicks heels, sends Power Users to the work camps*

I can see that you only have a cursory knowledge of IT so I'll be gentle. Buying a new hard disk and swapping it in to the laptop for use at home would not require a rebuild, not would running a secondary OS from an external hard drive.

I clearly pointed out that the third option is only viable if the IT dept. will not be seeing it for some time. My wife has a school laptop, for instance, that has not been to school for years and it has been rebuilt many times by myself and has had a new hard drive too, at my own expense, when the old one went.

In any regard, FF asked a question of how to bypass his companies security measures and I told him? Why the hell are you taking it personally? It doesn't and never will effect you Andy. Lighten up dude! Spend more time outside the server room.

 

[Dave5N]

Our security software, which apparently stops us visiting 'inappropriate websites', managed successfully to stop me visiting our own company website last week.

If IT thinks our own website is too risky for staff to look at, what hope is there?

 

[Fab Foodie]

Whoops

Didn't mean to start an anti IT dept thread per se, (though of course they are amongst the most hated parts of any organisation...like H&S, Accounts, Management and all the bits that curtail our liberty to loaf in a manner of our own pleasing whilst at work ).

I'm not gonna go to extreme lengths to work around nothing more than an irritation, if it was a simple settings change, then I'd go for it. No worries.

Thing is, the Firefox and other bits were installed by the previous IT guy who worked in the company for years and looked after all the production systems as well, since made redundant as part of "restructuring". We now have a "Corporate" guy who visits 1-2 days a week, everything else is done long range. Service has declined. Understand he has a job to do.
Bummer is, he couldn't fix the problem I asked him to solve, none of which had anything to do with the extra software or a non-corporate desktop back-ground!

For you IT guys, the slaptop takes 3 mins 30s to get to the CTR+ ALT+DEL bit from hitting the power button...frustratingly long.

 

[domtyler]

One more option that has occurred to me is to buy one of the newer usb drives, such as the Sandisk Cruzers that have the ability to host their own mini environment to install and run software from.

Basically you set up the usb key with all your settings, desktop, wallpaper and any software you wish to run and then just plug it into your laptop.

Look here for more info:

http://www.everythingusb.com/u3.html

 

[Danny]

Bizarely in our organisation, you can put any picture you want on your desktop, but cannot then revert back to a standard blue Windows background (as I found when I mistakenly turned my Avitar into wallpaper). No one can explain to me why we have this policy even though I am able to go straight to the person who supposedly sets the policies.

Having said that, I have some sympathy with andygates as I am part of a large IT Dept (though not the bit responsible for PCs) and can see the benefit of having "standarised builds" - it is more cost effective and most users end up getting a better level of support.

However the problem is often that the decisions on what constitutes a "standard build" often is, or appears to be, very arbitrary, and the people making the decisions don't consult or bother to explain to users why the policies have been put in place. As a result everyone gets very frustrated and expressions like "computer nazis" get thrown around.

 

[Landslide]

My place of work spent huge sums of money on upgrading the entire network, including Windows media player so we could watch video messages from our board of directors etc...

The security policy they then applied means that we can't watch videos...