I’ve decided to toss off a few random thoughts from my own wee corner of the medical world.
1) Whither the manscaping, teens of America? Don’t you want to take a few moments to enjoy your new tokens of puberty before shearing them off?
2) You know that old saw about wearing clean underwear in case you have to go to the doctor? Those are words to live by. They’re even more full of wisdom if the appointment has been scheduled for quite some time. If you know you’re coming in for a physical, don’t rock an unfurnished basement.
3) If the medical finding of concern to you is a skin condition that is literally invisible to the naked eye, it is almost certainly benign and can be safely monitored at home. But we appreciate your business.
4) Ha, ha. Of course those “Please Do Not Touch” signs over my tongue depressors and gauze pads are a joke, you adorable rapscallion! Touch all you want! And pay no attention to the grinding noise emerging from my mandible.
5) Dads! If you are taking your kid in at your wife’s insistence, I am sorry for your inconvenience. (I did not collude with her.) But now that you’re here, details would be nice. You’re concerned about possible ear infection? Chicken pox? Dropsy? “I dunno, my wife thought I should bring him in” does not a sufficient medical history make.
6) “They’re little? And white?” doesn’t help me narrow down which over-the-counter medications you’ve already tried. Let’s all just assume it was Claritin.
7) If screaming at your child does not effect the desired change in behavior at home, it is unlikely to take on new efficacy in my office. But it will trigger a discussion about disciplinary methods that I’m sure we’re all going to enjoy.
8) I know my hands are cold. I’m really sorry about that. I don’t know how to fix it. (But I really am sorry about it.)
9) It sucks your sports injury is keeping you out of play. It makes me crazy when I can’t run, and I sincerely sympathize. But I can’t clear you to return before you’ve recovered just because you’re bummed out right now, and the reason why rhymes with “falpractice boot.”
10) Oh, my GOD RANDOM PERSON WHO IS JUST NOW GETTING PULLED OVER OUTSIDE MY OFFICE! I’m super-sorry, and I hope you can talk your way out of it. But you are totally blocking the entrance to our driveway. Can neither you nor the nice officer behind you make note of that, and thus afford our patients a point of egress?
What the hell. Let’s make this an open thread.
You are hilarious and exactly what I needed after an arduous week. Thanks, Russell 🙂
I cannot stop giggling over Falpractice Boot. Since it’s an open thread, here are mine:
To philosophers:
1. Failure to perform grooming and basic hygiene does not indicate you are extra deep and philosophical. Wearing shoes to a conference is not only in the interest of the superficial people who care about risible things like “professionalism,” it’s in your interest, too!
2. Making an office decision about whether it is okay to, say, leave bikes in the hallway might need not touch on many of the main issues in environmental ethics, ethical theory, and aesthetics. Counterexamples and occurrences in remote possible worlds intrude a bit on the discussion.
To students:
1. No, I will not give you an A because you really need it to get into law school. Interestingly, law schools want to see your grades because they assume it reflects actual work performance, not a measure of your desire to go to law school.
2. Emailing or sending a chat 2 me in txt msg speak is not the best way 4 u 2 indicate u take the course srsly.
3. If you think philosophy is total bulls**t, why the fish did you sign up for this class and keep out someone on the waiting list?
4. If you stare at a computer screen without raising your eyes once and type at times that are unconnected to anything I’ve said, you have not succeeded in making me think you were paying attention.
5. If you are going to do 4, I am totally baffled as to why you show up for class. Surely checking FB from your dorm room is more comfortable?
6. Saying that a paper is late because you were hungover doesn’t make you seem winningly honest.
7. The day papers are due seems to be fatal to grandparents. Guard your loved ones closely as the due date approaches.
And now I cannot stop giggling at #7
“5. If you are going to do 4, I am totally baffled as to why you show up for class. Surely checking FB from your dorm room is more comfortable?”
I TA’d for a professor once who taught large-ish in a large lecture room. He didn’t take attendance. Yet I would still see a few people come in with their laptops and headphones and watch movies. I have no idea why they would even bother to show up.
I don’t take attendance either! Perhaps they don’t realize, I totally don’t notice who shows up on any given day. Just if someone always shows up or never shows up.
Make that part of your introductory speech on day 1.
A psych professor did that once, “I know sometimes you will learn just fine not hearing my voice. Please only come to class if you intend to participate. I don’t dock you for not showing up… although showing up and participating will improve your grade, I don’t grade on a curve.”
I never felt bad about missing her class, but I didn’t miss her class very often.
I had a Chinese History professor who droned on and on, reading from the assigned text-book. I spent one day filling my notebook with drawings of Viking long-ships and dropped the next day. If it had been required for any reason, I would have found some way to stay awake that didn’t involve listening to the drone.
(I was sore disappointed in that class. Chinese History should have been fun. I was bummed by the way he treated it.)
I took three semesters of Chinese history as an undergrad and had a very dynamic, interesting professor. He was an insufferable apologist for almost anything bad any Chinese person or dynasty or post-dynastic regime has done ever, but I learned a lot from those classes. Too bad your experience didn’t work out.
Wow. That’s a lot of apologizing.
What got me was the footbinding. He claimed that we shouldn’t compare China to “western” standards, e.g. and a la footbinding, but then quickly reminded us that corsets were common among middle class English ladies (isn’t that a comparison?). The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution weren’t all that bad because, well, some people were unharmed even though you might’ve they’d’ve been targeted.
Still, in his own way, a very good, if biased, teacher.
On point 3: I took two philosophy classes for my GE. The first was a class on logic and argumentation. The seconds was an intro to philosophy class.
That put me in the somewhat odd position of believing that my philosophy class was Bulls**t due to insights gained from a previous philosophy class. The so-called great philosophers I was reading were wrong, and were wrong in ways that were obvious to a guy who’d taken a freshman logic course.
In retrospect, I can accept that there were good ideas around the obviously wrong bits. At the time, though, it just soured my on philosophy in general.
I don’t know why I’m not a fan of philosophy. The few classes I took as an undergrad I came into with gusto, but I just didn’t “take” to it. (My first philosophy class, however, was, like yours, in logic, which I liked a lot.) I think one of my objections then (although I probably didn’t know myself enough to phrase it this way) was that philosophy, as my professors usually taught it, seemed divorced from any context, especially the historical context that I even at that age thought was important. I encountered arguments and, like you, thought many of them to be BS, but that was probably in part because there was little to no engagement with why the philosophers felt it necessary to engage in the discussions they engaged in.
This is probably more a failing in me than in philosophy. And I’m sure historians have their own glaring blind spots that I don’t know about because I am “on the inside,” so to speak.
No, that is not your failing, that is entirely the failing of your philosophy teachers! And it’s a damn shame, because we chase away super bright kids. I always try to relate it to their own lives, or where that’s not possible (the inverted spectrum problem not being a major issue as we move our way through the world), I try to at least say why it’s interesting. And I’m always working to improve that. Too many philosophers have the attitude that it’s not their job to be “entertainers,” so they’ll present the material and let the chips fall where they may.
Other problems I’ve seen with philosophy taught at the intro level are that profs introduce an idea and then immediately show the arguments against it. They don’t let the idea percolate in the students’ heads. Shockingly often, the students come up with the relevant objection on their own. They also feel compelled to address the issue in far too complex terms. Someone who will take only one philosophy class in her life doesn’t need to know the word “epiphenomenalism.”
We have one of the most instinctively fun and interesting and attractive subjects. We should revel in that!
I think there’s blame aplenty for at least one of my instructors. He simply wasn’t cut out for teaching discussion-oriented classes, although by all other account he was probably a nice guy and maybe even a good scholar. (Now that I’ve had a chance to teach discussion oriented classes, both as a TA and as an adjunct, I have a lot of empathy for what he was going through and sometimes wonder if I’m any better.)
However, I also think that part of my aversion to philosophy is temperamental, or in rosewoodehousian terms, I lack the motivation and diligence to develop my “talent” for philosophy 🙂 In other words, some of the responsibility is on the student to take what they can from a course and to be open to its possibilities regardless of how good or bad the teacher is. (I have, by the way, had a couple of good philosophy teachers from whom I learned a lot. So it’s not all one-sided as I may have made it appear.)
I didn’t love philosophy, but had professors that made it really interesting in very different ways. The first guy taught an intro course but clearly had the chops to be teaching far more sophisticated philosophy (and hopefully was). Initially, I thought there was no way I’d get this guy, as I had zero experience studying philosophy when I walked in the door. But then he used contemporary media like “Groundhog’s Day” and the “Seinfeld” finale to point out different philosophical approaches to life. BOOM! Not only did I get it, but I was engaged and interested. The other professor was a super engaging personality and taught a course called “The Challenge of Justice” where we evaluated a variety of philosophical and theological (I went to a Jesuit undergrad) approaches to defining and seeking justice. Not only was the topic fascinating, but we connected it to real world examples and evaluated society’s incorporation of these different ideas.
Kazzy,
I had a pretty good philosophy professor as part of a biology 101 class. It was a regular class, but one day a week we studied philosophy of science with a different professor, where we studied primarily the ethics of animal science and other issues. I’ve ultimately come to disagree a lot with what that professor said (he is a strong proponent of animal rights). But while he defended his views spiritedly, he made it clear it was okay to disagree with him. And taking that class was one of my best experiences as an undergrad.
On the contrary — EVERYONE needs to know the word “epiphenomenalism”! And (off-topic) “defenestration” — that’s one of my favorites.
I had a wonderful philosophy professor. Took every course he offered at one time or another. Philosophy, he observed, was a rigorous attempt to impose order on human thought. The first semester was a history of philosophy, explaining how each philosopher built on others’ arguments over time, constantly revisiting what seemed completely obvious to his predecessors, rather like the mathematicians did, over the same period.
Mathematicians are always out in front of the physicists. The philosophers are always out in front of the rest of society’s progress. So much of what we take for granted was first proposed by the philosophers, Thales, Anaximander, all those Old Dudes. The philosophers, like the physicists and the mathematicians, if they’re any good at what they do, give us Better Questions.
I don’t know when and where you took philosophy, but there is generally much less of treating the old guys with reverence than there was even 15 years ago. When I teach intro, I usually mix up old and new, and try to remind them that while the argument standards aren’t quite the same as today, there are some great nuggets in the golden oldies. Socrates is often totally wack, but, you know, we still haven’t figured out that whole Euthyphro dilemma.
Socrates is often totally wack
No, no, the fact that you can instruct someone via leading questions totally proves transmigration of souls.
Transmigration of souls is fine — it’s all that illegal transmigration that worries me.
space awesome
I took an ethics class back in ’02. The professor’s mother passed away halfway through the semester, and we had a substitute professor for those three weeks.
My father passed the day before my final exam. I literally went from taking care of my mother, to the funeral home and arranging the casket, flowers, obit and all that and then to school. I brought all the paperwork with me, receipts and all.
I said to him, “Professor G, my father died of lung cancer yesterday, is it possible I could have a two week’s extension or grace period for my exam? My mother isn’t handling things well and I would appreciate your permission to go home and take care of her and the family matters which need my attention.”
He said to me, “Well, these are things that happen in life. You need to learn how to deal with them. Have a nice exam, I’m sure you’ll do fine.”
To say that I was furious would be…. an understatement. I took his exam, and instead of answering his essay question, I proceeded to write down exactly what I thought about him and his ethics in denying me the two week postponement of my exam, and the fact that I didn’t give a rat’s ass if he gave me an F for the exam, since it would still result in a C for an overall grade in the course.
I handed in the exam, nodded to him as I left the class, and then reported him to the Dean.
For #1, I’m in some ways a labor historian, and I’ve noticed that a lot of them like to go to conferences in blue jeans or other clothes in what seems to me an attempt to show they are “down with the people (but in a good way).” Now, I don’t find jeans exceptionable in the least (although I personally find them uncomfortable *cough* I’ve gained weight *cough*), but there is a bit of ostentatious homey-ness that can be eye-roll-inducing.
I love the one about clean underwear, although I don’t think I’ve ever heard the expression “rock an unfurnished basement” (I tried googling it, as a phrase, and got 3 ads for basement renovations and a link to your blog post.)
I stole “unfurnished basement” from an old episode of “The Simpsons.”
If the insecurities of my teenage and preteenage years had been any indication, then I would have imagined any of your clients would be mortified that you noticed the unclean underwear.
Since you’re not really my doctor, I can’t sueyou. Thus, you ca clear me to return to basketball despite y ankle/foot still being purple and swollen. Huzzah!
There’s probably a limited audience for this set of pet peeves:
1. To customers I used to help when I was a customer service rep at a bank call center: the low interest you earn on your savings account is probably less than you like, but it’s not “criminal” (someone actually told me it was “criminal”) and I’m not on the board of directors nor do I have a courtesy appointment at the local Fed branch, so I don’t have any influence on what the rate is. If you want more return from your $100,000, invest in a CD, or perhaps the stock market.
2. To customers I used to help when I was a teller: I realize ID requirements are somewhat arbitrary and the ID process is more about us covering our a$$’s than actual security, but the argument “I have an account here” doesn’t mean you don’t have to show ID if the teller doesn’t recognize you. What if someone got hold of your account number and assured me that they “have an account here” and took out all your money?
3. To the [very well known, among historians] US History professor I TA’d for about 12 years ago when I got my masters: no, it’s not “unfortunate” that some students might have a different position on abortion from yours, or that they might be suspicious about unions. And no, the legal case for or against the impeachment against Andrew Johnson does not begin and end with the question of whether his Reconstruction policies were immoral.
4. To the customers in the dairy aisle who just stand right in front of the milk case as if they have never heard of “m-i-l-k” before: it’s a beverage that come in four varieties based on fat content, there is a generic brand, a name brand that costs about 50 cents more, and an organic brand that costs about two dollars more, and it comes in four sizes, from pint, to quart, to half gallon, to gallon. The expiration dates are advisory. Now, do you mind if I squeeze through and grab my milk while you stand, dumbfounded and the prospect of purchasing this intriguing white drink?
As you can probably tell, I’m not always an easy person to get along with.
#4 should be required posting in all supermarkets.
If you spend more than 30 seconds contemplating a milk purchase, they should simply sterilize you on the spot.
Does the recipe call for low-fat or 2%. Are any of my guests lactose-intolerant? If so, what’s the best substitute? Milk ain’t just milk any more.
BOOM! You’ve been castrated.
Great. Now the pro- vs. anti- castration people will show up and start yelling.
…there are pro-castration people…?
Clearly you don’t know many militant lesbians.
Lesbians? Yes. Militant folks? Yes. Militant lesbians? Sadly… no. I did date one once!
Not that this counts as “dating,” but I had a “girlfriend” in fourth grade, and she’s now gay (and apparently doing well….I know because we’re Facebook friends).
My doctor told me to take a milk bath, and I don;t know what kind to get.
Pasteurized?
No, just up to my waist.
Oh… oh, sweet fancy Moses. That was awwwwwwwwwwful.
I hate to disagree with the good doctor, but I found the joke hilarious.
Also almond and soy, in different flavors. There is, in fact, a full case of milk and milk-like products in most grocery stores. Surely you don’t object to people lingering over the butcher section, debating which cut they want tonight?
In short, I’m inclined to agree with your self-assessment (not like I’m the role model for “easy to get along with”!).
Good point about my self-assessment. I guarantee that my grumpiness at the dairy aisle is the least of my problems in that regard.
But I will point out that in the grocery store I go to, the soy, almond, lactose free stuff is adjacent to the more traditional milks. Therefore, if people stand awestruck in front of those sections, it doesn’t really bother me.
Also, who doesn’t know what milk they’re going to buy?
I don’t. price, expiry date, and availability.
I buy the store-brand generic, skim, and latest expiry date I can grok at a glance (i.e., I don’t hunt in the dark corners of the refrigerated case to see what late date might be lurking).
at least the ones at your store don’t moo at the milk. (I think they were actually dairy farmers)
Sorry have to post this
http://youtu.be/2ifNDsibWao
Advice for Parents…
1.) Yes, it is not only okay to take your 4-year-old out of school for a week to go on a once-in-a-lifetime trip, but I outright encourage it! However, no, I will not give you “homework” for them. And don’t expect future teachers who agree with me on either question.
2.) Before you come and kick down my door about the outrageous story your 4-year-old just told you, remember that they are four years old. And this makes them untrustworthy reporters. I hate to invoke trite cliches, but if I must, I will trot out the ol, “If you promise not to believe everything they tell you about me and this class, I promise not to believe everything they tell me about you…”
3.) Your child is sometimes wrong. They are not always the victim. Sometimes they are the aggressor. This is normal.
4.) Yes, your child is special, in the sense that they are an individual who should be treated as such. With exceedingly rare exception, they are not a genius or a prodigy. And even if they were, the rules still apply to them. And to you.
5.) Do not expect me to settle discipline issues you can’t or won’t at home. I am happy to work with you on how to approach such issues in the appropriate place and time (Drop Off and Pick Up are NOT those times). But I’m not going to talk to them about the need to clean their room.
6.) Your child will get hurt in my class. They will come home with bumps and scrapes, some of which neither I nor they will be able to explain. They will also get dirty. They will destroy some of the clothing they wear. If you read the information I sent you way back in August, you will remember this being bullet point #1. If you don’t want any of these things happening to your child, I can’t effectively teach.
7.) Calm the fuck down. Seriously. Do it.
8.) I have no incentive to recommend your child for evaluations or services outside of advocating on their behalf. I might very well be wrong and often am. But I get no kickbacks and have no financial relationship with anyone I might recommend you to.
9.) Likewise, I will not recommend your child for services or evaluations that I don’t think they need. Not only would that be in violation of what I believe my professional ethics ought to be, but such support does not function in the way that you think it does, namely additional tutoring your child will receive to get a leg up on their classmates that does not get recorded and thus remains a super-secret advantage you craftily acquired for your child.
10.) Tell me that me or what I do is cute and I’ll punch you square in the nose. SRSLY.
No. They do NOT ask for homework?!?!
Oh. They do. One of the most comment requests is for Spanish or French homework (whatever the foreign language we are “teaching” the kids). It just boggles my mind.
Why wouldn’t you tell the parents “We’ll be reading these stories and practicing these number facts”, so the parents can do the same during down times?
A few responses:
1.) My advice generally is to simply read a few books every night. Not MAKE THE CHILD read the books. But read books. As you hopefully always do. Ya know, bedtime stories? Parents still read bedtime stories, right? RIGHT?!?!
2.) Most of the parents asking for “homework” for four-year-olds want workbooks and worksheets and the like. Even something as simple as what you’ve said here will lead to them creating their own number-fact flash cards that they have their child do the whole time, thus negating whatever amazing experience they should be indulging in.
3.) With few exceptions, anything I teach in a given week is going to be taught multiple times in multiple fashions, so there is really very little that is ever missed. If there is an extended vacation (such as a month) and/or I have concerns about the child’s progress or regression, I might give some simple, basic activities for them to do, often play based and generally things they can do in the environment (such as playing I Spy games with letter-sounds). But, again, parents want workbooks and crap.
Also, re: #2, apparently my kid has told his schoolmates and teachers (inter alia): 1) that is father is 60, 2) that his father has a mustache, and 3) that we’re moving to Asia because he got a job there.
I generally don’t do it because it is a bit too kitschy for my taste, but one of the funner activities to do for Mother’s or Father’s Day is to have the kids answer a questionnaire about their parents, including questions about their age, their job, their favorite things to do, etc. It is often uproariously funny in a “Kids Say the Darndest Things” kind of way. My first job had the kids do something for me to celebrate my departure. The best answer was the kid who was utterly convinced I spend all my free time roller skating.
Wait. You don’t spend all your time rollerskating? My whole mental picture of you was completely wrong.
I suddenly have an urge to tell you how cute this was.
Assorted pet peeves:
1. The first question is not: “When will you be done with the system?” That question will be answered when we have arrived at a definition of Done.
2. You don’t have to invite the consultant to your Christmas party or your company barbeque. Just don’t ask him to work unpaid overtime.
3. In like manner, do not expect the consultant to mentor your staff and meet deadlines, too. As the consultant did not hire your staff and they do not report to him, any direction he might provide will only work at cross-purposes to the objectives of their actual management, which is often the same person who signs his invoice. In like manner, do not saddle the consultant with your incompetent offshore team without the mandate to get rid of them, particularly when they created the mess you are asking him to rescue.
4. The consultant is not your little temp worker. Yes, in these parlous times, when anyone with a laptop and a Delaware incorporation can call himself a consultant, there is a difference between consulting and staff augmentation.
5. The consultant is as useful as you will let him be. Do not waste his time by making him fly into your godforsaken installation and rent a car and get a hotel, only to have him sit in a conference room and ssh into a server a thousand miles away from your offices from his own computer, which he thoughtfully brought in, correctly guessing you wouldn’t have one for him to use.
6. Pray do not lean on the consultant and use him as an unpaid psychologist. He cannot solve the personality problems on your team. Especially do not attempt to recruit him to your side of an office feud. He is there to do a job.
7. And especially do not try to hire the consultant at the end of the engagement. The consultant takes no pleasure in telling you No. Nor does the consultant want to hire you or give you advice on starting your own consultancy. There is no loving your job: it will never love you back. The consultant has traded the illusion of stability for the option to control his own career and better money than you can ever offer him.
11) Your non-vaccinated child has (a) been exposed to measles or rubella or chickenpox and (b) now has a rash and a fever. Please DO NOT bring said child to into Urgent Care or a pediatric waiting room. Telephone the office or the scheduling nurse to make arrangements for the child to be seen without exposing others.
Hey, Liz! Long time no see!
What the heck. Risk management clients:
1. I know you think filling out an application with “NO CLAIMS” will fool the underwriters who have just shelled out $100,000 paying your claims over the past 12 months. But it turns out they are far more sophisticated than you ever imagined.
2. You know that young 20 year old intern? The one that you hired because she’s really hot? That loves being called into your office every ten minutes for no reason because she just loves all the attention from you? Yeah, she really doesn’t, and you’re about to pay for her grad school tuition.
3. Similarly, your black and hispanic employees don’t really respect you for being “colorblind” because you’re willing to tell black and hispanic jokes in front of them.
4. For the love of God, please stop telling me you can do something because you saw the perfect legal defense for it on an episode of Damages, Suits, or an Ally McBeal rerun.
5. No, you really can’t tell who needs to be drug tested and who doesn’t based on their haircut and shirt choices… unless it’s a mullet. Then, by all means test away.
6. If I’m representing a client you’re having issues with and I come to your office to meet with you about it, the clever strategy of having my wait in the lobby until 15 after the scheduled time doesn’t actually make me feel like the beta to your alpha. Everyone does it. I just play NBA Jam on my iPad until you’re ready.
7. Telling the nice man from OSHA that you pay his salary is a surprisingly ineffective strategy to get him to look the other way.
For the love of God, please stop telling me you can do something because you saw the perfect legal defense for it on an episode of Damages, Suits, or an Ally McBeal rerun.
If you were a skinny but extremely pretty women in a short skirt, you could have solved this by now.
What about that episode of Star Trek: Next Generation, where Picard defends Data against the charge of not being a sentient being? Can I use that at work?
You can absolutely use that. However, I must caution you against using the opposing Riker legal strategy of turning your coworker “off” to show that you are in the right, especially if they are human. Courts today are very liberal and activist and consequently frown upon this.
Yeah, but….Picard is cool!
1. “It isn’t working” is probably not going to be enough information for a really useful diagnosis of the problem.
2. “It’s spitting out error messages” is only marginally better.
3. Yes, those stack dumps are really ugly and complicated-looking, but don’t feel you need to spare us from looking at them. It’s all in a day’s work.
4. If the most detailed question you can ask is “How fast is it?”, the most detailed answer I can give you is “Really fast.”
5. “I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable answer, and much less likely to cause problems than making stuff up. But if you do make stuff up, try to make it ridiculous enough that I can immediately discount it. It’s the plausible nonsense that really wastes time.
6. When your system, which has been working fine for a year, starts failing, and I ask you what’s changed, “We upgraded the operating system” is a more useful answer than “nothing”.
7. We do appreciating people reporting spelling mistakes in error messages. We are not, however, going to issue a special patch to fix them, no matter how many times you mark the bug report as “urgent”.
8. Just be honest and tell us you were looking at porn. Seriously. That saves everyone boatloads of time. And we usually assume it anyway.
> 5. “I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable answer, and much
> less likely to cause problems than making stuff up. But if
> you do make stuff up, try to make it ridiculous enough that
> I can immediately discount it. It’s the plausible nonsense
> that really wastes time.
Ohmygosh yes on that one.
> 6. When your system, which has been working fine for a
> year, starts failing, and I ask you what’s changed, “We
> upgraded the operating system” is a more useful
> answer than “nothing”.
“Nothing” is a useful answer iff the actual answer is, “Nothing”. The actual answer is almost never “nothing”. Usually you did *something*. If what you did seems ridiculous and can’t possibly ever be the cause of the thing breaking, that’s probably it.
Here’s a number 8 for you, Mike:
8. If I ask, “When is the last time this worked”, and you answer, “It’s never worked correctly”, the priority of the fix is going to be indirectly proportional for how long we’ve gone, since you got the system. If it hasn’t worked for a year, and you’ve known it hasn’t worked for a year, and you’re only reporting it now because you need it for the first time 2 days before some deadline…. #murdermurdermurder.
If what you did seems ridiculous and can’t possibly ever be the cause of the thing breaking, that’s probably it.
My favorite of all time was (many hours into investigation) “You know, the irritating thing is that the system’s worked fine all this time, and it only started failing after I handed it over to my new assistant.”
reverse complaints about working with (some) IT people / departments (my experience only, ymmv):
1. The day before you “upgrade” our computers, give us warning so we can download the files we need on our flashdrive in preparation for the fact that the 24-hour “upgrade” will result in the computer being inaccessible for a week.
2. Sometimes I don’t know the terms you use. Deal with it or explain them to me.
2b. Don’t get angry when I use “disc” and “disk” incorrectly.
3. Don’t respond to my feedback in answer to your request for feedback with “useful suggestions only.” If what I said is unclear or unuseful, explain to me why, so I can explain to you what I mean.
4. When the computers shut down and restart automatically at 8pm don’t accuse me of shutting down and restarting when you told me not to because I followed your order and I leave work at 7.
Amen to all of that.
1. IT should make an appointment for an upgrade. A tech should stop by, ensure the data is properly backed up and stay there until the upgrade is finished.
2. It is beyond stupid, reaching into the realm of sadism, to treat the user like an idiot. These are the people who must use these systems and machinery. Users are not stupid.
2b. IT pedants ought to be fired. They only make things worse.
3. See 2b
4. Had a boss one time, one of my first forays into pro software. In those days, we had two disk drives, one for the system and applications, the other for data. These drives were about the size of small washing machines. Unlike today, where drives are sealed, then, you’d open the top of the drive, unscrew the data platters, (which we called a disk pack), and put in another one.
We took the system down during lunch to format a new disk pack and we did it using the data disk drive.
It was Nate’s first day, just out of college. He was holding both disk packs, one in each hand. Jeff told him to put the pack in, and Nate put in the wrong pack. We formatted that pack, losing all the data. We did have a backup of the data every night, and we mounted the backup pack. Jeff, that weasel, told us all “Nobody say anything, I’ll handle this.”
Fine, Jeff. So the calls start coming in after lunch. “We can’t find this morning’s data”
“Oh” said Jeff, “you must have done something wrong.”
Well Chuck, one of the better programmers, gets the ass. He sticks around for a week, just seething with rage. He goes into the bosses’ office and resigns. Well, that just wouldn’t do, since Jeff was on the bowling team. “What would it take to keep you?” the owners demanded to know.
“You’d have to fire Jeff.” he said. So they did, on the spot.
In defense of the IT department where I work, they are probably overworked and the guy who helps us is actually pretty nice in person.
As for the anecdote you describe, it’s interesting. Jeff’s firing was probably deserved, but I still hate to see people lose their job.
Oh Jeff was such a weasel. Nobody was sorry to see him go. In the world of Information, liars don’t last long.
In the world of Information, liars don’t last long. before being promoted to management.
> 1. The day before you “upgrade” our computers, give us
> warning so we can download the files we need on our
> flashdrive in preparation for the fact that the 24-hour
> “upgrade” will result in the computer being
> inaccessible for a week.
If the hard drive in your machine contains unique data, they’re doing it wrong wrong wrong #murdermurdermurder (unless they are *forced* to do this by some software vendor, which happens only with very, very specific commercial applications).
You should be able to stand up at your desk, pull out a .357 and unload into the box that sits underneath your desk… and then walk over to the next empty office, log into the machine using the same credentials you used to log into the now-dead machine in your office, and see the same thing you saw this morning.
A machine blowing up should take – at absolute worst – 45 minutes to return to replace.
Problem is, nothing keeps the Winders World with its Suite o’ Productivity Tewls from saving files to the C drive. And people just will do it, doesn’t matter what corporate policy might be. Best you can hope for is to propagate that stuff up into a share drive. I’ve written quite a few of those utilities, just recursing through the C drives of this wicked world, copying data files up to the share.
A domain solves this problem. You don’t even need to run Windows server, just Samba, which is free.
The other problem comes in when you would Much Rather save everything to shared drives (or your personal folders on said shared drives) and instead you are repeatedly lectured about how small said folders are, not offered bigger folders, and urged to keep everything on your hard drive that you don’t absolutely need to have access to from anywhere.
Somebody needs to upgrade a file server
Ayup. (And to be fair, the unwillingness to upgrade isn’t coming from the same people who have to scold us about the size of the folders, but from further up the chain.)
In such cases, Maribou, I have to gently remind the higher-ups of the Papyrus Effect, where the cost of drives is shrinking compared to the cost of people.
That said, users are often guilty of saving multiple versions of the same document or dataset, only creating confusion as they hand these artifacts around, attaching them to emails and suchlike. Who has the gospel version of such a document? Nobody knows. I like the way Google Docs allows multiple people to share and interact with the same document, even edit it at the same time. I taught my g/f the rudiments of Java using Google Docs, watching her edit a document. I could then highlight a passage and talk to her about it over the phone.
This paradigm is what users have always wanted. It’s been held out as a promise since the earliest days of client-server computing and never fulfilled.
I’m not sure I understand a lot of this. I will say that under my desk is something that looks like the CPU is a “server,” and I’ve been warned never to turn it off because something bad would happen. So I put a bit (I mean “HUGE”) post-it on it to remind me not to turn it off.
Oh Bebby Jeezus. There is an old joke about Bill Gates. He goes to the doctor with a frog on his head. Doc asks “What’s going on here?”
Frog replies “Gosh, it started out as a wart on my ass. Now look at the damned thing!”
Your machine contains the database for some system. Once the software which maintained that database probably belonged to you. But others need to access the information on it. So in their infinite wisdom, the mad gods decided to open your box up so others could get at it.
Yeah, this is rank stupidity.
You never leave a shared resource like that in a physical location where users have access to it. If you have a server under your desk, they’re doing it wrong.
In their partial defense, they probably don’t have the funds or the clout with whoever assigns offices in the building to do it right, but that’s still their fault. They should be arguing for that stuff.
It is a library at a public university. And the answer to the question “who’s in charge?” is….opaque. I don’t know if we’re necessarily underfunded (although the standard refrain I hear is “the state should give us more money”), but how the money is spent is probably at play here.
In the meantime, I’ll really try to remember not to turn off the server.