Author Topic: Windows8 and the End Of Days  (Read 1786 times)

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Offline Alphabet Soup

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Windows8 and the End Of Days
« on: April 06, 2013, 02:07:39 PM »
The morons I work for got squeamish about RIM (Research In Motion) - the Blackberry guys - so they issued an edict that we would stop using them. Never matter that there isn't a practical alternative to BB's when it comes to synchronization with corporate (Exchange) email.

Never fear - for low and behold there is win8 phones. Patooie!

My department started handing them out a couple of weeks ago. I left mine in the box where it would do no harm. Then yesterday I dropped and lost my BB. Crap! So I dug out the new one and proceeded too spend the next six hours trying to get it up and running.

So far I've been able to activate it so that I can place calls. Nothing else works.

What a total piece of shiite this thing is. This spawn of Satan doesn't work for me - it expects me to serve it. There's not one bloody thing about it that is intuitive - but there are buckets that are predicated upon my "drinking the koolaid" and re-ordering my life to fit around its idiosyncrasies. It's loaded with useless time-wasters that tattle on you via GPS and it was the better part of an hour just finding and disabling all those different apps. For the first full day I was pulling the battery out to terminate phone calls because the friggin thing wouldn't present me with an "end call" button!

I have never hated a piece of technology so instantly like I do this thing! So far from what I've seen of it the damned thing promises to be a black hole of productivity.

 ::gaah:: ::gaah:: ::gaah:: ::gaah:: ::gaah::

Offline Glock32

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Re: Windows8 and the End Of Days
« Reply #1 on: April 06, 2013, 06:23:13 PM »
What sort of synchronization? I administer Exchange in a 300 user environment and our users have a total mixed bag when it comes to mobile devices. iPhones, Droids, and a few Windows phones. All of them have native compatibility with Exchange. We have Blackberry Enterprise Server to hook into Exchange for over the air data pushing, but we've literally only got 2 or 3 Blackberry users left.

If the Windows 8 based phone is anything like the Windows 8 desktop OS, then yeah. I haven't liked anything I've seen with it so far.
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Offline Weisshaupt

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Re: Windows8 and the End Of Days
« Reply #2 on: April 06, 2013, 08:43:09 PM »
The morons I work for got squeamish about RIM (Research In Motion) - the Blackberry guys - so they issued an edict that we would stop using them. Never matter that there isn't a practical alternative to BB's when it comes to synchronization with corporate (Exchange) email.


I agree with Glock32..  My Android device syncs no issue, and did first time out of the box.  Even implements certs and does encryption and all I had to so was to put in my email server, creds and push "yes"  to agree to the security requirements. .
There was a time when BB was the only real sync device. But that ended ages ago.. unless you are trying to sync something unusual?

My Exchange calendar and email sync without issue and use a registration/Push algorithm so you don't even poll the server periodically.
It sound like the problem is your IT department perhaps not allowing anything but BB to sync, or just using really old versions of exchange...
 

Offline Alphabet Soup

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Re: Windows8 and the End Of Days
« Reply #3 on: April 06, 2013, 11:05:50 PM »
It's supposed to do native sync - like you said, username, PW, mail server and way you go. Only there's no go. With the BB's we used a BES server situated on the DMZ and I suspect that we have something similar for Exchange but our admins have bankers hours so I'll have to sit~n~stew until they deign it proper to return my frantic-gram.

My revenge will come when they convert the rest of the company away from BB's - about 1000 of them - by this June.

 ::evil::

Offline Glock32

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Re: Windows8 and the End Of Days
« Reply #4 on: April 06, 2013, 11:37:53 PM »
Does it ask you to put your network's domain name in a separate field? If not try prefacing your user name with it like "domain\username". You might also need to install a security certificate on the device. I ran into this with a few users who have Windows phones.
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Offline Alphabet Soup

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Re: Windows8 and the End Of Days
« Reply #5 on: April 07, 2013, 09:47:46 AM »
Does it ask you to put your network's domain name in a separate field? If not try prefacing your user name with it like "domain\username". You might also need to install a security certificate on the device. I ran into this with a few users who have Windows phones.

Yea, it has a separate field for both domain and for the server. It looks like it recognizes the domain but fails on the sync. I suspect that they've created another Active Directory group and it is a "Mother-May-I" proposition. I'll just have to wait until I hear back from the admins.

I guess the thing I resent so much about it is that I need tools to do my job. I'm a tool freak - I like and appreciate good tools. This isn't a tool - it's a toy. A very elaborate, funorama toy, but a toy. Things have taken a turn for the worse with my employer (hasn't it with everyone?!) and there are ever greater expectations being piled upon us.

I don't have time or inclination to F with toys.




Offline Weisshaupt

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Re: Windows8 and the End Of Days
« Reply #6 on: April 07, 2013, 10:52:25 AM »
Things have taken a turn for the worse with my employer (hasn't it with everyone?!) and there are ever greater expectations being piled upon us.

Who is John Galt?

I have been ever so much  happier after I decided I just didn't care anymore.  I do my job.  I don't fret about things that go wrong. If they give me a crappy tool and it takes me longer to get my job done, I shrug - I have my liberal alibi - "the tool you forced me to use doesn't work- that is why it takes long"  If something is going off the rails, I no longer work to keep it on if I am not directly responsible for the outcome. I have embraced my inner Wally.  I am even playing games with management-- seeing how long I can not send in my weekly status reports and time-sheets  till I am called out by name (because its useless monkey work - no one reads them . You should see some of the activities I have put in just to see if anyone does..) .  With the Acquisition coming, the management I piss off, my not even be my management 6 months hence. The behemoth I will be  working for will be struggling to retain anyone, and performance reviews won't matter much ( its the difference between a 2.5% raise and a 2.6% raise..)  and if this behemoth is anything like the last behemoth I worked for, simply answering your phone and calling people back will be considered above-par work.

My employer can have all the high expectations they want to have.  I will do my job, they way they want it done, taking the time it takes. Urgency? Why? Too many things to be done? You are on the calendar for next week or the week after.    Even a small company has to spend 6-8 months jumping through legal  hoops to fire anyone- Firing someone  just isn't worth the effort - when transferring you to another group, and out of the productive flow works so much better and faster. Especially in a huge company- there is always some manager who cares more about the number of people in his organization /fiefdom than he cares about their output.

As things get worse economically, you can expect the sort of draconian legislation they have in Europe. Required severance pay for 3 years.  Minimum Vacation of a month.  More "spread the hours around" legislation (Do you think that the hour limit incentives in Obamacare weren't intentional? They were betting on getting unemployment numbers to drop that way..)  If you stay employed long enough they will effectively grant you tenure by making it far too expensive to fire you.

Work hard? For what? To be demonized as Rich? To have my output stolen to feed the noncontributing, Democrat voting, zeros?  So I can "save" for retirement? At 0% interest? They raised the drawbridge.  I will never retire. Hell, I will probably die bleeding out in my driveway long before retirement would be a consideration because some liberal thinks my kids belong to the community  and tries to take them. The things I was working hard to obtain, can no longer be obtained.  At least, not by working hard.
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Offline Alphabet Soup

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Re: Windows8 and the End Of Days
« Reply #7 on: April 07, 2013, 12:24:39 PM »
Excellent rant Weisshaupt!

***************************************************
Editorial note: No one needs to read further since it's all sillyness


I guess I was sorta encouraging exactly your kind of response with my "end of days" portion of the thread title.  ;D

I find myself vacillating back~n~forth between not GAS so bad that I don't go to work for days on end to being so outraged that they would screw up a sweet-deal scenario whereupon someone could take a few days off without anyone noticing. Some days I literally don't know if I don't care anymore or care too much. I should just appreciate the ride that they gave me.

So you're one of those guys who turns in their TPS reports without the cover sheet, eh Weisshaupt? I knew that there was something I liked about you ;-)

I routinely offer my employers an opportunity to observe Bentham's calculus (measuring the value of ones work by rationalizing it in terms of the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain). On the one hand I'm old. I'm cranky. And I'm politically incorrect as the day is long (most folks put some sort of smarmy or pithy tagline on their emails - the tagline on all my official correspondence reads: "Political Correctness is tyranny with manners"). On the other hand I out-perform every other member of my "team". I'm not necessarily smarter than they are but I have vastly better instincts and can reason my way through a problem (instead of blindly taking a stab or two and then throwing up my hands like they do). I make things happen. I get things done. No one EVER has to go back and correct my work.

So there's the conundrum - what to do with Surly Soup?

For the four years since Random passed they've been squeamish about saying anything to me (it's all about feelings doncha know) so they did the opposite - they let me off-leash and allowed me to define my own job. Because burying oneself in ones job is better accomplished when one actually works, my definition was an ambitious one that included being the escalation point for the issues that no one else could solve. Having free reign and little in the way of imposed restraint (by virtue of being immune to PC) I've solved a lot of problems that couldn't have otherwise been accomplished.

Throughout my "career" (at one point I bet a buddy that I had been fired from more jobs than he had ever worked. He named 7 jobs and I recited the names of 13 places where I had been fired - out of nearly 3 dozen that I've worked) I've encountered many guys who were intimidated to speak to "management" much less the big dogs. As a game (and since I am not afraid of anyone) I've developed first-name basis relationships with almost all the directors, and upper executives. I've found that this frightens the crap outta my supervisor. He keeps intimating that I will embarrass the team by saying something un-PC in the presence of a VIP when in actuality that exact thing has happened when his more PC drones.

The stresses of Øbamanomics and the natural consequences of ineptitude have taken their toll on my supervisor and he took a step down in order to reduce his personal risks. The new guy appears to be a micro-manager who favors style over substance. I foresee collisions ahead (we've already had a few). He thinks that he can "handle" me all the while that I'm getting him to dance a jig. I recognize that he is smart enough to catch on (eventually) but there's a part of me that doesn't GAF.

So yea, I do the job. My heart isn't in it anymore and have to watch myself to keep from snickering at what those people consider crises. I was initially miffed when my (old) boss instituted a virtual team meeting since the staff meetings represented the only face time with many of them, but I have since rethought it and see it as a good thing. Now I can dial in, put the phone on mute, and play on the Internet while they drone on about absolutely nothing. If I feel inclined I'll offer some esoteric jargon-laced BS report about my current activities. and then I sign off for another week.

And they wonder why they're losing money hand over fist.