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Author Topic: On the Job: f.ds edition  (Read 51390 times)

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pacovf

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #125 on: May 22, 2015, 10:57:15 am »
0

If you're dealing with an API that only accepts C-strings, you can do all your manipulation using std::string and at the last moment you call c_str() to get a char*. Something like this:

Code: [Select]
std::string foo = "I can has";
std::string bar = "cheezburger";
std::string foobar = foo + bar;
silly_api_that_takes_char_ptr(foobar.c_str());

...and you can shorten the last two lines to:

Code: [Select]
silly_api_that_takes_char_ptr((foo + bar).c_str());

Yeah, I ended up using this solution. It took a lot of reading before getting there though.

But as you imply in your answer, the problem might be ROOT, rather than C++, in which case I guess I owe an apology to Mr Stroustrup.
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Kuildeous

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #126 on: May 28, 2015, 08:03:59 am »
0

Oh my, what could be accomplished by something as simple as turning on spell check in Outlook.

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If this has thouroughly confusted you

I'm not sure what confusted is, but it sounds kind of painful.
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SwitchedFromStarcraft

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #127 on: May 28, 2015, 08:28:38 am »
0

Oh my, what could be accomplished by something as simple as turning on spell check in Outlook.

Quote
If this has thouroughly confusted you

I'm not sure what confusted is, but it sounds kind of painful.
In a British sort of way.
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Kuildeous

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #128 on: May 29, 2015, 10:03:08 am »
+1

Ugh. So one of my co-workers is out of the office, and I've been tasked to update one of his projects. I go into it and am flummoxed by just how inefficient everything is. He insists on making things more difficult for himself, even though I proposed some time-saving measures years ago.

As a generic example, there is a table outlining important information. Some of that information is to be published for the company to view while the other information is for our use only. I suggested a conditional tag on the rows containing information that do not display when we publish. So how would you do that?

His solution was to have Row 1 be visible, Row 2 be invisible, Row 3 be visible, Rows 4 and 5 be invisible, and so on. And he has to apply that each and every time a new process is started. He hasn't even applied the conditional tag on the template used to create new processes. At the very least, arrange the table so that all nonpublished information is together so you just apply the tag once. I mean, this is the pinnacle of ensuring job security.

I'm tempted to go in there and change things up while he's gone, but he gets pissy when anything changes, even if it's for the better. I'll just wait until he retires in 6 months. I'll inherit his crap anyway. I'm not looking forward to that, but I will be so happy when I'm done cleaning it up.
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Kuildeous

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #129 on: July 01, 2015, 03:33:00 pm »
0

I feel bad for people who don't handle shortcut keys very well. I guess they can still do their work, but I have someone who just does not deal well with shortcut keys. She has to repeat the same thing several times, and I told her that rather than clicking and right-clicking all over the place, she could just press Ctrl+PgDown to cycle to the next object and then press Shift+Ctrl+N to fix it. It is exactly what I would do to speed through the file putting everything right. I'm sure I could have finished that within 2 minutes.

But man, I told her how to use those two commands in rapid-fire succession, and she freaked out and shut down. She is much more comfortable with doing everything the long way. Well, it's not worth speeding things up if she's afraid she'll mess it up, so I left her to her own devices.

I just don't know how people can be so averse to shortcut keys. But then, I've been using computers for nearly 30 years. Back in my day, everything had to be keyed. A mouse was what you didn't want chewing on your plugs. She obviously did not. What's sad is that I think she's only slightly older than me, but I clearly got a head-start on her when it comes to computers.
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SwitchedFromStarcraft

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #130 on: July 01, 2015, 04:05:50 pm »
0

I think the key (no pun intended) in your observation is that she shut down. Maybe out of overwhelm, but maybe out of closed-mindedness, which might mean you had no chance of reaching her to begin with.  You can lead a horse to water....
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Kuildeous

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #131 on: July 02, 2015, 10:01:12 am »
+3

My wife applied to become a tech within her unit. Basically, she applied to become the expert that can answer questions from everyone else. She had one competitor from the same unit.

So the competitor won. Bummer for my wife, but it was already known the boss wanted the competitor to become the tech anyway. My wife only applied because the other woman didn't want it at first but then changed her mind.

After the promotion went to someone else, my wife's boss approached her with some questions.  Nuh-uh, lady. You don't get to promote someone else and pay her more money and then ask my wife questions. That's why you promoted her instead of my wife. And when your response is that you don't want to overwhelm her, then perhaps you should reconsider why you chose to promote her if she's not capable.
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Lekkit

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #132 on: July 02, 2015, 12:44:43 pm »
+1

After the promotion went to someone else, my wife's boss approached her with some questions.  Nuh-uh, lady. You don't get to promote someone else and pay her more money and then ask my wife questions. That's why you promoted her instead of my wife. And when your response is that you don't want to overwhelm her, then perhaps you should reconsider why you chose to promote her if she's not capable.

I like your wife.
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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #133 on: July 02, 2015, 03:03:15 pm »
0


After the promotion went to someone else, my wife's boss approached her with some questions.  Nuh-uh, lady. You don't get to promote someone else and pay her more money and then ask my wife questions. That's why you promoted her instead of my wife. And when your response is that you don't want to overwhelm her, then perhaps you should reconsider why you chose to promote her if she's not capable.
GOOD for your wife.  That kind of behavior irks the shit out of me.
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Kuildeous

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #134 on: July 02, 2015, 03:10:48 pm »
+2


After the promotion went to someone else, my wife's boss approached her with some questions.  Nuh-uh, lady. You don't get to promote someone else and pay her more money and then ask my wife questions. That's why you promoted her instead of my wife. And when your response is that you don't want to overwhelm her, then perhaps you should reconsider why you chose to promote her if she's not capable.
GOOD for your wife.  That kind of behavior irks the shit out of me.

And that's why she accepted an offer elsewhere.

It's too bad, because her boss's boss really wants to her stay with the company, and she's willing to cash in some favors to get her repositioned somewhere else. The problem is that that process moves slowly. My wife has lost all respect for her boss, which wasn't that high to begin with thanks to other issues, but the recent tech issues have really cinched the deal. She can't imagine working for her for another 3-9 months, or however long that'll take.

Still, she could return to the company when she has more experience under her belt. Even though the new job will disadvantage us financially, she'll be happier, and she'll have a lot more room for advancement. It's worth the paycheck hit.
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SwitchedFromStarcraft

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #135 on: July 02, 2015, 03:44:54 pm »
0

And the timing, if this promotion of the other woman just happened, is kind of a "smell me" message too, which is poetic.
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Kuildeous

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #136 on: July 02, 2015, 03:54:57 pm »
0

And the timing, if this promotion of the other woman just happened, is kind of a "smell me" message too, which is poetic.

It really is. She'd been looking off and on at other places, but she really likes this company. It has a new CEO who is way more transparent than the previous CEO and makes the employees feel hopeful about the future of the company.

And when my wife got this job a year and a half ago, it was already at a hit of over $10k/year. The benefits were better but not 10 grand better. So we already made a sacrifice for her to get this job. Unfortunately it is in the redheaded stepchild section of the company, and there's no advancement. She can't even really apply outside of the area because she doesn't have experience with the in-house system, which is used everywhere except for her insulated corner. The more I think about it, the more I view her department as the basement where Milton ends up in Office Space. It's just out of touch with the rest of the company because it's actually tied to another franchise (long story).

My wife says she wished she would have talked with her boss's boss a year ago. That could have made the difference. She had a distrust of upper management from her previous jobs (and, well, that distrust can often be justified), so they talked too late. My wife's been tolerating her boss for a while, but the promotion just took all that away. On top of that, her boss told her that the job would strictly be 8:00 to 4:30 with no exception. But when her coworker got the promotion, she gets to keep her 7:30 to 4:00 schedule. Now it sounds like her boss was trying to dissuade her from continuing with the application, which may be true since she always wanted this other woman in that position.

So a bit of straw that broke the camel's back. I'm not looking forward to cutting back on expenses, but I am looking forward to her advancement possibilities, especially since HR accidentally redialed her to offer a job to someone in a higher position at nearly $20k higher. So she has that to look forward to too.
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SwitchedFromStarcraft

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #137 on: July 02, 2015, 05:03:46 pm »
0

I hope she gave minimum notice of her leaving.
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Kuildeous

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #138 on: July 03, 2015, 03:47:28 pm »
0

I hope she gave minimum notice of her leaving.

Not the minimum. She still respects her boss's boss. But clearly her departure lets her know the problems with that unit.

Also, we're timing it so that she starts her new job when we get back from Gen Con. So she's putting in her notice on the 14th so she can work up until Gen Con. She still has nearly 4 days of vacation, so that means Gen Con days are still being paid for.
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Kuildeous

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #139 on: July 10, 2015, 09:48:04 am »
0

Ha! Rules lawyered!

We have a semi-weekly department meeting, but my little subgroup is optional at these meetings since they tend to cover topics that are of no relevance to us, so why waste our time?

The meeting organizer changed the meeting location and added a line that attendance is expected. My coworker thought this meant our attendance was required, but I looked on the meeting request and saw we were still optional. He checked with the manager, and she confirmed that we're still optional, so I read the meeting request correctly. Only those listed as required were expected to be there. This actually makes the missive that attendance is expected a bit redundant, but welcome to office life.

But I can see where the confusion came from, and it's actually quite possible she says that it's no longer optional while forgetting to change it on the meeting request, but I take these things at face value dammit.
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Kuildeous

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #140 on: July 13, 2015, 12:13:36 pm »
0

I like setting things up to be easily modified later. I was given a dozen changes to make, and I finished them, thinking, "That didn't take as long as I expected." But that's exactly why I set everything up the way I did. I read an article about how lazy people should be hired because they'll find the way to do the work with the least effort.

But then I look at my task of needing to document what I do, and I'm kind of worried. What I do is quick and easy. If somebody tries to follow the steps I take, he's going to find it horribly slow and awkward. Part of it is that there are judgment calls that I can make on the fly that are difficult to document. Not looking forward to that. "Hi, here's my really easy-to-use, quick system that will probably take you 20 times longer as you try to decipher my madness." 
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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #141 on: July 27, 2015, 11:50:27 pm »
+1

I am currently typing a memo verbatim because no one bothered to save a copy to the share drive we have at work, and the individuals who made the memo to begin with are no longer here.

Yay for me.
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SwitchedFromStarcraft

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #142 on: July 28, 2015, 09:02:12 am »
0

You can't go to an server backup from the last few days of employment of one of the folks involved?  Or is that one of those things that takes a written request, 14 counter-signatures, and an IT guy that will co-operate?  In other words, was retyping the whole thing quicker?

You couldn't scan the hardcopy and use OCR to convert to a text file or something importable to Word?
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Kuildeous

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #143 on: July 28, 2015, 10:21:25 am »
+1

I really do weep that there are environments where retyping is actually quicker.
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SwitchedFromStarcraft

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #144 on: July 28, 2015, 04:22:39 pm »
0

I really do weep that there are environments where retyping is actually quicker.
Well, rest assured there are MANY such environments.  You'd have to include any government setting (municipal, district, county, city, state, and federal).  That's a lot of tears to shed.
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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #145 on: July 31, 2015, 03:05:34 am »
0

You can't go to an server backup from the last few days of employment of one of the folks involved?  Or is that one of those things that takes a written request, 14 counter-signatures, and an IT guy that will co-operate?  In other words, was retyping the whole thing quicker?

You couldn't scan the hardcopy and use OCR to convert to a text file or something importable to Word?

Yeah, trying to recover his files wouldn't have worked, and scanning and converting wouldn't work either.  So I actually ended up doing something almost as good.

I typed up a new signature block and copied the original memo with a new signature block carefully placed to align with the page.  Had I spent a bit more time on it I am pretty sure I could have gotten rid of the residual line that happened because I was placing two papers on top of each other.  And yes, the font wasn't exactly the same. 

I really do weep that there are environments where retyping is actually quicker.
Well, rest assured there are MANY such environments.  You'd have to include any government setting (municipal, district, county, city, state, and federal).  That's a lot of tears to shed.

But it was good enough for government work.
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SwitchedFromStarcraft

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #146 on: July 31, 2015, 01:32:14 pm »
+2

If your standard was only that of government work, you could have just set it aside indefinitely.  Less bother that way.
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Kuildeous

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #147 on: August 10, 2015, 12:24:46 pm »
0

Man, what the hell, Adobe?

We've used Adobe Captivate v3 and v4 years back. We updated some of the files, but there are still some instructional files we created that did not need updating in the past 6 years.

Fast forward to Captivate 8, and we have some changes to make. Turns out Captivate 8 does not open legacy Captivate files (.cp). In order to convert them to the newer format (.cptx), we have to install Captivate 5, 6, or 7. Then we have to convert all those .cp files to .cptx. Then we can finally open them in Captivate 8.

I'm pretty sure I could open a Word 95 file in Office 2013, so Microsoft has the right idea. Why must I go backwards with Adobe before going forwards? Grr.
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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #148 on: August 13, 2015, 02:45:02 pm »
+5

I'm likely to be out of a job in 2 weeks.  :(

So almost 5 months after I lost my job; got an offer today!! I start in a couple weeks. It's not as good as my last job, but my last job was kind of like hitting the lottery, I never expected to find something like that again. I think it will be really good.
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Kuildeous

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Re: On the Job: f.ds edition
« Reply #149 on: August 13, 2015, 03:31:57 pm »
0

Yay, congrats!

Any job that helps keep you alive is a good job…some are just way better than others.

My accomplishment today is that I finally asked my boss is there's any prohibition from wearing kilts. She's checking with our director tomorrow.

Not that I actually own any kilts, but I want to know if I can wear them to work if I break down and buy some.
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