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ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

(OP)
Corny management sayings i can live with on the GIGO prindipal and that i can instantly forget what management say.

I started in a papaer office with Grundig dictaphone, a typing pool and fiel clerks to hide all the paper records where no one else could find them.
Then came computers with their promise of lower head counts and a paperless office.... wrong on both counts as it happens, but what they did bring was the IT department.

IT are a frustration. If my computer crashes, I need them to fix it. This is never a happy experience because I usually discover I have about the lowest priority in the company and they are always busy doing something else... though what I have never discovered.

Worse though is that they have a language more obscure than legalese and they employ it to devastating effect.
Some of their sayings are vaguely comprehensible but much of what they say is, deliberately  think, way over my head.

[ul]
  • The server's down (again)

  • [ul]
  • You've exceeded your server capacity (I'm working too hard, but that's not what they mean to say)

  • Those are the excuses I think I understand.

    What I never understood was why upper management get the exensive powerful laptops to carry home and back to play Hearts and Minesweeper (not loaded on mere mortal's machines in our company) while the rest of us had to make do with old 386 machines running Windows 3.1 to run complex spreadsheet applications, prepare devastating powerpoint presentations and write endless reports no one ever read. .... IT's excuse:
    "We won't upgrade to the latest Windows until all the bugs are out" (never, in other words, I never ever had a current Windows operating system or Office setup).

    JMW
    www.ViscoAnalyser.com

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    Careful! They might be listening :tinfoil-hat:  Oh man IT goes so far beyond the realm of normal life I don't know if we can list all their idioms.

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language


    jmw,

    I'll trade you your 386 for my Commador 64.

    "If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!"

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    (OP)
    Nope, Casseopeia, I would have to go back to my Amstrad PCW 9*** and get all inky re-inking the ribbon cartridge to save money.

    Boy, if that gives my age away, then how about this: I even remember the first computer I ever saw was an Elliot 803, donated to our college by ICI, I think. Its great advantages being no IT and no Bill Blue Screen Gates and an awefull lot of punched dots from the tape to throw at other people in the Styudent Union Bar(till the safety minded tutors warned us they could get behind someones eyeball and sever an optic nerve.... spoilsports).

    Pencil and paper to Punched tape to Windows.... not quite such a time frame as bronze age to iron age but it sometimes feels like it.

    JMW
    www.ViscoAnalyser.com

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    Ha, I once backed up an FE model to paper tape.

    Cheers

    Greg Locock

    Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language


    My first computer was a Polymorphic "Poly 88"
    It was an S-100 based machine. I used an old TV set for a Monitor.
    In the 286 days I remember loading a program off of 48 3 1/2" floppies.
    yours

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    My department are lucky because we maintain the plan't distributed control system, giving us full access to all of the IT toys - administrator privileges, our own private network, own budget, etc. And I work on a top-of-the-line Sun workstation! Some of our Sun machines don't get a reboot for two years if the turbine has a good run and doesn't require intermediate shutdown - and they very rarely crash.

    On of our big problems is IT want to upgrade our oldest department laptop which currently has three boot options: NT4, Win 95, and DOS 6.22 / Win 3.11. We need the older O/S to communicate with some of the equipment at the plant, much of which is late 80's vintage. The proposed new laptop doesn't have a serial port, and the DOS emulators within slater windows versions are a waste of time, as are the USB - serial converters.

    If anyone can ever explain why Lotus Notes has to exist, please let me know. I really can't get along with this software, it just frustrates me.

    When reminiscing about old computers, does anyone remember the BBC Model 'B'? What a lovely machine to program, and really well built. It never got the games support of the C64 (nightmare to program) or the Sinclair Spectrum (glorified calculator), and was relatively expensive. I think mine is still in the loft of the house.

    ----------------------------------
      I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy it...

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    Ah...Lotus Notes...I see we have to face it all around the world...

    Cyril Guichard
    Mechanical Engineer Consultant
    France

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    We could programme 9 steps on the first "computer" in our office. We produced endless pro-formas with little boxes to calculate various stresses and switched the ribbon by hand to red for the output box.

    "The sweat of an IT man" is similar to "hen's teeth" in our world.

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    IT people have an odd position in most companies.

    Normally in working with colleagues from other areas/departments there's a healthy give & take situation - flow of help in both directions.  I like helping you because I know you'll help me if I ask.  With IT it's different.  The only help I can give them is telling them how to do their job properly when they screw up.  It doesn't buy that many favours.

    This is why IT hold so much power in companies.  They have no favours to return.

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    We have a remarkably good relationship with IT. Much of our work crosses over, with us managing their infrastructure installation, and them looking after our Cisco switches under their contract for example. We also speak much of the same technical language, and a bit of gentle rivalry between the Unix and Windows camps is taken in good spirit. I even have a local administrator account for my business PC (gasp!) so I can install my own software. Perhaps we're unusual in that respect.

    ----------------------------------
      I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy it...

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    The quality of service the IT department provides can be very easily calculated as follows:

    service quality = 100% / number of IT people

    In my current company the number of IT people is 1. I am a happy person. My computer is only 2 years old, it is fast, clean and if I want to change regedit setting, I can just go ahead and mess around. If I screw things up, the IT guy will tell I'm stupid and then happily do a complete reinstall.

    In my previous company the number of IT people is estimated at 1500. The calculation of the quality of service provided is left as an exercise to the reader. My computer was 7 years old, windows crashed at least 3 times a day, to have this repaired I had to call the helpdesk which was located abroad (it used to be the UK at the time but I guess they must certainly have moved to India in the meantime). The only thing the helpdesk did was give me a request number and a priority which was always low, unless (I discovered) when there was a safety issue related to it, that makes the priority jump to the highest level. I remember once the printer was set to the wrong paper size. After printing a safety critical procedure, I found out that the last two lines of each page had not been printed, so I played the safety card. Within an hour, somebody from an external IT company was called to the site urgently and fixed it.

    Sorry for being so off-topic but I know it's everybody's favorite subject...

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    Touche.  My current IT request number from our helpdesk (why it's called a 'help' desk I have no idea) is 565048.  Since January my (1998) PC has been disconnecting itself from the server on a random, and regular basis.  IT view this a low priority as for some reason, they do not think I need access to the server to do my job.  A little odd considering thats where all the project data is stored...

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    .... And I thought during all these years that 'inherittance' and 'polymorphism' are the terms found in Darwin's Origin of Species till my kid brother working in IT clarified the point.

    May be its that when my mechanical and electrical engg friends switched dover to IT some ten years ago, I didn't.

    I am glad.

    Dinesh

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    We were recently bought out by a huge multi-national company, and are supposed to use their (multi-national) helpdesk.  Problem is that we are running some programs that they have absolutely no experience with.  As a result, we just quietly do what is needed ourselves (waiting for a handslap).

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    @freefallingbody,
    Ah your kid brother is object oriented!
    OOP is such a beautiful jargon (Smalltalk - indeed!). When I first heard the verb "reify", I thought I had not heard the middle part of the word.
    There are many verbs like "re-###" ("### once again") and many verbs like "###-ify" ("make ###").
    "Reify" sounds like an empty shell with no proper meaning. No idea how the verb was invented.

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    Hey, I used to work in IT, albeit in the 286 days of PC evolution.

    Jargon is jargon. They are in every discipline.

    And goof balls are goof balles. They are in every department. See this thread:

    Jerkholes at the office
    thread731-151135

    Maybe you need to be nicer to your IT guys - like try saying hi and thank you?

    I usually get along with IT guys/gals, and I've worked at HWL/Allied, IBM down to a 10 person consultant company where I am my IT guy.

    "Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."   
    Albert Einstein
    Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    It's not that the people are not friendly or competent. The problem is that the IQ of a department (IT or other) as a whole is significantly lower than the IQs of the people working there, depending on the competence of its management. IT being kind of special and complicated, it is an excellent example of a department usually run the "what I don't understand cannot be complicated - make it so!" management style.

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    "'Reify' sounds like an empty shell with no proper meaning. No idea how the verb was invented."

    Opening a dictionary (or typing the word into an online dictionary) could provide that idea.

    It's not an IT neologism.  It dates back to the mid-19th century.  Re is not always a prefix.  In this case it's related to res as in in medias res (oh, those IT dudes and their Latin...), and means "thing".  Reify means to take something abstract and make it concrete.

    Hg

    Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    Y'all should watch "The IT Crowd."  It's a BBC show from 2005 I think, basically chronicling the life of an IT crew.  They answer their phone, "Hello, IT, have you tried turning it off and on again?"

    Pretty funny, I agree with epoisses otherwise, personal accountability is the way to go.

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

       My best experience with IT came when I was required to maintain a SunOS network in addition to mechanical design.  We were running AutoCAD on Suns.  

       The lesson I learned is that you want to run the system administrator's favorite software.  

       I ran AutoCAD and PordWerfect a lot.  Every once in a while, I launched Lotus123.  I needed AutoCAD and PordWerfect to get my job done, so I learned how to seriously abuse them.  Most problems people brought to me were things I had already done, so it was simple to provide help.  I had a limited interest and understanding of Lotus123, so I was not good at troubleshooting.  Lotus123 for UNIX was crap, and I never got it working well.  

                          JHG

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    ...... Lotus Notes.  *shudder*   That's a piece of code I could live without.  thumbsdown


    RJC

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    In the UK, Lotus became an acronym for Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious. Admittedly that was in reference to the car brand and not the software publisher, but clearly there is some overlap!

    ----------------------------------
      I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy it...

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    I have enjoyed my evening by showing your mail to my wife. She works on Lotus Notes and is an expert!!

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    I was told by a wise old IT guy that Lotus Notes was more secure than outlook!  hmmmmmm I am not sure I believe it.  I would believe that there are far more IT whistles and bells on it to track all of us worker bee's.

    RE: ITese.... a new and incomprehensible language

    I have learned at least 2 things:

    When you work in consulting become really good friends with the IT guys and the HR director!

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