Rant Thread

My university's IT department is awful. Over the last few weeks they've been migrating everyone's Unix home directories to a different directory on the server. This meant that all our code has to be changed. It also turned out that we could no longer access our Unix directories directly from Windows as the map no longer worked for the previous directory locations. We were given an alternative method of doing this which involved updating some software and rebooting the PC. When I did this on Friday I could not log on to the PC again as the mouse and keyboard were not recognized. By the time I'd realized this all the IT people had gone home for the weekend so I had to submit an incident report with "URGENT" in the title. This morning it turned out that at least ten other PhD students had the same problem. Fortunately IT managed to sort it out fairly quickly and applied a remote fix to the PCs to reactivate the USB ports. Incompetence.
 
"This program is not responding."

All my work this morning (2.5 hours) gone. And I still have to explain to people why I keep handwritten notes and don't like to have everything digital only. People laugh at me as if I was some kind of weirdo for preferring analog to digital. A piece of paper does not go "this sheet is not responding", a book does not crash and wipe out all that is written in it, and a pen does not fry from a surge after a power outage.
 
I'd like to know if any company or organisation, anywhere in the world, actually has good IT.
 
Perun said:
"This program is not responding."

All my work this morning (2.5 hours) gone. And I still have to explain to people why I keep handwritten notes and don't like to have everything digital only. People laugh at me as if I was some kind of weirdo for preferring analog to digital. A piece of paper does not go "this sheet is not responding", a book does not crash and wipe out all that is written in it, and a pen does not fry from a surge after a power outage.
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This is why I use Google Docs now for all my writing. Saves every 2-3 seconds and the cloud is far less likely to have a critical failure.
 
I'm really starting to get despondent about finding a job. I'm struggling to get a full professional reference from my last employer, and most jobs ask for one. Pretty much every non self-employed job I look at involves a recruitment agency. Quite a few positions advertised don't accept CVs. Most ask for proof of paid employment in a similar role (even very basic skill level/unskilled jobs), and they drop generic tickbox competency skills telephone interviews on you without warning. A lot of jobs around barely cover the cost of travel to and from the workplace.
 
I hope whoever came up with this application website breaks his arms and legs. I get an error 9 out of 10 times and I have to copy/paste everything again, and there's no pattern as to why the error comes up. If I submit too fast - error. If I wait - error. If I copy-paste everything - error. If I type everything out - error.

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I keep my PhD thesis on OneDrive as it's accessible from my laptop or my work PC and therefore not susceptible to the wrath of the unreliable Unix servers.
 
unreliable Unix servers
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Unix is backbone of world's technology and the Internet. It is the maintainer/operator of the system who's at fault, not the system itself.
 
I’m so angry at people and even the weather sucks, today is an awful day. It’s one of those days you can’t figure out how to make life worth living again.
 
Mixing friendship with business. Worst thing ever. :grumble: How do you tell a close friend to stop using you and hire someone instead, when they would only manipulate you in response, telling you you're the person they trust the most and they really need you?
 
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