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"failure-only job"

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Alan J Rosenthal

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May 20, 2012, 4:27:49 PM5/20/12
to
http://www.cracked.com/blog/9-types-job-that-will-destroy-your-soul/

contains the term "failure-only job": "If you do it perfectly, no one
notices."

I find this term to be a contribution to the language.

Cipher

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May 20, 2012, 5:51:47 PM5/20/12
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I concur. Also, "...some of you are going to wind up as the one-man
computer tech support team in an office full of old timers who still
regard computers as a suspicious, yet necessary form of black magic" has
also been my job description with several MSPs.

--
The word "urgent" is the moral of the story "The boy who cried wolf". As
a general rule I don't believe it until a manager comes to me almost in
tears. I like to catch them in a cup and drink them later.
-- Matt Holiab, in the Monastery

Just zis Guy, you know?

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May 20, 2012, 6:22:06 PM5/20/12
to
On 20 May 2012 20:27:49 GMT, fl...@dgp.toronto.edu (Alan J Rosenthal)
wrote:
The rest of us have always simply called it mail admin.

Last week's stand-up row: No, Mr Customer, I will not give you free
support for the crappy Pbasyhrapr installation that you run on the
fine (and completely stable) collection of deceased rodents I
provisioned for you, as Pbasyhrapr was out of scope and installed by
your own people. I will, however, work long and hard to help *if* you
accept there's a bill attached. Sorry, much as I like you all, I am
not allowed to make charitable donations of my time when there are
other projects to deliver.

Guy
--
Guy Chapman, http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
The usenet price promise: all opinions are guaranteed
to be worth at least what you paid for them.

mrob...@att.net

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May 20, 2012, 10:43:21 PM5/20/12
to
Alan J Rosenthal <fl...@dgp.toronto.edu> wrote:
> I find this term to be a contribution to the language.

I agree. I have personally used the term "invisible job", but that
probably describes more types of job than the specific meaning in that
article.

The article also links to one page of
http://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/confessions-of-a-car-salesman.html
which gives interesting insight into how salesweasels operate. (Quick
version: reporter gets himself hired as a car salesman, then writes
about it later.)

Matt Roberds

David Gersic

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May 21, 2012, 2:02:24 AM5/21/12
to
On 20 May 2012 20:27:49 GMT, Alan J Rosenthal <fl...@dgp.toronto.edu> wrote:
> http://www.cracked.com/blog/9-types-job-that-will-destroy-your-soul/
>
> contains the term "failure-only job": "If you do it perfectly, no one
> notices."

That's pretty much my goal at work. If I do everything perfectly, no one
needs to know that I exist.


> I find this term to be a contribution to the language.

Agreed. I like it. I may have to add it to my job description.


Wojciech Derechowski

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May 21, 2012, 4:31:45 AM5/21/12
to
On 2012-05-21, David Gersic <usenet_s...@zaccaria-pinball.com> wrote:
> On 20 May 2012 20:27:49 GMT, Alan J Rosenthal <fl...@dgp.toronto.edu> wrote:
>> http://www.cracked.com/blog/9-types-job-that-will-destroy-your-soul/
>>
>> contains the term "failure-only job": "If you do it perfectly, no one
>> notices."
>
> That's pretty much my goal at work. If I do everything perfectly, no one
> needs to know that I exist.

Very modest of you, David, if it weren't sort of negative theology.
or at least a reason for some serious théodicée.

WD
--
Who is Entscheidungs and what is his problem?

Message has been deleted

Bron Gondwana

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May 21, 2012, 2:29:29 PM5/21/12
to
In alt.sysadmin.recovery, on 20 May 2012 20:27:49 GMT
Alan J Rosenthal <fl...@dgp.toronto.edu> wrote:
Definitely. As for the "only male in an otherwise all female office",
it honestly wasn't all that bad. Agree it's probably much worse being
the only female, especially if above 2/10 on the attractiveness scale.

Bron.

David Gersic

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May 22, 2012, 12:55:22 AM5/22/12
to
Sadly, or maybe fortunately, I'm far from perfect.


Julian Macassey

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May 22, 2012, 4:46:24 AM5/22/12
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Whenever a freelancer wants to write a tale of
scumbaggery and corruption, the nearest car dealership is a rich
source.

Playboy mag did a long, fascinating article about the
shenanagans of Cal Worthington of Los Angeles in the 1970s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_Worthington


--
“I’m not familiar precisely with exactly what I said, but I stand
by what I said whatever it was,” - Willard Mitt Romney, 17, May 2012
Message has been deleted

John F. Eldredge

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May 22, 2012, 8:06:44 PM5/22/12
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On Mon, 21 May 2012 14:32:19 +0000, abuse wrote:

> On 2012-05-20, Cipher <nota...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> On 5/20/2012 4:27 PM, Alan J Rosenthal wrote:
>>> http://www.cracked.com/blog/9-types-job-that-will-destroy-your-soul/
>>>
>>> contains the term "failure-only job": "If you do it perfectly, no one
>>> notices."
>>>
>>> I find this term to be a contribution to the language.
>>
>> I concur. Also, "...some of you are going to wind up as the one-man
>> computer tech support team in an office full of old timers who still
>> regard computers as a suspicious, yet necessary form of black magic"
>> has also been my job description with several MSPs.
>
> As distinct from an office full of newtimers who regard computers as a
> ubiquitous and indispensable from of black magic.
>
> Dima

I used to work for a company where a lengthy report was printed each week
for each salesman, specifying where he was to go that week and what he
was to do at each stop. One of the salesmen asked me, "Why can't the
computer just rearrange the ink on the report that was printed last week,
instead of having to print a new report?".

Given other, previous, evidence that this particular salesman wasn't too
bright, I think he sincerely believed this to be possible.

--
John F. Eldredge -- jo...@jfeldredge.com
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly
is better than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria

John F. Eldredge

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May 22, 2012, 8:08:25 PM5/22/12
to
It does help, of course, if whomever is in charge of payroll knows you
exist...

David Cameron Staples

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May 22, 2012, 8:30:14 PM5/22/12
to
On 23/05/12 10:08 AM, John F. Eldredge wrote:
> On Mon, 21 May 2012 06:02:24 +0000, David Gersic wrote:
>
>> On 20 May 2012 20:27:49 GMT, Alan J Rosenthal <fl...@dgp.toronto.edu>
>> wrote:
>>> http://www.cracked.com/blog/9-types-job-that-will-destroy-your-soul/
>>>
>>> contains the term "failure-only job": "If you do it perfectly, no one
>>> notices."
>>
>> That's pretty much my goal at work. If I do everything perfectly, no one
>> needs to know that I exist.
>>
>>
>>> I find this term to be a contribution to the language.
>>
>> Agreed. I like it. I may have to add it to my job description.
>
> It does help, of course, if whomever is in charge of payroll knows you
> exist...
>
And I said, I don't care if they lay me off either, because I told, I
told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I'm, I'm
quitting, I'm going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they've
moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the
window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then,
they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my
Swingline stapler because it didn't bind up as much, and I kept the
staples for the Swingline stapler and it's not okay because if they take
my stapler then I'll set the building on fire...

--
David Cameron Staples | staples AT unimelb DOT edu DOT au
Melbourne University | ITS | Hosting | Unix Operations
if there's one thing i hate its everything -- bash.org/?2778

Paul

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May 23, 2012, 1:02:23 PM5/23/12
to
David Cameron Staples <sta...@unimelb.edu.au.NOSPAM> wrote in
news:4fbc...@news.unimelb.edu.au:

> On 23/05/12 10:08 AM, John F. Eldredge wrote:
>> On Mon, 21 May 2012 06:02:24 +0000, David Gersic wrote:
>>
>>> On 20 May 2012 20:27:49 GMT, Alan J Rosenthal
>>> <fl...@dgp.toronto.edu> wrote:
>>>> http://www.cracked.com/blog/9-types-job-that-will-destroy-your-s
>>>> oul/
>>>>
>>>> contains the term "failure-only job": "If you do it perfectly,
>>>> no one notices."
>>>
>>> That's pretty much my goal at work. If I do everything
>>> perfectly, no one needs to know that I exist.
>>>
>>>
>>>> I find this term to be a contribution to the language.
>>>
>>> Agreed. I like it. I may have to add it to my job description.
>>
>> It does help, of course, if whomever is in charge of payroll
>> knows you exist...
>>
> And I said, I don't care if they lay me off either, because I
> told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then,
> then I'm, I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. And, and I told Don
> too, because they've moved my desk four times already this year,
> and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the
> squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the
> Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler
> because it didn't bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the
> Swingline stapler and it's not okay because if they take my
> stapler then I'll set the building on fire...
>

Not the red one? No, I haven't seen it...

--
Paul the Legacy Server
Full Recovery reached May 30, 2008
"People can be educated beyond their intelligence"
-- Marilyn vos Savant

Andrew

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May 24, 2012, 10:51:30 AM5/24/12
to
On Wed, 23 May 2012 17:02:23 +0000 (UTC), Paul wrote:

>> And I said, I don't care if they lay me off either, because I
>> told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then,
>> then I'm, I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. And, and I told Don
>> too, because they've moved my desk four times already this year,
>> and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the
>> squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the
>> Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler
>> because it didn't bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the
>> Swingline stapler and it's not okay because if they take my
>> stapler then I'll set the building on fire...
>
> Not the red one? No, I haven't seen it...

I took it. It's on my desk.

It was two months before anyone noticed it and caught the reference. In a
wholly unrelated event, a few days later a coworker suggested that the best
way to get $BOSS[1] to approve something important might be to bring me to
the meeting with a gas can....

--
Andrew

IT is a filter. It accepts masochists on stdin and emits misanthropes on
stdout.

Joe Zeff

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May 24, 2012, 1:46:09 PM5/24/12
to
On Thu, 24 May 2012 10:51:30 -0400, Andrew wrote:

> It was two months before anyone noticed it and caught the reference. In
> a wholly unrelated event, a few days later a coworker suggested that the
> best way to get $BOSS[1] to approve something important might be to
> bring me to the meeting with a gas can....

And? Did it work?

--
Joe Zeff -- The Guy With The Sideburns:
http://www.zeff.us http://www.lasfs.info
I just have a very broad definition of "normal."

Andrew

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May 24, 2012, 4:54:42 PM5/24/12
to
On 24 May 2012 17:46:09 GMT, Joe Zeff wrote:

> On Thu, 24 May 2012 10:51:30 -0400, Andrew wrote:
>
>> It was two months before anyone noticed it and caught the reference. In
>> a wholly unrelated event, a few days later a coworker suggested that the
>> best way to get $BOSS[1] to approve something important might be to
>> bring me to the meeting with a gas can....
>
> And? Did it work?

Too early to tell. As far as I know the meeting hasn't happened yet.

SteveD

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May 26, 2012, 3:19:01 AM5/26/12
to
On 20 May 2012 20:27:49 GMT, fl...@dgp.toronto.edu (Alan J Rosenthal)
wrote:

I've actually got a soft spot for administrative Cog-jobs. If their
physical component can be completely eliminated or emulated away, they're
great candidates for 99% automation and thus turning a 40-hour-a-week job
into 30 minutes of work and many hours of doing whatever the hell you
like.


-SteveD

Maarten Wiltink

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May 26, 2012, 5:44:34 AM5/26/12
to
"SteveD" <use...@vo.id.au> wrote in message
news:mo01s71eotc40md1s...@4ax.com...
[...]
> I've actually got a soft spot for administrative Cog-jobs. If their
> physical component can be completely eliminated or emulated away,
> they're great candidates for 99% automation and thus turning a
> 40-hour-a-week job into 30 minutes of work and many hours of doing
> whatever the hell you like.

If you can stomach that. Last Friday I slacked off for an hour,
threatening to actually _go_ drink beer on the roof like they dared me
(I don't drink the office beer and they know it. I did reconnoiter the
route to the roof).

I don't even like slacking off at work. At the end of the day, I like
working better.

Tebrgwrf,
Maarten Wiltink


Cipher

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May 26, 2012, 7:42:01 AM5/26/12
to
Isn't this mode of operation why most of us have the jobs we do?
Boredom, slack time, and "change blackouts" are where I always got my
most productive things done.

ObStory (if it's UI, sorry for your loss of SAN):
V unq n fcner srj qnlf bs fybj gvzr nurnq orsber n ybat jrrxraq, naq jnf
fhccbfrq gb hfr guvf gb jnyx guebhtu cebsvyrf ba n Jvaqbjf/Pvgevk freire
gb pyrna hc gur penc Vagreahg Rkcybqre naq gur nccf yrnir oruvaq. Nsgre
nobhg na ubhe bs guvf naq trggvat nyy gur jnl gb gur "P"f va gur anzr
yvfg, V fnvq, shpx guvf.
V'z n crey zbaxrl - nyorvg n cvff-cbbe bar - ohg cnefrq qverpgbel gerrf
vfa'g uneq naq va gjb qnlf unq gur pbqr jevggra, grfgrq naq ernql gb ebyy.
Vg ybbxf ng gur cebsvyr cngu sbe gur pheerag hfre, ubcf hc bar
qverpgbel, svaqf nyy gur bgure cnguf, naq jnyxf vagb gur evtug cynprf
naq qryrgrf pehsg. Vg fcvgf reebef ba ybpxrq svyrq naq cebqhprf ab ybtf,
ohg ng yrnfg vg'f htyl.
Ybatrfg ehagvzr rire ba n Pvgevk obk jnf fvk zvahgrf naq vg pyrnarq fvk
tvtf bs penc sebz gur cebsvyrf.

SteveD

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May 26, 2012, 7:53:33 AM5/26/12
to
On Sat, 26 May 2012 11:44:34 +0200, "Maarten Wiltink"
<maa...@kittensandcats.net> wrote:

>I don't even like slacking off at work. At the end of the day, I like
>working better.

Oh, absolutely. But if your job only takes you a couple of hours, I'm
betting you can find something worthwhile to do in your spare time.


-SteveD

AHS AMS

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May 26, 2012, 8:03:50 AM5/26/12
to
On 2012-05-26, SteveD <use...@vo.id.au> wrote:
> I've actually got a soft spot for administrative Cog-jobs. If their
> physical component can be completely eliminated or emulated away, they're
> great candidates for 99% automation and thus turning a 40-hour-a-week job
> into 30 minutes of work and many hours of doing whatever the hell you
> like.

If you're paid for the 40 and not the 0.5, yeah, that's the long way of
saying "the kind of job we all want".

And if you're really good, it drops to 0 after that first week.

Peter Corlett

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May 26, 2012, 8:42:45 AM5/26/12
to
AHS AMS <inv...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> On 2012-05-26, SteveD <use...@vo.id.au> wrote:
>> I've actually got a soft spot for administrative Cog-jobs. If their
>> physical component can be completely eliminated or emulated away, they're
>> great candidates for 99% automation and thus turning a 40-hour-a-week job
>> into 30 minutes of work and many hours of doing whatever the hell you
>> like.
> If you're paid for the 40 and not the 0.5, yeah, that's the long way of
> saying "the kind of job we all want".

Not if you're still expected to attend the office for the other 39.5 hours.

What I nominally do for a living, I would happily do for free. It started
off as a hobby, after all. Putting up with corporate bullshit and your
typical toxic office environment, that's where I demand $BIGNUM.

Message has been deleted
Message has been deleted

Joe Zeff

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May 26, 2012, 3:10:38 PM5/26/12
to
On Sat, 26 May 2012 11:44:34 +0200, Maarten Wiltink wrote:

> I don't even like slacking off at work. At the end of the day, I like
> working better.

Back before I was recovered, I orked on what most of you call the Hell
Desk. I actually enjoyed it, partially because of the challenge of
trying to figure out what's wrong based only on what the caller told me
and partially because there were people who's day was better because they
spoke to me. Job satisfaction is where you find it.

--
Joe Zeff -- The Guy With The Sideburns:
http://www.zeff.us http://www.lasfs.info
The free market works, but just not always the way you
want it to.

David Cantrell

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May 28, 2012, 7:49:23 AM5/28/12
to
On Sat, May 26, 2012 at 11:44:34AM +0200, Maarten Wiltink wrote:
> "SteveD" <use...@vo.id.au> wrote in message
> news:mo01s71eotc40md1s...@4ax.com...
> > I've actually got a soft spot for administrative Cog-jobs. If their
> > physical component can be completely eliminated or emulated away,
> > they're great candidates for 99% automation and thus turning a
> > 40-hour-a-week job into 30 minutes of work and many hours of doing
> > whatever the hell you like.
> If you can stomach that. Last Friday I slacked off for an hour,
> threatening to actually _go_ drink beer on the roof like they dared me
> (I don't drink the office beer and they know it. I did reconnoiter the
> route to the roof).
>
> I don't even like slacking off at work. At the end of the day, I like
> working better.

Automating all the boring crap away gives you time to find more
interesting work to do.

--
David Cantrell | Bourgeois reactionary pig

Graecum est; non legitur

stevo

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May 28, 2012, 10:42:00 PM5/28/12
to
AOL.

I had a job like that. It took me 45 minutes on Monday to do the entire
weeks work. While this sounds greate it gets soul crushingly boring
after a couple of weeks.

Skiving off when you have things to do is nice, but when you have
nothing to do, it's a whole different story.

--
Stevo st...@madcelt.org

Hans Klager

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May 29, 2012, 1:32:29 AM5/29/12
to
On Mon, 28 May 2012 21:42:00 -0500, stevo <st...@madcelt.org> wrote:
> Maarten Wiltink <maa...@kittensandcats.net> wrote:
>>
>> I don't even like slacking off at work. At the end of the day, I like
>> working better.
>>
> AOL.
>
> I had a job like that. It took me 45 minutes on Monday to do the entire
> weeks work. While this sounds greate it gets soul crushingly boring
> after a couple of weeks.
>
> Skiving off when you have things to do is nice, but when you have
> nothing to do, it's a whole different story.

As they say in Yorkshire: "Nowt wears you out like doing
nowt."

This is especially true when you have nothing to do, but
have to look like you are doing something.

--
"I believe marriage should be preserved as an institution for one
man and one woman." - Willard Mitt Romney, great-grandson of a polygamist

Peter H. Coffin

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May 29, 2012, 8:07:05 AM5/29/12
to
On Tue, 29 May 2012 05:32:29 +0000 (UTC), Hans Klager wrote:
> On Mon, 28 May 2012 21:42:00 -0500, stevo <st...@madcelt.org> wrote:
>> Maarten Wiltink <maa...@kittensandcats.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> I don't even like slacking off at work. At the end of the day, I like
>>> working better.
>>>
>> AOL.
>>
>> I had a job like that. It took me 45 minutes on Monday to do the entire
>> weeks work. While this sounds greate it gets soul crushingly boring
>> after a couple of weeks.
>>
>> Skiving off when you have things to do is nice, but when you have
>> nothing to do, it's a whole different story.
>
> As they say in Yorkshire: "Nowt wears you out like doing
> nowt."
>
> This is especially true when you have nothing to do, but
> have to look like you are doing something.

The aphorism that anything that happens in a text window looks like work
seems to hold true, for every place I've thus far been employed.

Granted, that used to require a 3270 window, but it's amazing how
prolific some of those mailing lists were in the early 1990s, and PROFS
did email just fine, thank you.

--
Kyle J Cardoza <ad...@zetachannel.com> sigged:
>Faith does not, in fact, move mountains;
Mainly because they won't let her loose with a drilling crew and enough
dynamite. -- Chris Suslowicz in the Monastery

Maarten Wiltink

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May 29, 2012, 11:39:22 AM5/29/12
to
"Joe Zeff" <the.guy.with....@lasfs.info> wrote in message
news:4fc12aae$0$2744$a826...@newsreader.readnews.com...
[...]
> Back before I was recovered, I orked on what most of you call the Hell
> Desk. I actually enjoyed it, partially because of the challenge of
> trying to figure out what's wrong based only on what the caller told me
> and partially because there were people who's day was better because
> they spoke to me. Job satisfaction is where you find it.

Helpdesk is the one job that had me toss in the towel and go home, as
related before. I am not suited to jobs where the good is found only by
careful sifting among the bad.

Which explains why I stayed at a safe distance yesterday when going for
a walk with wife, sis-in-law, and niece, who are participating in
something dubbed an 'art festival' next weekend, and had brought flyers.

Niece turns out to be *good* at this. She can approach random passers-by,
smile, and ask if she might offer them a flyer, explaining before they
have time to think that it's for the art festival in $NEARBY_TOWN next
week, and getting favourable reactions about fifty-eight times out of
sixty.

She's not even that good about shrugging off the other two... but she
doesn't need to shrug off thirty in any case. I'm not even trying that,
thank you.

Tebrgwrf,
Maarten Wiltink


Mike Andrews

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May 29, 2012, 11:53:45 AM5/29/12
to
Maarten Wiltink <maa...@kittensandcats.net> wrote in <4fc4edab$0$6898$e4fe...@news2.news.xs4all.nl>:

> "Joe Zeff" <the.guy.with....@lasfs.info> wrote in message
> news:4fc12aae$0$2744$a826...@newsreader.readnews.com...
> [...]
>> Back before I was recovered, I orked on what most of you call the Hell
>> Desk. I actually enjoyed it, partially because of the challenge of
>> trying to figure out what's wrong based only on what the caller told me
>> and partially because there were people who's day was better because
>> they spoke to me. Job satisfaction is where you find it.
>
> Helpdesk is the one job that had me toss in the towel and go home, as
> related before. I am not suited to jobs where the good is found only by
> careful sifting among the bad.

I apparently was pretty good at the helldesk function when I was working at
ou.edu, though from time to time I got in trouble for being rough on people
-- one Saudi prince particularly comes to mind -- who refused to learn.

But a lot of the helldesk querants had interesting problems, not just "why
doesn't this print 'hello, world'?" One gent was simulating ignition of a
gas cloud from a ruptured LNG supertanker, and wasn't sure his results were
stable; my advice was to solve the system of PDEs at two different mesh
sizes, selected dynamically, in the sim, and to call it "good enough" when
the differences were within some epsilon. He liked the idea, tried it, and
wound up with a PhD.

Fridays were beerdays, and sometimes I needed the relief.

--
A friend told me about an evening he spent drinking beer and discussing
language features to hack into C++ with a group that included Bjarne
Stroustrup. My reaction was, "It all makes sense now. C++ looks exactly
like a language designed by drunk people in a bar." -- Steve VanDevender

TimC

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May 29, 2012, 9:29:16 PM5/29/12
to
On 2012-05-29, Mike Andrews (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:
> But a lot of the helldesk querants had interesting problems, not just "why
> doesn't this print 'hello, world'?" One gent was simulating ignition of a
> gas cloud from a ruptured LNG supertanker, and wasn't sure his results were
> stable; my advice was to solve the system of PDEs at two different mesh
> sizes, selected dynamically, in the sim, and to call it "good enough" when
> the differences were within some epsilon. He liked the idea, tried it, and
> wound up with a PhD.
>
> Fridays were beerdays, and sometimes I needed the relief.

I miss snversity. It was insane, but all other places have been more
insane. And less friendly.

--
TimC
I'm surprised that freezing works at all [as a defence] for [water snakes].
A piece of string doesn't stand a chance against a cat, no matter how still
the string stays. -- pete in alt.religion.kibology

Garrett Wollman

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May 30, 2012, 12:09:54 AM5/30/12
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In article <133834127...@hexane.ssi.swin.edu.au>,
TimC <tcon...@rather.puzzling.no-spam-accepted-here.org> wrote:

>I miss snversity. It was insane, but all other places have been more
>insane. And less friendly.

That's why some of us never leave. (Well, that and pension and the
"free tuition should you ever spawn a subprocess smart enough to get
in" deal, which I don't think new hires get.)

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
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John F. Eldredge

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May 30, 2012, 8:10:05 AM5/30/12
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On Wed, 30 May 2012 20:57:43 +0900, Dave Brown wrote:

> In article <2012052811...@bytemark.barnyard.co.uk>, David
> Having automated myself into idleness, I now find myself musing how I
> can automate some unloved coworkers' jobs away. If a computer does
> their jobs for them, at least the mistakes they make will be consistent.
>
> --Dave

This is reminiscent of the T-shirt motto I have seen, "Go away, or I will
replace you with a very small shell script."

Shmuel Metz

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May 30, 2012, 5:15:49 PM5/30/12
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In <133834127...@hexane.ssi.swin.edu.au>, on 05/30/2012
at 11:29 AM, TimC
<tcon...@rather.puzzling.no-spam-accepted-here.org> said:

>I miss snversity. It was insane, but all other places have been more
>insane.

I sometimes think that I would have been happier in academentia, but I
doubt that I would deal well with academic politics.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <http://patriot.net/~shmuel> ISO position
Reply to domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+bspfh to contact me.
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)

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SteveD

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Jun 11, 2012, 11:38:39 AM6/11/12
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On Mon, 28 May 2012 21:42:00 -0500, stevo <st...@madcelt.org> wrote:

>Skiving off when you have things to do is nice, but when you have
>nothing to do, it's a whole different story.

Ah, but there's always something to fix, improve, automate, tweak,
upgrade...


-SteveD

SteveD

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Jun 11, 2012, 11:40:08 AM6/11/12
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On Sat, 26 May 2012 12:42:45 +0000 (UTC), ab...@mooli.org.uk (Peter
Corlett) wrote:

>AHS AMS <inv...@invalid.invalid> wrote:

>> If you're paid for the 40 and not the 0.5, yeah, that's the long way of
>> saying "the kind of job we all want".
>
>Not if you're still expected to attend the office for the other 39.5 hours.

Expectations of attendance can be carefully bent, with patience and time.


-SteveD
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