Macs in the corporate workplace: a true story
Tim Murray
work, that I thought I'd post something that might elicit some fun stories to
lighten things up.
This story begins about two weeks ago, right around the day (literally) when
a major virus/worm/whatever began spreading.
I'm consulting in a 100% Windows 2000 environment (I'll call it ABC Corp.)
where the usual worker-bee workstation is locked down to the point where you
can't, for instance, so much as drag an application link from one position in
the Start menu to another position.
I asked IT about hooking up my Mac to the network. I was told (1) corporate
policy does not permit non-ABC-supplied computers on the network; (2) the
network is set up to detect non-ABC computers; (3) if one is detected, the
port connection in the cubicle is shut down; and I kid you not, this final
gem, (4) attaching Macs to Windows networks brings them down. This policy
is, of course, to rid the company of virus attacks ... and I swear to God
that within one hour after I was told this, they were hit with that famous
virus of two weeks ago, and it soon infected nearly two office floors' of
computers. It was all I could do *not* to head back to the IT guy's office
and, imitating the late comedian Sam Kinison, scream, "I have a Mac, you
POMPOUS CORPORATE LEMMING! Do you want me to do some WORK for you while the
REST of the office is outside SMOKING CIGARETTES while IT CLEANS THEIR
COMPUTERS?" But being the humble soul I am, I decided against it and went
out for a smoke.
So here I am with this cube they're letting me use, fully equipped with a
333-MHz PIII computer with a locked down Win2K, 64MB of RAM, and nothing on
it but Word, Excel, and PowerPoint ... but I need Photoshop, Illustrator,
FrameMaker, Acrobat, and fonts, so what am I to do? I did what any
self-respecting PowerBook-wielding nerd would do: I took matters into my own
hands.
If you view my desk from the hallway, you see the PIII desktop unit with a
monitor on top, and to its right, my PowerBook. The monitor is displaying
the corporate logo wallpaper. The Mac shows, well, Mac stuff.
But if you were to peer behind the computers, you would see that the monitor
sitting atop the PIII is actually connected to my PowerBook, as is the cube's
network cable. The monitor is being driven, of course, by VirtualPC in
full-screen mode so you can't see any Mac stuff behind it. I've been using
Windows Outlook to connect to the corporate MS Exchange mailbox, but come
Monday I'll try out the Exchange add-on for Entourage. If it works, I'll be
one more step away from the Matrix.
L.L.
attack two weeks ago....
The company I work for is rapidly getting to the state of ABC Corp
(just got an e-mail describing the new desktop). Anyway, two days ago
I was talking with my boss when the IT network star comes in to explain
to her that she hadn't been able to get on the network because of some
"rouge Mac that stole her IP address". That got my attention because
I'd had trouble getting my wintel laptop to grab an address and knew
that the DHCP server we were under occasionally had 'issues'. So I
pointed out to this young wonder that a)it wasn't the Mac, b)it wasn't
even the wintel machine and c)it was their bloody server. He muttered
something about 'mac lover' and left. Later that day he reset my
bosses machine to pick up a dynamic address, so she can get back on the
network. But he also 'fixed' access to her network drive and toasted
everything there. I love these twits. Give them another neuron and
they'd have enough to make a synapse.
In article <0001HW.BC4AA220...@newsgroups.bellsouth.net>,
TheMartian
a while back I went into a 100% Windoze shop to deal with a network
problem. These guys are so pro M$ that they even have MSC consultants in
house.
anyway I go in there with my network sniffer (Mac PB), hook it up to the
nearest LAN port, and get on with the job at hand.
to cut a long rant short, the nature of the problem, ment that I needed
to make a return visit to the site, which is where the problems started
I got a call from one of the senior managers from the company in
question, telling me not to come back unless I was using a windoze machine.
after I stopped laughing, I got some real gems out of him, as to why
1. Me using a Mac is a serious security risk
2. Hooking up a Mac to the network, will damage the net infrastructure
this manager would not tell me, but something tells me that the MSC
"consultants" complained about me not using windoze
so, I did not go back, the network is still fscked, and likely to fail
totally at any time. When they call for help, the $$$ just doubled.
the best bit is that they already have several Macs (PBs) in very
unofficial use by a number of staffers, plus the inhouse support droid
uses a Linux box running VMWARE
seems the number of idiots out in luser land is actually increasing.
This is the second time I have been told not to come back if I am not
using windoze.
Tim Murray wrote:
--
www.sol4.net
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Proud to be 100% Microsoft Free
Bill Leeper
A friend of mine decided that what with the recent upsurge in virus
attacks he should renew his yearly definitions. He went online, and I
will leave the name out to protect the guilty, and proceeded to purchase
another year. He clicked on the buy button and waited for a few minutes
but nothing happened so he dumped out. Later he went back and the same
thing happened. After the fourth try he realized that he just might have
purchased four subscriptions. So he called the customer service number
and was put through to a rep in Eugene, which is just a couple of hours
from here. He explained the situation to the lady and she says she can
check it out for him and would he please hold on. It is taking a long
time and they get to chatting while she is trying to pull the info up on
her computer. She finds out he is from Newport and says she visits there
quite frequently. After a lengthly time she apologizes for the delay and
tells him that their computers had been hit with a virus and everything
was taking forever to do.
Bill
mah
Spent the past 6 years working with a small tech company. I'm changing
jobs and migrating my clients to new service providers. One came in for
the interview and looked at the inventory. They would not support any
systems not running W2K or Win XP pro. While they didn't really want to
support Macs, they would if they would connect to the server in OS 10
running in terminal mode. Client runs machine from W98, Wme, W2K,
WinXP, OS 7.6, OS 9.2, and OS 10. They looked at the conversion cost to
meet the conditions of the provider and said no thank you.
Bill Leeper
> In article <102bffe...@corp.supernews.com>,
> Bill Leeper <wle...@actionnet.net> wrote:
>
>
>>On a slightly different note here is another true story.
>>
>>She finds out he is from Newport and says she visits there
>>quite frequently. After a lengthly time she apologizes for the delay and
>>tells him that their computers had been hit with a virus and everything
>>was taking forever to do.
>
>
> Newport, OR! You lucky dog.
We like it. I take it you are familiar with the area? My wife and I make
a darn good cup of coffee if you ever get over this way. :-)
Bill
C. S. Wyatt
how that was possible, since (as you all know) Dreamweaver is a Windows
program. Uhg. The board wanted me to use a PC because, "The web site is
visited by people running Windows."
There's logic. You can't design a Web site on the Mac if people might use
Windows to view it????
I am stunned when "IT experts" tell me they could never use the Mac because
"it doesn't have a command line" or "it doesn't run Office." These same
people gush over OpenBSD or Linux -- but try to explain OS X is BSD and they
won't believe it until you show them the terminal window.
It is sad that Apple doesn't do more to educate people in its
advertisements. Apple needs to educate not just the public, but the
"technical" people without a clue.
I hook to any network, work on most files, and even write PC programs on my
Mac. Between BOCHS and VPC, I can run most PC applications, but prefer X11
apps when I must run non-OS X programs.
Apple needs to do a lot more to get back into the education and business
markets. HP signs a $35M laptop deal and its no big news. Apple has to
celebrate every $1M sell to a school site, since the "techies" at the
districts are all MS certified.
Oh, well....