At my company, people above the individual contributor level get rotated out to a new role after five years or so. There’s not a fixed duration, but after a while people get inflexible or idiosyncratic. It’s best for your own career development, and the company as a whole, to get fresh eyes. Good managers have no trouble finding new roles.
I’m getting a new computer Wednesday. I’m scared. I’ve been here before, and I always lose productivity.
I hope it doesn’t end up as bad as all that. I had serious doubts when we were forced to upgrade to Windows 11, which completely breaks the task bar. Fortunately I found a 3rd party replacement that allowed me to have the same setup as Windows 10 and although there are still some things here and there that are definitely not as efficient as Windows 10 on the whole it didn’t end up being that big of a disruption.
Of course I always tell the powers that be that I will need at least a day to get back up to speed after I receive a new PC.
//i\\
I think part of the problem was my spotty wi-fi connection in my basement office at home. If the signal dropped, a zscaler alert would pop up. When it reconnected, another one would pop up. So, it’s partly my problem - and the basement wi-fi issues have been fixed - but still… why is the alert box stealing my focus? It shouldn’t matter how many times the zscaler alert pops up. If it steals my focus once, that’s once too many.
Focus stealing prevents you from just ignoring it. From their, and your IT department’s, POV that’s a feature not a drawback.
STOP! Go back. Reconsider your actions. You are entering a Security Danger Zone!!!11!1!1!
Friggin idjits.
New computer doesn’t seem to have any issues. I am beyond grateful that we now have a dedicated IT person on the premises again. I’m allowed to keep my old one for a while.
Well - except a minor one. I wanted to get Adobe Acrobat Pro so I could mark up PDFs - but it was “strongly recommended” to get something called Kofax Power PDF. So I have to learn new software. Such is life.
This is coding stuff, but I’m doing it for work, so I’m dropping it here.
I want to convert Word docs on a SharePoint site into PDF. The necessary backend stuff to do it is all part of the Office365/OneDrive/SharePoint ecosystem, and can be coded with Power Automate Cloud, a graphical coding tool.
Drag action blocks around, fill in some variables, and done. Of course not. I’m sure some Power Automate guru can tell me why all of these design decisions are completely logical, but they were frustrating.
Create an automation that triggers on document creation or modification. There is no way to convert a SharePoint document, only a OneDrive document. So copy the document to OneDrive, and convert it there, then copy the PDF file back to SharePoint. Except that creating a new PDF file and overwriting an existing PDF file are two different actions.
I spent way to much time trying to be too smart about it, and check to see if the PDF file already existed, and take a different action. Except there is no easy way to see if a file exists on SharePoint. The only option is to get a list of all files on SharePoint, and see if the one you’re interested in is there. That didn’t work (discovered why later).
Finally I just set the overwrite action to run on failure of the create action. That works, but is somehow unsatisfying. Don’t care anymore.
Next step was to create an automation to convert all existing documents to PDF. I had the create/overwrite pipeline done, and I’d learned how to get a list of all files, so 90% of the way there. Put in a filter on the all files output to select only Word files, and I should be good. It worked, except it only converted 3 out of a few hundred Word files.
Much debugging, and dumping to text files, and finally found that the Power Automate definition of all files is 100. The action to list all files, only lists the first 100, which only happens to include 3 Word files. Fortunately there is a parameter called “pagination” which can be changed to adjust how many files are listed when all files are asked for. Set it to 10,000, and now everything is converted.
Throughout all of this Copilot was there to help me. A typical conversation went like this:
Me: how do I convert a sharepoint file to pdf
Copilot: Select the Convert SharePoint File action.
Me: [checking the list of actions several times] there is no convert sharepoint file action
Copilot: You’re right, there is no Convert SharePoint File action, you will have to use the OneDrive Convert action by copying the SharePoint file to OneDrive first.
Could you let me know how you like this? I’m on the lookout for an Acrobat Pro replacement…
So some parts arrived at work…among other information, each is stamped with ‘2025.’ What could this possibly mean??? No worries, we have an inspector with access to Google! This inspector determined, based on what must have been an exhaustive Google search, that ‘2025’ is supposedly a date code indicating that the parts were manufactured in mid-2020. Not acceptable! So the parts were written up for being too old, and ended up on my desk.
A quick email exchange with the vendor, and I’m now looking at paperwork that confirms the parts were manufactured in 2025. 
Who would have thought???
Ok I thought I dealt with idiots.
I will keep this post in mind the next time I’m dealing with the typical idiots I must occasionally deal with.
Apparently, they could be even worse.
Depending on what the parts are, I can see the 25th week of 2020 being the correct answer. “2025” seems too imprecise for a manufacturing date. Maybe it was “2025 16” or something like that, or 2025 means this year’s revision instead of just a date?
Anyway, stupid to reject those parts without finding the answer. Considering they come from an extant supplier that you have a relationship with, a phone call (*gasp*) might have been necessary.
This particular manufacturer has changed their date code format several times…about ten years ago it was a set of alphanumeric characters, then they changed to “MM/YY” or “MM/YYYY” (presumably based on which facility was producting the parts). Not entirely sure why they’ve further reduced this to just the year, unless it was to match the paperwork…which also gives a complete date for the test date.
For reasons too disgusting to detail here, some containers of Clorox wipes were deployed in the restroom today, each with prominent DO NOT FLUSH labels applied by whoever put them in there. I’m seriously considering adding a label with something like FOR CLEANING THE TOILET SEAT ONLY, because the last time Clorox wipes were set out around the facility we had one guy who was using them to clean his face and hands.
I will. I won’t use it that much. For my default viewer, I’m still using Acrobat.
I am sure a lot of us would be happy to learn of good alternative to Acrobat.
I have used Master PDF Editor, which has worked well for me especially since hey have a version that runs on Linux, which is my primary OS at home.
For work I use their provided Laptop which is a Windows 10 (now 11) machine and an old version of Adobe Acrobat Pro. Gone are the days when I could remote into a desktop that was at the office and now I have issues with certain file operations depending on the speed of my internet connection. Most of the time is fine, but not great when I am traveling. I tried to make a case a while back for still being able to remote in to something that is directly attached to network, but to little avail. So I am stuck connecting to servers that don’t have all the software I need to do some file copying and other such.
//i\\
I just got an email from a company I applied to in Jan 2022 telling me that they were going with another candidate. On 1/28/2022 I withdrew from consideration when the recruiter told me the real maximum compensation package they could offer was about 30% below my minimum to even consider.
I thought I might have been the victim of identity theft or something, so I emailed the recruiter asking what was up. They were finally getting around to doing the paperwork to close out the requisition. And they just emailed everyone who applied.
They have posted the same position again at least twice in the last three years. So what I really think happened is that some HRIS person clicked on the wrong requisition and instead of emailing the applicants for the latest opening, emailed those for the one from 3.5 years ago.
Has the offered salary improved any? Silly question; I already know the answer.
The company has been in the news for the last year as having a very serious quality and service problem and is bleeding customers as it furiously builds more locations (franchises ones). Another great company hollowed out by private equity.
So I dodged a bullet.
Light on the rant, but high on the skibidi.
My workplace recently replaced one of the bathroom signs with this one. That toilet seems very ominous, and I hope the wheelchair person is fast.
