Three Pits in one

The BBQ Pit
1

I’ve been stewing on some of these for a while, but the bile is building up, so I must get them out.
[ul]
[li] Citrix. Ok, so we’re on fucking Citrix. And our even keystrokes go through the National Office. Did I mention we’re a not-for-profit? Did I mention how much this stupid piece-of-shit software cost us?[/li]As if that weren’t enough, they forced several divisions through hastily this summer. As in, half the country or so.
Complaints begin pouring in, some legitimate, some not. The biggest legitimate complaint quickly becomes printer function. Citrix magically disables some printers on different days, it won’t print some fonts, it won’t do this, it won’t do this. All during our second busiest time of the year.
And what do the assholes in charge do? Ignore the complaints, try to deal with them one-by-one and continue forcing Citrix down our throats. Until the problem has become an epidemic…no one who has Citrix can print on a regular basis. This is two weeks before a $100,00 event.
They finally call a screeching halt to installation of new Citrix servers until they fix it. Now it’s (mostly) fixed, but there are lots of other yummy wonderful things to Citrix.
Can’t install anything ourselves. Ok, fair enough.
Can’t even change our toolbars, our settings, or our color schemes.
We have to call the Help Desk to access a CD.
There is no trust! Gah! stupid stupid! Of all the places to make drones, a nfp is not it! You don’t pay us enough as it is.
And the brightest thing is - the National office keeps sending us CDs, which we can’t access, and media fiels over the e-mail which we can’t open since we can’t open any *.exe files. FUCK!

[li] Another work-related Pit. An employee of ours went on maternity leave. Another one is temping for her, and has been now since October 8th. And we haven’t paid her. Why? [/li]Well, first it was because she didn’t put in the right type of time sheets. Only, she was putting in time sheets for *weeks * and no one said anything, least of all payroll. Only when she complained did they tell us.
Now? It’s fucking December 29th and she still hasn’t been paid. She’s pregnant. Her baby is almost certainly going to be premature (uterine wall lining problems). She needs this goddamn money, assholes! And they keep putting red tape in.

[li] Non-work related. Evening of the 26th. Most people in the States have to work on the 27th. We are woken in the middle of the night - 3 AM, I checked - by some total asswipe bouncing some kind of ball against the wall. Bonk. Bonk. Bonk. I am a very deep sleeper and there is no way I can sleep through this shit. He is a very light sleeper and of course is wide awake.[/li]The worst was, he was one apartment over and downstairs, so pounding on the walls didn’t do anything. Who knows, maybe the music was up, but that doesn’t bother us, we can sleep through music.
Haven’t you cocksuckers ever lived in an apartment complex before? News flash: This isn’t a dorm you stupid git. Don’t you know that is probably the worst fucking thing you can do…for some reason the noise goes right through the walls.
I wanted so much to go down there and bang on his door but I knew there was no way in hell I could do it civilly so I put up with it…and next day filed a noise complaint with the apartmnet complex. Oh, and envisioned horrific solitary fates to occur to the ball-bouncer (I don’t want anyone *else * hurt!)
[/ul]

Whew! I just needed to get those things off my chest. The last one particularly has been annoying me, because I like where I live a lot. It’s a fairly quiet apartment complex, but every now and then we get college students or some other assholes who treat it like a dorm or some shitty little apartment in downtown Albany.

2

I feel your pain on Citrix. We have to use it because we’re on a client/server accounting program that’s designed for (at most) 50 users. As of today I have 639. It was either use Citrix or fly me all over the country to install it on everyone’s machines. For what it’s worth, my Citrix administrator found some kind of universal print driver somewhere that converts all the print files to pdf, which almost any printer can use. Perhaps you can suggest that to the Powers That Be at your company, seeing as they’re so gung-ho about using it?

3

I hear your citrix pain. I too have to use it, and I know all about the printing problems.
(sidenote: I just had a serious case of deja vu when replying to this thread.)

4

I will have to say that Citrix is awesome when implimentated correctly. I wave it at work which doesn’t seem so great then but what is great is that I can just hop on any web connected computer anywhere in the world and it is just like sitting at my office desk. It has saved me from coming into the office many times.

I have their personal software called LogMeIn which is free and lets you get on your home computer anywhere there is web access. Way cool and way useful.

This type of virtual computing is the wave of future. Done correctly, it can be awesome.

5

Can’t you cc this OP to ‘National Office’ the next time they give you mug coasters? :wink:

One of our clients uses Citrix to run one of the applications we develop. In fact, you’ve reminded me to send them an email about one of the few issues that recently appeared: most punctuation gets changed in to strange quotes, and accented es and as. It’s especially bad since I’m guaranteed to have to write an email or some SQL code or something. Thanks! :wink:

6

I use VNC Viewer, another free piece of software. I love it.

Agreed, but it seems like very few companies know how to implement it correctly.

7

I’ve not used Citrix, but I do know the frustration of being in a communications department where we are constantly upgrading and changing software, but we ourselves are not allowed to do this, and have to wait for IT to come up and do it for us. I need to code web pages, but IE is the only company approved browser, so it’s all I get. Gah.

8

That’s what everybody says, who’s had it for a while. (Non-company people). I guess we just have to wait and see. And suck it up in the meantime. Did I mention we’ve been told we’re not allowed to complain about it anymore?

9

Ah, Citrix. Pity you didn’t post this next week: I’ve a colleague who’s a real guru.

As for not being able to change the settings, I’m afraid I’m with your IT guy. I’ve dealt with too many people who’ve mucked up the settings and then rung for help. It’s a tool, not a toy.

10

I consulted with a guy who was the IT department for the local Catholic diocese here. Yeah, he was the whole IT department. The only way he would agree to that arrangement was if he could put everyone on Citrix. Now, almost everything is done through a server in his office. Need new software? He installs it from his office. No more running from computer to computer.

So, as others have said, it works great when it works. We have other clients where its a nightmare.