My company, in their continued efforts to keep our networks free of worms, viruses, trojans and the like are always adding to their firewall. The list of web sites that I can no longer access is growing daily. The latest victim: Google. That’s right, I can’t Google anymore except when I’m at home. 
I find myself wondering how long 'til they find the Straight Dope and add that to the list. Each day I come in to work wondering if this is the day that I type in straightdope.com and get the grey screen with the big red triangle capped with the words ACCESS DENIED!
I’m afraid. Without the Straight Dope my time at work will be dull and pointless. I can only hope that there’s at least one Doper working in the dept. that handles this type of thing. There’s got to be at least one, right?
It’s not like I do nothing at work all day…well it is but that’s because there’s no work to be done. I’m the only computer support person in this office and if there are no problems, I don’t have anything to do. Like the noble Maytag Repairman I’m just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. (ok, really it’s waiting for my pager to vibrate which is lots more fun but you get what I mean)
The list of places I can no longer access reads like a Who’s Who of web sites: Yahoo, CNN, MSN, Google, Ebay…it sucks. I’m going to have to start bringing a book to work.
i hear you. i actually discovered SDMB at work. the last 3 weeks before i was laid off (IT outsourcing) i wasn’t allowed to help people in my office any more. i was only allowed to help my replacements when they showed up.
luckily, our firewall was not as stringent as your is.
Will they let you Timbuktu (or PCAnywhere or ARA or VNC etc) out? Then you could remotely control your home computer and let it do the browsing.
sometimes certain IT folks add domain names and neglect to block IP addresses. I’m must sayin’.
I don’t know how to find a site’s IP address. I’m sure it’s simple but it’s one of those things I never learned. Anyone care to enlighten me. In the interest of fighting ignorance of course 
Meanwhile, my favorite are newspapers are now blocked along with News of the Weird. Is nothing sacred?
And no AHunter3 can’t do the PC Anywhere thing. OK, well, I could but I’m fairly certain I’d get my hand slapped for it. The log in scripts actually inventory the software on the PC everytime you log in. Anything that hasn’t been authorized and paid for will get caught eventually. Of course I’m the one they’d call to remove it from the offending computer but you get what I’m saying. Until a couple of days ago I had my laptop set so that I could log on to the LAN without running the scripts but I got my hand slapped for that so now I’m logging on like the rest of the lemmings.
Looks like they’ve got everything categorized as “news” blocked which means if anyone here links to a news story I can’t see the link and therefore don’t know what the heck they’re talking about.
Poop! :mad: