New Testingstan

these were not lengthy instructions. it was not a complex task. i seriously wonder if the staff member avoided reading emails that didn't fit into auto-preview.


reminds me of the time i got called out to look at a computer that was 'corrupting emails' or something

turned out the person had never actually opened an email, she was just reading the auto-preview text

*opens email*
"wait what's that, how did you do that?"

Oxymoron wrote:If it was more than two standard Word pages long, it WAS too long.

Also, annotated pictures/screen-caps aren't a luxury in most of these cases. People have, in general, a far easier time understanding things if they are told them visually rather than textually (reading comprehension is never a given, even sadly for people with a college education...).


It really is a job.

But ever so satisfying in its own way when you do it right...


Anyway, I feel your pain, Zod.

It was 12 pages of internal documentation for converting a PDF into something we can upload into our database. The PDFs in question tend to be about 100 pages worth of stuff. Lots of screencaps were made but I'm pretty sure I'll have to go back in and revise it.

But our clients are never going to see it so I doubt anyone really stupid will ever read it.

I love people who don't understand actual users

The real joke is how the untrained fit their little bits and pieces of knowledge into a framework that is totally wrong

^^ THIS ^^

Totally. It's often too easy for people to dismiss users as dipshits without going further than that and trying to adapt themselves.


Just read the Daily WTF, and try to guess how many of these people really tried to understand and adapt their practices to the end users instead of simply bitching about them.

As much as I do feel for, and attempt to adapt to users, at a certain point, I can't hold hands of specific people anymore, as they just want me to do it for them rather than do it themselves. That's usually where I draw the line.

I agree. I talk of the stuff before this point.

But in the other hand I don't have -that much- corporate experience : I only worked part-time in the company for two years (for my degree : getting paid to study !), but there I worked with people who acknowledged their weaknesses (it was vehicle maintenance, and most of them where old-timers, baby-boomers without much formal education beyond middle/high school), and who, for most of them at least, honestly tried to do better. So maybe that makes me the exception rather than the norm ? I dunno.


It's just that it makes me cringe when I see people despising those who are supposed to use their end-product...

Oxymoron wrote:I agree. I talk of the stuff before this point.

But in the other hand I don't have -that much- corporate experience : I only worked part-time in the company for two years (for my degree : getting paid to study !), but there I worked with people who acknowledged their weaknesses (it was vehicle maintenance, and most of them where old-timers, baby-boomers without much formal education beyond middle/high school), and who, for most of them at least, honestly tried to do better. So maybe that makes me the exception rather than the norm ? I dunno.


It's just that it makes me cringe when I see people despising those who are supposed to use their end-product...

so our clients are supposed to be compensation professionals right

but how are we supposed to feel when they hand us files to work with that look like they were slapped together by a first year business student?

i mean we'd never say it to their face but some of our clients honestly make you wonder how they've stayed in business this long

I think it's more the 80/20 rule.

Edit, particularly if you assume an 80/20 rule applies inside the 80/20 rule and so on.

Extending that out, even if I support a product with 50mn customers, there's gonna be one I'm spending almost 8.5% of my time on. That feels about right for the distribution of end users.

Edit: working the math back, maybe 60/20 is more right for me, but the point still stands.

Oxymoron wrote:Just read the Daily WTF, and try to guess how many of these people really tried to understand and adapt their practices to the end users instead of simply bitching about them.

the real wtf are the wtf comments

oh man i should have fixed the timestep on this game years ago, now it actually doesn't look like shit when i'm recording it

took about an hour to put in all the rendering interpolation code for when the frame and update rates don't match, but pretty cool that i could just totally change the update logic by changing a few lines and everything still works

fraps apparently still likes to fuck up the sound though and its files are huge

what a piece of shit

and hypercam fucks up the frame rate wtf how do people even record games goddamnit

Can't you have a program that just, like, record the video & sound card outputs and mash them together ?

that's what those programs are supposed to do, but they fuck it up

fucking piece of shit laptop keyboards

i bought this one new

like 18 months old

the third key on it just upped and fucked up


god damn it

Prices as they are suggest they're basically disposable now

Man I am having the exact same experience

I even had a weird dream about telescoping keys

you can always buy a dirt cheap tablet for like $100

lol planned obsolescence

i do have that ipad the client bought me

but i've barely used it. i don't like it much at all

even my broken keyboard is easier to use that that touch shit



i know it is kinda cliche to praise this brand but i have an ibm thinkpad that came with windows 95

old old computer

and its keyboard still works really well



actually i like that old computer. it is a good size, decent weight, good keyboard


it must have cost a fortune when it was new (I bought it for $1 from a friend of a friend in 2005 though)

but it is just too old to actually use now



but eh i'll just see about fixing this key and bitch about it again when the next one breaks

i hate the idea of replacing something in under five years

I miss the old IBM thinkpads.

Only reliably solid laptop line I can remember. Lenovo has been approaching Dell levels of it might be awesome, or we might have forgotten fundamental things like "this won't sit on a desk its entire life". Still better than anyone else in the market though.

If you care about build quality buy an macbook

zhaktronz wrote:If you care about build quality buy an macbook

if you care about usability buy anything else :troll:

Maybe he can just learn instead of bitching when everything isn't the same like a little girl lol

Ps my mum can use a MacBook

If you can't

You're just a fucking retard, the end

MacBook with windows = adrs retard requirements met and still costs less than "business" laptop

consumption is evil and ought to be minimized