Absolutely everyone loves video conferencing these days. Some perhaps a bit too much
- Reference: 1585898108
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/03/on_call/
- Source link:
This week's protagonist, assigned the sobriquet of "Sarah" by the Regomiser 6000, tells a story set in modern times, although in the pre-COVID-19 era.
Those with a nervous disposition might want to look away now.
"I work as a consultant," Sarah told us, "mainly advising the customers of our agency on system setups and custom build, specialist software applications."
Having been sent to the German city of Cologne to assist a client with a project involving a software giant located near the city, she'd been instructed to make an unscheduled Paris visit by a boss clearly not blessed with a strong grasp of European geography.
The Paris client was, however, hugely important and she'd dutifully agreed. Naturally, her boss didn't bother with fripperies such as transport arrangements or details of what she'd actually be doing other than providing a bit of moral support for the desperate customer. She was also tasked with selecting the most "efficient and economic" mode of getting there.
Over a few beers in her Cologne hotel, she found a train that would take her directly to Paris faster and cheaper than flying. Oh, and it was a First-Class ticket too. Clickety-click. Sorted. Time for another beer to celebrate.
The train was delightful. Punctual in a way that users of Blighty's network could only dream of. The seat was huge, with acres of legroom. There was even Wi-Fi for her devices. She sat back in her seat, perhaps a little sleepy from all that good German beer the night before.
Two hours later she was abruptly awoken by a trilling from her phone and found herself the subject of angry glares from her fellow First-Class residents. The thing had been bleating nearly continuously and showed more than two dozen emails of increasing urgency (to the point of shouty capitals) from a chap we'll call "Jerry".
Jerry was close to securing a huge contract and had a final presentation to make to his customer. He'd gathered data from the team, pasted it into a PowerPoint document which he'd promised to email ahead of the meeting. But, for some reason, the email "did not go through."
We've all fired up an email client after a period offline (either physical or digital) and seen escalating panic from the Jerrys of this world:
"Help!"
"This is company CRITICAL!!"
"REPLY!!! WHERE ARE YOU!!!"
"CALL ME NOW!!!!"
It took Sarah all of three seconds to diagnose the problem. She'd been cc'ed on the original message with the presentation, and she could see the PowerPoint file was over 15MB.
Fixing the file might be problematic; Sarah ran Xubuntu on her laptop and while Impress would open it, saving it might break some formatting. But booting back to Windows 10 was also not going to be ideal; she hadn't used it for two years and Windows does love those updates.
Before doing anything rash and Microsoft-based, she opened the file just to check it out.
"I flipped through the presentation," she said, "expecting to see 693 slides for a presentation of one hour. But I'm proven wrong. Only 23 slides, including the title and 'Any questions?' slides."
She then scooted through the presentation and used the compress option on any suspicious pictures or crusty old stock imagery. But all was well. With Windows 10 looming and a mere 25 minutes before she arrived in Paris, she had one last throw of the dice.
"I [1]renamed the extension of the file to .zip and took a look inside."
And there it was. A hulking great 6.5MB image file. Wondering how she could have missed it in Impress, Sarah opened it and... oh.
The image was a simple black and white technical line drawing of the client's production line. She'd missed it since, in Impress, it was just a 2-bit image. Tiny, right?
However, what had happened was that Jerry had nabbed this from a previous presentation, which he had simply opened and taken a screen-shot of. He then shoved it into PowerPoint in such a way that only the line image was visible.
However, the full image contained everything that had been on his super wide, 3840 x 1600 pixel desktop at the time as well as the source presentation.
Everything
Including a browser opened to something called "dirtyroulette", a chat system in which the participants appeared to have adopted a more, er, casual approach to video conferencing (for "casual" read "naked and a bit excited.")
"Jerry," sniffed Sarah, "is a misogynistic runt," but she was a professional and called him as she headed into Paris for her meeting. She ended up speaking to his wife.
The conversation went a bit like this:
"Hi, this is Sarah from the agency. Can I speak to Jerry please?"
"Can you call back later? He's in the shower right now. But I think you have to be quick, because he's on his way to a meeting with an important client."
"I know, that's why I'm calling"
"Oh, OK. So can you call back in say, 45 minutes?"
"Well, that's going to be rather difficult, since I will be with a client myself, here in Paris."
"Oh. Is it really important? Can't it wait? I mean, I know he is super hyped up about the meeting with this client. He hasn't slept because he has been working on his presentation all night."
"Working."
Sarah pondered what to do. The woman sounded pleasant enough. Perhaps now was not the time. Instead she explained that she knew that Jerry's contract was one of the biggest the agency had ever scored, but this was rather important, so could Mrs Jerry pass on a message?
A bit of fumbling later and she was ready to take down Sarah's message.
"OK, just tell him that I assume he didn't succeed in sending his presentation to our client. Tell him that is very good ."
"OK."
"Tell him that it's OK to take the presentation with him and present it to the client."
"OK."
“But please tell him also that he, under no circumstance, should not leave a copy of the presentation with the client. Did you get that? No copy. Ever ."
"Oh."
"He can only present it from the drive he takes with him."
"Oh, OK?"
"Not unless he wants to change contracting this client into one big... dirty... roulette... game."
"Oh."
"Did you write that down?"
"Yes... big dirty roulette game."
"Perfect. Cheers. Have to go now!"
As she headed to her own client in Paris, Sarah took a look at the last of her emails in the hope of something, anything to tell her what she was actually supposed to do in Paris. Nothing from her boss.
"Typical."
Ever saved Sales from themselves? Or left a little something in a screenshot that maybe you shouldn't? We're still traumatised following a Tiny Elvis incident back in the day. Email your telephone-based tales of woe to [2]On Call . The Regomiser is waiting. ®
[1] https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/extract-files-or-objects-from-a-powerpoint-file-85511e6f-9e76-41ad-8424-eab8a5bbc517
[2] mailto:oncall@theregister.co.uk
Re: During my time in front line IT support I've seen things
@crisp
Ive been there too. .. as they say, that which has been seen cannot be unseen.
Re: During my time in front line IT support I've seen things
I have a huge collection of mind bleaches... some flavored like Gin, Single Malt Scotch, Vodka.
My best advice: "You might want to close that other tab before going to the meeting..."
Re: During my time in front line IT support I've seen things
Well working in retail you do see the odd image that makes you wonder about the sender. There are a number of people who send in high resolution pictures of their purchase. They include (hopefully) accidentally a view of copies of 50 Shades of Grey or worse on the shelves is amazing. I've seen magazines of the very adult variety through to R18 films. I've also seen seen email conversations which have started long ago and end up being forwarded with a request for help with the product. There was the request for 'him not to forget the lubricant', through to the one explaining 'they might need a new bed after last night'.
Years ago I worked on a computer for a friend of a friend that somebody had managed to bork. The odd thing was he was quite upfront in telling me that the browser history and the download folder would be full of porn. I didn't look too closely as it wasn't relevant to what I was doing but there was stuff on the desktop that had 'interesting' titles. As it was, the issue turned out to be the Dell DVD player software had lost a needed file and stopped running as a result. He didn't trust Windows Media Player so I added VLC instead and said to use that. Strangely for such a porn filled machine there wasn't any malware that could be detected. I did use my own usb keyboard though just in case.
Re: During my time in front line IT support I've seen things
Posted anonymously for reasons which will immediately become obvious (apologies in advance)...
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Erect members fired up off the shoulder of Orion. I watched Cum-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
Please, downvote me for despoiling a thing of beauty.
Re: During my time in front line IT support I've seen things
Down vote for that? Seems you're asking for it...
Re: During my time in front line IT support I've seen things
Couldn't help a little embellishment....
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Erect members fired up off the shoulder of Orion. I watched Cum-beams glitter in the dark near Tannhäuser's Rear Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
Paris...
I once had to do a day trip to a sister company there, essentially all I did was deliver a laptop that they didn't want (wrong keyboard, QWERTY not AZERTY) and have a nice lunch* before spending several hours in the concrete hell of CDG's Eurohub due to a cancelled flight.
Afterwards people were saying, "Paris, how lucky you are!" Business travel ain't glamorous.
*And deliver a magazine to a colleague. He kept asking on the phone if I could take him a copy of Whateefee. It took ages to figure he meant What HiFi.
Re: Paris...
> He kept asking on the phone if I could take him a copy of Whateefee. It took ages to figure he meant What HiFi.
Thank heaven the chap didn't want a copy of McAfee...
heefee, heefy, weefy, wiffy....
I spent a bit of time in the Netherlands, and often get confused when they talk of wiffy, or maybe weefee, when they actually mean wi-fi.
Re: heefee, heefy, weefy, wiffy....
A Spanish colleague of mine was really happy to have tickets to see "da-bee-dee-bin". No clarification possible, all that came out of his mouth sounded like "da-bee-dee-bin". For all that I tried, I couldn't fathom what he meant, so I finally gave up and asked him to write it down.
I ended up also enjoying David Byrne's performance.
Re: heefee, heefy, weefy, wiffy....
talk of wiffy, or maybe weefee, when they actually mean wi-fi.
I know exactly what you mean. In general the Dutch speak English pretty well, perhaps hampered only by an accent that floats somewhere between South African and bad American TV series. But it confused the hell out of me when everybody asked me: "Do you need wee fee?"
I know the Dutch are trying to charge you for everything they can, but I thought it was pretty steep if they wanted you to pay for using the company loo...
Re: Paris...
Is that just a McDonald's coffee?
(Paris icon, natch.)
Re: Paris...
...CDG...
You did remember to travel with carry on hand luggage only, didn't you?
Re: Paris...
"..CDG...
You did remember to travel with carry on hand luggage only, didn't you?"'
The best idea is to never set foot on CDG at all. So crowded and if you need to go to the men's room, plan at least 30 mins of queuing.
And it's probably the only european airport who killed people ! And there's no trial in sight yet ! I feel for the families of the poor 6 killed people.
Re: Paris...
Oh Bob, really? I was looking (before the madness kicked in) at a flight to Madagascar that had an overnight layover in CDG.
It can't be that bad... can it?
Re: Paris...
Why don't you tell us afterwards?
Remember, hand luggage only... Unless you want to wear the same undies for the time you're there...
Re: Paris...
> It can't be that bad... can it?
Think of all the bad things you've heard about JFK and Heathrow. Add them and multiply by 10. CDG is still worse.
Re: Paris...
You did remember to travel with carry on hand luggage only, didn't you?
No luggage at all on the return, and only the one laptop case on the way there, fortunately.
Re: Paris...
No, my luggage was conveniently lost before being re-routed to CDG. This was many, many years ago, and I'm still haunted by my experience there. I get a weird feeling just driving by the place...
Re: Paris...
Oh man, how I hated those AZERTY keyboards. I spend a few weeks in France once running around a factory doing stuff on all sorts of systems. I was switching between AZERTY keyboards on the local machine's to the QWERTY keyboard on my own laptop all the time.
The worst thing was a pretty random password that was nicely committed to muscle memory, so much so I needed to visualize a keyboard to actually be able to spell it out. That password was needed fairly often, and contained a Q. Getting it right at the first go became a rare thing.
The lunches where very nice though...
Re: Paris...
Damn confusing AZERTY and QWERTY. I had an AZERTY laptop in France but configured to use English for the OS. After I set up full disk encryption I couldn't get back into the computer after bootup.
Took a while for the penny to drop that during bootup it treated the keyboard as QWERTY not AZERTY and only switched to AZERTY afterwards. So I had to type in the disk password pretending the keyboard was QWERTY.
Re: Paris...
One of the people I work with doesn't bother setting the language to en-GB when he installs an OS.
Now, as 99% of the time we're accessing it via SSH so it's not a problem.
But that one time when I had to log into the console, with a UK keyboard, it took me several minutes to work out why my password wasn't working. It was (as I'm sure some of you had guessed) that the OS was expecting an en-US keyboard, with it's keys in the wrong places.
Had a similar problem logging into something via a Mac, when I had a # in my password.
I've had my fill of trouble with keyboards. Now my passwords have neither Q nor Z in them.
Must remember to avoid A and M as well.
Re: Paris...
What is it with language settings and keyboard layouts? Win 10 at work keeps defaulting to ENG, even though I have tried to set other layouts (mainly CYM - at least they have it!). I write an occasional email or other thing in Welsh and the standard ENG layout doesn't let me compose characters for accents. CYM and International English variants work perfectly well but I even find that I might change when writing an email, but when I switch to Word it's back to ENG. Why won't it stick?
I've generally had better luck under Linux, but I'm struggling at the moment with an Acer laptop running OpenSuse which insists on US layout for the keyboard, no matter what I have actually set - a pain for ", £ and @ in particular. It used to be perfectly fine so I don't know why it's decided to apply for a Green Card just now. The only software recently installed is Zoom for piano lessons...
M.
Re: Paris...
I use an AZERTY keyboard at home, but then its a mechanical keyboard that I got for £20 vs the £120 normally asked for the thing and since I've been a touch typists since I was a nipper (aged 6 I got taught to type on an LCD 286 powered compaq laptop as an attempt to sort my dyslexia out which failed but at least gave me a life skill early on).
Still keep forgetting that 'm' is the '?' on this keyboard though from time to time. Really ought to buy some new cherry mx key caps.
Re: Paris...
This one time, I was working a few days on the outskirts of Paris. The works canteen was not quite Michelin-starred, but definitely a cut above everything else of that ilk.
Another time, I had three days' teaching in Monaco (well, Cap d'Ail). Bookended with a day each side in Nice and Schipol airports. Saw nothing of the place.
Re: Paris...
I used to supply electronic timing and in-car telemetry to F1 teams (1990's). Occasionally, I would have to go on-site for a test session. Oh, the glamour - NOT! Just one example: drive overnight from the UK to Monza, spend all daylight hours and quite a few more at the circuit, struggle into a nearby hotel (rinse and repeat 3 times), then drive overnight back to the UK.
Re: Paris...
I had a boss who hated it if anybody got to go somewhere exotic that he hadn't been to. He had to be ordered by his boss to let me go to a conference in Brazil that the mothership wanted in on. But then an urgent job came up in Puerto Rico, and all he knew about PR was that they were all Spanish speaking drug dealers, so I was duly packed off to this hell-hole for a week or two.
It was terrible having to spend time in a 4-star hotel on the beach, watch your breakfast being cooked in the open-air restaurant, be taken out to an enormous lunch by the MD of the extremely nice company I was visiting, and spend nearly two days actually doing the job. Even worse was being asked to get back as quickly as possible and finding the only way to get back quick included a layover in Antigua.
The one time I was approached by what I thought were mildly shady looking characters it turned out they were members of a local camera club and, seeing my kit, had some suggestions as to good places to visit.
Pretending to have had a hell of a time next week was quite difficult, especially as they asked me before I left if they should have a problem in a few weeks that necessitated a return visit so we could organise a better social program, as they had never had a visitor from England before.
Re: Paris...
" ... a problem in a few weeks that necessitated a return visit ... "
Life can be so hard when you get these important clients in exotic locations with their constant problems. Sometimes they even become convinced that you are the only person who understands the thing, and insist that you come and fix it in person.
Just make sure that if the boss goes, he does get booked into the hotel with drug dealers in the lobby...
Re: Paris...
all he knew about PR was that they were all Spanish speaking drug dealers
First read through, thought he was referring to Public Relations....
It's always the board members who do the worst things
Back in the early days of internet connectivity being delivered to the desktop I was part of the internet police for a Large Government Department. We had a visit from the headest of honchos who was interested in all things internet, as part of which we were to demonstrate the tools we were using as Marshals of the Wild West Web. After giving the broad outline of the principles and process and assuring that the money they were spending with us was worth every penny and more, I gave him a quick practical demo of how we could capture what the users were browsing, how we worked out whether it was a Bad Thing, how we tied this in with a machine and the user logged into it and how we reported it the Powers That Be.
"So you can see that this user thinks that it's a good idea to look at chickswithdicks.com over lunchtime".
"Who is that?".
"XXXX XXXXXX based in XXXXXXXXX".
"Ah. I know who that is. Before you start the rest of the process, let me have a word with him at tomorrow's board meeting".
We heard about a sideways career move a couple of months later.
Re: It's always the board members who do the worst things
I remember the magazine.....
Staying at a hotel in Amsterdam, and was talking to an employee there - he showed me his collection of magazines that he finds left behind in the rooms when people realise that they can't take them home.
Quick glace at the cover - attractive topless lady wearing stockings. Second glance, that's not a lady.....
Avoided him for the rest of my stay there......
Jerry
Think I'd have thrown him under a bus, personally.
webcam shows...
This reminds me of that time (not that long ago) that a colleague had to show another chap something on his pc, and he didn't know about a space-age thing called "desktop sharing". He instead put his laptop in front of his secondary monitor, so the webcam was seeing the screen. All great until i passed by and noticed 1. that there were the usual post-its with passwords on the monitor (if you haven't done it or seen anybody do it you're a liar!) and 2. that the chap on the other end was connected to the projector in the meeting room, thus showing everything to everyone in that office.
It's behind you ...
I was once in a videoconference connecting our development team with the outsourcer's opposite numbers. The PHB, as was his way, led the meeting and asked all the questions, only consulting us when there was something technical to clear up. The outsourcer's team dutifully gave their answers and the boss carefully wrote them down. When the link was over, the boss asked us if we had anything to add.
One developer raised his hand and said "It seems they don't expect to deliver any of the outsourced modules on time, and have not even started working on some of them. They also don't want us to find out about this". The boss looked annoyed and asked what made him think that.
My colleague replied, "The whiteboards on the wall behind them contain notes from their pre-conference meeting. They either forgot to wipe them, or assumed that nobody here would be able to understand them. They were wrong - that is my first language".
Köln-Paris? Thalys train....
There's a quick way to get from Köln to Paris with the high-speed Thalys train - which I guess what she took. So maybe not an absurd request - just they could have setup her travel - my company would have done it.
I understand Britons still not understand well this way to travel across the country - maybe with Brexit BoJo will attempt to build some high-speed lines to justify it....
In one of my travels on it, on the other seats there was a couple of nice German women who used it for a shopping day in Paris...
Re: Köln-Paris? Thalys train....
The only high speed lines the present Government is likely to manage involve a sheet of glass and a razor blade.
Re: Köln-Paris? Thalys train....
Yeah, we know that Britain pretty much only has "medium speed" lines for the most part, by today's standards, but, given the hassle of air travel and getting to and from the airports, rail travel is still nevertheless a pretty good option if you're near an InterCity line. Even Edinburgh or Glasgow to London is do-able in a day for sensibly timed meetings, and not a few people do actually do that. And quite a number of combinations of cities are within 2 hours' travelling time of each other.
That's not to say that a network of proper high speed lines that could shave at least an hour off the journey time isn't long overdue, however (Long overdue = should have started building in the 1980s like everyone else did. With world-class British organisational excellence, it would be just about ready by now.).
During my time in front line IT support I've seen things
Terrible things.
I feel a strange sense of kinship with "Sarah"