Butting Heads with IT

Okay I said I would do some explaining. I don’t want this to get long so I’ll try to summarize.

My coworker who does GIS work here is using a workstation formerly used by another former employee. This PC has seen its day I think. All the form boxes in applications and websites are out of proportion and sorta smooshed into other text. I took a stab at figuring out what it was to no avail. Okay that was short and sweet. Then recently a couple apps started popping up the Windows installer every time the Desktop was accessed. Thinking he must have some spyware or virus, I scanned his machine and ultimately uninstalling one of the two troubling apps to work with one at a time popping up. As administrator things seem to work fine after going through the install motions but only for that session and IT has these locked down so that users can’t do installs. So in one effort to fix that dang form box monitor resolution issue, I install a different video driver and viola! it is fixed. Install one of the pissy apps and wham it’s all crap again.

This box has seen its day! So after finding the resource CD’s I format/reinstall from custom corporate CD’s and install Firefox, Gimp and Google Earth. Then I logged it into our domain but can’t add the computer to the domain as I didn’t have permissions. So I call IT and give them the scoop and all hell breaks loose. At one point I had to stop him (the IT guy) and tell him to spare me the lecture as I just knew I should have called them from the start. Me knowing me and they not, I didn’t want to waste time sending the machine across the States. This issue has been looked at once before to no avail. Heck if I didn’t know what I was doing I wouldn’t have been so stupid to think I could just TRY and see if I could fix it. The best way to fix Windows has always been to format c:\ right?

Well after all that he logged in remotely and called back to ask what the hell some of those apps I installed were. He asked about Gimp and 7zip then said Firefox is not allowed and he proceeded to uninstall it. To shorten further; he couldn’t get the box to register with the domain and INSISTED I send the box overnight to them.

Before they got the PC in their hands I sent him an apology email saying I was sorry for not staying within my domain and on and on. I didn’t want them to hold a grudge over my coworker is spite of me.

About two weeks later the whole company gets an email:

Good Afternoon,

The IS Department has noticed several employees have installed browsers such as Firefox on company machines.

We ask that you do not install or use any browsers other than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Version 6 (please do not upgrade to Version 7).

If you have installed any browser other than IE6, please remove them from your machine.

Thank you.

IS Support

My immediate response remains in my Drafts folder today in efforts to bite my lip.

Admittedly I was one of those who had Firefox installed and have since removed upon request stated below. However I would like to understand where the IS department is coming up with this decision. Before I state my opinion, I think it is necessary to give a brief background history of my usage.

I have been a Netscape user from the start before Internet Explorer ever made the scene. Remaining faithful to the line using the Mozilla suites into this day with Firefox. I have supported the online community in seeking bug fixes and support for users. This has always been the good nature of the Open Source community. I advocate Firefox as a far superior application to any other web browser.

To mention any of the shortcomings of Internet Explorer would be preaching to the choir assuming you know its history. I am not saying that Firefox is bug free either. One main difference is that bug fixes are applied within hours not days or even weeks that IE bugs go unfixed. The fact that IE 7 is not recommended yet by IT folks is the same you acknowledge. I understand that IS should disapprove IE 7 solely on the basis that it has not been tested with Webapps. Personally I use IE just for such purposes. Firefox does not work with sites requiring DirectX and luckily there are very few of those sites out there. But to assume that that should be the only use employees’ venture to the Internet is far from reality. I know this is where I should state why I could not live without Firefox when it comes to performing my job. I have thought long and hard about what answer to give, but no I truthfully don’t other than it has been a long time preference of mine. One of my previous careers as a Systems Administrator I converted the office to Mozilla for web and email. As an ISP business support, I advocated proper use of Firefox and helpful/powerful extensions available; suggesting to customers to use it as well in efforts to help keep spyware and other malice off their computers. Detection and removal tools alone should not be the sole method for fending from these attacks. Not placing the target (IE) on your back is the answer.

I hope you and the IS staff will do the homework and re-consider this decision. It’s a great tool full of productive and secure features by default.

Thanks for you time,

So anyway this is most not all of my relations with our company IT staff.

Birthdays Galore

Surprise surprise surprise! First thing this morning at work I get an email from a long lost cousin. Not lost actually but just doesn’t respond to email very well. As I was sending a Birthday email wish to a mentor of mine, IN comes the surprise! Was great to hear from him. I immediately sent off a belated Happy Birthday to him as well. His was yesterday. He is one day shy of being a year younger than I. My mother-in-law’s Birthday was yesterday too. Kassie meant to call her along with my kids and we forgot to do so until bed time. Was watching ‘You’ve Got Mail’ ’till 10:30. What a great love story. Been meaning to see that for quite some time. Anyway I talked her into calling and it turned out well. Her mother was not upset and they ended up talking for record times. It seems that it’s been a goal for several years now to escape a Birthday with out hearing anyone wishing me a happy birthday. For the most part I have never been able to but came very close. Got off to work without the wife and kids saying anything, but they soon called later. Only one coworker vaguely said anything. He mentioned that I was looking older. The receptionist asked if I got my hair cut. It was cut Friday, so only three work days late. I like to be a giver not a taker, so not to draw attention to myself is what I want to achieve.

I get off on the cheesiest things. I discovered how to modify Mozilla do color code replied and forwarded email. Also how to change the font in the URL bar to an easier font for such things like copy-n-paste. Sometimes it’s hard to get the drag through just to the right spot. Now what I’d like to do is create a packaged install of my preferred settings. I even have my favorite Orbit theme I started installing. If you’re savvy enough you could find a screen shot somewhere in my Gallery.

Had a great discussion with a friend about Christianity last night. He is somewhat of a Gnostic person. Today in modern times Gnostic ppl of the world tend to create their own system based on their knowledge. I was one… I know. I didn’t believe in organized religion. Based all my beliefs just in what I knew. I reached a point in my life tho where I no longer wanted to seek the answer to unknown questions. I found having faith and a belief system was a huge relief off my back. Don’t get me wrong… this is not blind faith. I am still a sinner and so I still have questions all the time. Sometimes I’d fear final growth but just when you think you have it all under control, a new arena comes forth. New growth to be had.

The hidden stress of getting taxes out of the way is gone!

I’m recapping from last night to start; my family normally attends Wednesday night church services, and I decided to take that opportunity to start the drudged taxes. I have been doing my taxes for the past three tax years online with Turbo Tax. The past two years required me to use Netscape since they had some java scripting that detected your browser. Even the cool feature in Konqueror for changing its identity wouldn’t fool it. No I had to use the good old Netscape. But hey! I was adamant about using Linux to do my taxes. I always had been very cautious about doing it online, and therefore it took me 1-2 weeks to finish. Last night… start to finish in about 2 hours! Also with Mozilla this time! I highly recommend using Turbo Tax online as it comes out the same if you were to purchase the box-set. The only advantage of having the box-set (I think) is that you can possibly share it with others but they’d still have to pay for the electronic sending. But then again I have never used the box-set. My dad does but he also does both grandmothers, two aunts and a great aunt’s taxes with it.

Finally got started on setting up the bosses new Dell computer I had ordered with three other Dells about three week ago. This is the machine is going into his office at the mansion :-\ For a third day in a row now, I have gone to his place for various computer fixes. Today was a classic MCN email account setup! I was glad to see the old settings still work with Earthlink. FYI I worked for MCN a couple years ago as a part time technical support person.

Just got notice a Butte Linux Users Group exists! Added them to the growing list of Montana LUGs. Sounds like they have a very healthy start. I hope to make it over there some time as it’s in my old stomping grounds; I travel back to Anaconda quite often. I wish them well and hope for their success.

Mozilla 1.3 is finally announced! Gee I must have missed this on their site by minutes today. I installed a nightly build of 1.3 (non beta) I downloaded on Feb 28th to my bosses new Dell. I paid a visit to the Mozilla site because I was surprised to see it saying I was using old 1.3b version. Guess I really was but didn’t see the official 1.3 listed. I highly recommend this version; it is awesome!

This week has been the least Linux week I’ve had in over a year!

Second day of unconfiguring Windows…

This morning started off on the Windows box by running defrag a second time after I left it running last night defragging. Had a bit-o-trouble getting it to go online since the Internet Config Wiz was broke. Seemed to have this kind of trouble with various apps since we came down from Windows ME to 98SE. Finally found one wizard to work from it’s exe and off to the races I went! The bosses son only called me two times today asking how I was doing

Backing up nightly pays off. I had converted another user here at the office from the old Netscape to Mozilla for email. I normally don’t remove the old email app until I know they are happy with Mozilla. Today he accidentally goes into Netscape and proceeds to delete all his Inbox email. Now we run most email from an IMAP server and he doesn’t have a Trash box, it just deletes. Needless to say he waxed them. Fortunately he had read the new ones for the morning and didn’t need them anymore. I keep an rsync copy on my workstation. Every night via cron job, it syncs up and another cron job BRU puts it to my local tape drive. Since he come to me quick enough I only needed to transfer from my rsync copy not the tape. Quick and easy! I thank Scott D for that idea; he does just about the same thing at his office

A little worried that a discussion on the Gallery forum I help moderate was turning sour. Had a user complaining of a “heavy security bug” with the Nuke version of Gallery. Well there isn’t a Nuke version; the standalone just plugs into some CMS web apps. “I do understand your concern Prokurist, but you’re sounding as if this was [is] some commercial software at the mercy of it’s paying customers (copyright). This is the gnu generation (copyleft).” I thought that was kind of a classic response

The rough beginning

Yesterday I had attempted to start my blog but after writing it all afternoon, I had to open a second tab in Mozilla to do some admin stuff to get this going. In the process of doing that I had closed the tab and tried continuing my writing on the original tab. Well I suddenly lost the data probably due to the closing of all cache related to this site when closing the previous tab.

I don’t plan to re-write it. All it was about is past and future projects I have. As it is anyway, it’s my nature to go into too much detail as it is when talking about something. But then again it’s my nature to not give enough detail at times too. Never a happy medium.

So this blog is about my daily doings in the computer world. It may include what I have been doing with Windows boxes too. But for the most part my daily work is structured around Linux.

Today started off at the bosses house at 8am. His son called last night with major computer problems. No mouse and huge fonts and icons. Come to find out that something hosed his registry so I needed to take it into the office. It had ME on it and I put 98SE on it this afternoon. Almost had to ax the whole windows directory as it took several tries to install and it kept pulling in data from the corrupt OS.

I plan to install a Linux VPN server (FreeS/WAN) at the bosses house so while I was there I took a peak at their cable modem setup. The new home (mansion) has a hidden network control panel so I couldn’t see everything. I got the info I needed anyway by finding the Linksys DSL/Cable router. Next is to call them up to make plans to incorporate it.

Got a used HP lj5 from another Linux user in Colorado today. We got it for $250 and it has 109580 pages, so I hope that is considered low mileage. It was a nightmare to get it shipped because UPS thought we were going to print the labels her and mail it to them to affix then call UPS back up to pick the box up. What we wanted was for them to supply the label, have the driver affix the label and have the driver bring it to us and have them bill our account for this. It’s called a “one time pick up”. I thought the USPS was bad!

The boss had another guy pull some old equipment down from the loft about a week ago and placed them on pallets in the shop getting them ready for the dumpster. I had gone through testing the PC monitors for good/bad. Also want to get rid of all the IBM terminals from our old setup. Ironically I got a call from Computer Management International asking for used equipment to buy or sell. Had to call them back up today to light a fire under them so I could get rid of these! Everyone thinks this is my mess I drug out into the shop as the bullets fly.