Grumpy Coworker

Category: Technology

  • Our content filtering blocks “blogs”. Maybe we should block the “Internet”, too.

    Apparently, there is dangerous stuff out there online.  Individuals are writing these subversive things called “blog posts”.  Word is, that if an employee of our company comes across one, all productivity ceases.

    Unfortunately, much of the current or obscure information that I’m looking for online happens to be in either forums or blog posts.  I’ve heard these “internet forums” are dangerous, too.

    There’s nothing more frustrating than finding the solution to a specific problem I’m having by doing a search, only to find the article which contains the answer is blocked because it’s on a “blog”.

    This approach is tremendously effective in preventing me from wasting time of course, considering that I can pull up all those awful “blog posts” on my smartphone.  Of course, if I’m trying to actual bring up useful page, I have to view it on a 3.5″ screen.

  • How the mute button on your phone actually works.

    I guess I had made some incorrect assumptions about the function of the “mute” button on my phone.

    I’ve always assumed that when properly activated, the mute button prevents other people from hearing things that are on my end of the line, and not like how the TV mute button works, which prevents me from hearing things from coming through the phone.

    After comparing notes with several other people, I’ve determined that, at least for conference calls, the mute button works quite differently.  While the mute button is activated, not only can people not hear their names being mentioned during a call, but they apparently hear very little of what’s actually going on during the conference call.  Only after being prodded by several alternative methods can a person whose phone was on mute actually realize that the rest of the participants on the call are waiting for feedback.  More importantly, the last 5-10 minutes of the meeting have to repeated for the benefit of the person on mute.

    A side effect of the mute button is the rendering of the feedback provided by the person who was on mute completely useless.  The best remedy for such feedback is a verbatim quoting of the feedback in a mass email to all participants of the call.  At this point, one of two outcomes will take place:  Either there will be a complete retraction of the erroneous feedback or there will be a written record of commitment to the feedback provided.

    Hope this helps.

  • Stop sending powerpoint slides exported to bitmaps via email.

    Whack-a-mole
    (Amazon affiliate link)


    I feel like I’m playing a game of digital whack-a-mole with my email.  My inbox keeps bumping up against its quota.

    I then spend X amount of time weeding out my inbox, archiving folders, etc., to get the email that is on the server down to 40% of my quota.  I then leave for lunch, only to find another 5% of my quota eaten up by 3 broadcast messages.

    Did you know you can export a PowerPoint slide to a bitmap image?  Did you know you can copy and paste that same image into an email?  Did you know you can paste the same stuff into a calendar invite that you can put into an email?

    Well, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.  Sure, my inbox quota is tiny by modern computing standards, but this is all the more reason not to attach large images in an email.

    Of course, a picture is worth a thousand words.  Unless it’s a picture of 50 words on a PowerPoint slide.  And 50 words in light green on a white background is probably worth less than 50 words.

    One more thing: If you send important things like agenda updates or such which are embedded in this exported PowerPoint slide, Outlook will not find them.  It doesn’t know how to read the text in an image.