Fascists

[legalmoose]

As expected, the IT people came in on Friday and fucked up converted my computer to the new Common Coperating Environment. Which means no more chat programs (the "Windows Messenger" icon is still here, but doesn't appear to be working - clicking on the icon produces no results). Not a huge loss, but an annoying one; no more mid-day conversations with urban_bohemian or ironmanjt. :-( SMS usage, here we go.

More annoying than that, though, is the lack of control over certain aspects on my desktop. Hello, I don't need to have an MS Powerpoint or MS Access icon on my desktop, I never use the programs, and I want the icons gone! But no, I'm not an administrator, so I have copies there and as separate program icons on the program bar, and I can't delete them (that was one nice improvement in Office XP, which I have at home - the icons appear under a folder and not on the program menu as standalones). Oh, and despite there being settings to "hide" the inactive icons on the lower right next to the time, nothing's being hidden. [edit @ 10:41 - the hide feature appears to be working now] I'm very particular about how I like my desktop to look, and the lack of control, to this control freak, is going to be exceedingly annoying for a few days.

At least I wasn't one of the first people to migrate so they fixed the WordPerfect problems they created with the migration. Long story short, they expected the lawyers in GC, who almost all use WordPerfect and not Word because, well, WP is the superior word processor, especially for lawyers, to use a common copy on the intranet instead of having copies on our desktop. That lasted all of half a day before the General Counsel put her foot down and got it fixed. Hey, not our fault they're trying to foist a crappy product (MS Word) off on us.

Comments

[spiritquest.livejournal.com]

I was also a recent victim of can't-get-those-icons-off-my-desktop-anymore. I feel your pain. :-/

[legalmoose]

At least they weren't dumb enough to get rid of my desktop theme and replace it with that stupid MS field and clouds picture. The poor local IT guy (the one for our office, as opposed to the main CIO folks) came in as I was logging in and got the brunt of my disgust as I quickly changed the screen resolution from 800x600 to 1024x768. Had that not been in my control his butt would've been in the chair changing it right then and there. There's nothing wrong with my (corrected lens wearing) eyes, I don't need huge fonts. ;-p

[dclibrarian.livejournal.com]

I, too, feel your pain...

In the course of the day here at work I use 3 different PCs all having different levels of privileges and setups. While I am listed as an administrator on my office PC, the other "shared" PCs around the library are locked down tight - no desktop control, limited access to files and folders, and no ability to do some things (like MSN Messenger) that I can do at my desk. I'm sure the IT guy would give me the admin password if I asked nicely, but it is such a pain to have to log in to all these differing layers of control just to delete an icon from the Desktop.

BTW, I enjoyed meeting you and lioncub at the party on Saturday. We should all go out to dinner sometime.

[gunther-cub.livejournal.com]

Well..if you like AIM,

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Well..if you like AIM, <a href="http://aimexpress.oscar.aol.com/aimexpress/launch.adp>try this</a>, because it gets through my really strongly filtered environment (although, it sounds like your on a Terminal, and I have a PC)

As for display, ask them to make a "display properties" group... we have one for supervisors and above, although you have to know it exists and <I>ask</I> for it... I was so happy when I found out about it, I deleted about 100 useless icons... The most important thing, for me at least, is resolution. I keep mine at 1024x768... What really annoys me, is whenever IT comes to "fix" something, they re-size it...so if I couldn't change it back, I'd go ape!

[zen2475.livejournal.com]

Progress is wonderful.

[spudpuppy.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the wonderful swinging pendulum. The IT world is taking back the control they lost with the demise of the mainframe.

Even though I'm a local administrator and have to do all the desktop installs/setups, I don't have the domain administrator password. We have a set desktop, at 800x600, with specific icons, that cannot be changed, and all desktops must be identical. No adding personal software, only what is on the IT groups approved list, no personalizing the desktop.

And if they find you don't have a standard desktop, when you ask for help, they will refuse help until your computer is re-imaged with the standard desktop. Meaning, I get a call to go down and wipe their drive and reinstall.

So I know what you're going through and I can feel your pain. But don't be too hard on your local IT guy, he may be just as frustrated with the situation as you are.

[legalmoose]

Ugh. I think if I were in that situation (you must have the borg desktop and you cannot personalize it at all) I'd be tempted to get a personal laptop, bring that in and use it for anything other than corporate email. What a mess.

[deejayqueue.livejournal.com]

It's situations like yours that make me feel lucky to have the privilige here where i work. Just about everyone not directly related to the central focus of the business is a contractor, including me, and the IT people. So they really don't care one way or the other. Also they just kinda dropped off a bunch of computers here and left them up to us to set up and install. The best part is that the internet use policy here is very, very lax so it's easy to not feel bad about d/ling programs like chatclient or aim.

But i don't take any of it for granted, i would be uber-pissed if they took any of that away. then again i'm waiting for the other shoe to drop any day and when it does i'm not going to mind much... easy come easy go i guess... :)