Do you work in IT?

[Gerard Clarke]

I went for IT in Claridge's with Kate and Wills. 1 lols 1 duz.

Can someone who works in IT kindly remind me how to get coffee out from between me keys.

[Pete L]

Invalid question. No one works in IT.

[exit, pursued by a beard]

At least we don't have to wear wigs!

Perhaps we should, since we're one of the other trades that cares about precision in language. Although since I class myself as an engineer, I favour the stovepipe hat as worn by Brunel.

What are the legal wig wearing requirements these days?

Watching Laura Norder, the aged prosecutor was rugged-up but his attractive female junior colleague was not. Was this just for dramatic effect (i.e. not detract from a fine pair of cheekbones).

Back in the dark ages, the sort of stuff I do was considered to be a branch of engineering, in that it (a) had to work and (b) not kill people other than through machine induced stress, and business applications were a bastard child of accounting. Somehow this all became IT when the teachers were allowed to play.

[Gerard Clarke]

The wig wearing situation is even more fugged up the wazoo than usual,Pete. The Judges in the Civil Courts have abandoned wigs in favour of poncy Thargon Space Battlecruiser robes, designed by Betty Jackson and resembling the sort of velour house coat which Mabel customarily wears (although, unlike Mabel, most of the Judges wear something underneath, albeit just a NAT0-issue spandex thong or their Xmas jumper). Meanwhile, us lot still have to wear the wig and the uncomfortable collar and the whole shebang. This is because the Criminal Bar love to dress up and outvote the Civil Bar everytime we have a vote on the subject. Crim Judges still wear the full nonsense.

The whole thing is utter foolishness. I would rather just wear an ordinary suit in Court, but at a pinch would accept wearing the gown over the suit (which is what they do in most European countries, with varying amounts of fur and lace and gilt accessories - generally the further south the more the blingier).

I would certainly vote for all engineers to wear Brunel hats. That guy was such a dude.

PS: The depictions of legal processes in "Law and Order" were woefully innacurate, and the legal costumes were all made up too.

PPS: There are some who think that the wearing of a horsehair wig by an attractively cheekboned female junior is an attractive thing, but they be pervs.

[KevinH]

I work (that may be overstating it just at the moment) in real, definite, absolutely no-doubt about it IT. I never, however, say "power cycle" , I say "how the hell would I know how to fix your computer, try turning it off at the wall and then see if it improves it". I also would rather chop my arms off with a blunt axe than say "leverage" and never pretend that IT is an investment, it's almost always just a cost of doing business, although we will now get 2.6 million overpaid IT people telling me it transforms people's lives.

[Lindsayp]

I went for IT in Claridge's with Kate and Wills. 1 lols 1 duz.

Can someone who works in IT kindly remind me how to get coffee out from between me keys.

Well I spilt coffee on a keyboard once, that had 2 sugars dissolved in it (the coffee I mean), so I disconnected it, ran it under a cold tap for a couple of mins, then left it upside down on a radiator in the office. Next day I plugged it in and it mostly worked, with it's own version of creative licence and idiosyncracy. Sorted!

Of course I wouldn't do that at home...

[Lindsayp]

Anyone who uses the phrase "power cycle" works in IT. If you don't then you're not in.

Nononono, the phrase is "clock cycle".

Never used "power cycle", never read the Register (except when I check if my troops are in each day), I do still practice binary, octal and hexadecimal though, to show off to the kiddies when they start telling me about how they void their variables in java.

[Sharpie]

I also would rather chop my arms off with a blunt axe than say "leverage"

Are you sure you work in IT??

[v6g]

I worked in telecommunications software engineering, but am now re-training to more of an IT slant after seeing how experienced engineering salaries have degraded.

[wessex boy]

Power Cycle?

In IBM we called it a BRS Double Status Change*


* BRS=Big Red Switch

I have spent 20 of my 23 working years in big, proper hairy **** IT, in my last contract I was running a Managed Storage Service for 26 of Capgemini's clients, totalling over 500TB of Disk and 1.6PB of backup.

Of course I have now left all that behind and now waft around the touchy-feely world of Human Remains never,ever, ever making non-PC comments....

[Vince C]

Nononono, the phrase is "clock cycle".

Never used "power cycle", never read the Register (except when I check if my troops are in each day), I do still practice binary, octal and hexadecimal though, to show off to the kiddies when they start telling me about how they void their variables in java.

I thought it was 'duty cycle'.

I used to read registers in PDP11s (in Octal, of course) but was brought up on hex (Burroughs). Folk in Computing (as it was called then) used to understand how computers worked and could excercise and 'scope around an ALU to fix it. Haven't used any binary-related noughts and ones skills since IP subnet address masking back in the '80s.

So called IT experts these days are really experts in a particular company's product. Heck, even the 'qualifications' are defined by those companies!

[Geobunny]

Need to define 'IT related'. I use a PC for hours every day, but not an IT person, except to those who know less about than I do. (No one on this forum obviously, except perhaps Rob S). (:-)

If you have to ask a question like this then the answer is probably no

[JonathanB]

I'm ecstatic to be able to vote "No"! When I recommence "work" in February, I can say I work in Aviation (although I'll be a paid student to start with!).

[cloudhopper]

I create maps and models, all on computers, using lots of SQL type stuff, I even look after the client/server version of our software, simply because I sat next to the dude who set it up then left 10 years ago.

Sounds like you do what I do (or did!), except that I also do some development stuff (.Net, Javascript, Python, Dojo etc etc).

Off to read the register and BOFH

[Paul Incognito]

never pretend that IT is an investment, it's almost always just a cost of doing business, although we will now get 2.6 million overpaid IT people telling me it transforms people's lives.

IT should be an investment, but oh so often I get asked to spend bucket loads of time building something that will save someone five minutes a month. They're all accountants and they know how much I'm paid. I won't tell them how to do their sums if they don't tell me how to build their toys. Well actually, sometimes they do tell me how to build their toys, but I'm still not going to tell them how to do their sums - I have principals.

And yes, very overpaid. (I'll have Jim wondering about my morals now).

[Vince C]

It's never an 'investment'. Kev is right - it's one of the costs of doing business - an 'enabler'.