remote learning with Teams and OneNote feels like it belongs here now. It seems like the primary source of stress in my household these days.
― sound of scampo talk to me (El Tomboto), Friday, 30 October 2020 00:13 (three years ago) link
OneNote worked two years ago when I used it in my last teaching job, but now that I really need it, it does not work. I spent a full class period trying to get kids to activate their OneNotes, only to find that it's too mysteriously glitchy to be worth bothering with.
― Lily Dale, Friday, 30 October 2020 00:53 (three years ago) link
Teams is Microsoft’s “hey, we need a tool that competes with this one simple bit of functionality. and a tool that competes with this thing. and wouldn’t it be cool instead of just offering an alternate to Slack and Zoom, we also shoved a full-fledged document management suite in it that’s a thin wrapper over SharePoint?”
arrrrgh
― mh, Friday, 30 October 2020 01:31 (three years ago) link
I have no idea how they’ve fucked OneNote, which worked fine for me a few years ago, but I suspect it also has the blood curse of SharePoint now
I just call whatever Microsoft application I’m currently using DickPunch because that’s what using them feels like
― shout-out to his family (DJP), Friday, 30 October 2020 01:34 (three years ago) link
I dare not speak the name of any product Microsoft has that seems slim and useful because they’ll overhear me and decide it needs a handful of kitchen sinks
― mh, Friday, 30 October 2020 01:36 (three years ago) link
tbf Teams functions pretty well for me at work, I even kind of like the built-in wiki, but the way it’s organized with our daughter’s school apps - especially OneNote - is just a nightmare to try and navigate. And she’s the age where she’s absolutely determined to do everything independently no matter how infuriated she gets so like 90% of the time she just winds herself up into a meltdown and refuses all help.
― sound of scampo talk to me (El Tomboto), Friday, 30 October 2020 01:37 (three years ago) link
We're a mostly MS Office workplace and while our Slack's been going for a while it's been mandated from on-high (as in campuswide) that we have to use Teams at some point next year. I've poked around in it -- seems useful enough for what we do that I can live with it, but obviously it's just a bit of extra randomness.
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 30 October 2020 01:39 (three years ago) link
It actually does make all parts of an online set of meetings easier in that you can have files attached to channels and reference them directly from a video meeting in that channel
However, we’ve done that multiple times now and each time someone has to helpfully say “you have to click on the group, then the channel, then click this weirdly worded thing at the top to switch from chat to attached videos (or whatever)” and the person who says this on our non-Teams chat system gets a dozen upvotes for good content
― mh, Friday, 30 October 2020 01:42 (three years ago) link
They also have a few things (notably the interface to share a file during a live video meeting) where the description text and the link to open the file are in the same typography and there’s no indication which text is a link
― mh, Friday, 30 October 2020 01:43 (three years ago) link
I don't have a dick but although Google Sheets has vastly improved recently, DickPunch Excel makes it easier to "hide columns and rows"
― sarahell, Friday, 30 October 2020 02:01 (three years ago) link
You can spend $10,000 and still not get a laptop with a keyboard that is as good as one from 20 years ago.
― Philip Nunez, Friday, 30 October 2020 02:04 (three years ago) link
FWIW, on the subject of microsoft, I am very confused about the difference/overlap between Teams, OneDrive and Sharepoint. I had some staffers ask if they could share files they were prepping for me in Teams rather than OneDrive and I am unable to discern what's different except that there is a "T" symbol.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, 30 October 2020 02:16 (three years ago) link
i don't mind teams since it's sort of a happy medium between email and something like skype chat for a lot of work interactions but it's funny watching things shift from "file attached to email and good luck finding it" to "file embedded in teams chat and good luck finding it"
― call all destroyer, Friday, 30 October 2020 02:57 (three years ago) link
the thing that really gets me about the whole office 365 suite is that Microsoft fucking made all of it and designed all of it to work together and yet it just doesn't integrate that well.
Also, I am forever getting confused between my own files, my "team's" files, and the files a team or other person shared with me.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, 30 October 2020 03:13 (three years ago) link
Only use teams for online meetings but were a big Slack company, we even made Slack shoes. The one MS program I support is ToDo which is a rebuilt Wunderlist, which was the only to do app I liked.
― dan selzer, Friday, 30 October 2020 12:18 (three years ago) link
Teams is just adequate for meetings. Skype for Business was way better in my view.
And Teams's use for file storage / collaboration offers no advantage over SharePoint (because it is in fact just a front-end for SharePoint). If I am using Teams for files I just immediately open the directory in SharePoint, where I can do more of what I want to do.
So all that Teams has left to recommend it is chat rooms and wiki, which I see no real point for if you already have email and phones and such.
Can't speak to OneDrive as I never use it.
― Anaïs Ninja (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 30 October 2020 12:27 (three years ago) link
I used to use a really nice web-based outlining/list making tool but I can't remember what it was now. Super minimal. You'd click a plus sign to create a new entry.
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Friday, 30 October 2020 12:50 (three years ago) link
Ah found it! Workflowy - https://workflowy.com/
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Friday, 30 October 2020 13:00 (three years ago) link
> Workflowy
i hate it already
― koogs, Friday, 30 October 2020 13:19 (three years ago) link
i know, i really do like it though
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Friday, 30 October 2020 13:26 (three years ago) link
lol I've finally gotten used to MS Teams and we've mostly worked out the tech kinks.
has some inferiorities to WebEx that I'll never get over but w/e
― Lover of Nixon (or LON for short) (Neanderthal), Friday, 30 October 2020 14:30 (three years ago) link
Found Teams to be way better than Skype for Business which we were using before. I guess these things in large part depend on what you use them for. For us it's mostly chat and meetings and I find it works better than most other software for this kind of stuff.
― silverfish, Friday, 30 October 2020 15:39 (three years ago) link
lol Skype for Business is a complete garbage fire of a program
― mh, Friday, 30 October 2020 15:46 (three years ago) link
or known by its earlier name, Lync
― Lover of Nixon (or LON for short) (Neanderthal), Friday, 30 October 2020 15:47 (three years ago) link
and before that, Office Communicator!
― mh, Friday, 30 October 2020 15:51 (three years ago) link
did anybody use Sametime back i nthe day
― Lover of Nixon (or LON for short) (Neanderthal), Friday, 30 October 2020 15:52 (three years ago) link
love sporadically getting “this message can’t be delivered” messages for inexplicable reasons
― mh, Friday, 30 October 2020 15:52 (three years ago) link
sometimes Skype for Business would transmit my messages out of order if the server got congested
"The bathroom is overflowing on the third floor""Hey, do you have a moment to discuss an issue?"
― Lover of Nixon (or LON for short) (Neanderthal), Friday, 30 October 2020 15:54 (three years ago) link
uhh it works good enough let’s just slap a revised gui on the client and change the name, no one will be the wiser
― mh, Friday, 30 October 2020 15:56 (three years ago) link
yeah, for us what happened was that we were told that Skype for Business was what we were going to be using (mostly just for instant messaging, this was pre-pandemic when we did pretty much all meetings in person). A couple of weeks later, somebody figured out that we have Teams included in our Office 365 subscription and everybody just gradually switched to that.
― silverfish, Friday, 30 October 2020 15:57 (three years ago) link
I definitely remember the messages out of order thing. Also that the conversation history would always be missing huge chunks of exchanges.
― silverfish, Friday, 30 October 2020 16:00 (three years ago) link
yup. MS Teams is much better about that
― Lover of Nixon (or LON for short) (Neanderthal), Friday, 30 October 2020 16:05 (three years ago) link
Ok I don't need five different ways to ask someone to give me a piece of information. Every "innovation" so far has just multiplied the ways in which something can go wrong or get missed.
1995: You called me on the phone and I either answered, or I wasn't there so you left a message.
2000: You sent me an email and I either responded, or I didn't, so you sent me another email or you called me on the phone.
2005: You sent me an email and I either did or didn't respond. Then you called me and I did or didn't answer. Then you sent me an IM that I did or didn't answer. You came over to my cubicle and we worked it out.
2010: You sent me an email, sent me a text, called, and IMed me. I either did or didn't respond to those. You walked over to my office and left a Post-it on my monitor.
2020: You sent me an email, sent me a text, called me, IMed me, put a message in the group Teams chat and on our slack channel and our Discord server. I either did or didn't respond to any of those.
All I see in this relentless chain of "progress" is the number of different ways in which I need to ignore someone before it becomes clear that I am, in fact, ignoring them.
― Anaïs Ninja (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 30 October 2020 16:12 (three years ago) link
you never tried the "Fuck u and take ur needless bullshit down the hallway" reply?
― Lover of Nixon (or LON for short) (Neanderthal), Friday, 30 October 2020 16:14 (three years ago) link
As someone who is often ignored, I agree that this progress is annoying, because it means I have to go through all these different ways to thoroughly attempt communication and can thus document that _I_ was the person doing my job and that my colleague is _the other guy_
― sarahell, Friday, 30 October 2020 16:27 (three years ago) link
Exactly.
Also, like, I'm looking for the email that had the link for the thing I need. Wait no, maybe that reached me via Teams chat? Wait no, maybe they sent me a text. Wait, no, maybe it was in Slack.
Fuck, can't we just go back to email where I can sort by sender and date and search for keywords?
― Anaïs Ninja (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 30 October 2020 16:40 (three years ago) link
since we're on the subject of work tech -- can I express my annoyance at people who assume I have iMessage and will send me links to files via text, assuming that, I have iMessage and can just open them with my computer
― sarahell, Friday, 30 October 2020 16:51 (three years ago) link
so here's my company's clumsy embrace of technology, if it makes you feel better:
2005 - Sametime = chat client, Lotus Notes = email client. No virtual training, all in-person - few had webcams 2010 - Move from Lotus Notes to Outlook for email. Still using Sametime. virtual training becomes a thing, we use WebEx for it (no webcam, audio only)
2011 - Move from Sametime to Microsoft Lync for chat. However, our seasonal employees inexplicably are given access to Sametime through Citrix, so we have to keep Sametime it and use it for some group chats. So we have to be logged into both clients. (I actually lead the charge on changing this and got a shoutout from one of the GMs for pushing back on the nonsense defense of it)
2013 - Because Microsoft Lync has meeting capability, we're told to use Lync for training, access revoked for WebEx.
2015 - I teach my first domain class, and am told I have to have WebEx to teach it, as this is the preferred client, even though we literally just revoked licenses firmwide. So I have to reapply for a license, now we are leading training in both WebEx (For domain classes) or Lync(for others).
2017ish - sometime or other Lync becomes Skype for Business.
2018 - We are told we are no longer using Skype for Business as chat client and meeting capability licenses will be revoked, we are going to use WebEx Teams, and all training/meetings will be through WebEx Teams by 2019.
2019 - Colleagues stop using Skype, begin using WebEx Teams full time
2020 - Colleagues told we are no longer using WebEx Teams, right as the firm had just finally embraced it, and are going to MS Teams. WebEx Teams not decommissioned until 11/1 so people have been using both.
― Lover of Nixon (or LON for short) (Neanderthal), Friday, 30 October 2020 16:51 (three years ago) link
Game devs used to test games to death before clicking the magic button to go gold and roll out the final no recall disc/cartridge.
The technological advance of high speed connected devices means they just chuck out broken buggy pieces of shit at full price in time for whatever target market they thought they'd be ready for then keep "fixing" them every week until no-one cares or the company dies.
― here we go, ten in a rona (onimo), Friday, 30 October 2020 20:48 (three years ago) link
xp wow kind of surprised anyone was still using Lotus Notes in 2010 tbh
Slack's been doing that a fair bit lately
― CP Radio Gorgeous (Colonel Poo), Friday, 30 October 2020 21:15 (three years ago) link
We just switched from Lotus/IBM Notes to Outlook last year. Outlook is soooooo much nicer.
― Mr. Snrub, Saturday, 31 October 2020 05:15 (three years ago) link
Remember when most websites didn't try to make you sign up or sign in or download their app or accept their cookies? I quickly close like fully 1/3 of the pages I visit these days because they're goddamn intolerable to look at or to navigate through. I almost long for the days of old school, meat & potatoes pop-ups.
― OrificeMax (Old Lunch), Saturday, 31 October 2020 15:02 (three years ago) link
2FA woes otm. just logged into my bank...
go to bank website on laptopenter user serial numberenter security questionunlock phonestart bank appunlock password safecopy bank password from password safepaste bank password in bank apphit generate secret numbertype secret number into bank website
(and i fouled up and generated secret number before i was ready and it's only valid for 20 seconds so had to redo it)
― koogs, Saturday, 31 October 2020 15:33 (three years ago) link
Especially with banking, there are times where I’m just like “I’m insured against theft, just let me into my damned account”
― shout-out to his family (DJP), Saturday, 31 October 2020 16:40 (three years ago) link
without 2fa i'd never have seen my colleague open his google authenticator app to find the codes for the 5 or 6 websites were all 000 000, try to take a screenshot before they changed, panic and fall off his chair.
― neith moon (ledge), Saturday, 31 October 2020 17:55 (three years ago) link
work web mail login sends you a text with a number in it to verify yourself. it also times out after 20 minutes. i've had 295 such texts from work in the last 6 months.
― koogs, Saturday, 31 October 2020 18:04 (three years ago) link
mine asks me for the same login code 3 times in a row for some reason.
― Specific Ocean Blue (dog latin), Sunday, 1 November 2020 01:49 (three years ago) link
Theres a related idea that I think about often, about tech we thought we wanted but then discarded - when I was a kid two things that signified Our Amazing Future were video phones and food in pill form. Now we have those things, but if you actually met someone today who was like "I only eat soylent & supplements and only communicate via FaceTime" youd be like wow this person is deeply troubled― “Hakuna Matata,” a nihilist philosophy (One Eye Open), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 17:54 (one year ago) link
― “Hakuna Matata,” a nihilist philosophy (One Eye Open), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 17:54 (one year ago) link
― handsome boy modelling software (bernard snowy), Saturday, 19 December 2020 15:30 (three years ago) link
regular-ass cash withdrawal transactions at ATMs take, conservatively, 3 times as long as they did 20 years ago.
― call all destroyer, Wednesday, 20 January 2021 03:13 (three years ago) link