The Dudeism Forum

Quote from: Hominid on March 19, 2013, 10:13:45 AM
Ya, "normal" seems to have gone out the window. At least when it comes to social decorum and professionalism.

I'm kinda guilty of that. When I jettisoned a client up yonder in Winnipeg, the guy went totally nuts. He seesawed around between threatening me and begging me to reconsider. It was strange. Anyway, he just wouldn't take no for an answer as long as I was being nice... so I flatly told him to "go blow a goat". In response, he derided me for my lack of professionalism. Imagine a pornographer, of all people, deriding me for saying "go blow a goat". 

Quote from: RighteousDude on March 19, 2013, 12:06:13 PM

Quote from: Hominid on March 19, 2013, 10:13:45 AM
Ya, "normal" seems to have gone out the window. At least when it comes to social decorum and professionalism.

I'm kinda guilty of that. When I jettisoned a client up yonder in Winnipeg, the guy went totally nuts. He seesawed around between threatening me and begging me to reconsider. It was strange. Anyway, he just wouldn't take no for an answer as long as I was being nice... so I flatly told him to "go blow a goat". In response, he derided me for my lack of professionalism. Imagine a pornographer, of all people, deriding me for saying "go blow a goat". 

I used to run our company's email, firewall, and proxy servers, so I'd see everyone's surfing habits. You wouldn't believe the outrageous sites people would visit from their cubies. I would post the top ten on the cafeteria's bulletin board. Didn't stop them till each one was challenged individually, some were even fired. Legal cases resulted... real ugly. People are stupid sometimes.

Quote from: Hominid on March 19, 2013, 12:47:37 PMYou wouldn't believe the outrageous sites people would visit from their cubies.

Yeah, actually, I would.

Quote from: Hominid on March 19, 2013, 12:47:37 PMPeople are stupid sometimes.

And it's a surprising number of them, too, and many who have no excuse for not knowing better.

As glad as I am to have got rid of that pornographer whose product is on the far side of outrageous because it means I never have to see that shit again, I'm even more glad that I don't have occasion to interact with his user registration data any more. I'm just fine with people being into weird shit, but it's the damnable stupidity of putting not just jobs but entire careers at risk to indulge that need that really bugs me.

Quote from: RighteousDude on March 19, 2013, 02:50:40 PM

Quote from: Hominid on March 19, 2013, 12:47:37 PMYou wouldn't believe the outrageous sites people would visit from their cubies.

Yeah, actually, I would.

You want to hear what's bad? I used to do volunteer IT work for a local daycare and their all-female employees would visit some truly fucked up porn sites while on the job. About half involved schoolgirl porn. That's just... damn.

Fuck me dude, that's really fucked in the head. I think every "job" location's proxy server should have a disclaimer stating that all surfing is monitored. You know, Terms of Use and all that.  Porn's bad enough - but we had a dude trying to hack our competition from the office! Nmap, the whole nine yards!

Quote from: Masked Dude on March 19, 2013, 05:33:45 PM
I used to do volunteer IT work for a local daycare and their all-female employees would visit some truly fucked up porn sites while on the job.

I figure that if you want to maintain respect for a person you should never, under any circumstances, look at his or her browsing history. Not because everyone has something in there that you don't want to know about, but because enough do. I've been told, and it seems reasonable enough though I have no way of knowing, that the porn a person looks at is very rarely indicative of the sexual activities the person engages in, or would even consider engaging in.

Quote from: RighteousDude on March 19, 2013, 07:09:02 PM

Quote from: Masked Dude on March 19, 2013, 05:33:45 PM
I used to do volunteer IT work for a local daycare and their all-female employees would visit some truly fucked up porn sites while on the job.

I figure that if you want to maintain respect for a person you should never, under any circumstances, look at his or her browsing history. Not because everyone has something in there that you don't want to know about, but because enough do. I've been told, and it seems reasonable enough though I have no way of knowing, that the porn a person looks at is very rarely indicative of the sexual activities the person engages in, or would even consider engaging in.

Me, I just like boobies!    Think Al Bundy from "Love & Marriage". 

Quote from: RighteousDude on March 19, 2013, 07:09:02 PM

Quote from: Masked Dude on March 19, 2013, 05:33:45 PM
I used to do volunteer IT work for a local daycare and their all-female employees would visit some truly fucked up porn sites while on the job.

I figure that if you want to maintain respect for a person you should never, under any circumstances, look at his or her browsing history.

Actually, that was part of my job. Clear things out, see if they're doing any non-work browsing, etc. So if I hadn't, I wouldn't have been able to use that as work history. I didn't tell the director whose computers had what on them, since I agree that what you browse isn't a direct reflection on you. However, as we all know, in the business world, you should be working, not doing fun work. Save the fun stuff for elsewhere.

On the up side, I only did that sort of work for a very limited time. It was boring, so I went back to repair and teaching back then.

Quote from: Hominid on March 19, 2013, 07:12:01 PM
Me, I just like boobies!    Think Al Bundy from "Love & Marriage". 

If I could sing, I'd release my song "I Like Titties" for all the world to hear.

An interesting debate is whether workplaces should not only block porn sites, but Facebook, work searches, dating sites, etc. Privacy laws can be weird depending on what side of the fence you're on.

Courtesy of Joe Walsh, who almost succeeded in unfucking the Eagles, ILBT. For your listening and viewing pleasure.

Quote from: Hominid on March 19, 2013, 09:31:26 PM
An interesting debate is whether workplaces should not only block porn sites, but Facebook, work searches, dating sites, etc. Privacy laws can be weird depending on what side of the fence you're on.

I figure that it's legit to block porn and other sites that might give offense to one's cow-orkers, known malware hosts, and other such things as might cost the company serious money. Other than that, those are real live thinking, feeling human beings out there in those soul destroying cubicles, or, worse, open office plans. Treat 'em right and they'll do good work, go all fascist on them and they'll go all Office Space on you. (They'll work just enough to avoid getting fired, and when they're pissed off they'll do exactly as they're told even when they know it's somewhere between suboptimal and completely fucking wrong.)

My own squid3 installation has as its only purpose the blocking of sites known to the good folks of malwarepatrol.net to be distributing malware. And the squid3 logs are completely disabled because trust and loyalty are two way streets.

Quote from: RighteousDude on March 19, 2013, 10:06:20 PM

Quote from: Hominid on March 19, 2013, 09:31:26 PM
An interesting debate is whether workplaces should not only block porn sites, but Facebook, work searches, dating sites, etc. Privacy laws can be weird depending on what side of the fence you're on.

I figure that it's legit to block porn and other sites that might give offense to one's cow-orkers, known malware hosts, and other such things as might cost the company serious money. Other than that, those are real live thinking, feeling human beings out there in those soul destroying cubicles, or, worse, open office plans. Treat 'em right and they'll do good work, go all fascist on them and they'll go all Office Space on you. (They'll work just enough to avoid getting fired, and when they're pissed off they'll do exactly as they're told even when they know it's somewhere between suboptimal and completely fucking wrong.)

My own squid3 installation has as its only purpose the blocking of sites known to the good folks of malwarepatrol.net to be distributing malware. And the squid3 logs are completely disabled because trust and loyalty are two way streets.

You make a very good point; it is indeed a two way street, and for the most part we're all trustworthy. It's always a small minority that fuck it up for the rest of us. Being in that position of responsibility (i.e. deciding on blowing the whistle or not) is sure a tightrope. Thankfully we had a well defined corporate policy, part of being hired was agreeing to it. Not too fascist; it was a good balance.

Then, well, every so often us IT guys would just say fuck it and spend the afternoon on a patio drinking beers with cute waitresses in short skirts with no underwear. (Them, not us - really!)  My special lady picked me up from work drunk on a Friday afternoon more than once. And that's with my manager...  made it all worth it.

Quote from: Hominid on March 19, 2013, 11:01:24 PM
Then, well, every so often us IT guys would just say fuck it and spend the afternoon on a patio drinking beers with cute waitresses in short skirts with no underwear. (Them, not us - really!)  My special lady picked me up from work drunk on a Friday afternoon more than once. And that's with my manager...  made it all worth it.

It's important to keep in mind what truly matters, I think.  Once upon a time when I was pretending to be a field engineer I worked for an outfit where most Fridays we'd shut the office down early and go for margaritas on the company's tab. The regional manager kept old AmEx cards from departed employees to pay with, and gave up the name of some random client contact to the corporate office on the East Coast so they could cheat on their taxes claiming it as a business meeting. I always thought it would be more honorable to put it on the regional manager's own card and not do the tax cheat thing at all, but who am I to turn down a beverage or five?

I almost hated to leave that place, but the CEO promised me a really fat (25%) raise, then flew his fascist ass across the country to explain to me why he was reneging. I cannot abide a liar, so I went to work for a competitor and so got an even fatter (40%) raise. The new outfit wouldn't permit liquor on the company tab, though. I guess it was a Muslim thing. I thought it strange that they'd buy hookers and blow (literally) for the executives of client companies who'd rig the competitive bidding process but wouldn't buy me a drink now and then. I've been living amongst humans since 1961 and I ain't got the screwy bastards figured yet.

QuoteI've been living amongst humans since 1961 and I ain't got the screwy bastards figured yet.

Me, 1955.  Fuck it all, let's go bowling. (Which I'm terrible at BTW). I think we cope with it all by just labeling it all as "foibles".  We cope the best way we can. White wine works for me. Well...... till Monday rolls around.