From one end of the spectrum to yet the other, I am now on the other end of the tech/user relationship. Yes folks, I'm a user... and I hate it. Let's back up just a bit so you may understand exactly what it is of which I speak. For years now, the Flight Center has had a crappy windows 2000 Local Area Network that ran our crappy old version of Total FBO. It didn't work entirely well, but I had given myself full administrative rights to every computer on the small network and I had it running almost efficiently... at least as efficient as one could get with the stoneage boat anchors that these computers really were. Now, we have a crappy-slow 10 megabit fiber connection to campus, and brand new dell computers that are slower than dirt because they must interface through the aforementioned crappy 10mb fiber connection to a windows 2003 active directory domain with some stupid novell client running over it. In other words, you log in and it takes approximately five freakin' minutes to get to a desktop. (No, it's not installing managed software, they don't even use RIS here) It's just loading EVERYTHING they could install on these stupid things at startup. Yep, I'm locked out, I'm just an ordinary user who is now suffering the intolerable stupidity of a poorly managed network. I'm used to working on crappy computers and making them run more efficiently, it's my specialty. (msconfig anyone?) I've even been known to delve into a registry or two in my younger years seeking the utmost in efficiency, but when I see brand new 2.4 ghz dells running this slow, I feel like throwing them all into a big pile in the middle of the room and going back to pencil and paper.
I also had quite an interesting conversation with one of the tech guys at the airport while waiting on one of my students. The conversation turned to macs and he claimed to hate them just as he managed to crash this particular computer for the third time in half an hour, and I responded with, "Why? Because they work when they're supposed to?"
I want to reintall windows 2k on every computer at the flight center and run these computers on the hope domain via VPN... OSU can go to the nether regions... I think I'm just gonna stick to flying from now on, computers make my blood pressure too high.
Rant over,
Jeff C.
