N.A.V.Y.

When I joined the Navy many moons ago, I quickly learned that the name of the service was really an acronym: Never Again Volunteer Yourself. It was a lesson that I continue to forget.

"Hi, Monkeys. $MegaCorp has a new support contract with Microsoft and we don't talk directly to Blackie and his department anymore. Instead we follow $MSprocess. We need a couple volunteers to be our internal contacts."

Military poll

x-posted to da brog.

Survey Says...

Dear Microsoft,

When I fill out your dynamic survey, and in it I specify that I'm not a manager (question #21), that I have nothing to do with corporate policy (question #25) and that my job duties entail IT and software support (question #35), do not then throw management-style idiotspeak at me in a follow-up question.

Also, unexpected job-related happiness including alcohol and boxen.

Beer poll
x-posted to da brog.

The Windows update site now requires that the "Automatic Services" and "Background Transfer" services not only be running but must be permanently switched on (i.e., set to Automatic). It's also impossible to avoid Genuine Disadvantage if you install fresh.

A definitive guide that will grow over time.

Bloodbath

Microsoft's 200606 patch (and not 916282 as some seem to think it's called) was public ally released Tuesday morning. Some of our customers didn't turn off auto-updates and Tuesday afternoon we got another spike in our ticket count.

The problem isn't that any of the new fixes cause our software trouble, it's that that the patch also removes the 912745 compatibility patch which undid the hobbling of embedded object calls that patch 912812 imposed last month thanks to the fucking Eolas case.

We knew this was going to happen. We warned everyone about it. We have alerts up. Fuck knows I've answered enough follow-up questions about what would happen on June 13th. It seemed like every every fucknut who I'd already explained the Eolas problem to came back and asked again. Despite that they got hit. Either they didn't pay attention or they didn't warn their (l)users.

x-posted to the blog

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/912945/en-us

On #husi tonight last night we were having a discussion about Microsoft and anti-competition laws.  Here are my thoughts, accompanied by just a few* hyperlinks.

Follows is a brief overview of some of the things that are bothering me this week.