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Admin
Frist is 'deadline' in german
capture validus: so true.
Admin
He couldn't have gotten a free word processor before that?
Admin
Whats wrong with Notepad?
CAPTCHA: odio, oh well
Admin
Are you trying to ruin this shit_that_didn't_happen.txt with common sense?
Admin
This reminds me of my girlfriends new job. They have the best computers you can buy at apple - but they are too cheap to buy Office. Currently they are toying around with libre office and my Girlfriend burned a full day for a task, which had been 5 Minutes with MSO or the apple pendant. This time alone cost more than an MSO license for the whole firm... Additionally: The CEO does not like windows because it is "too slow" - and then constantly points at the one PC at the office who runs Windows and constantly crashes. My girlfriend examined the PC: Windows XP with no service pack, old as hell and on C:\ there are 500 Bytes of disk space free, while D:\ has 500Gb available...
Admin
...
So it was a physical version of every QMS over 3 months old?
Admin
Ah, the 'big idea' business owners. Who are terrified that someone will steal their 'big idea' and leave them with nothing.
Worked for too many of them, and have the grey hairs, receding hairline, and ulcers to prove it.
Give me project managers, and QA, and development milestones, and HR, and a real office with computer desks and working A/C any day.
captcha: iusto, as in iusto work for people like this...
Admin
So whats wrong with Wordpad? The one supplied with Windows 7/8 covers most of Words most-used features anyway...
Admin
What are they going to do with Word specifically? Insert pictures of sticky notes on whiteboards?
If they're on Windows 8 then there's a lot of other (free!) platforms available much better suited to documentation.
Admin
Admin
Documentation in Word? I'd have fired her.
Also, is it Jason or Ross?
Admin
FTFY.
Admin
Nothing better for work confidence than finding your manager/product owner/ceo crying in a corner for a bunch of post-its.
Would I be crazy to think this is how Peter Molyneux started?
Oh! And the name of the game is Duke Nukem Forever 2.
Admin
The Real WTF here is taking the job without finding out what they are actually developing; asking some basic questions in the interview would have probably shown all the red flags.
Dev: "So tell me what you're developing? What kind of game?"
Clueless Moron Owner: Umm... well it has big guns in it. And lots of action!
Dev: So you have no idea at all? Thanks, but no thanks. Call me back when you actually have some clue what you're doing.
Admin
Probably went more like: Wide-Eyed College Grad: You mean I can get in on the ground floor of the next Valve?
Clueless Moron Owner: That's right! In fact, we're currently working on the next blockbuster game title!
Wide-Eyed College Grad: Wow, that's amazing! Can you tell me more about it?
Clueless Moron Owner: Well, you know, with all the corporate espionage in this industry, I can't reveal too much (whispers We had a guy from UbiSoft snooping around here just last week...), but I can tell you, it will have big guns and lots of action!
Wide-Eyed College Grad: gasp When can I sign up??
Admin
I suppose that some anonymization was made and Word stays for more costly software.
To take notes one could use a simple editor, or a rater complex editor like emacs that has modes specifically made to take notes and to-do list. Emacs is free as speech and runs from almost any operating system.
Or, if tou're 2.0 and like sticky notes, there's Google Keep...
Admin
Say you update office every 3 years. That works out to about $0.50 a day per person that does documentation. If the documentation isn't worth that to you then it shouldn't be worth it to pay their salaries either.
To beat the same drum as everyone else: notepad, wordpad, LaTex, LibreOffice etc etc.
Admin
Nope - she burned a day because Libre Office Impress cannot groupd shapes together, so that aligning them is a pain. Also, it series printing function is crap.
Admin
What?
Seriously?
What?
Admin
Admin
We should define a string table for our comments. It could save us some typing.
STRINGTABLE BEGIN IDS_FRIST "FRIST!" IDS_DISBELIEF_SUSPENDED "The following comment assumes this all really happened as we are being led to believe." IDS_TDPHB "This looks just like another daily pointy-haired boss." IDS_TYPICAL_STARTUP "Another brush with a half-assed start-up." IDS_SPARTACUS "I'm %s!" IDS_LIFE_OF_BRIAN "I'm %s, and so's my wife!" END
MessageBox(IDS_DISBELIEF_SUSPENDED); MessageBox(IDS_TYPICAL_STARTUP);
Captcha veniam: "Not the artery, but the veniam."
Admin
Theres a little known editor that comes with all new Windows computers free of charge called Paint that allows you to put images, text even shapes into documents. Its hidden away in the accessories page of the start menu but it is on every Windows computer i have ever worked with. it took me a bit longer to master it than word or excel but now i am reaping the rewards.
like i said its absolutely free you dont need ms office to run it and it has its own text input box to write text. Unlike word and excel you can put text and images wherever you want on the page. there are literally no rules you can even make text overlap and draw freehand and the document can be expanded to whatever size you want. also unlike word documents even people with macbooks can open paint documents you email them. if you are beginner at IT I would say learn word and excel first (although excel is really optional depending on what kind of work you are doing, use the right tool for the right job)
Admin
Who is Jason?
Admin
TRWTF - this. If they seem crazy even before you start working for them, you really think it's going to get better?
Admin
has she tried microsoft paint? it has shapes and you can move things easily and print. not sure what you mean by grouping shapes together. do you mean something to do with the copy paste?
Admin
Admin
I've been grouping shapes with LibreOffice back when it was still called StarOffice, in the 1990s.
Admin
Paint whould even more time - did you never buld rather complex presentations?
Admin
Google Docs??
Admin
He should have upgraded to Cork Board and Push Pins. Now that's some cutting edge humidity-resistant technology!
Admin
I started for a very high-flying investment w^Hbank in 2008 working on one of their trading systems. Me: "Oh, where is the documentation so I know what's going on?" Colleague David:"Ah. Do you have an A4 sheet for me, so I can draw how it all hangs together".
Admin
I once worked for an engineering firm whose President (doctorate) ignored the white-boards and wrote his notes directly on the wall. They were moisture resistant, but edits would have required a drywall saw.
Admin
Let me guess--the money he had budgeted for Office went to cocaine instead?
Admin
Damn straight. If you need to generate customer-facing prettydocs, Flare works great. If you're doing internal-facing stuff, preserving institutional memory against the inevitable "Jim gets hired by a bus/hit by google" scenario, then often a well-curated wiki will be the best thing.
Using Word for documentation is indeed the real WTF
Admin
Didn't know what the title of the game was? Me either, but I'm guessing it's something like "Delude Yourself Into Believing That You're Actually Creating Something".
Admin
Anita was a developer. It wasn't her job to know what Flare is, or even how a wiki works, unless she was told "the documentation is in Flare/this wiki, here is how you access it". It was her job to read whatever form of documentation was provided and turn it into code.
Naturally, she would have picked up an idea of how it's supposed to be done if she worked at a properly-organized company for a while, but she was fresh out of college, so it's hardly fair to expect her to be the expert. She didn't know what documentation tools exist. All she knew was the Post-Its sucked.
If the boss man didn't have anyone who knew that his Post-Its are fucking retarded (and using Word would have been almost as bad), it's really his fault for not hiring that person. But, given his affinity for Post-Its even when told they were impossible, he probably didn't want to hire that person.
Admin
I don't Brad was actually Tim Schaffer.
Admin
Meant to quote, not reply.
Admin
Okay, I'll buy that. Even Word would be better than the post-it system, that's true enough.
Admin
Admin
My guess: Brad is a former athlete who won a very important game with blood all over his sock.
(For those who can't guess, hint: BoSox; and his game company not only went bust but nearly dragged an entire state gov't down with it)
Admin
Come on. How do you code in Unity and not know what the game is doing? Why not use Open Office? I call bull!
Admin
So an old guy finds a female college student in a classroom/lab and takes her back to his garage? I'm pretty sure I've seen pr0n like that.
Admin
A friend of mine was actually part of that. He's a veteran developer who'd been a lead at Blizzard for several years, and knows the game industry really well. I talked with him a while back about how that all went down, and to hear him talk, they were basically doing everything right, and the company ended up failing because the state investors screwed them over and they ended up not getting money that they'd been promised.
Admin
Y'know, in the real world of game development, you usually don't even have a title until you're starting to show it off to the press. Sometimes at that point it's still just a working title, even. Knowing the title of a game doesn't really help with the development of it. You should be designing to a design doc, not to a title.
And yeah, if you have a problem with collaborative documentation management and decide to use Word, now you have two problems. Go with something DESIGNED for that, like a wiki. MediaWiki is pretty powerful and completely free.
Admin
Of course the great solution I like is "cork board" and "push pins", as mentioned before. If you are REAL cheap, you can use the office wall (drywall) instead of the cork board. You do end up with a bunch of holes in the wall, but they are small, and can be easily filled for the next customer. As for the sticky notes, it is probably a good idea to at minimum put a date one each one.
Many low cost solutions.
p.s. Good AC maintenance is always a good idea.
Admin
Admin
Happens. One time, at band camop... well, one time at a certain FUBAR coding shop; coding tools were "whatever we can find on the internet." They did not even standardize that.
Admin
Admin
Kanban board, right? Works in may companies these days.
Personally I have 7 stickers attached to my monitor; and I've been practicing it for years now, doing it even for my home remodeling projects.
As to MS Word, it sucks from the very beginning, does not it? Wiki, otoh, is a good solution.
But you know the advantage of yellow stickers? They stick until you are done, then you just throw them out. Pretty efficient, especially for personal use.