Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[Ryujin]

As a Prof who regularly plays cards with two of the IT folks who used to work for our department and are now elsewhere in the University and who regularly chats on FB with one who is elsewhere in the state ... 100% that.

I also sympathise with the complete abject lack of support from above (CIO down to them) many of them suffer, and the inability of the University to staff or pay well for their skills.

(Part of getting a PhD is apparently being imbued with complete mastery of editing, assessment, data analysis, writing, management, pedagogy, and numerous other things that they don't seem to realize have specialists of their own.)

When I had been in the job for about 6 months, I had a received a work order from an engineering prof that stated every time he turned on his computer, his printer would spit out a page with a single character on it. I had a look and there was nothing that I could do. It was an issue with Win98 (yes, Win98) Plug&Play polling for new devices at startup and it triggered HP printers to print that single page. I figured it out before finding any reference to the issue online. Microsoft didn't have a fix for it yet.

Of course the prof wasn't satisfied so he escalated using the words, "... and send someone competent this time." Seems I was incompetent for recognizing an issue that Microsoft hadn't fixed yet.

Next month it'll be 27 years since I was hired.

 

[RealAlHazred]

(Part of getting a PhD is apparently being imbued with complete mastery of editing, assessment, data analysis, writing, management, pedagogy, and numerous other things that they don't seem to realize have specialists of their own.)

I can explain that. If you're familiar with GURPS, you'll know there's a mechanism where, if you lack one skill, you can default to another skill at a penalty. So, for example, if you need to do a decryption and you don't have the "Encryption" skill (for code breaking), but you have "Tradecraft" at 14 or less (general spy skills), you default to Tradecraft at some penalty.

Well, you can technically do this with any skill, so long as you can convince your GM of the applicability. These professors are just pretty sure they can convince the GM that, for example, "Macroeconomics" can be defaulted to, uh, "Italian Art History (16th Century) 16 or less". I mean, if they've achieved tenure, they can probably blather pretty well...

 

[Ryujin]

I can explain that. If you're familiar with GURPS, you'll know there's a mechanism where, if you lack one skill, you can default to another skill at a penalty. So, for example, if you need to do a decryption and you don't have the "Encryption" skill (for code breaking), but you have "Tradecraft" at 14 or less (general spy skills), you default to Tradecraft at some penalty.

Well, you can technically do this with any skill, so long as you can convince your GM of the applicability. These professors are just pretty sure they can convince the GM that, for example, "Macroeconomics" can be defaulted to, uh, "Italian Art History (16th Century) 16 or less". I mean, if they've achieved tenure, they cab probably blather pretty well...

I have abused History as a cross skill in several different games, in this manner

 

[RealAlHazred]

I have abused History as a cross skill in several different games, in this manner

Back when I played GURPS, we did this with "Game Design," which we could justify for a truly absurd number of other skills: "Macroeconomics," "Physics," various "History" skills, etc.

 

[trappedslider]

Proper response to mugging: