Dogs…. just fluffy balls of awesomeness right ?

Just like we have health insurance, i got pet insurance for our first Golden Retriever – who turned 11 a last month, through Pet Insurance Australia… as they seemed to be ok-ish based on the online reviews… acknowledging that its incredibly difficult to discern a real review from a bot-farm review anymore.

He’s had a full life of playing with other dogs (his favourite), his little human, his therapy dog work and the rest of our family… like most goldens, he’s pretty much universally loved… because he’s fucking awesome and might well be the nicest creature on the planet – ever.

All the way back in 2016, i got pet insurance for him because – risk and risk mitigation. At the time it was around the $500 a year mark.

Fast forward to yesterday (July 2024) – the premiums are now approx $2200 for the upcoming renewal. One one hand, i understand inflation and that his risk profile has changed now he’s older… on the other – isn’t that what i paid premiums for the last 8 years to help cover ?

When i rang to cancel the policy, i got the same old bullshit, including an offer to give us 3 months free… which really sealed the deal for me. If you can offer 3 months for free, then you’re just price gouging (like most corporates at the moment, i’m not saying this is isolated) rather than increasing prices in line with inflation.

Fuck you Pet Insurance Australia…. there aren’t many sacred things left in the world – but the health of doggies everywhere is one of them – you don’t fuck with that…. may you all get bowel cancer and die a long, incredibly painful death.

This is one of the entries that kinda needs a “so bad its kinda funny” category.

Microsoft, due to their unique understanding of customer needs, will be setting the default search engine in chrome to bing when you update to Office 365 version 2002.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/office-365-blog/introducing-and-managing-microsoft-search-in-bing-through-office/ba-p/1110974

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/microsoft-search-bing

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/microsoft-search-bing#how-to-exclude-the-extension-for-microsoft-search-in-bing-from-being-installed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_hijacking#Microsoft_Office_365_ProPlus

The best bit of the 1st article has to be the comments section, with universal love and praise of Microsoft for making this wise decision.

fortunately for the users in enterprise environments, it just a simple on/off toggle – the fact that many users in enterprise environments struggle with absolutely any dialogue box doesn’t seem to phase the decision makers.

 

Anyway, if i can delve back into reality for a second…. for enterprise admins out there that don’t want to generate a bucketload of support calls due to this bafflingly bad decision, you have a couple of options

• Grab the Office admx templates from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49030 (must be version 4996.1000 or later)
• Set Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Office 2016 (Machine)\Updates\ Don’t install extension for Microsoft Search in Bing that makes Bing the default the search engine = Enabled
• Utilise the config.xml at deployment time, with the line
  • <ExcludeApp ID=“Bing” />
• If the extension has already been installed, utilise “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\DefaultPackMSI\MainBootStrap.exe” uninstallAll 

 

As at time of writing, i have not tested any of these – but when the update is rolled out – scheduled for middle of February 2020 – i will update this article with any additional info at that time.

 

Seems to be in the same vein as the  “SCCM will effectively stop working if it detects 3rd party MDM on a device“…. an equally bad decision, but one that effects far fewer people than this moronic BS.

I, like many of the readers of this blog, have been getting messages constantly from “www.youracclaim.com” to get “badges” from the Microsoft exams they have sat over the past years.

I have ignored these up until recently, but when I went to update my linkedin profile, to include some recent university results, and thought “there must be an easy way to add my Microsoft certs, ill try this youracclaim.com thingy…. its from pearsonvue – how dodgey could it be?”

My question was soon answered with this (below) when trying to link my newly created “youracclaim.com” account and linkedin.

 

Post updates, make comments and like posts as me… are you fucking serious?!!?! Does anyone fall for that? (rhetorical question – someone must….)

Recently, my staff an I have been subjected to a bunch of phone call spam from http://www.parallels.com

I’m getting calls from a UK number, + 442033276423, asking us to partner…. the first time, it was “no thanks”, subsequent calls have been met with less friendly suggestions, and then a block.

Still, no company with decent software needs to engage in this type of activity – avoid.

*update 4/10/2016*

They still call persistently, two times a day, leaving “silence” voice mails after their number has been blocked. There doesn’t seem to be a way to block the number and prevent them from leaving voicemail…. any app developers out there want to write an app to do that? (if you can do that). Its a windows 10 phone, so you’d have to be willing to write an app for a platform that commands a whopping 0.7% of the handset market and, based on the complete lack of support from Microsoft and the rumour mill, unlikely to exist for much longer!

A while ago I started using freelancer.com for some odd jobs here and there around coding or websites…. it worked out ok once for a basic website, but seemed to be very poor if I tried to use it for anything a bit more substantial. The main sticking point for me was that freelancer.com took their cut immediately when the project was awarded – so if the bidder turned out to be completely incapable of delivering (which is not uncommon) – they still charged a reasonable amount.

 

Due to this, I moved to elance – which did not engage in the practice of taking their fees for jobs immediately.

I still had some issues due to the inherent nature of this type of market. For those of you that haven’t used one of these types of sites before – if you post a job, for anything from a basic website to an SQL database and front-end, you will get bucket loads of responses – many of which are copy and paste jobs from people that don’t read the job spec – and are in broken English.

After a while, it becomes easier to pick these and filter them out, however you are still stuck with those that are smart enough to make it look like they can read the spec doc and do the work, but cant actually do the work.

Through Elance I have posted a couple of projects – such as website and an internal timesheet tool.

With these projects, basically I would always have a couple of false starts with someone that was not able to complete the work satisfactorily, until I found someone that could.

Overall, it was still worth it – as even with the false starts and paying out people that couldn’t do the work – our website update cost a couple of hundred, as opposed to the quotes for $6-12k I was getting locally for 7 static pages.

 

My current project is a timesheeting tool for my business – I found the existing ones out there didn’t meet my needs and/or were a confused jumble of modules that seem to be written by people that actually haven’t run a business before.

 

On my 3rd attempt – I found a guy that just seemed to “get it” – which is always nice – and all was going well until….

 

Joyette, Sep 2, 9:08 AM:

Hello hayes,

We have some concerns regarding your job with your freelancer, ‘xxxxx’

There are no messages in the work room, Workview is not being used, and there are no details regarding the work being done in the job proposal. Please detail how you know your freelancer, the nature of the work being done including examples, and how you are communicating. Please provide a detailed response so we may continue to review your Elance account.

 

This was quite bizarre – so my response was…

 

Hi Joyette,

Im a bit flabbergasted by this email.

1) There are no messages in the work room because the messages though elance are hard to use, we have been emailing each other constantly over the project lifetime – just not using the, rather poor, elance messaging system.

2) Workview – see above. Workview does not do useful things such as keep track of outstanding tasks on the job – so why use it ?

3) “There are no details on the work being done in job proposal” – the work being done is the work that has been requested. Since this guy actually speaks English we were able to communicate to a level where I was conformable that he knew what he was doing.

4) I know the freelancer via elance…. Hence why I am paying him via elance – What an odd question!

5) The nature of the work being done is what’s requested to be done – would I really be paying the bills if it wasn’t ?

6) We are communicating via email and Skype.

WTF? Review my elance account? Where were you guys when the sh*tty people doing this job last time were lying through their teeth? Now that I have found someone that actually has a clue – now you want to review?

I’m not quite sure where/why this is coming up now – he is doing the work – I am paying him (via elance) – it’s pretty simple. Sure, the date’s aren’t being met – however, I have added quite a bit of work to the spec – hence why another milestone has been added in elance.

This was followed by

Joyette, Sep 2, 3:58 PM:

Hello hayes,

Thank you for your immediate response.

I am currently reviewing your account but need some help from you to continue. Please send us a scanned copy of any Government issued photo ID ( i.e Passport/ Drivers License) in order to verify your identity.

Regards, Elance Risk ManagementTeam

 

The contractor I was using received one of these too – then with no reason or warning, they suspended his account, leaving him unable to withdraw the funds I had deposited for him.

There is no way in hell any logical person would provide a scanned copy of a passport of drivers license to pretty much any organisation let alone one like Elance. In addition, they are, funnily enough, more than happy to take funds from your credit card without this information, but when it comes to refunds, or asking relatively basic questions that don’t directly make them money – they all of a sudden need this!

After many more emails, I closed my elance account, the contractor eventually got his money…. and we continue to work together outside of elance.

It remains a bit of mystery as to what was really behind this from the elance side – as, if they have any real reasons – they are not sharing them or presenting any evidence of any type of behaviour that would warrant involvement of a “risk management” team…

In short – while elance.com initially appeared to be one of the better freelancing sites, they obviously have something going on behind the scenes and some pretty dodgey practices, perhaps there is something going on due to their merger with upwork…. or perhaps they have always been run by a bunch of idiots and I just haven’t noticed before.

Either way – my suggestion would be to avoid elance & upwork…. I would be happy to hear if anyone out there has had a positive experience with one of these style of organisations.

 

Last year, the ACCC announced it was going to “crack down” on drip-pricing

http://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/accc-takes-action-against-jetstar-and-virgin-for-drip-pricing-practices

Of course, with the ACCC having no real teeth, the practice still occurs with many service providers.

Jetstar is a prime example of that.

Today I booked some flights at an advertised price of $119. For 3 people, return, that adds up to $714.

Yet the final price was $916.55 – almost 28% more than the headline price.

I, like many people, have come to expect the ludicrous charges….

$20 each for baggage (and it has to be the same for all passengers, I cant select “no baggage” for my little girl… 2 year olds don’t tend to have suitcases)

$17.50 per-person credit card charge….. how on earth a charge per-person is appropriate when a transaction fee is a per-transaction fee is as mind-boggling as Tony Abbott knighting a foreign duke.

These are incredibly stupid and inflexible, Jetstar (and others) know this and use these to their advantage – but everyone knows this – and its expected.

The bit that really shits me is the website…. they are trying to sell you such an incredible amount of absolute shit and in addition, some add-on “services” are automatically selected, so you just cant scroll to the bottom and hit “continue”.

Today I inadvertently signed up for “travel insurance”…. or as I believe its known in the industry – “incredibly high profit margin useless service that is worth nothing” – and while $38 isn’t going to break the bank – its the dishonest and deceptive way the Jetstar website sells this service that gets me steamed.

While I know its a pipe-dream, it would nice to have an ACCC that could appropriately punish this practice.

Hey all,

i’ve forced logon for comment posting…. not something i wanted to do, but in the last month or so the amount of spam comments has gone through the roof.

I sat 70-412 this morning, as part of my “exam updating” process that I go through every 3 years or so. I’ve now passed 30-ish (I think it might be 33) MS exams since 1997, so I think I’m reasonably qualified to talk on the topic.

While I agree with many people out there that think MS exams are of little real value, due to the poor nature of the questions, the unrealistic scenarios and obscurity of some of the questions, they do help us keep our partner status (which is a whole ‘nother argument) and every now and again, there is a question in there that makes me go home and read up on a topic I don’t know well enough.  The dumps commonly available around the web and the “certification factories” running in places around the world de-value any real test of knowledge the test may have represented from an employer point of view.

So the price is ludicrously high and the value minimal, but the fact that we need them for partner status makes it a moot point – they have to be done if we want to be a MS partner.

Anyway…. onto todays specific exam:

• Fair enough you can’t take phones etc in… but today, I made the mistake of being sick….. and I wanted to take in a cup of tea… nup… can’t take in a cup of tea… because… well, I might cheat by… umm….. reading left over tea-leaves ? (that weren’t there because there were only tea bags available at the testing centre). Just as well prometric cracked down on that security loop-hole! Well done!
• Test machine only hung once during todays exam…. was typically slow, but only the one hang – this is very good for MS exams.
• Question refered to Server1 and Server2 in the question, but all the answers were about Cluster1 and Cluster2…. not a disaster, but would it really hurt to get someone to proof read exams before they go out ?
• Question about Hyper-V test failover…. all of the answers were about failing over the entire cluster…. and well, all wrong
• Question about setting up a failover cluster, where the user is an administrator on both nodes, but not a domain admin…… I don’t remember the exact wording, but the first two answers were absolute gibberish (and one of them should have been the correct answer if they had said what I *think* they were trying to say). Clearly written by someone who does not speak english well….. and when the outcome of an exam can depend on wording – I think that’s pretty bad. I completely agree that my spelling and grammar are average at times too – but this is a blog read by a few thousand people – not an exam taken by (I assume) 10’s, if not 100’s of thousands of people, some of whom may need to pass for career progression etc.
• There were the standard couple of questions in there that had “correct” answers, but talking about methods which you would never, in real life, use. Would it really be that hard to get someone who has actually used the products to write… or at least proof-read the exams ? (the SCCM 2007 exam was a pearler for this too)

So… whats the point of writing all this ?

How about some basic QA on exams before they go out ?

How about getting one of the 1/2 decent MCS techs to look over it before they go out ?

How about getting someone who speaks english as their native tongue to look over it before they go out ? (for english exams) or even someone that write good n stuff ?

But alas – none of that will happen… so really its just an opportunity to blow off some steam. Microsoft and their partners don’t seem to “do” criticism, constructive or otherwise.

I’ll go back to knocking off exams and ignoring the MCM program due to its excessive cost.

Classic.

http://australianchristianlobby.org/
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/cat-ladies-snatch-australian-christian-lobbys-name/story-e6frfkp9-1226631165790

Just in case the above link reverts – the site currently has a wordpress blog from the Australian Cat Ladies… and has nothing to do with scary Christians.

The Australian Christian Lobby (or ACL), who forgot to renew the domain name (or some such) are a undeniably evil pack of bigoted fuckwits who deserve all the hatred and vitriol they get….. and then some.