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Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Month: March 2023 (Page 1 of 2)

Workflow Redux

29 March, 2023 /

As a quick follow-up to yesterday’s adventure, ConnectWise Support called me yesterday just before close of business to explain what went awry. In short: The third condition failed on thousands of tickets because prior to 2016, status changes were stored differently in the database. So the condition for “last ticket status update not more than 1 hour ago” was checking for the new kind of status change flag, not the old kind.

We had almost no way of knowing this would happen, short of memorizing every feature and function change over the course of a decade’s worth of software updates to this platform.

By the by, at one point we hit 3000 open tickets. Fun.

Two upsides: One, this should never happen again (on this particular service board) because, well, we’ve now re-closed all those tickets with the new status change flag. Two, my performance metrics for the month are through the roof:

The other four-digit bar is the Operations Manager who decided to pitch in on the ticket-closing efforts.

Do I get a raise for this, boss?

Workflow Overflow

28 March, 2023 /

It seemed like a simple request.

“If a technician closes a ticket without attaching a Configuration (device), reopen it, send them an email, and change the ticket’s status so they know they need to remedy the lack of Configuration before closing it again.”

Cool. I can do that.

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Depeche Mode – Memento Mori

25 March, 2023 /

I can imagine few situations more challenging than trying to craft an ostensibly commercial creative project almost immediately after the death of one of your longtime collaborators. How do you balance the push and pull of “the record has to sell or the label will be cranky with us” versus “this needs to be meaningful on some level”? I’m not sure I could do it, and I wholly understand why a band might just “nope” out of existence when one of its members passes on.

With all of that said, yesterday’s release of Memento Mori, Depeche Mode’s follow-up to 2017’s Spirit album and their first project since the death of Andy Fletcher last year, didn’t connect with me. Is it well crafted? Definitely, absolutely. Are the lyrics laden with meaning? I suppose so, but my brain doesn’t process lyrics very well so I’m only guessing here. And the problem is, I suspect that if lyrics were what I connected to in a song then I’d be faring much better with this record. They’re not, and I’m not.

Will I listen to most of it again? Probably not. It’s not bad, for the most part, barring a couple of tracks that actively repelled me. The album’s just not working for me. It might for you, though! And that’s cool.

Fire Emblem Engage – Story Thoughts

19 March, 2023 /

Over the weekend I finished off my first playthrough of Fire Emblem Engage, and I’ve been sitting with it for a little bit to percolate my impressions. Overall, in general? It’s a perfectly serviceable tale. There’s nothing groundbreaking in it, nor is there anything absolutely awful.

I don’t want to spoil specific details, but I can’t really talk about my reactions without giving some general things away, so… bail now if you aren’t done with the game and want to avoid anything spoiler-ish. For that matter, I’m also going to talk about some comparisons with Three Houses, so… again: Beyond this point there shall be spoilers-of-sorts.

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Meme Snark – Anime Edition

14 March, 2023 /

I don’t have anything to say, today, I just wanted to get this Space Battleship Yamato 2199 bit of silliness posted somewhere for safe keeping.

I liked the show well enough, but it wasn’t a nostalgia hit for me because I wasn’t a Star Blazers kid. I was a Robotech kid. Look, either you were one or the other, that’s just how it went.

Thank you, and please don’t forget to leave a plate of knives out (as it were) for Brutus and his boys to use tomorrow.

An hour of jet-lag twice per year

12 March, 2023 /

Seriously, can we just stop doing DST changes? Nobody actually wants this, right?

I know it’s only an hour, but throwing off my sleep schedule absolutely wrecks me for the four or so days afterward. Today, for instance, I’m struggling to type these words despite “only” losing an hour of sleep. And yes, I went to bed on time last night and (more or less) slept well, inasmuch as I ever do.

It’s annoying, pointless, probably causes actual harm (it’s a good thing I don’t drive, I’d almost certainly crash into something or someone today), and should just get done away with.

So say we all. Probably.

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