MystikIncarnate

I'm a lot like you. For the most part, I try to look beyond the question being asked, and find the root cause. If the root cause is because of a skill issue, I'll direct them to the next logical resource. If it's not a skill issue, or I can't determine that it's a skill issue, then I'll continue to test until I can make that determination.

9 times out of 10, if I find a solution to make a thing work in a program, I'll share that with them, and let them take it from there.

A lot of the people I support are working in the finance space and my company has an entire support department for finance applications. I'll either bounce the problem off of them, or just direct them to the finance support team for guidance.

This wasn't either of those things. It wasn't even asking how. It was straight up telling me to do a thing for them, in a program they should know how to use. It's not a complex finance program or anything, it's literally Outlook.

The short version is that I explained that we have a company policy that we are support, not education.

This is not a support issue because no technical issue is preventing the user from getting this completed.

I work in IT. I usually call my job "IT support" but I'm also technically the system admin, and network admin.

Today, I had someone ask me to delete a calendar for them in Outlook. It wasn't a shared or special calendar, it was literally just a calendar in their normal outlook.

Bear in mind, they didn't ask how to do it. They asked me to do it.

That's a skill issue right there. I'm not in the business of doing other people's work for them. Now and then I'll entertain the odd request of "how do I do x" and show someone how to get something done, mainly because it's a lot less effort than telling them that I didn't go to university for teaching, and all the ensuing arguments thereafter, because there's always arguments.

But this was straight up "do my job for me".

Lol, no, I have my own shit to do.

I would argue that it's common sense to at least make a point in time copy, to... IDK, a USB drive? Before trying to implement a new source/control system.

Just plug in an external drive, or a thumb drive, copy/paste, unplug it, then proceed with testing.

I don't see how anyone who values their time and effort could do any less.

As for the files, undelete is a thing, and it shouldn't be hard to do.

While I have some sympathy for anyone who loses months of work, as an IT administrator by day, all I have to say about their lack of backups, and lack of RTFM before messing with shit is:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA. you got what you deserved fucker. GL.YF.

It's not difficult for me, to say the feeling isn't felt very strongly, would probably be an understatement.

The other comment I want to make is that I agree that there's too many humans, however, the economy survives by constant growth, so that's a thing. It has to do with how money works and is valuated.

The video "money as debt" is a good resource for more info on that.

Bluntly, I don't care since I'll be long dead when the economy collapses under it's own weight.

I'm on the other side of the generational gap (nearly gen x, but millennial), and I was terrified during my late teens/early 20s of becoming a parent. I could not imagine raising a child the way I was living paycheque to paycheque, if I had a paycheque at all....

That feeling never went away, and I still wouldn't know how I could possibly afford that. I decided in my mid 20s that children would be a decision I would leave up to my wife (wherever I had a wife to make the decision). I was/am instinctually driven to want them (a feeling I mostly disregard), but given the state of the world and my own financial situation, I can't say that I want to force any intelligent being, especially one that is my offspring, to suffer through a lifetime of this shit like I have been forced to so far.

I didn't ask to be here. If someone had given me a choice, I would have probably opted out of gestures all of this.

I'm currently in a long term relationship, and we're planning on signing the papers next year, so soon I'll have someone I can legitimately call my wife. She is very much on the side of "never have kids". So that's my decision as well.

Instinctual drive isn't enough to cause me to overlook how things are going. I love my (non-existent) children too much, than to force them into living a life in these circumstances. Fuck no.

I'm Canadian. I mostly do.

Unless I'm actually off on a medical leave, then maybe not. IDK.

All I'm trying to say is that my employer is actually not bad. Almost every other job I've had, has been some variation of bad.

Also, on medical leave, you qualify for EI where I am, so it's kind of paid. Honestly not worth the hassle for a couple of weeks, but anything taking months or more, it's better than a kick in the privates.

Keep everything local is a great strategy until your house burns down or your hard drive or SSD decides to end it's own life.

I'm not saying that you should use one drive. I'm saying that you should have backups. If all you can get is cloud storage, then one drive might fit the bill. Maybe it won't. I don't know you or what you want from a backup.

I back up my files to a NAS on my lan, but I also use one drive and Google drive when I need to.

All I'm trying to say is: one drive isn't necessarily the worst option. Raw dogging a single local storage drive as your only copy of the data you're trying to hold onto, is much worse than one drive.

Other than that, I'll just reiterate: back up your shit. And I want to add, check your bitlocker to see if it's on. If it is, back up your recovery key to somewhere safe. Bitlocker, in and of itself isn't a bad thing. I would argue that it's best practice to have some kind of FDE, and bitlocker can achieve that. Just back up the recovery key, for the love of God.

Pro tip. "Print" the recovery to a PDF, then email that file to yourself. Quick and easy. The option to save your recovery key to a file, will not allow that file to be saved to the drive that it unlocks, but if you print it, you can save it as PDF without the same limitations. Just don't leave it on the encrypted drive. Literally put it anywhere else. A USB drive, a NAS, an email, cloud storage, whatever you like. I'm not your boss.

Save yourself a metric fuckton of work, and/or lost data; back up your shit.

EDIT, some words (auto carrot), also, WTF? I'm being down voted for saying you should have backups? I expect better from lemmings.

Related, I'm a sysadmin, and I work in IT, and I approve this message. Back up your shit.

I will never again wonder how a group like the KKK was able to form, thrive, and persist for so long, inside the USA.

So glad I don't live there. I'm worried about you all.

Good luck.

Same people, I bet.

I call any non-native citizen (anyone not born in my country) an import.

Like beer.