I still think we're miscommunicating. I think I'm the office Windows guru due to the ignorance of those around me, not due to any special skills on my part. Remember this isn't a software company.
Unless I'm misunderstanding you and valkyriekaren has gone to work for Microsoft.
Yes, I misread your answer, but I don't suppose your office mates are more than averagely ignorant about Windows as a proportion of its user base. Your answer appropriately reflects your expertise.
Heh. I'm on the "I can get along" rather than "office windows guru" by virtue of working tech support with several people far more windowsguruish than I.
On the other hand I usually screw with the registry via Telnet. Does that net me any points?
Clarification on windows experience: I work in an office full of windows experts, so while I'd say I can more than hold my own, I also don't fit into either of the more experienced categories.
I've gone into the registry once or twice to remove branding from the title bar in Internet Explorer, but only while reading instructions. On a professional level, when customers used to ask about removing the branding from their copies of IE when I worked for Bigpond, we initially told them it was unsupported, but when that raised issues of monopoly we referred them to our back office who would email the instructions on how to do to the customer.
When I used to work in 2nd level software support I was rootling around tweaking things in the registry all bloody day. But not any more, not for two years now. I don't even care what came after win2k, as I don't have to think about it.
I am the office Windows expert mostly due to the relative ignorance of my colleagues. They're generally better with applications than me, but when it comes to recovering lost folders, mapping drives and editing what file type opens with what application, I am the guru...!
I'd like to add that I'll probably be putting out a plea for help regarding editing registry entries as I'VE got a conflict issue RE: Easy CD Creator 4 vs Windows XP.
The only way to resolve it is tweak the registry but the whole thing freaks me out.
regularly tweak / play / add / delete registry keys manually or via code as required, since forever. Beta tester of Win95 and 2k - found some faults too! - so reasonable aware of the internal concepts (have even visited Redmond, nut then lots of people have ;-)
Clarification: it depends what you mean by 'windows experience' - are you referring to (a) writing kernel level WDM P&P drivers, (b)administrating an extensive windows network or (c) changing a subheading style in Word?
(a) I'm your man (b) I can hold my own (c) I break out in a cold sweat and run screaming. There are some things that man* was not meant to know.
* 'man' as in 'mankind', in the absence of some more gender neutral term springing to mind
Hmm, dunno. I was looking for a nice rounded cliche, really. 'Man' in this context is an abbreviation of 'Mankind', which is arguably an abbreviation of Humankind, so I felt that would do. Explicitly writing the full form seems to me somewhat acoustically/visually clunky. Humanity works slightly better, but I guess I'd rather go for an entirely different and unpolluted aphorism. Perhaps something Quatermassian ("The horror! The horror!")? That would certainly sum up my relationship with MS Word very nicely...
It's crazy, isn't it. I'm doing some maintenance work on smartphone pocketpc driver code at the moment (including registry access, as it happens) and I'm like a small puppy on speed: zap that class - KAPOW!; rewrite this data structure - SHAZAM!; EWWW - *really* don't like the way those build options are defined, let's tear them down and do them properly - WOOSH!; etc. Then in a few days I'm going to have to write the associated design document, and I just know I'll spend 2 hours trying to get one line of text into the right font and indentation and be in serious danger of defenestrating my pc out of sheer frustration. Duh.
Points taken about "Things no gender-neutral-human-personage was meant to know". Lovecraft just wouldn't have been the same.
On the docs front, may I suggest DocBook? Semantic markup rules.
Admittedly there's a bit of a learning curve, but you can forget about the presentation until you're (nearly) finished, and then generate PDF, HTML, or whatever. Then have hassles about the presentation.
There are, of course, other markup dialects, both XML-based and not. But I'm sure you know all this, and are only using Word because it's there. Given that, you could always get the content down in a text editor, and import it into Word and add the formatting later.
Sadly the vast bulk of documentation I do gets delivered to a diverse set of customers, often using their own templates. Trying to persuade them all to adopt non-word anything would be somewhat akin to drinking a pan-galactic gargle blaster, except without the lemon.
Actually I have made a couple changes but only when following step-by-step instructions, so doesn't really count.
In my troubleshooting guide to life, I tend to do: 1. Restart 2. Check everything's on, attached, and Windows admits that 3. Download new drivers and patches and stuff 4. Find David
I haven't played with a registry entry at all since moving in with conflux...
To clarify my answers: I've edited a Windows registry entry, but only under guidance from someone else who knew far more about it than I did; and I'm only cnsidered the office Windows expert in comparison to a bunch of middle-aged guys who are strictly two-finger-typists without a clue between them - therefore not much of an expert at all!
I would say the number of people who can only "hold their own in Windows" is disproportionately high as compared to the people who've edited the registry.
Isn't registry-editing not supposed to be something you need to do by hand under any but the most extreme circumstances?
If so, why are all these perfectly normal users finding the need to do so?
(Those are rhetorical questions. Feel free to answer with rhetoric.)
If you develop under windows you really have to edit the registry at some point even if it is just for turning on file name completion when using a command prompt window.
To clarify my answers, it could best be said that I am an ex-Windows guru; I haven't used any Microsoft products in about five years, so I know nothing of 2K or XP. The greatest amount of Windows knowledge I had was for 3.x, as when my dad got a laptop for business use it came with MS-DOS, and as he had no interest in using it and gave it to me (my parents are Apple people and my mother gets discounted Apple stuff for being an educator, so my dad was fine with the IIGS), I installed 3.0 as soon as it came out. I had to support 3.x and 95 when I was still doing tech support, and I had 98 on my own machine before I blew it away and installed FreeBSD. I've probably forgotten most of what I knew, but if I sat down with the ones I have used it would probably only take a few hours to get re-acclimated and if I sat down at the new ones it might take a day or two.
OTOH, in comparison with Aidan, I'm still a Windows guru. ;>
My windows skills are not strong. I was considered the Linux guru in my research group (High Performance Computing) - I'm not sure I agree with that assesment of my abilities. I've been avoiding learning anything about windows (but I hear XP is a real OS). I occassionaly muddle through a bit of debugging on windows for my friends.
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Also the first question should have had an option something along the lines of "knee deep in registry tweaking every morning before 8am, mate."
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Unless I'm misunderstanding you and
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*Pout*
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On the other hand I usually screw with the registry via Telnet. Does that net me any points?
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"Yes, but I'm woefully out of practice at Windows admin and haven't done anything like that for a while."
Actually I'm a horribly lazy home admin, but that's largely beside the point.
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C.
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I am the office Windows expert mostly due to the relative ignorance of my colleagues. They're generally better with applications than me, but when it comes to recovering lost folders, mapping drives and editing what file type opens with what application, I am the guru...!
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The only way to resolve it is tweak the registry but the whole thing freaks me out.
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Can make windows do many things, but would rather administer an AS/400 or, in fact, telephone switches than Windows.
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(a) I'm your man
(b) I can hold my own
(c) I break out in a cold sweat and run screaming. There are some things that man* was not meant to know.
* 'man' as in 'mankind', in the absence of some more gender neutral term springing to mind
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Then in a few days I'm going to have to write the associated design document, and I just know I'll spend 2 hours trying to get one line of text into the right font and indentation and be in serious danger of defenestrating my pc out of sheer frustration. Duh.
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On the docs front, may I suggest DocBook? Semantic markup rules.
Admittedly there's a bit of a learning curve, but you can forget about the presentation until you're (nearly) finished, and then generate PDF, HTML, or whatever. Then have hassles about the presentation.
There are, of course, other markup dialects, both XML-based and not. But I'm sure you know all this, and are only using Word because it's there. Given that, you could always get the content down in a text editor, and import it into Word and add the formatting later.
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In my troubleshooting guide to life, I tend to do:
1. Restart
2. Check everything's on, attached, and Windows admits that
3. Download new drivers and patches and stuff
4. Find David
I haven't played with a registry entry at all since moving in with
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Isn't registry-editing not supposed to be something you need to do by hand under any but the most extreme circumstances?
If so, why are all these perfectly normal users finding the need to do so?
(Those are rhetorical questions. Feel free to answer with rhetoric.)
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OTOH, in comparison with Aidan, I'm still a Windows guru. ;>
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My windows skills are not strong. I was considered the Linux guru in my research group (High Performance Computing) - I'm not sure I agree with that assesment of my abilities.
I've been avoiding learning anything about windows (but I hear XP is a real OS). I occassionaly muddle through a bit of debugging on windows for my friends.