# I know I'm a smartass because....



## sossego (May 18, 2013)

I started this thread.


----------



## ShelLuser (May 19, 2013)

Because I dare to tell you that you're wrong 

(without sharing a reason of course, that's what makes me a smarter ass :e).


----------



## graudeejs (May 19, 2013)

Because my ass is smart[red]*.*[/red]


----------



## Erratus (May 21, 2013)

Oneway using maybe safe but not smart.
Nowadays smart became a synonym for managed.


----------



## SirDice (May 22, 2013)

Because I got fired for putting an "I park like an idiot" sticker on some moron's car.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (May 22, 2013)

Did you really?!

I once got fired because I complained about not getting paid and refusing to sign off on documentation that was illegal.


----------



## Beastie (May 22, 2013)

SirDice said:
			
		

> Because I got fired for putting an "I park like an idiot" sticker on some moron's car.


Uh-oh! It wasn't the CEO's car by chance, was it?! :e


----------



## SirDice (May 22, 2013)

I don't know, must have been some hotshot manager. There weren't a lot of spaces in the car park and I really hate idiots that think they have a right to take up more than one space. I mean he (I assume it was a he) parked smack in the middle of two parking spaces.

But if they want to fire me for sticking up for myself, so be it. If that's the kind of company they want to be I don't even want to work for them any more anyway.


----------



## jrm@ (May 22, 2013)

How did they find out it was you?


----------



## SirDice (May 22, 2013)

Because I'm arrogant enough to tell them it was me.


----------



## gkontos (May 22, 2013)

Translation, _I am an ass and I park wherever I want to..._


----------



## SirDice (May 22, 2013)

Haha... A friend of mine pointed me to a sticker that read, "If you f**k like you park, you will never get it in."

Though that would have been a little _too_ much :e


----------



## jozze (Jun 6, 2013)

... I refuse to read MS Office .doc* files. I could convert them to .pdf myself using various internet applications, but I always send back emails with complaints about non-portability of such files.

This is again wrong, but I suffer from lack of respect for people who use * Office programs for serious scientific work, seminars, manuals, diplomas etc. in my field (physics/mathematics). Especially if they used MS Excel for the graphs.


----------



## fonz (Jun 7, 2013)

A word of warning: people who send you MS Office documents often don't know any better and complaining doesn't always help, it may even piss them off. People don't usually take kindly to being confronted with their own stupidity. Been there, done that, never got the t-shirt. Way before the days of OpenOffice/LibreOffice etc. I had to work with a particularly braindead secretary who sent HTML mail, sent MS documents, sent e-mails that were formatted worse than what we sometimes get here on the forums, etc. But when I dared to even subtly hint at anything she would go off on a rant so stupid, ignorant and uninformed (obviously referring to all sorts of thing that had absolutely no relevance whatsoever) that I couldn't even be bothered to dignify it with a response of any kind for that would have only made things worse.

Sometimes people can be educated, but other times people are just too stupid and/or proud to waste your precious time on.


----------



## jozze (Jun 7, 2013)

I know, but I get just so annoyed by such ignorance. If you have to fill in any serious applications, they are all in the .pdf format (more or less). But then I get some people who are sending me .doc documents and my blood boils. 

I remember when I was going in high school, and I prepared some presentations in PowerPoint. I was using version 2001, and in school they had 2005 version (or something like that), and they couldn't open it. This was my first encounter with clumsiness of MS Office. In order to milk people of their money, their standards are not always backwards compatible.

In the following years, I have discovered, that even if you managed to somehow open the document, the formatting will be completely different. Pictures are flying across allover the document and if you don't have that particular font you're in for a treat. Excel is another matter. It's clumsiness beats people with university education, and with it it's still impossible to create custom fit. Furthermore, MS created another standard, making the other obsolete, so maybe in the future the support for .doc format will be discontinued. This isn't what you expect from a standard! I have vowed I will have nothing to do with MS Office again.

I am not saying that everyone should do what I say and write .pdf files. But if I see that it was done in an * Office program, I just cannot bring myself to take that document seriously.

It's like rules of this forum: if you want people to take you seriously, you have to make an effort, and pay attention on the formatting/spelling/labeling etc. If you create an * Office document, there is no effort. At least press that "[cmd=""]convert to .pdf[/cmd]" button when you're done writing, is that so much to ask? Maybe it is, and that's why I am a smartass :e.


----------



## Dies_Irae (Jun 7, 2013)

At work (a Microsoft-centric environment x(), at least once a day someone calls me on the phone whining about the fact that his/her XP machine is "veeery slooow". The first thing I do is killing the antivirus :e, gaining an average 20-30% in performance.



> User: Wow, now it's waaay snappier! I hope it stays so...
> Me: Keep hoping...



Note: the (l)users here are worse then any computer virus ever created. No matter what/how may antivirus software you install, they are always able to destroy their PC. So trust me, a day without antivirus won't do any damage that they have not yet done.


----------



## fonz (Jun 7, 2013)

@@jozze:

I understand and share your frustration. I do understand that people want an office suite, but unfortunately MS Office, OpenOffice.Org and LibreOffice all make it way too easy to create crappy and unportable documents. At least the latter two are free, but how people and entire businesses can shell out hundreds if not thousands of dollars/pounds/euros for what is essentially crapware is beyond me.


----------



## expl (Jun 7, 2013)

Because I use words like _context_ and _relative_ in every conversation.


----------



## ShelLuser (Jun 7, 2013)

Apologies up front, just got back from the "home terrace" (balcony) enjoying a cold Palm, while a Grolsch is waiting for me in the fridge 

Me a smartass?

Because I now feel like writing up _the_ ultimate L.A.R.T. (*L*user *A*ttitude *R*eadjustment *T*ool) for @jozze and then send him the highly functional automated .docx macro document: "_Oh, I thought you used Office too..._" (<running & ducking>!).

Sorry, sorry, sorry... ok; all borderlining "pun" aside: I consider myself an MS Office 2010 "power" user, simply because my whole company rests on it and I use some relatively advanced VBA powered templates for my common day work (not going too much off topic, but when I set up a bill in Word it automatically contacts Outlook to retrieve information such as addressee information and such. All manually coded stuff).

When you have a subscription with my company you get your bills 2 folded: a regular one using common mail, and the other electronically.

So the first thing I did?  Code something like this:


```
Dim melding As Integer
Dim desktop, brief As String

brief = Left$(ActiveDocument.Name, Len(ActiveDocument.Name) - 4) + "pdf"
ActiveDocument.SaveAs2 FileName:=desktop + brief, FileFormat:=wdFormatPDF, AddToRecentFiles:=False
melding = MsgBox(brief + " opgeslagen op de desktop.", vbInformation, "Document geÃ«xporteerd")
```
(small snippet, not going _too_ much off topic here)

This basically exports the Word document I'm working on in PDF format and saves it on my desktop. From there I manually process it by e-mailing, deleting, and setting a reminder in Outlook's todo items to make sure that I double check if customers have actually paid (even though I work in IT I wouldn't trust my income to be processed completely automated).

Darn, guess that doesn't make me such a smart ass after all, or does it? :\

Either way; probably needless to say but even as an "MS Office 2010 fan" I still wholeheartedly agree with your frustrations.


----------



## gkontos (Jun 7, 2013)

I consider Excel to be the most useful product that Microsoft ever created.

I think I now qualify for the thread.


----------



## jozze (Jun 7, 2013)

Double LOL :e! Just what I'd expect from this awesome community .



			
				ShelLuser said:
			
		

> Because I now feel like writing up _the_ ultimate L.A.R.T. (*L*user *A*ttitude *R*eadjustment *T*ool) for @jozze and then send him the highly functional automated .docx macro document: "_Oh, I thought you used Office too..._" (<running & ducking>!).



Well, you can make all sorts of macros, and make your document print letters with tulips and musical composition, but this doesn't mean you'll be able to reinvent the way people read books. BTW I am not saying *Office is all bad. I'm just saying the bad pretty much outweighs the good.



			
				gkontos said:
			
		

> I consider Excel to be the most useful product that Microsoft ever created.
> 
> I think I now qualify for the thread.



Could be, but I prefer awk/sed + gnuplot in its stead.

Yup, definitely smartasses :e.


----------



## ShelLuser (Jun 7, 2013)

jozze said:
			
		

> Double LOL :e! Just what I'd expect from this awesome commuity .


+1

I wonder if the moderators also adjust our spelling mistakes, because uhm.. well...  _community_?  (no offence; honest. I'm simply writing a message while I probably shouldn't have ).



			
				jozze said:
			
		

> Well, you can make all sorts of macros, and make your document print letters with tulips and musical composition, but this doesn't mean you'll be able to reinvent the way people read books.


Oh but you can  Because some people really need it (link to funny Youtube.com movie about people unable to read :e).



			
				jozze said:
			
		

> BTW I am not saying *Office is all bad. I'm just saying the bad pretty much outweighs the good.


Nah, no need, no need. If I had the slightest idea that the criticism wasn't genuine I really wouldn't have bothered writing up something stupid up there (sharing VBA code on a FreeBSD forum? Maybe it does make me a smartass after all ).


----------



## jozze (Jun 7, 2013)

LOL 

And as for correcting my spelling mistakes... well, you're a smartass, so it can't be helped :e.


----------



## cah (Jun 23, 2013)

I once got fired from my university because my tutoring methods were too aggressively academic.


----------



## throAU (Jun 24, 2013)

gkontos said:
			
		

> I consider Excel to be the most useful product that Microsoft ever created.
> 
> I think I now qualify for the thread.



Excel is unfortunately too powerful. You end up with end users creating their own non-relational databases with it.

I'm a smartass because once many years ago (2003?) I was looking for documentation on mpd and the first (and most detailed) hit that came up on _G_oogle was a brief HOWTO that I wrote and posted to one of the old BSD forums about 6-12 months prior.  Unfortunately, it didn't help solve my problem :e


----------



## gkontos (Jun 24, 2013)

cah said:
			
		

> I once got fired from my university because my tutoring methods were too aggressively academic.



That sounds very interesting. I would love to read the full story.


----------



## cah (Jun 25, 2013)

gkontos said:
			
		

> That sounds very interesting. I would love to read the full story.



It was interesting to say the least.  In college I was known for my intensive philosophy research and my papers.  When I was hired as a tutor, I had a hard time reading the kinds of things that students came up with for theses and supporting arguments.  My personality at the time was a bit much for some people, and I made it quite clear how I felt about the students work.  I often would start thinking about the paper topic that they had and start to come up with ideas of my own, encouraging them to do way more research than they had planned.  Eventually I was fired because I was not being an 'easy' tutor.  Funny thing was, I was not out of work long.  I told some of my professors about it, and a couple of them wrote to my supervisor about why I should work as a tutor.  It was a pump to my ego for sure, and it worked to get me hired again.  

Looking back, I could have been a better tutor.  Most of my problem was my expansive ego at the time.  I had just finished a book, and had gotten some cred around campus for one of my philosophy papers.  I think I knew intuitively that tutoring was not really for me, but I needed money...


----------



## cah (Jun 25, 2013)

I think that I just didn't want students to be so satisfied with what they had for a thesis, I wanted them to desire more for their work.


----------



## ShelLuser (Jun 25, 2013)

No,{4} (regexps, you know ),

Trying not to cross a line here while also trying to share my personal take on the matter, perhaps violating a few rules in between. I was just heading out to get some sleep when I came across this and I can so awfully closely relate to some of the things you shared here...

Just for the record: I might be bending a few rules to try and get my somewhat personal point across, I have no intention what so ever to break the rules. Even so, I feel this needs to be done in the way I'm doing it. Apologies up front, but I honestly see no other way to share what I'm trying to share here.



			
				cah said:
			
		

> When I was hired as a tutor, I had a hard time reading the kinds of things that students came up with for theses and supporting arguments.  My personality at the time was a bit much for some people, and I made it quite clear how I felt about the students work. I often would start thinking about the paper topic that they had and start to come up with ideas of my own, encouraging them to do way more research than they had planned. Eventually I was fired because I was not being an 'easy' tutor.


I could be all wrong here and as such make a complete fool of myself, but it's a risk I'm willing to take. I get the impression that you tried to get more out of your students than they would show because you had a hunch there was way more potential underneath than they would show. Whether or not that was so is something most likely no one can possibly answer but I get the impression this could be the underlying issue.

And I honestly think that anyone who has _seriously_ tried to help out others with their (technical) problems has experienced that very same feeling. Very hard to express but something in the likes of: "If you know how to setup and administrate a mail server then surely you should know that an open proxy is a horrible setup"? (open proxy: mail sent in from a public location can reach destinations within that same public location).

That was one of my rants before realizing that some people really don't know. They learned about MTA's, they learned about setting the whole thing up, but the one thing they didn't learn nor realized so far was that there were "bad guys" out there who would try and take advantage. Surely anyone with "_some_" interest in the matter would know better?

But sometimes their interest doesn't go as deep as yours...  And some honestly get stuck at the point which their tutors taught them.



			
				cah said:
			
		

> Funny thing was, I was not out of work long.  I told some of my professors about it, and a couple of them wrote to my supervisor about why I should work as a tutor.  It was a pump to my ego for sure, and it worked to get me hired again.
> 
> Looking back, I could have been a better tutor.


Here I go again, spouting off without even knowing the circumstances..  Even so: no, you couldn't have been in my opinion. The only thing you could have done different -in my very personal opinion- is bring the message a bit different. Or so I think.

But that, well, takes patience and some self understanding. Let me put this differently.. You're not alone there.

Totally different yet still related in my opinion: take the rules of this very same forum we're all on. I only reread them because @DutchDeamon bumped them (and I thought there was something new). Let me put this differently, do you really think "those guys" (no disrespect) would put something like this in for no reason:



> 2 - Be respectful of all users at all times and respect the forum staff. This means please use etiquette and politeness. Treat people with kindness and gentleness. Be considerate to the person asking the question. We were all a green user at one point. Yes, some users are harder to help than others, but please be respectful to all users.


Please don't try to see something between the lines here, there is nothing but me just trying to get my point across.

But I can't help wonder if these issues don't overlap each other. The expectation of "if you know A then surely you know about B too because it's a given", even though to some people it's not that obvious.

Pardon me if I'm now completely ranting and totally off the mark (luckily we're in the off topic forum) but I honestly get the idea this could be an underlying issue.



			
				cah said:
			
		

> Most of my problem was my expansive ego at the time.  I had just finished a book, and had gotten some cred around campus for one of my philosophy papers.  I think I knew intuitively that tutoring was not really for me, but I needed money...


Self reflection and the openness to do just that is where it all starts in my opinion. And that, sir, honestly earns my respect even though we don't even know each other.

As mentioned earlier; apologies if I'm making some false assumptions or such but alas, there's nothing more I can add to this.


----------



## throAU (Jun 25, 2013)

ShelLuser said:
			
		

> And I honestly think that anyone who has _seriously_ tried to help out others with their (technical) problems has experienced that very same feeling. Very hard to express but something in the likes of: "If you know how to setup and administrate a mail server then surely you should know that an open proxy is a horrible setup"? (open proxy: mail sent in from a public location can reach destinations within that same public location).
> 
> That was one of my rants before realizing that some people really don't know. They learned about MTA's, they learned about setting the whole thing up, but the one thing they didn't learn nor realized so far was that there were "bad guys" out there who would try and take advantage. Surely anyone with "_some_" interest in the matter would know better?



I think you under-estimate the number of kids who get roped into system administration because they "know Linux" or are "good with computers" and end up badly configuring an MTA for the company/family business/etc. ("Hey, it works!") as a result. They don't have any interest in learning an MTA, they just want to send/receive e-mail via SMTP.

The fact that it is 2013 and we still have no easy out of the box way of configuring a small e-mail site in a fairly automated, safe, secure manner is a total joke. It really should be as easy as

Enter your domain name: 
Enter your LAN subnet:
Enable Anti-spam features? (y/n):
Relay inbound e-mail to mailbox server? (for local delivery just press enter here)
Anything more advanced should be a manual process, but I'd wager that answering the above questions should be enough to configure SMTP for 95% of all non-enterprise sites out there.


----------



## wblock@ (Jun 25, 2013)

Two things:

1. FreeBSD has always been a toolkit.  "Here are the pieces, set it up any way you like."  A canned setup is more appropriate in PC-BSD.  And of course there's the question of which options to choose for a canned setup: mail server, antispam measures, and so on.  Bikesheds ahoy!

2. It can be argued that helping users set up a mail server without any understanding of it would be doing no favors to them or the rest of us.  More BSD-like is to have documents that show how to set up a mail server.  That helps to give them an least an introduction to what is happening and why.


----------



## cah (Jun 25, 2013)

ShelLuser said:
			
		

> I get the impression that you tried to get more out of your students than they would show because you had a hunch there was way more potential underneath than they would show.



This is the way that I saw it at the time.  I wanted to encourage the kinds of habits that had gotten me in a tutoring position in the first place.  I went to college because it seemed like the next logical step for my life, but when I was there I found that it was much more than that.  I had a hard time with students who seemed only interested in completing the assignment so they could go out and party.  For me, the assignment was the party :e  

Having browsed a lot of computing forums in the last few years, I feel like I understand what you are talking about.  It is important to have tact and patience with those just looking for fast 'solutions,' even though it might be difficult.  My tutoring situation is a good allegory for this.

@wblock@, your comment resonates because this is why I am so attracted to the *BSD's.  I found it so liberating to be just given the information and allowed to craft my own system.  I may not be a very advanced user, but I still appreciate this philosophy nonetheless.  To me, this kind of system values the user (and the user's judgment) much more than a canned system.       



			
				ShelLuser said:
			
		

> Self reflection and the openness to do just that is where it all starts in my opinion. And that, sir, honestly earns my respect even though we don't even know each other.



Thanks, man.


----------



## throAU (Jun 26, 2013)

wblock@ said:
			
		

> Two things:
> 
> 1. FreeBSD has always been a toolkit.  "Here are the pieces, set it up any way you like."  A canned setup is more appropriate in PC-BSD.  And of course there's the question of which options to choose for a canned setup: mail server, antispam measures, and so on.  Bikesheds ahoy!



Perhaps I should have been more specific:  I wasn't referring specifically to FreeBSD.  FreeBSD core aren't the guys who write sendmail or postfix for example.  And yes, I agree PC-BSD is likely a more likely place to find this.

However, ANY distribution of ANY MTA I have seen - none of them I have seen so far (including Exchange) enable a novice to get a BASIC working, *sensible *email configuration configured properly without extensive prior SMTP knowledge, digging around on forums, configuring third party milters, etc.

And whilst yes, some people want to write calculators and stuff in sendmail.cf, the vast, vast majority of cases (especially where the user is a novice) are covered by either a single host sending/receiving and hosting email, or a relaying situation for a single domain.  

Which should be a fairly easy configuration to standardize and supply as a script as part of the MTA distribution, which is optionally run as part of installation of the MTA.

Given that the people most affected by broken MTAs (open relay, etc) are the "rest of the internet" (via the flood of UCE, etc.), it is in the community's interest as a whole to make basic secure, *working *MTA configuration as simple as possible.

20 years in the industry has shown me that if you want to fix a widespread problem with misconfiguration in an application, documentation won't work.  There's already plenty (too much?) documentation out there to sift through - much of it out of date or detailing features that most users will never need/want.  Or - written by novices on forums - the blind leading the blind.

The more effective way to tackle the problem is to make the default "lazy setup" secure.  Because many people are lazy.


----------



## gkontos (Jun 26, 2013)

There are actually a few, iREDMail for example is one of them. Still due to the complexity of the way MTA's work it is hard to create a simple solution.


----------



## kpa (Jun 26, 2013)

I think it's easy to argue that nowadays the only safe default is what FreeBSD does with sendmail(8), enable only local submission of mail and that's it. The reason is that if you enable an MTA that receives mail for your domain with just some default rules that are supposedly "safe", you are going to get pwned by spammers very very quick if you don't also set up things like greylisting, spam filter and a virus filter*.* Even with just those it's already far outside of "simple defaults" and you're not even close to a working system that you can trust. Email is a complex beast and should be treated as such.


----------



## igorino (Jul 6, 2013)

*B*ecause I was sued, fired and humiliated after putting in the monthly web usage report of my agency the child porn activity of the governor office computers of my old state (which I was forced to move to avoid other "consequences")*.*


----------



## sossego (Jul 6, 2013)

Expect resistance from those in power when you stand up to what they do.


----------



## jozze (Jul 6, 2013)

@igorino, what the hell? You should include this in the report to the police, not only to the monthly web usage report. I'd like to hear more of that story.


----------



## igorino (Jul 6, 2013)

We'd make monthly reports to show the state audit the use of our link, we did all offices except the governor's office, one day I decided to add computers from his office in the reports, although my boss telling me not to do it (I already knew something suspicious was happening, but I knew not it was something serious). The other day the state auditors and advisers of the governor were waiting for the firewall/web cache administrator, me, outside the office, right there I was warned of all that would happen to me, chronologically, for wanting to change something.


> "If you want to make enemies, try to change something." - Woodrow Wilson


----------



## gkontos (Jul 7, 2013)

igorino said:
			
		

> The other day the state auditors and advisers of the governor were waiting for the firewall/web cache administrator, me, outside the office, right there I was warned of all that would happen to me, chronologically, for wanting to change something.



Go public to the media. These people should be locked up.


----------



## break19 (Jul 7, 2013)

My grandmother was discussing my new job and says "So where are you now" in reference to my training. I answered her with "on this barstool at moms sitting in front of you." "I meant in your job, you smartass shit" LOL, love my granny


----------



## phoenix (Jul 9, 2013)

break19 said:
			
		

> My grandmother was discussing my new job and says "So where are you now" in reference to my training. I answered her with "on this barstool at moms sitting in front of you." "I meant in your job, you smartass shit" LOL, love my granny



My Baba (grandmother) had a similar retort to anyone asking her, "How do you feel today?"

"With my hands." 

She was a real smartass, alright.  Maybe that's where I get it from...


----------



## break19 (Jul 10, 2013)

Ahahaha! Nice. Love it.


----------

