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  1. #21
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    Outside Philly
    Quote Originally Posted by duke74 View Post
    But did you get the client?
    Briefly but then they realized what I knew: the DC office managing director fancied himself a rainmaker but was really a low flow sprinkler who was mostly juggling his main dish and side dishes...

    ...which brings me to tech blunder 2: don’t give your underling permission access to your inbox if you’re going to conduct your literal affairs via work email and take part in the naked lady picture sharing pool with the office lawyers.

  2. #22

    Passwords

    I strive to use best practices with respect to passwords - I use a password database (offline only, in fact) that creates a different, complex password (e.g., YK|"~Hlf;8^RLol\:rG~WwGI#FO+9r-C ... btw, that's not one I actually use) for every login or account I have. I only know the master password of the database; I don't know any of my passwords for banking, investment, email, ... not even Netflix. I use 2FA when available, and don't answer security (password reset) questions with real answers (which are often easily found out through "social engineering") - they get another garbled string of letters, numbers, and symbols.

    I'm sure there are ways to further improve my approach, but I feel like I'm probably going to much greater lengths than most.

    The other day I'm linking an investment account to a bank account to allow for ACH transfers. I'm logged in to the former, and have the routing number and account number for the bank. I'm then presented with a security question, so I consult the password database for the garbled answer.

    Blunder: it appears that, for that account, I had only entered the answers, and failed to copy in the questions associated with them! Hmmm ... was YK|"~Hlf;8^RLol\:rG~WwGI#FO+9r-C the name of my first pet or 3rd grade teacher?

    Slight panic ensues. Luckily I have a paper backup of the password database in our safe deposit box, and it turns out I had handwritten on that printout the questions associated with each answer. Phew!

  3. #23
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    New York, NY
    50+ girls, all under age 11. Out of town weekend event. Pizza place. About to watch a movie.

    One of the dads uses his laptop to show the film. Up pops porn. Fortunately at one of the rare interludes of PG/R. Seconds tick as he scrambles to shift it to 101 Dalmatians, but those are loooong Grant Hill to Christian Laettner seconds.

  4. #24
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    Outside Philly
    Quote Originally Posted by johnb View Post
    50+ girls, all under age 11. Out of town weekend event. Pizza place. About to watch a movie.

    One of the dads uses his laptop to show the film. Up pops porn. Fortunately at one of the rare interludes of PG/R. Seconds tick as he scrambles to shift it to 101 Dalmatians, but those are loooong Grant Hill to Christian Laettner seconds.
    Oh my. That is dad nightmare fuel right there.

  5. #25
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Raleigh, NC
    Back in college I had an old school flip phone (circa 2007), but it did have the ability to load a handful of mp3s and play them. It even had some handy playback buttons (play, forward, back, etc) on the outside of the phone so that you could control the music without opening it (it was a Samsung, looked kind of like a pager...great phone and could really take a beating).

    I'm fast asleep in Diff EQ. Apparently my leg is pressing against the frame of the desk, right where the "play" button is on the phone. Get Back by Ludacris starts BLASTING in the middle of the class. Took me probably 10 seconds to wake up and realize what was happening, and another 20-30 seconds to figure out how to get it to stop.

  6. #26
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Location
    Winston’Salem
    Quote Originally Posted by brevity View Post
    I can think of a few.

    March 23-25, 1993: The three days when Bobby Cremins was South Carolina’s coach



    October 13, 2018: Fumbles Doom Jackets in Homecoming Loss



    May 12, 2019: Tech Drops Series Finale to Duke 10-4



    ETA: Oh, *those* kinds of Tech blunders. Never mind.
    Paul Hewitt's huge buyout, and the hiring of Brian Gregory, both wave & say hi.
    "Amazing what a minute can do."

  7. #27
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    Undisclosed
    Dean Smith getting tossed out of a Final Four game.

  8. #28
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    Outside Philly
    Quote Originally Posted by OldPhiKap View Post
    Dean Smith getting tossed out of a Final Four game.
    Blunder is in the eye of the beholder.

  9. #29
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    North of Durham
    I have spent much of my career in working in groups with the word “public” in the title - public sector, public finance, etc. In some of those jobs I did a lot of RFPs. I have learned the hard way that spell check does not help you if you drop the “L” from the word “public.”

    In my first job out of college in the late 90s, in the relatively early days of email, our department admin was very aggressive in monitoring our emails, reading each one closely. It wasn’t as easy to access a personal account back then so I sometimes used my work account for personal. One Thursday night, a friend who was in grad school returned home and sent me a very long, detailed description of time spent with a new lady friend. I arrived at work to see a printout of the email in my chair. I had to have a “conversation” with my boss, who had to act upset but was trying really hard not to laugh, then I had to call my friend, who was fast asleep and apologized to all. Going forward, my friends were more careful and would often write notes to the email checker at the end of notes to me.

  10. #30
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Asheville, NC
    I was a CompSCi undergrad at a small liberal arts college during the rise of the Internet age. I was asked to do a workshop with some faculty on how to use the World Wide Web, so I prepared a short talk with some room for interactive questions at the end.

    During the Q&A session, I fired up Netscape Navigator and projected the browser on the screen while I fielded questions. I don't remember the exact question, but it was something to do with how does one know the URL for popular sites? I commented that many are just the name of the organization + .com on the end.

    I then bandied about a list of common ones, you know, cnn.com, espn.com, and then I demonstrated one. The one I chose to demonstrate was the site for the White House. Naturally, I added .com and loaded the page for the handful (15ish) of faculty to see. Many of you already see my error, but the address for the White House ends in the .gov domain not .com. If you visit the one that ends in .com, it is (or at least was) a website of an adult variety with a definite NSFW (or school, in this case) image on the main page.

    I don't remember much of what happened after that, since it took me several seconds to realize the error, and change the projected image. I may have blacked out. We'll never know.
    Last edited by grad_devil; 04-01-2021 at 10:54 AM.

  11. #31
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Vermont
    I think the Johnson and Johnson subcontractors who just managed to bungle up the ingredients for the J&J vaccine (thereby ruining 15 million doses) merit mention. Measure twice, pour once.

  12. #32
    My wife, who is a corporate lawyer, has put together a 30-minute (or so) Powerpoint presentation that she calls "Practicing Safe Send" and she has given this talk to many of her corporate clients and their employees and also other groups like the Chamber of Commerce. She has a whole list of embarrassing "fails" where people did very stupid things with emails and other forms of work-related social media (and, in some cases, they were fired from their jobs). She even had mouse pads made up with a list of everything you think about when using email. I now use that mouse pad at my office.

  13. #33
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    Outside Philly
    Quote Originally Posted by CrazyNotCrazie View Post
    I have spent much of my career in working in groups with the word “public” in the title - public sector, public finance, etc. In some of those jobs I did a lot of RFPs. I have learned the hard way that spell check does not help you if you drop the “L” from the word “public.”

    In my first job out of college in the late 90s, in the relatively early days of email, our department admin was very aggressive in monitoring our emails, reading each one closely. It wasn’t as easy to access a personal account back then so I sometimes used my work account for personal. One Thursday night, a friend who was in grad school returned home and sent me a very long, detailed description of time spent with a new lady friend. I arrived at work to see a printout of the email in my chair. I had to have a “conversation” with my boss, who had to act upset but was trying really hard not to laugh, then I had to call my friend, who was fast asleep and apologized to all. Going forward, my friends were more careful and would often write notes to the email checker at the end of notes to me.
    Hah!

    This jogged a memory. In high school, I dated the daughter of one of the administrators. After I graduated, she told me my HS calculus teacher had printed off a sex toy catalogue to the school printer and someone else found it.

  14. #34
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Vermont
    many years ago my very large employers moved to a voice mail system, so everyone stopped using his or her desktop voicemail mechanism with the 45 minute cassette. Employers said they'd be gathering these up, they did one night, then sold them to employees for home use for a nominal $5 fee, just to keep them out of the land fill.

    A friend of mine bought one, thought he'd listen to the tape just for grins...and there unfolded about 15 messages (increasingly frantic) from a married woman to a married man (not her husband), chock full of steamy prose, including her thoughts about what she wanted to do to him when she saw him in church (yes, good irony too). She eventually concluded she was being ignored, and the messages got pointedly unpleasant.

  15. #35

    autofill ftw

    Quote Originally Posted by grad_devil View Post
    I fired up Netscape Navigator and ...the one I chose to demonstrate was the site for the White House. Naturally, I added .com ... a website of an adult variety
    Not mine ... but I was attending a nerdy tech meetup where attendees would demonstrate the latest thing they were working on. I can't even remember what was being demonstrated, but it did involve a live browser window up on the digital projector. The woman began to type a URL beginning with "p" in the address box. You guessed it, a drop-down box appeared and "p0rnhub" URLs presented themselves ... along with descriptions of the particular genre(s) of interest. TMI ! Fortunately it was only adults in the room (no bosses or co-workers either), and as she finished typing the rest of the address, the NSFW dropdown choices mostly disappeared (save for the intended site, which was SFW).

    Clear your cookies and browser history upon exit, my friends!

    Woot shirt design to that effect here: https://d3gqasl9vmjfd8.cloudfront.ne...8d294f13e3.jpg

  16. #36
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    New Bern, NC unless it's a home football game then I'm grilling on Devil's Alley
    Quote Originally Posted by Nrrrrvous View Post
    I used to work as an A/V Tech. One day I was sent to a small bar/restaurant to figure out why they couldn't see anything on the large projection screen over the bar. The gear was in a closet under the stairs around the corner from the bar. After troubleshooting the satellite for a few minutes to no avail, I switched over to a vcr in the system. I just instinctively hit play and it never occurred to me that I hadn't put a tape in but it was playing something. So, just to see if I had picture and sound I popped back out to the bar area. There, in all it's glory, was Hot *** Babes #10 in full color and sound! There were maybe a dozen people eating lunch at the time. The bartender's eyes were pretty wide as I ran back around the corner and hit stop.
    That series had pretty much jumped the shark by then. Anything after #6 they were just phoning it in.
    Q "Why do you like Duke, you didn't even go there." A "Because my art school didn't have a basketball team."

  17. #37
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Forest Hills, NY
    Quote Originally Posted by duke79 View Post
    My wife, who is a corporate lawyer, has put together a 30-minute (or so) Powerpoint presentation that she calls "Practicing Safe Send" and she has given this talk to many of her corporate clients and their employees and also other groups like the Chamber of Commerce. She has a whole list of embarrassing "fails" where people did very stupid things with emails and other forms of work-related social media (and, in some cases, they were fired from their jobs). She even had mouse pads made up with a list of everything you think about when using email. I now use that mouse pad at my office.
    Would she be willing to share it? (Redacted of course). Sounds to be very valuable. For work and my students now on the job hunt.

  18. #38
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Durham, NC
    My tech blunder in the early internet years is so bad I would be a wanker if I tried to tell about it in detail. Let's just say it involves a major sporting goods chain and assuming what their URL would be called. Before google, trying to type the address in directly. At work.

  19. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by aimo View Post
    My tech blunder in the early internet years is so bad I would be a wanker if I tried to tell about it in detail. Let's just say it involves a major sporting goods chain and assuming what their URL would be called. Before google, trying to type the address in directly. At work.
    That happened to my wife. I am absolutely aware of this conundrum. Somehow it took her 3 hours to get off of that website.

  20. #40
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    Outside Philly
    Quote Originally Posted by aimo View Post
    My tech blunder in the early internet years is so bad I would be a wanker if I tried to tell about it in detail. Let's just say it involves a major sporting goods chain and assuming what their URL would be called. Before google, trying to type the address in directly. At work.
    I wish they didn’t use it in all caps in all their advertising and copy. I feel like they know what they’re doing.

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