Why dont soldering irons keep going

[sirwiggum]

Panasonic toughbooks?

Not the quickest machines, but surprisingly durable.

Still see them about, useful for their serial port to connect to 406 ECUs / telecoms switch and router console ports, and the fact that they can be bounced off floors.

[steve_earwig]

That would be them. BT just stuck more and more software on them they used to fall on their arses continuously - a right pain in the bottom when they crash, lock out your access and you have ring up a helpdesk at 4 am. OOh, I have a pic...


My last night's work:

[sirwiggum]

Ah Windows 98/2000 and Office 2000!

And the auto trader running in he background

I thought BT were moving to a centralised approach whereby all endpoints were monitored and configured from a central server / configuration repository?

[steve_earwig]

I was probably looking for a Transit. Hmm let's see now, Work Manager, Talk Forums (filled up with tories and feminists), Auto Trader, Outlook, email from my then girlfriend and CSS/FR

I thought BT were moving to a centralised warble farble something-or-the other

Errr, pass. I've not been there since March 2004.

[sirwiggum]

I was probably looking for a Transit. Hmm let's see now, Work Manager, Talk Forums (filled up with tories and feminists), Auto Trader, Outlook, email from my then girlfriend and CSS/FR

They're good machines, still highly saught after. My dad has one for industrial control panels and industrial burner settings, very useful with the com port (which seems to have gone AWOL from modern machines), and his ODB cable to his beemer.

Win2000 is still a decent OS, XP without the fisher price colour scheme.

Get yourself a nice HDi Peugeot Boxster / Citroen Sweater and join the ANTI POLLUTION FAULT banter!

I thought BT were moving to a centralised warble farble something-or-the other

Errr, pass. I've not been there since March 2004.

And I've only been dealing with BT issues since 2006, so a good passing of ships in the night there

[highlander]

I can attest to the useless Windows build that BT sticks on its PCs. It's crap.

I used to work for them (via Manpower) when I lived in Thurso, from the middle of the year 1999 to the end of the year 2003. 4.5 years of misery; BT / Manpower are so crap to work for - poor pay, poor working conditions, no value placed on individual workers, no value placed on customer services ("percentage of calls answered" was the only stat that mattered, not whether or not we actually helped anybody).

Remember the joys of CSS? BT's central mainframe system (and I mean mainframe in the original sense of the word - it was based on old IBM infrastructure which we used the old Attachmate Reflection or EXTRA! terminal emulator clients to access) which had all of BT's customer and product data on it. When CSS was down, BT couldn't work.

Not sure if CSS was ever replaced; they were talking about it pretty much the whole time I was there.

Oh - and while I was there, my department changed names three times - from BT Syncordia Solutions to BT Ignite, then finally to BT Global Services.

I am 29 years old and I am officially a grumpy old man.

[sirwiggum]

Moving / renaming things gives the appearance of progress!

Manpower got me a temp job for a hotmail email call centre once. It was the same. Had it for a few weeks but wasn't in the "clique" that seemed to be established with some of the "temp"ers.
Got home one day, in the door 5 minutes and they phoned me I was no longer needed. Apparantly I had been accessing my hotmail email too often (yes I had, but only to check / confirm users problems / troubleshoot / step-by-step how tos! Don't even use hotmail as my main email account!).
It seems they didn't want me to *help* the users but to send off pre-written support templates. Basically what the helpdesk "turn your router on and off" guy does
Pay was crap. Earnt about 4 times more touring the country cleaning out industrial boilers for insurance survey work.

[FarmerPug]

Yip it makes sense i have been using a vice grip to store the iron and the tip is quite black, ill look out for a solder station as ive probably been burining out the soldering irons along with my fingers that i have used to check if they are on

[mjb]

BT's central mainframe system (and I mean mainframe in the original sense of the word - it was based on old IBM infrastructure which we used the old Attachmate Reflection or EXTRA! terminal emulator clients to access) which had all of BT's customer and product data on it.

Ewww telco stuff... I used to work for World Online (who bought Telinco, who got bought out by Tiscali) who had a load of telco stuff like Nortel DSM switches. Nasty nasty stuff. I worked on the IP/server side of things mostly but I did understand SS7 at one point though

[steve_earwig]

Yip it makes sense i have been using a vice grip to store the iron and the tip is quite black, ill look out for a solder station as ive probably been burining out the soldering irons along with my fingers that i have used to check if they are on

You don't really need a station (unless you do lots) but a stand would be good. A sucker would be useful too.

I can attest to the useless Windows build that BT sticks on its PCs. It's crap.

I used to work for them (via Manpower) when I lived in Thurso, from the middle of the year 1999 to the end of the year 2003. 4.5 years of misery; BT / Manpower are so crap to work for - poor pay, poor working conditions, no value placed on individual workers, no value placed on customer services ("percentage of calls answered" was the only stat that mattered, not whether or not we actually helped anybody).

Remember the joys of CSS? BT's central mainframe system (and I mean mainframe in the original sense of the word - it was based on old IBM infrastructure which we used the old Attachmate Reflection or EXTRA! terminal emulator clients to access) which had all of BT's customer and product data on it. When CSS was down, BT couldn't work.

Not sure if CSS was ever replaced; they were talking about it pretty much the whole time I was there.

Oh - and while I was there, my department changed names three times - from BT Syncordia Solutions to BT Ignite, then finally to BT Global Services.

I am 29 years old and I am officially a grumpy old man.

I've lost track of what my old division of BT is called this week, my bro's still there (the word is "doormat") and he tells me but I'm just not interested really. It wasn't always like that, I came on just as BT was privatised and before that it was more like Butlins in comparison. Which I suppose is the point of privatisation (selling us something we already owned and giving your buddies cushy jobs and vast handouts wasn't). I "worked" for BT from when I was 18 'til I was 39 (with 2 years off for good behaviour ). Btw I just got off the phone with my bro, CSS still exists (as do COSMOSS and CAMSS), with no hope of replacement (too busy watching the share dividends to actually invest anything). Actually, the first job I did when I came off of sick was to help stuff LLISFR (frame records system) into CSS - all your eggs into one basket, balanced on a 20 foot tall pole in a gale?