BobJam
Thread Starter
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2005
- Messages
- 380
OK . . . now I'm "more comfortable" - in here just chit-chatting. Yes, this "Random' forum has not been one I've visited much either, but I don't want to run afoul of the hall monitors again, so I've carried this casual discussion over here.
As I said, I saw on your post that you are from "Western Canada". That encompasses quite a bit of territory, doesn't it??
When I was working (retired now), I used to travel once in a while up to Calgary, in Alberta Province (that's considered "Western Canada", isn't it??). I'd fly into Calgary, visit our Plant there, and then motor up to a place called "Red Deer", where we had another Plant. Actually, I'm calling them Plants, when in fact they were plain old "landfills" - or dumps.
The word "Plant" is something we called them because the company I worked for (BFI) used SAP, and in SAP the terminology is "Plant".
Actually, there's a funny story I remember from my working days with SAP:
Anyway, back to Canada. I still have some friends up there.
Some of the place names up there are quite "colorful" - or maybe I should spell that "colOURful". Places like Medicine Hat and Moose Jaw . . . is there a "Frostbite Falls", or was that just in Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons??
Speaking of Moose (what's the plural of that - Meese??), I saw a Moose one time on the way up to Banff for a winter holiday, and the critter was enormous!!! And I remember while we were in Banff, the caribou would come onto the golf course and graze. And I remember that a local told us they can get nasty with the golfers if it's "rutting" season.
Since you guys use the metric system, are there just 10 months in the year?? (Just kidding, I'm not THAT stupid, it's just that we're still rather crude here in the colonies).
Back to SAP for a second. When I used to travel to Canada before the company used SAP, I'd file my expense account and for those charges I made in Canada (lodging and meals), I never converted back to U.S. dollars by the exchange rate. MY charge card bills would of course be in Canadian "dollarettes", but the accountant paying the expense account would always pay the total claimed in . . . U.S. dollars. So I'd always make a few extra bucks on my trips to Canada.
But then along came SAP, and we'd have to file our expense account by entering it in SAP. SAP automatically put in the exchange rate, so then the total was calculated in "actual" U.S. currency. I no longer was able to benefit from the dollarette.
Anyway, where exactly in Canada are you?? British Columbia, near that "Ocean Whisper"??
BTW, I see the Tech Guy (Mike??) is from Chambersburg, PA. I went to college at a little school called Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, just down the road from Chambersburg. In fact, I used to date a few gals from Shippensburg State Teachers college in Chambersburg. Of course, that was back in the 60's, so I expect those gals are old and wrinkly and cranky like me now.
My wife (I call her "The Incumbent Mrs. Jamieson, since I've been married four times now) and I both suffer from the ravages of age. She is in the early stages of Alzheimer's (not too far gone yet), and I have what they call "Ataxia". It's a neurological disorder similar to Parkinson's, only without all the shaking. The primary symptom is a stumbling gait, and I "spontaneously" collapse (fall) frequently. I'm not in a wheelchair yet, but that's somewhere in my future.
The official diagnosis is "Ataxia of Unknown Origin". Which is the neurologist's fancy way of saying "We don't know what the heck is causing it or what it really is, but you sure do walk funny." I've had MRI's, CAT Scans, P.E.T. Scans, Nerve Conduction tests (where they stick needles in your muscles and then pass an electric shock through them - makes you jump), blood tests, all manner of primitive poking and prodding, and all they can come up with is "Ataxia of Unknown Origin".
They've ruled out Multiple Sclerosis, Muscular Dystrophy, Parkinson's, Cancer, Cerebral Palsy, and a lot of other stuff.
But I got tired of sending Docs to Switzerland on their summer vacations and financing their expensive sports cars only to be told "We don't know what the heck is causing it or what it really is, but you sure do walk funny.", so I finally decided I'd stop being their research project and income, and just live with it.
But I still have my wits about me, and my wife has a sound body, so between the two of us, me physically disabled, her mentally disabled, I figure there is actually one whole person.
So the TSG filters don't filter out Brit swear words, huh??
I don't really think I could be a MOD here, because those folks seem to be VERY technically astute, and I'm just an amateur.
I noticed though that they seem to have scripts for common problems. I have scripts for McAfee issues, like installing, uninstalling, updating virus defs, etc., so that all I have to do is cut and paste the appropriate solution to a poster's problem.
So tell me some of your stories . . .
Oh . . . one more thing. Do you still run Windows Millenium on your machine?? Microsoft has stopped support for that, haven't they?? Can you run IE7 on it?? How do you plug any newfound security holes in it if it's not supported anymore??
Bob Jamieson
As I said, I saw on your post that you are from "Western Canada". That encompasses quite a bit of territory, doesn't it??
When I was working (retired now), I used to travel once in a while up to Calgary, in Alberta Province (that's considered "Western Canada", isn't it??). I'd fly into Calgary, visit our Plant there, and then motor up to a place called "Red Deer", where we had another Plant. Actually, I'm calling them Plants, when in fact they were plain old "landfills" - or dumps.
The word "Plant" is something we called them because the company I worked for (BFI) used SAP, and in SAP the terminology is "Plant".
Actually, there's a funny story I remember from my working days with SAP:
Our company owned and operated garbage collection trucks, so it employed mechanics to maintain those trucks. Since the SAP terminology didn't include the word "landfill", and we (I was in the Environmental Compliance department of the company) had to enter permits for landfills into the system, we entered purchase orders for permitting activity by Engineering Consultant firms under the word "truck". Well, the maintenance people learned of this nuance in the system, so they began to enter phony purchase orders for trucks and they would get booked to landfills. Then the maintenance guys would get a new truck (about $250,000 U.S.), and it'd be charged to the Landfill company, NOT the Collection company.
Finally, some accountant type person in the parent company caught on to this scam, and maintenance people were no longer authorized to get into SAP.
You'd think that BFI would've just modified the program and coded in the word "landfill". But apparently, any modification of SAP was "verboten" by the German company that owns SAP, and BFI's license for the software would've been pulled had BFI tried to modify the code. And, from what I understand, BFI paid millions of dollars just to license the software.
SAP was originally designed for manufacturing companies, and ours was a "Service" sector business, so using SAP for our business was something like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The SAP sales guy that sold the software to our company must've laughed all the way to the bank with his commission on the sale.
Finally, some accountant type person in the parent company caught on to this scam, and maintenance people were no longer authorized to get into SAP.
You'd think that BFI would've just modified the program and coded in the word "landfill". But apparently, any modification of SAP was "verboten" by the German company that owns SAP, and BFI's license for the software would've been pulled had BFI tried to modify the code. And, from what I understand, BFI paid millions of dollars just to license the software.
SAP was originally designed for manufacturing companies, and ours was a "Service" sector business, so using SAP for our business was something like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The SAP sales guy that sold the software to our company must've laughed all the way to the bank with his commission on the sale.
Anyway, back to Canada. I still have some friends up there.
Some of the place names up there are quite "colorful" - or maybe I should spell that "colOURful". Places like Medicine Hat and Moose Jaw . . . is there a "Frostbite Falls", or was that just in Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons??
Speaking of Moose (what's the plural of that - Meese??), I saw a Moose one time on the way up to Banff for a winter holiday, and the critter was enormous!!! And I remember while we were in Banff, the caribou would come onto the golf course and graze. And I remember that a local told us they can get nasty with the golfers if it's "rutting" season.
Since you guys use the metric system, are there just 10 months in the year?? (Just kidding, I'm not THAT stupid, it's just that we're still rather crude here in the colonies).
Back to SAP for a second. When I used to travel to Canada before the company used SAP, I'd file my expense account and for those charges I made in Canada (lodging and meals), I never converted back to U.S. dollars by the exchange rate. MY charge card bills would of course be in Canadian "dollarettes", but the accountant paying the expense account would always pay the total claimed in . . . U.S. dollars. So I'd always make a few extra bucks on my trips to Canada.
But then along came SAP, and we'd have to file our expense account by entering it in SAP. SAP automatically put in the exchange rate, so then the total was calculated in "actual" U.S. currency. I no longer was able to benefit from the dollarette.
Anyway, where exactly in Canada are you?? British Columbia, near that "Ocean Whisper"??
BTW, I see the Tech Guy (Mike??) is from Chambersburg, PA. I went to college at a little school called Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, just down the road from Chambersburg. In fact, I used to date a few gals from Shippensburg State Teachers college in Chambersburg. Of course, that was back in the 60's, so I expect those gals are old and wrinkly and cranky like me now.
My wife (I call her "The Incumbent Mrs. Jamieson, since I've been married four times now) and I both suffer from the ravages of age. She is in the early stages of Alzheimer's (not too far gone yet), and I have what they call "Ataxia". It's a neurological disorder similar to Parkinson's, only without all the shaking. The primary symptom is a stumbling gait, and I "spontaneously" collapse (fall) frequently. I'm not in a wheelchair yet, but that's somewhere in my future.
The official diagnosis is "Ataxia of Unknown Origin". Which is the neurologist's fancy way of saying "We don't know what the heck is causing it or what it really is, but you sure do walk funny." I've had MRI's, CAT Scans, P.E.T. Scans, Nerve Conduction tests (where they stick needles in your muscles and then pass an electric shock through them - makes you jump), blood tests, all manner of primitive poking and prodding, and all they can come up with is "Ataxia of Unknown Origin".
They've ruled out Multiple Sclerosis, Muscular Dystrophy, Parkinson's, Cancer, Cerebral Palsy, and a lot of other stuff.
But I got tired of sending Docs to Switzerland on their summer vacations and financing their expensive sports cars only to be told "We don't know what the heck is causing it or what it really is, but you sure do walk funny.", so I finally decided I'd stop being their research project and income, and just live with it.
But I still have my wits about me, and my wife has a sound body, so between the two of us, me physically disabled, her mentally disabled, I figure there is actually one whole person.
So the TSG filters don't filter out Brit swear words, huh??
I don't really think I could be a MOD here, because those folks seem to be VERY technically astute, and I'm just an amateur.
I noticed though that they seem to have scripts for common problems. I have scripts for McAfee issues, like installing, uninstalling, updating virus defs, etc., so that all I have to do is cut and paste the appropriate solution to a poster's problem.
So tell me some of your stories . . .
Oh . . . one more thing. Do you still run Windows Millenium on your machine?? Microsoft has stopped support for that, haven't they?? Can you run IE7 on it?? How do you plug any newfound security holes in it if it's not supported anymore??
Bob Jamieson
As an aside, I was amazed at the number of kids in my graduating class that went into the teaching profession....Class of '68...
