Work Life: Venting about venting turned into just venting

I have recently been venting a lot of negativity about the people around me about the people I work with. Unfortunately, sometimes this come through when I am talking to another colleague. I do my best to still end the conversation on a positive note but it has become harder and harder lately.

Work-positive, I do many things to assist or automate so I am not just purely venting and twiddling my thumbs. I created a chat bot, created ticketing processes, demo how requirements can be broken down into smaller workable parts, etc.

These are all things that are not part of my job description. And I think my frustration is because the problems are growing faster than I can fix them... which no matter how much I try to convince myself that is always the case, it does not stay below my threshold to vent.

So maybe as a final venting ground...

I just do not understand why people do not care about their work!!! By "care" I mean wanting to learn more about what they should be doing. Although I complain that they do not know what they are doing, but the kicker is that they do not even motivate themselves to figure it out on their own.

I work with a "scrum master" that doesn't know scrum or agile. The person is not only a scrum master, her title is actually Senior Scrum Master. She complains all the time that she has no time, yet seems to be able to find time to email, comment, message on the exact same thing on my tasks every single day. All these tasks appear in my queue... if she just updates the tickets properly which is just to assign to my and put the status into the backlog state.

I work with people that have practically no consistency at all, not even in misspelling. In a single list that the person produce, I can have 5 different variants on how to name something. All the different objects would be the same type but they manage to give each one a different type on top of all that. 

I keep a nice color-coded spreadsheet to manage all the chaos. I had to share this when I had to be on PTO for an extended period of time. I come back with my spreadsheet missing all sorts of detail. Even one person pasted 5000 cells "by accident" losing all the data.

We have a bottleneck in our process where we do not have enough testers, yet we have been hiring at a high rate at all positions except QA. Now we have an even worse bottleneck...

I work with developers that cannot figure out other applications. I have developers not know who to go to about getting access to different applications. I have sent one manager the link on how to give access to our wiki in practically every single email, yet she keeps sending me an email to add someone. It has been two years, I still get those emails. The steps is basically chat with a bot, click, add the person's email, click wiki, then submit. It is way faster than email anyone.

I work with developers who do not understand access levels. I do not know how many times I have to explain to developers that they are trying to access something in SharePoint so they need to reach out to the author of the artifact. Even after explaining, they would tell me that someone else told them that they need access to the wiki...... yet, they are clicking on the link to the video that is in the wiki. And the video url clearly shows SharePoint and the author's name. There is even a huge button that says "Request Access" when you click the link.

THEN.................... I have to go to the other developer on how to make their video accessible. I have to explain to a DEVELOPER on how to grant access to a video posted on a medium that I have not used before. They basically screen share, then I basically just have them click on educated random things to eventually figure out where to grant access which they always claim, "Oh, I didn't know I can click that". SOOOO disturbing that developers do not know how to "reverse engineer" a simple website built for people with even less understanding.

I shouldn't care about all this. I should just leave it hang. How do they figure things out before? Even though I know the answer because that is why the company is in the state that it is in. I have to say that it is impressive that the business side has been able to make so much money on a product that is almost like building a life-size workable skyscraper with Legos. The new growth is basically trying to convert that into a standard skyscraper not made of Legos by hiring Lego technic experts with my as the guy who brings them the resources advising them that these are not the proper "standard" materials.

Don't care... brain, stop thinking. Just focus on your own task. I am tired of complaining about people. Why cannot I just find someone like myself to help myself?

Totally random thought... maybe the key to getting promoted is be able to find and exploit someone like myself?

Work Life: Two-Fingers Typers Who Type Too Slow Shouldn't Be in IT management (very over-generalized) (rant)

The worst! THE WORST!!! Is one of them wants ME to type out something (email, documentation, meeting minutes, etc)? How about you just LEARN to think?! That's right, not learn to type... just learn to think and maybe you'll learn to type faster. Seriously what a waste of my time and energy.

I have not had any good experience with slow two-fingers typers. At best, they are almost average thinkers. How do they even become managers? I don't know how their directs manage, but I just cannot work under one.

I have to waste 20 minutes either to watch you type or dictate something for me to type. Even worse than WORST is that I type faster than they can dictate without them even realizing that I finished typing. Then... THEN..... ON TOP OF ALL THAT.... You question my spelling AND.... AND..... you are STILL wrong!

And if you are a manager that is also a slow typer whether with any number of fingers, STOP wasting your employees time. Type it offline. Do it in secret. Most of your staff is making over 100k which means around $50/hr. I've been on calls where we spend half of a one hour meeting with ten people... that's $250 just to watch you type (ie being an idiot).

Or just stay out of the way. I spent an hour with someone complaining about my idea for about an hour to eventually just using my idea. This has happened multiple times. You would think they should just learn to just listen at some point. That person did not stay long after I left.

Just had a moment of flashbacks...

I just realized that none of my former managers stayed longer after I left. Seven different employments. Three of them, I didn't really have a manager. Three fired and one laid-off.

Work Life: I hate IT people who cannot figure things out (vent)

I have spent countless hours of my life showing "IT" people how to do things, especially things that my role is not even supposed to do. 

Currently as a release manager, I also manage:

1. Entire department wiki (including managing user access)
2. Troubleshoot defects
3. "IT" people's IT support desk
4. Onboarding IT access
5. Explain, re-explain, re-re-explain processes that are not even related to me
6. Gatekeeper for managers

#3 is the worst of the worst. At this point of my career, I hate supporting this the most. Why are we hiring IT personnel that cannot figure things out? I do not even mean learning cutting edge technology or tools. I am referring to just getting access to a network folder. In most corporations, this is done through a ticketing system.

The worst culprits of these people are boomers or older. Is it that hard to go to the ticketing system that everyone already uses and looking through the options? It is not my tool. I figured it out. So, just open the page and just skim through the text. Our ticketing system only has 7 options, the third option is called Request Access. One of the saddest parts is that I already walked them through it in the past. It is only three steps. The third step is basically an open form where the user has to ask the question that they just asked me: "please give me access to blah blah blah."

And then..... the worst of the worst culprits are when they are managers who request the exact same thing 10+ times. These are not even my managers. So now not only do I have to ask why are we hiring these people, but also how did we promote these people?!?!

I do these at first because I am only a jerk in the inside. But I also slowly include the steps to do their requests. Each time they ask after that, the turnaround becomes larger and larger... sometimes to the point where I literally sit there staring at the email thinking how it would have been faster for me to do it than just sitting here but then they'll never learn eventually just not doing it for another X days where X is the number of times they have requested the exact same thing.

Work Life: Attentive to detail? Detail-oriented? Why do people who claim this seem to be the worst at it?

Although this one instance today triggered this post, the main reason I post this is because I just have flashbacks to all the other individuals who also claim to be very detail-oriented.

I have worked with some extraordinarily detail-oriented people. I worked under a CEO of a company of over 500 individuals. I met him once. He remembered my name and some random information about what we spoke about over 15 months prior. Others may not have been as good but they were still impressive. And if there was one thing in common for all of them... none of them have ever said that they were detail-oriented.

If anything... perhaps I am biased to the data... I find everyone who has ever told me that they were detail-oriented especially after I tell them to correct a minor detail are the worst detail-oriented people. Always something on the line of "so sorry, I don't usually make these mistakes. I pride myself on being attentive to details.", "please let me know because I am very detail-oriented", or some other BS. They are not even average.

There was one guy that was so terrible that I nearly told my manager that I could no longer work with him because it was taking me longer to edit his work than to do it myself. I was really about to, but his work was so bad that even upper management said enough was enough. This was a lot because I've seen them accept pretty bad works before.

And today's example was a developer who talks a mile-a-minute to cover his inability to stay focused. He "prides" himself on his detail-oriented work. Yet every request has some pretty big blunders like misspelled object names, wrong server, wrong types. What really threw me for a loop was that he misspelled a name twice. One was an obvious catch like "label" vs "lable" but the other was OB210. OB is for outbound, so obviously that should be the letter O, but instead it was a number 0. It took me a little bit of time, and I actually tested that... it took me another hour or two because the "misspelling" of label was the actual spelling.

Yes there is human errors but this guy is up there. Developers have to provide me a list of their changes. Because he appears awesome, he gets a lot of new projects so many of his objects do not exist yet he will provide me a list of stored procedures like... spName, sp_Name, NameWithoutSp, NameWithSpAtEnd_SP, SPName, SpName, [spName], dbo.[spName]. It is just pure crazy how inconsistent this guy is. I can understand other developers do a little of this because the name was already that way but this guy gets to create his own names.

Third example, he created a bunch of destination folders. They have the same structure CustomerName_Type_CarrierName_something. A list of maybe 10 of them, then there is one folder that keeps failing because it is called CustomerName_Type_CarrierName _something. Who puts a space in the folder name? Then not catch it because it also needs to be set inside a configuration file where it is even more obvious there is a space.

Last example is he somehow screws up the SQL stored procedure names in such a way that even SQL gets confused. I use C# SMO to create automatically create scripts and he has one where it creates a name [SpName ] in the textheader but sql actual corrects the name to [SpName]. So this creates an error because the textheader doesn't match the actual name.

I just do not understand how these people have such huge egos and still look impressive.

I stopped using Microsoft Visual Studio and Azure (2019)

I am mostly a hobbyist developer. I had moved to more process management in software engineering. So the cost of paying for the professional version ($1200 / $800) of Visual Studio is quite steep even though I still paid for several years. I am aware there is an Express version which I had used initially but the professional provided a lot of neat features also provided Azure credit so I figured it compensated some of the cost.

I was content with paying but then my real work got busy for several months, also many things came up in my personal life, so I had neglected programming for a bit. When I returned, I realized Visual Studio no longer let me log in. I eventually found that my subscription had expired. I then noticed that I had received a bunch of emails that said I was overdue. This was due to a fraudulent charge on my credit card which was canceled, and that card was the one on record to renew.

This was extremely confusing, because I thought they had moved to subscription basis which I had been paying. When I paid all the overdue costs, I was still unable to use VS 2019. But somehow VS was separate and that had expired several months past, so it will cost me another $1200 to repurchase to use. I am still a bit confused exactly what is what, like what was Visual Studio and what was monthly subscription.

My current understanding is that I was paying monthly for Azure which does not include VS. I had paid for VS the prior year. Sadly, I didn't notice that I had been paying some much to MS for so long. So I still have Azure to host my site temporarily, but absolutely no access to VS. But if I paid for VS, then I should basically own my copy of VS. After talking to support, this was confirmed to be the case. I was unable to find a key in my MSDN subscription. I just grew tired and frustrated, then just refused to use VS again... not even the Express version.

On top of that, since I had purchased VS 2019, I should have had $50 monthly credit to Azure so why was I paying the Azure monthly costs (which was under $50 / month)?! Ugh.... this is so painful.

In Summary

I had once forgot to renew in the past and paid the full cost, so this is the second time. I was barely ok with the cost. Then they moved me to subscription basis which I had complained about because I just wanted to pay a flat amount. Then I found out that I still had to pay the VS subscription and I guess I was paying the Azure subscription. I had been using VS for over 10 years, maybe around 15 years.... and absolutely no sympathy for my situation. I have been a promoter of MS VS, .NET, and MS SQL, but no longer. I don't hate them, but definitely no love anymore. 

And so, I have moved to Google Cloud, Linux, Python, Apache, Django, and Postgres. After one week, the pricing scheme is very reasonable for hobbyists and people who wants to experiment before going full production. First impressions for this new tech stack will come in the future.

Will I go back? Maybe if there were some changes, but unlikely. I'll continue to use MS Windows, although a good chance I may move

Work Life: Job Hunting While Employed

Why haven't human resource managers or recruiters improved the process in finding applicants? It frustrates me to no end why they have to call during the day. When there is finally a job that actually sounds interesting, the interview must be within the next 2-3 days and during work hours.

Perhaps someone that is unhappy with his work could pull it off or someone who is ok with lying to their boss (i.e. calling in sick). But I am (at least I think that I am) very professional about the work that I do. I am almost always busy, so where am I supposed to find time to consider a job opportunity.

There were a couple interviews that I did go to. Primarily because I happened to have some downtime and was able to take some time off. One of the benefits of being a contractor as opposed to being an employee. I feel there is more freedom in how to manage my time.

One of the most upsetting experience was that the manager I was supposed to meet was overbooked during my interview and did not notify myself or the recruiter. I took an entire day off and drove an hour to not even have an interview. I did not even get to meet anyone. I sat in the lobby and waited for my recruiter to call me to tell me why no one was showing up. They also never called back to apologize. Tranzact is totally on my black list now.

As for interview questions, I feel that everyone is surprised when they ask why I am looking and that I respond that I am not looking. I reply that I am perfectly content at my current job, but that I am always willing to consider better opportunities. In my interviews, I always seem to end up asking most of the questions. I have also received a high percentage of offers.

I have rejected all offers so far because I have not been satisfied with the companies. I feel that they start off on the wrong foot with me because they need someone immediately. This tells me a couple things. They have poor resource management. They also have poor contingency plans. This is reinforced by stressing that the start date is as soon as possible, but no more than 2 weeks. Most of other questions are about management and process. Very few interviewers seem genuine in their responses in that they seem to be avoiding certain points. None seem to impress me with what they have.

Perhaps this is because I only respond to cold-calling recruiters so these opportunities are high-stressed environments. I have also found that these recruiters will always try to negotiate your rate down from whatever numbers you give them. There was one that I had absolutely no interest in but the recruiter was very persistent. When he asked, I gave him a number that was high but somewhat reasonable and he countered with a number slightly lower than that. He never did call back though, so I at least found a way to keep some of them away. I am not sure why either, but a lot of these recruiters also have very poor call qualities. I have no problems with anyone else that I speak with and I am on a lot of conference calls.

Well, that's the end of my rant. I really hope that the industry will some day figure a better way to run. It is really tempting to me to start a recruiting company just to demonstrate how it should be done! :D

Buggish: Curly Braces with Confluence v5.1.5 (Jira) and SharePoint

I continue to have issues with the links from SharePoint due to the curly braces. I had hoped the Wiki upgrade would have resolved this which it kind of does.

The editor no longer has odd behaviors when saving and editing the links where the text/link combination kept growing each time the page was edited and saved. But, it does not fix the link issue.

Now, the issue is that the link appears but is not a hyperlink. Also, the curly brace at the end is not made part of the link. This behavior seems to suggest to me that there is a conflict with the editor interpreting part of the link as a macro.

If I removed the curly braces, the link becomes clickable. Thus, I still use the same workaround as before.


Reference
Complaint: Curly Braces with Confluence v3.x (Jira) and SharePoint
Upgraded to Confluence 5.1.5

Buggish: Cannot turn off / hangup / end Switch Calls Option in Mid-Call (Google, Motorola DROID RAZR)

The issue is while I am on a call and someone else is calling in, I switch to that call. I keep it short so it ends before the first call. If I hit "end" on the second call, this hangs up both calls. If I do not hit "end" and wait a moment, it will automatically switch to the first call. At first, I thought this was the reason it hangs up both calls because I ended the first call while the second automatically ended. After a couple more occurrences, the second call does not go away thus the "SWITCH CALLS" option is always there. Even though the other person has already ended the call, I only get a dial-tone when I switch to that line. When I hear the dial-tone and hit the end-call button, both sessions will end.

Depending on when the second caller ends the call, the switch may take a while. Thus, I sometimes manually switch the call. There was one call where I hit it around the time I heard the other person end the call because I heard a click right before I hit the switch button. At this point, I am not sure which call I am on. A nice feature would be to display which number I am on.

Buggish: Cannot Scroll After Click on Back Button on Google Chrome

On Google Chrome (Version 32.0.1700.107 m), I cannot use the scroll wheel after clicking on the back navigation button on the browser. After dragging the scroll bar, I then can use the scroll wheel as normal.

Buggish: Gmail down 1/24/2014

I needed to check on an email. To my surprise, I could not access Gmail. At first, I thought I lost internet connection because I lose that connection way more often than Gmail. After further investigation, I was able to access Google search, blogger, and other sites.

Searching to see if there were other posts or news on gmail, I eventually stumbled across Google's Apps Status Dashboard. There it reported that it was down at 2:12, although there were sites that it saw it was down at 2:06 while I found it around 2:10 although I noticed that gchat was down earlier.

Fortunately, I have backup email with Microsoft's hotmail and was able to get the information I needed. This a good reminder to keep multiple accounts with cloud services. I'm not sure how companies would justify having costs for two services though. It is surprising how much companies are not willing to pay extra for disaster recovery, so I find it unlikely companies would be willing to get a second email cloud service. They may consider bringing it back inhouse, but that would probably cost more than two cloud services.

Services are back up for me around 2:20-ish, although I did not check anytime between it was down and checking it again. Appears in the status dashboard has other services interrupted but I do not seem to be impacted by those.

Reference
http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=status&ts=1390591289210
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/todays-outage-for-several-google.html

Buggish: Blogger Compose Style removes Script Tags

I was posting a few links to Pinterest which uses a script to modify the link tags to display the images. To do this, I inserted the script into the HTML portion of Blogger.

Although Pinterest says to add this to the end, that only ensures that there are no other scripts that will interfere with Pinterest. The easiest way to check is just to try and see if it breaks. Very rarely do multiple scripts clash, but it can happen. I didn't want the script to be executed on all blog posts (why give them tracking data when I do not have to). So, short story is that I had no problems with this.

At the end, I wanted to add the reference. To do that, I went back to Compose mode and added the link to the site that I pulled some of the info from. When I updated, I noticed that the images were missing. Returning back to blogger, I noticed that the script disappeared which was easily remedied by re-adding the script.

Reference

http://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2014/01/life-wall-bookcase-ideas.html

Complaint: Flash player volume on Google Chrome - Perma-mute issue

If a stream uses flash player and has a mute option, I've noticed that if you leave the mute on for too long the video will not unmute although the icon changes to the unmute icon. The shortest I've noticed this is about 30 minutes but is not consistent. I have had run a stream for a couple hours without a problem. At first, I thought this was only with Twitch.tv but I've noticed this on other video streaming sites like CBS.com, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (also Colbert Report), and Hulu.

I've only been using Chrome so I am not sure if this also occurs on other browsers. Not a major problem as refreshing the page resolves this issue all the time but is quite frustrating when the player restarts from the beginning (thus watching commercials before jumping back, then watching another set of commercials).

Complaint: Google Analytics - Demographics and Interest Reports - New Tracking Code

I was playing around with Google Analytics and stumbled across the Demographics and Interest Reports which seemed interesting at first but it brings me to a page to say that I need to make a change to the scripts to have this work.

Why didn't they just give me the proper scripts to begin with? I have the option already enabled. This is quite a hassle even though I know how to do the work. Then again, after trying to follow the instructions I could not find what they needed me to change.

The instructions is to change:

ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';

To:

ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://' : 'http://') + 'stats.g.doubleclick.net/dc.js'; 

And no where in the script do I have these lines. The code surrounding the lines are not supposed to change but even those are not what the script was provided by Google Analytics. What is provided to me is the follow:

  (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
  (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
  m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
  })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');
  ga('create', 'UA-xxxxxxx-x', 'xxxxxxxxxxxx.blogspot.com');
  ga('send', 'pageview');

Figuring what the changes are, I could deduce that I change google-analytics.com/ga.js to stats.g.doubleclick.net/dc.js. But then I checked the privacy policy and noticed that that this also required me to update my privacy policy. At this point, this is just too much of a headache so decided not to move forward this change until I figure out what to do about the privacy policy part. Whatever reason for not implementing the change, I find it odd that the instructions to update the script is not correct for me which I would expect from a company like Google.

Release Management

Who's responsibility was this issue? For my team, this would appear to be needed from our product team. It is also odd that no one has a checklist to make sure that documentation should be updated since the instructions appear to have been for an older version (here's an example to publish versions for those people who believe version numbers are practically obsolete due to new agile processes). None of the steps after product would really check on this change because it wouldn't exist in the requirements since it was missed. This wouldn't have a chance to be caught until much later in the process like User Acceptance Test (UAT)... possibly System Test (ST) if they did some free-style testing which I find unlikely since most corporations would have the team follow test scripts which would exist since there was no requirement. Also odd is that even after all that, a user like myself should have reported this by the time I got to this (although I am making a huge assumption that this feature has been out for while). But Google typically had something like a "did you find this helpful" and of course, it does not exist for the one time I looked for it.

So even after all that, there is a chance that I have missed a step somewhere. I am not sure where I skipped a step and if it wasn't that intuitive then something at least needs to be improved.

Reference
Instructions to change - https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2444872?hl=en&utm_id=ad
Policy requirements - https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2700409
Google Analytics - https://www.google.com/analytics

Complaint: Curly Braces with Confluence v3.x (Jira) and SharePoint

There is an issue with Confluence when using curly braces and URL. This should be easily replicated by typing in any URL with curly braces, like http://test.com/?param={test}. Another example is to copy the URLs in Sharepoint into Confluence.

What happens is that Confluence attempts to convert the curly braces as macros. At the same time, it tries to convert them into clickable links. I was unable to find a way to disable this. I even tried to use the forward slash, '\', to disable to display the curly brace. Since that did not work and I could not disable the conversion, I removed the http portion which helped display the link.

The workaround to fix this problem is to convert the left curly brace with %7B and right curly brace with %7D. For example, http://test.com/?param={test} will become http://test.com/?param=%7Btest%7D. What I do not like about this workaround is having to listen to people complain about having to do an extra step, or even worse not pay attention and not change the braces because not making the change really messes up the page especially if they are embedded in tables.


I apologize that I do not know which version of Confluence is being used. I do not have access and couldn't find it before having to leave work.


Update 1/27/2014 - I have found that the latest this version is 3.x.

Reference

Work Life: Upgraded to Confluence 5.1.5

Homes: Buying a brand new home - New Address

Not all systems will be able to find the new address. I just tried to change one of my addresses and it was rejected.

Edited 1/3/2020:

There is very little that can be done if the system does not allow custom addresses. Fortunately, some systems do allow this. The only workaround if really required is to use an address of the new development and hope that the mail will still be sent to your address.

There was another new development in the area which used a similar tactic. Unfortunately for them, a lot of the mail was sent to my address as my house number is the same as the number they used. For example, I lived on 1 Main St and they addressed it to 1 Center St. Center St is the known street that connects with Main St. Since there is no 1 Center St, I assume the post office worker just guesses that the intention may be my address. I am also guessing this is subjective because I don't get all the mail, just a couple here and there.

What do I do with all the misdelivered mail? I just note that it was sent to wrong address and put them in the outbox.

Eventually all the systems had my address, maybe a year after. I haven't had this issue for a while.

Complaint: Google Drive and Blogger Spell Check Inconsistent Identification

Spell check in Google Drive documents appears inconsistent. I'm not sure how to pull the version of Google Docs, version 10/24/2013 3:00 AM ET. Some are tagged, others are not. You can see OCT2009 is tagged if at start of date range. You can see DEC2007 is tagged if followed by a comma.

In blogger, "résumé" is not considered the correct spelling. It is not tagged in google drive.

Both were used in Google Chrome, 30.0.1599.101 m.
Misc: Why can I paste as plain text in blogger but not in google docs? Couldn't they at least put in version number in the source?

Complaint: Microsoft Exchange - Group Mailboxes

I like that group mailboxes decrease the amount of mail circulating within the group, but there have been a few things that do not work as I expected them.

The reason we switched to using a group mailbox is because it allows our team to have a central location for emails. Since we use a lot of personnel rotations for each role, this can be confusing for people outside our group. Also, this forms some bad habits within the group of not checking all emails (even though they should be checking the email when they are off-rotation).

Sending mail from group box

When sending emails after changing the 'from address' to the group email id, the sent mail is saved in my personal box's sent folder. This means that I cannot tell if someone in my team already responded to the email nor the team knowing that I responded to the email without copying ourselves.

Sending meetings to the group box

When someone accepts the meeting in the group box, the meeting automatically goes to the deleted folder. This does not allow anyone else in the group to see the invite to accept. On the other hand, this is good if the invite only needs a single representative from the group.

Rules

You need additional permissions to add rules to the group mailbox. Since I do not have it, there are limitations to what I can add. One rule that I would like is to copy certain emails to my personal box. I think it should be possible to create a local rule to copy from one mailbox to another, but I cannot find a way to get the rule to check the incoming mail to a group mailbox.

Overall

Group mailboxes are still usable and useful to have especially when you have low email quotas. Otherwise, a distribution list (DL) may be an better alternative.




Reference:
http://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2013/10/complaint-outlook-2010-adding-rules-to.html

Complaint: jobofmine.com Has Stolen Information from dice.com

They have stolen information from dice.com. I do not know if they stole it or bought it from someone that did. Either way, there is some shady business. I would not trust this site.

This is why in today's age, it is more important to be lost in too much information than to remove all information about oneself. There are some small unique quirks that are intentionally used. This helps me identify where the information is coming from.

I also wish that there is some law that can be signed that forces companies to provide details where they received the information. This is to primarily target those companies that are buying contact information from other third parties. This would also make it easier to target companies that use shady business practices like trading email addresses for marketing purposes.

Edited: 10/24/2013
My apologies. I had thought the info was copied from monster.com, but in actuality, it was from dice.com.

Complaint: Turbotax Error - Unable to Download

ERROR: "Unable to download getTaxReturnPdf from myturbotax.intuit.com. Unable to open this Internet site. The requested site is either unavailable or cannot be found. Please try again later."

This error occurs when I try to download previous year returns through Internet Explorer 8. I got around this using FireFox 17.0.8. I have not tried this on later versions of IE because that requires me to try this again from the other room (maybe I'll get to it later or perhaps if someone requests it).

Complaint: Outlook 2010 - Adding rules to group mailbox with limited access

I do not have full access to the group mailbox, but I do get to read and compose from the group mailbox. So, why am I not allowed to create a rule to copy emails from the group mailbox to my main inbox? I am allowed to run the rule on specific folders which then would copy, but I cannot get it to automatically trigger when it comes into the group mailbox.

Worst case, I should be allowed to do this from client-side instead of server-side since I still technically have access to the emails and could manually do the function.