Is it a Christmas miracle?
8So one of the reasons that I haven’t been quite as active lately (actually the only real reason) is that the idiots who run IT at my work are paying Fortinet to block pretty much everything on the web. Even the head of IT had no idea how much stuff they were blocking. They turned it on and flipped just about every switch they could find. Pretty much every bit of social media, shopping sites, restaurants, sports, even some news sites have been blocked. Obviously any site that’s even remotely fun. For some really bizarre reason they didn’t block YouTube, so that’s been my saving grace. Yes, meh was blocked too and using my phone all the time is a bit of a pain in the ass. And that’s the reason I haven’t been on as much! Now I wonder, is this a Christmas miracle… because I just tried the site and here I sit typing out this post while I’m able to once again connect to meh. I’m wagering this is just a hiccup and it will end up blocked once more.
How many of you work for life sucking overlords like I currently do?
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Careful. Several people here are life sucking overlords.
Many years ago I had a job traveling around the country installing and configuring firewalls. This one time (in band camp) I installed a firewall at a trucking company and locked their network down well.
Before I left, I was asked if I could turn off all restrictions for the owner’s computer’s IP address. Why? So that he could continue to watch porn at work.
True story.
@mml666 Oh, trucker porn! Did you do it?
@therealjrn Of course. Its their network. I was just the consultant.
That is the attitude I developed long ago. If the customer wants something stupid, first you try to explain why its bad and shouldn’t be done. But in the end of the day, as a consultant you do what the customer wants and its not your problem…provided its all documented
The irony of my story above is that the IT director didn’t know how much was blocked until he was trying to shop on Walmart.com. We could get to Amazon, but not Walmart. That was the point I told him this was absolutely ridiculous and they went waaaaay overboard with the filters. On the bright side, I can still access meh at the moment. I trust it won’t last.
@cinoclav I keep pretty much everything locked out of the main subnet via a whitelist-only strategy. I had a new hire quit after 3 days because she couldn’t stream Spotify or Deezer or whatever to her workstation. I don’t mind if they listen to music while working, I just can’t have that traffic on the company network (metered ISP; rural office location with few ISP options). She was welcome to listen via her phone though. She declared that cretinous and stomped out.
THEN, she had the nerve to file for unemployment benefits, claiming “hostile work environment and discrimination against the young”. Oh snowflake. Poor, delicate little Snowflake. I wonder where you are now.
@cinoclav @ruouttaurmind I heard she ended up in the Lego shipping department for Wal-Mart.
@therealjrn
@ruouttaurmind Ok Boomer
@cinoclav @ruouttaurmind That’s insane.
@cinoclav @ruouttaurmind
Man, these entitled young kids crack me up. To think they are our future generation.
@cinoclav @ruouttaurmind @star2236 To be fair, quitting a job for lack of Internet access doesn’t seem crazy to me – jobs are basically your entire life.
And then trying to wrangle unemployment benefits because you don’t have a job… Eh. Gotta have money. She might have gotten the order of operations shuffled a bit there, not had a job to move to. We all know people. Reckless stupidity in youth is intergenerational.
I do not like Fortinet though. Rinkydink VPN bullshit. Wish we’d stuck with Cisco. I’m waiting for the crackdown where I can’t have my own devices on the internal network. Fingers crossed the cell signal holds up, when that happens.
I can’t talk about my boss right now… I might be listening…
1846 EST and it’s blocked again.
@cinoclav dang! That sucks, Clavvy! I’m sorry.
@cinoclav - I don’t suppose you can switch your workstation to connect off what I would assume is available hospital guest wifi? I work for an IT outfit and we have to run some of the legacy machines off the company’s guest wifi. Sometimes when the company’s secure network is down, we run off the public access offered by the company next door!
Hey, security is great, but there’s something to be said for functionality.
Gonna be honest I read it as, “idiots who run IT at my work are paying Fortnite to block pretty much everything on the web.”
@ThomasF yeah, at first glance I wondered the same.
@ThomasF though I thought it said playing Fortnite… Like that was going to block everything-- possibly by using up all the bandwidth…
/giphy facepalm
I run Fortinet gear and I don’t block nearly as much stuff as that.
Are you savvy enough to set up a vpn through your home connection? That could get you through some tough times.
I don’t dare to use this site on my work computer. Regular social media is blocked.
Phone works fine for me.
As someone who always worked at work and didn’t have computer access at all, it fascinates me that you have time to browse the web. Now that I have my own home business I close my browser during the work day to avoid temptation.
I used to work for a place that was in a location that you couldn’t get radio reception at all and many of us couldn’t get phone reception either on our cell phones. We’d stream the radio on occasion. It would take them about a week to block that station. So we’d find another one… Cat and Mouse game where we had never been told not to listen to the radio in our own offices (as faculty not on the clock so really not an issue that way). Good thing there were many different ways to listen to the same kind of music. If they are still doing that this many years later they might be starting to get close to blocking all urls out there for radio. I discovered some really nice stations from other parts of the world this way that I’d never have found otherwise. Oddly they did not block youtube.
Somebody must have fucked up again. I can currently access meh while at work. I once again give it an hour before they flip the switch.
@cinoclav
Don’t waste this chance to waste time!
@f00l Not sure who should get fired but I’ve been able to access the site all day.
Thankfully that has not been an issue here (yet). In fact, a lot of my posting (including this one) is done at work. I use an incognito browser and yes I know my work could figure out who is doing what, but I also know that they don’t bother. I use the incognito/private browser simply so I don’ have to remember to clear a history or cookies when I am done. I am always amazed when I check the browsers and find saved log-ins etc… So far I have resisted the temptation to order some sort of weird shit that would freak out their spouse etc.
/giphy must resist temptation