Need GEEK HELP! HELP ME! HELP ME, PLEASE!

Poststructural Pub
1

Please, can someone help me? I don’t know how much more of this I can take, although I’m now beginning to understand how the state of Florida can list “computers” as hazards.

My computer has found a voice and is now talking at me.

Some time ago, our computer people, in their never-ending quest to aggravate everyone, wrote the program from h*ll. It enables them to post system status messages. They pop up as yellow sticky-looking things in the lower right corner of the screen. If, for instance, something happens to the network, they post a message. When they fix it and you need to reboot, they will post another. The problem is that the messages keep popping up every minute or two, continuing long after the problem has been solved.

This was annoying enough.

Today, the messages are speaking. Every time one of these things pops up, a voice with some unidentifiable accent comes on and reads the message. If I click the system status thing in the tray, he tells me about it and then wishes me a nice day.

It’s not the Swedish Chef. I like the Swedish Chef. This is like nothing I have ever heard. It just speaks with some kind of hideous speech impediment.

I’m very close to losing it here. I’m getting two different kinds of headache.

I have email coming in at me through two separate systems. Every time one of those receives an email, it flashes a transparent version of it in the lower right corner. It’s a flood of email and about half are duplicates and duplicates of duplicates.

A few weeks ago, I looked at my calendar and discovered meetings on there that I hadn’t scheduled. Turns out that everyone in the country can view my calendar and put things on it . . . and they’ve lost no time doing so. (“I checked your calendar and saw that you weren’t doing anything this afternoon . . .”)

On top of that, people can find me through several other pieces of software.

Now, on top of everything else, there is this freakin’ voice yakking at me.

Please, does this ring a bell with anyone? Can anyone help me turn it off?
Nobody else in my office has this going on today. It’s just me. I may have been the only one to get software updates in the last few days, so their loss may be only temporary.

Don’t tell me to turn off the sound entirely, because I . . . ah . . . have some CDs that need to run. Very important ones. Educational ones by . . . oh . . . Matt Molloy and Michael McGoldrick.

I just want to turn off the computer voice that is reading messages at me. I’m thinking that it is going to start reading the help messages that appear in software.

I don’t know how much more of this I can take and if I can get this fixed without having to call the computer people . . . who will delight in the knowledge that they have tormented me yet again . . . I’d like to go that route.

Thank you.

2

This is a computer at your place of employment, I assume?

At any rate, I have no idea what that software is or how to deal with it. I am an utterly useless person.

Always glad to help. :slight_smile:

3

If it is your employer’s PC, and if you do not have total control over the adding and removing of software on it, then I’m afraid you are totally at their mercy. If you are working from home, you should be running two PCs at once: your work PC and your own personal PC, with a small router to connect both of them to your line out (unless you have dial-up access, in which case you is screwwed). You play the CDs and do personal stuff on your own PC. That way they can’t monitor you when you’re goofing off. :wink:

The meetings/appointments without warning are coming courtesy of MS Outlook. See if you can disable this feature, but if it is an employer-controlled application, you is screwwed again.

Multiple duplicate emails may be filtered through some of the freeware available (there’s a package mentioned on a nearby thread about forwarding mail) but if you are not allowed to load software on your employer’s PC, you is screwwed a third time for good luck.

Technology at the hands of your employer - scary stuff! :astonished:

djm

4

You don’t have to turn the sound completely off. There are different
channels in the sound system of windows (I assume you are ussing
Windows, since you didn’t state otherwise). The voice is probably on
the “Wave” channel, which is different than the “CD” channel.

Bring up your Volume Control. Depending on your system, you should
be able to find this in your Start Menu under Accessories / Entertainment.
Or, if you have a little yellow speaker on the righthand bottom corner of
your screen, then double-click that.

When Volume Control comes up, you should see several channels,
called “Wave”, “Midi”, “CD”, etc. and a “Mute” checkbox under each.
Check the box for Mute under the channel called “Wave”. This
should silence the voice, but not the CD, hopefully.

Forgive me if this doesn’t make sense, I’m doing it from memory since
I don’t use Windows at work.

5

These are the the guys who can help you.

Tell them you can’t work under these conditions, go home and listen to Cds in peace, and tell them to call you when the problem is resolved!

6

Call your corporate help desk for the talking thing.

The email notification sounds like an Outlook thing. Just go into Outlook and pick Tools | Options…

In the options dialog be sure to select the “Preferences” tab.
Then click the “E-mail Options” button.
Then click the “Advanced E-Mail” Options button.

Near the center of the resulting dialog you’ll see some check boxes. One of the check boxes says, “Display New Mail Desktop Alert”. Click the check box so it’s NOT checked.

That’ll get rid of the little transparent boxes that get in your way.

I can’t help with the voice stuff.

7

Admit it Lamby, you’re just scared it’s going to announce to the world that you’re looking at a Flatley website. :wink:

If the meetings are coming through MS Outlook then just go to Tools/Options/Delegates and change their permissions. Here at work we have to have our calendars available for viewing but that’s all so if anyone wants you at a meeting etc. they have to ask.

8

Dang. If I hadn’t insisted on taking the mick I might have been first with the help.

9

Yes, all these behaviours are controllable from the Options menues. Unfortunatley, many employers disable a user’s ability to change these settings, or reconfigure your settings back to the corporate standard without your knowledge. I work for one such employer.

djm

10

Find the sucker with the job title of systems administrator…kill him.
Then the sucker that designs new systems, repeat.

The company will have hired a new ones by the time you get out.
The new ones may get fix it…

:wink:

or not.

11

At my job, you have to sign a paper that says you won’t install software without the permission of the IT department…

And then I realized…I am the IT deparrtment :wink:

12

Have mercy, he may know b*gger all about computers. Believe me I know. I was seen looking at a manual one day and got that added to my job description (and it was only the manual for my new monitor coz I couln’t find the on switch). Ah, the joys of UK Local Government.

13

Yes, I’ve seen that on some occasions.

14

Well, I can now turn off The Voice, Fearfaoin. It is coming through the “wave” channel. Unfortunately, so is my CD. :moreevil:

When the voice goes, so does the CD. Bummer.

This whole thing is some government employee’s “hey, I did some work this month” project. First he wrote the software to flash the messages and now he’s added a voice to them. He has undoubtedly gotten fat bonuses and probably a pay increase or two for it. The messages, however, are completely irrelevant. They NEVER appear when you need them. They’re always coming on AFTER the problem has been resolved or when there is no problem to begin with. If there is a problem, they still have to use the overhead to announce them.

15

Most unfortunate. What do you use to play CDs? Windows Media Player?

16

Yes, Windows Media Player. It’s there when I put a CD in and close the cup holder.

I’ve temporarily solved the problem by turning the CD up real loud. It has the added benefit of drowning out my coworkers.

Normally, I can’t listen to the CD while working. Today, I’m doing something that isn’t too challenging.

You know, now I’m looking for an Office of the Inspector General hotline number. This stuff interferes with my software. Every time one of those messages pops up, the cursor hangs for a bit.

Worse, I have one of those jobs where you have to use actual brain . . . it involves reading massive amounts of material, noting what’s going on, and keeping running lists of this sorted in order (and the order changes), while also recalling information from other sources and applying it to what I’m reading, and operating a minimum of two different software packages at the same time to do this with. Most of what I do is not the usual, but involves problem-solving. By the time it gets to me, everybody else has given up on it. And I’m going to be interrupted every two minutes for several hours at a time with a flashing yellow message and . . . the Voice from H*ll?

I’m going to calculate the interruptive downtime from this. projected across my department and the institution, and then I’m going to report it to the OIG hotline. There is waste in every organization, but deliberately orchestrated waste like this is just too darned much.

GRRRRRR!

And Cran thought I was crabby! HA!