Forum in Constant Refresh

[Stuugie]

Hi Admin & Moderators,

I just wanted to bring to your attention the fact that it seems this forum seems to be in continuos refresh mode for me. I am using IE8 while at work. Just a fyi!

[Dani]

Ewwies! What do you mean by continuous refresh mode?? I have the site open in IE 8 on Windows 7 and everything is fine. Are you in compatability mode or IE 8 standard?

Also, can you try disabling ads from your member profile and let me know if it still happens? (Not with your own ad blocker, but from within your member profile).

[Stuugie]

Hi Dani,

At work I use IE8 standard and my profile already has the ads disabled. What I meant was the pages act like they don't stop loading. At home I use Chrome and I don't see the same problem. Tis a curious thing!

[Dani]

Try clearing your browser cache. Unfortunately I can't reproduce this.

[JorgeM]

During the time that you indicated problems related to memcache, I did also experience some pages not fully rendering. The spinning indicator in the browser would just continue until the page was refreshed manually. Then it would be fine for a while. I havent seen that happen lately.

[Stuugie]

I completely cleared my cache and the spinner keeps on a spinning! :)

[pritaeas]

I cannot reproduce this behaviour either.

[Stuugie]

Odd! I just installed Chrome on my work pc and as I am typing this, the spinner keeps spinning. Maybe it's a local problem at my work? I don't know how that could be but if it's pretty well just me that is having this issue then it must be because of where I am. In saying that, other forums that I frequent are not having the same issue. Odd!

[~s.o.s~]

IIRC, this happens when Daniweb includes some content (javascript/images/widgets etc.) from an external domain which is not allowed or is blocked by your ISP. Corporate ISP's are notorious for blocking a lot of sites. So basically it starts loading some resource and perpetually hangs up because the host/domain is blocked by your work proxy. Not 100% sure but this might be one of the reasons.

[Reverend Jim]

Stuugie works at a place where IT is somewhat gung-ho about blocking sites that are of use to programmers. Not all sites; just some of the ones I used to frequent (I worked at the same place for 29 years).

[Stuugie]

I'm just glad that this site isn't all-out blocked on me. They let us visit and watch Youtube though!

[Reverend Jim]

I ran up against the IT gestapo more than once. There was one sight in particular (which I have long since forgotten) which they refused to unblock. The only way I was able to get at it was at home on my own time. The only reason I was given for the blockage was "it's corporate policy".

[john.knapp]

Not all IT guys are Site Nazis though... :)

[Reverend Jim]

Quick story about IT.

My group was originally a part of IT even though we had nothing to do with them. IT was responsible for all general corporate computer services. Because my group was responsible for (and only for) the computers used by the control centre (mainframe and SPPCs), we had no ties (other than organizational) to IT. We had to "rent" five VT100 terminals from IT for $100 per month each. They claimed this was for "services rendered" which amounted to none (other than the service of taking our money). To actually buy the terminals would have cost use $800 each. And they came with a one year warranty so we would have been more cost effective to buy new terminals every year rather than rent them from IT.

IT also billed the control centre for our services at 300% of our salaries. Eventually, the engineer in charge of the control centre was able to have us put directly under the control of the people we actually worked for. The financial savings for them were considerable. IT wasn't happy losing their cash cow.

So, yeah, I have a rather jaundiced view of IT.

[john.knapp]

Not all

I didn't say most....

Besides, you mainframe programmers can be a quirky lot <ducking>

[Reverend Jim]

Quirky doesn't even begin to describe me ;-)

[john.knapp]

<lol>

The only think I'd like to add is this: As you can see from my avatar, I've always taken great pains not to be a pointy-haired boss... Although I do have a well-worn a$$hat that pulls down snugly over my ears

[Dani]

Reverend Jim, if your department was technically considered a part of IT, why would you have to pay yourself??

[Stuugie]

I see what the issue is now for this:

waiting for static.ak.facebook...

is displayed at the bottom of my browser. I'm guessing that because Facebook is blocked by my work, it is the reason why this site's refresh is constantly spinning, it's waiting for a response from Facebook.

Just noticed daniweb is waiting for Twitter too and probably other social networking sites.

[Reverend Jim]

Reverend Jim, if your department was technically considered a part of IT, why would you have to pay yourself??

Sorry, I forgot to reply to this. My corporation had a funny financial structure. Each department had its own budget including for internal services. I don't know anything about accounting but I suppose this made it easier to identify where the money pits were located. My group provided all of the computer support for the control centre (which is the very heart of Manitoba Hydro). Because we worked under IT (we were part of the IT Department) rather than directly for the control centre, the department that contained the control centre staff (Transmission and Distribution or T&D) had to pay IT for our services. IT had their own overhead (training, management, secretarial, etc) to pay for so T&D got billed for our salaries plus extra for overhead. The total amounted to around triple my salary. Also, because we had no secretarial staff of our own, and there was no training available for what we did, IT really had no expenses because of our existence other than desktop computer hardware (which they also charged T&D for). So we were a "cash cow". We cost IT only our base salaries but they got to bill three times that base salary to help pay for all their other expenses. Eventually the engineer in charge of the control centre was able to call in enough political favours to get my group moved out of IT and directly under T&D (a move that we all welcomed).

[Stuugie]

I don't understand why it's so hard to be IT for a department here and not be under the IT department banner. The work I do here is definitely IT like but because I am not IT, I get paid a little less as a student, my official title is Student Admin. Other student admin people I know here are people working on their business degrees, not IS like me. I've also had trouble acquiring relevant software like VS 2010 because they don't want to give that out to student admin. All the .NET learning I do I do it from home.

[Reverend Jim]

There are certain groups that specialize in very specific areas. For example, my group (Process Control) did work exclusively for the control centre. We never did work for any outside group although we were available to advise on occasion. As such it made no sense for us to be under IT. There were also union considerations. My group had to work with the hardware as well as the code so we were able to negotiate an agreement with IBEW to allow us to do so. This was made easier because the IBEW guys were always too busy to do the hardware stuff for us (which would would have meant a lot of wasted time on our part. There are other groups such as PS&O that have similar requirements. Groups, such as Engineering Systems, develop applications for more than one outside group so they belong under IT.