"Work account" productivity tips



  • @dcon said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    @dkf said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    The hard part is avoiding the siren call of the really good coffee I've got in the kitchen…

    That's easy. Just finish the pot and don't brew another one...

    Coffee Maker [in my case Espresso] within reach of desk - problem solved...



  • @thecpuwizard said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    Coffee Maker [in my case Espresso] within reach of desk - problem solved...

    Something like this ?

    0_1505158676848_41600e6f-e81d-4b2b-b08f-0f36ef953550-image.png



  • @dcon said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    @thecpuwizard said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    Or just constrained by applications with the 255 char path length

    windef.h:
    #define MAX_PATH 260

    Yes, and it depends on how one looks at the definition of path.. the 260 includes DriveLetter, Colon, Backslash and Trailing BackSlash and NULL terminator... so 255 for the directory structure itself....

    [Technically, you are 100% correct, but I hate to count the number of times someone has been within the 255-260 range not counting those elements and wondering why it was broken.]



  • @blakeyrat said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    People who tell you to do work in like c:\shitty_open_source_program_made_by_idiots\ are giving you shitty wrong and bad advice. You see this sometimes from open source-y morons, but also from elderly people who are still used to working in DOS.

    I had to reinstall a certain Korean game to C:\[name of company]\[name of game] from another drive to fix a crash every time I entered a certain zone. My guess was that some idiot developer hardcoded a fully-qualified asset path and assumed that nobody ever would own two hard drives at once.

    Of course they are wrong, but there's an attitude with these types of developers that bugs are to be worked around, and are the customer's problem. We can bitch and moan all we want, but we don't get to play their game unless we play by their rules.



  • @anotherusername said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    Something like this would probably work.

            Proxy auto-config
    

    TIL this thing exists.

    I ended up using a browser extension that limits my time wasting to 15 minutes during work day... after which, I just switch to a different browser. Sigh.



  • @heterodox said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    @anotherusername said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    @heterodox in the network configuration. The configuration script doesn't have to be on a web server -- it can be an ordinary file; the file:/// URI scheme should work just fine.

    That won't work. Have you tried it?

    Okay, so why won't it?


  • :belt_onion:

    @anotherusername said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    Okay, so why won't it?

    Ask Microsoft. 🤷♂ Internet Explorer just doesn't support file: as a URI scheme for the WPAD URL. Everything will default to DIRECT.

    ETA: draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01 does say explicitly that "The client then requests the CURL [Configuration URL] via HTTP. When making the request it MUST transmit HTTP "Accept" headers indicating what CFILE [Configuration File] formats it is capable of accepting." etc. So that would be why. The whole thing is based around HTTP. You can't use a local CFILE.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @thecpuwizard said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    @blakeyrat said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    who are still used to working in DOS.

    Or just constrained by applications with the 255 char path length :(

    Like Unreal Engine, which gets the limit removed Soon©


  • :belt_onion:

    @cartman82 said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    Another interesting thing. Administrator protection / UAC is utterly useless. From my second account I can access everything on my primary, including a bunch of bank passwords and stuff I have in txt files on disk.

    If you want security, you need to go deeper than unprivileged account.

    What did you do to your ACLs? Other accounts (even administrators) should never be able to see in someone else's profile!

    Administrators can change that, but...

    EDIT: Massively :hanzo:ed.

    Oh well.



  • @heterodox said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    ETA: draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01 does say explicitly that "The client then requests the CURL [Configuration URL] via HTTP. When making the request it MUST transmit HTTP "Accept" headers indicating what CFILE [Configuration File] formats it is capable of accepting." etc. So that would be why. The whole thing is based around HTTP. You can't use a local CFILE.

    That's just about the worst reason I could imagine. The Accept header isn't even something the HTTP server sends... it's something the client sets, to tell the server what formats it supports.

    That makes about as much sense as refusing to open a local HTML file because the file:/// scheme doesn't give you the ability to set an Accept header telling the server that you're able to render HTML files.

    At the end of the day, the server's probably going to just do whatever the hell it pleases anyway... it might be configured to actually do something as a result of the client's Accept header, but it might also just shrug and give you the file you requested and assume that you'll go bother someone else if you can't read it properly.


  • :belt_onion:

    @anotherusername You're focusing on the Accept header part (which for clarity, I probably shouldn't have included); I'm focusing on the "via HTTP" part. The whole thing is based around HTTP. There are more requirements than what headers should be used.



  • @heterodox I found the document you're referring to. It's specifically related to WAPD -- automatically detecting the proxy configuration file, which does occur over HTTP. I still see no reason why the URI of the proxy configuration file itself, when the user manually specifies its location, has to be HTTP.

    They repeatedly stress that the purpose is just to discover proxy configuration. That's the protocol I assume would be used if the "Detect my network's proxy settings automatically" option is selected. The document does appear to assumes that HTTP will also then be used for retrieval of the CFILE, but I see no legitimate reason why it has to be used when the file's location is specified manually.

    This page indicates that it at least might work, with possible exceptions/caveats:


  • :belt_onion:

    @anotherusername said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    @heterodox I found the document you're referring to. It's specifically related to WAPD -- automatically detecting the proxy configuration file, which does occur over HTTP. I still see no reason why the URI of the proxy configuration file itself, when the user manually specifies its location, has to be HTTP.

    That's a fair point (depending on your POV, you may or may not be "discovering" a locally configured configuration URL). I don't think the document "repeatedly stresses" that the purpose is just to discover proxy configuration as much as you think it does, but point taken.

    Looks like it does work if you both set the EnableLegacyAutoProxyFeatures policy and make sure you're using only two slashes after file:, not three slashes. I still think it's a pretty "hacky" solution and that you should have tested it before proposing in this category, but it works. :tiphat:



  • @cartman82 said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    My system is already paying dividends. That chrome extension totally blocked me from checking twitter all the time. I wanted to play some video game during the post-lunch lull, but there were no games available. So I just went back to work.

    Something that I read somewhere (sorry, guy-on-the-web-who-had-a-good-idea, I can't remember who you are...) was a single rule:

    You are allowed to do any amount of browsing and checking web stuff but every time you do so, you must close your browser afterwards.

    Well, OK, as far as I remember the guy was actually talking about closing his computer, which wouldn't work for you (hence I changed it for browser...), and actually restarting a browser might not take more than 1 second on a modern computer (and of course the whole idea of the thing is to put a barrier to those activities that you want to limit, so if opening the browser takes no time, that's not very effective). And you probably need to have a browser for work-related stuff which remains open.

    Another way to apply that might be to have another user account that you use for web stuff, so you would be free to use it as often as you want but you have to at least switch sessions (or even log off from that account?) between each activity.

    Anyway, I liked the idea as it was not really bothering with trying to find technical ways to enforce weird restrictions, nor was it trying to say "just be strong", but instead tried to install a simple rule that can be blindly followed (with a bit of self-discipline, but you need some in any case!) and that will have the required effect, while at the same time not directly limiting the activity itself (a key point was that you don't consciously try to limit your browsing, you just make it slightly more painful).

    Maybe you can find a similar rule that you would be able to enforce and that would slow you down?



  • @cartman82 said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    If someone has some tips, about this or any other aspects of locking down the work environment, please share them here (yes, yes, tip no 1, don't start forum threads you'll have to follow, baby steps people).

    Adblock, block element, root element.



  • @remi said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    @cartman82 said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    My system is already paying dividends. That chrome extension totally blocked me from checking twitter all the time. I wanted to play some video game during the post-lunch lull, but there were no games available. So I just went back to work.

    Something that I read somewhere (sorry, guy-on-the-web-who-had-a-good-idea, I can't remember who you are...) was a single rule:

    You are allowed to do any amount of browsing and checking web stuff but every time you do so, you must close your browser afterwards.

    Well, OK, as far as I remember the guy was actually talking about closing his computer, which wouldn't work for you (hence I changed it for browser...), and actually restarting a browser might not take more than 1 second on a modern computer (and of course the whole idea of the thing is to put a barrier to those activities that you want to limit, so if opening the browser takes no time, that's not very effective). And you probably need to have a browser for work-related stuff which remains open.

    Another way to apply that might be to have another user account that you use for web stuff, so you would be free to use it as often as you want but you have to at least switch sessions (or even log off from that account?) between each activity.

    Anyway, I liked the idea as it was not really bothering with trying to find technical ways to enforce weird restrictions, nor was it trying to say "just be strong", but instead tried to install a simple rule that can be blindly followed (with a bit of self-discipline, but you need some in any case!) and that will have the required effect, while at the same time not directly limiting the activity itself (a key point was that you don't consciously try to limit your browsing, you just make it slightly more painful).

    Maybe you can find a similar rule that you would be able to enforce and that would slow you down?

    Make a process that opens your browser but sleeps for X time first.

    You could make it always alive and have it warn you about the browser being open too much, but Chrome likes to make all these processes for its applications other than browser.



  • @heterodox There's a lot more here:

    Basically, IE11 deprecated the syntax (which implies that it did work before), for the reason that WinINET-based applications (which included IE) could use file:// proxy scripts, but WinHTTP-based applications could not. So, for consistency, they deprecated it, and now they recommend that everything use HTTP.

    0_1505231983637_169ee195-4152-4148-ba99-860ab0c09b3f-image.png

    (that page also links to The Bizarre and Unhappy Story of ‘file:’ URLs, which is worth reading)

    @heterodox said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    I still think it's a pretty "hacky" solution

    Granted, but the whole point of this topic was to find a hacky solution... break part of the internet, but not all of it, for only certain user accounts, and not others, and all with as little complexity and overall difficulty as possible. It's certainly no more hacky (and probably easier to hack together quickly) than logon scripts to change the hosts file depending on which user logs in, which was also a suggestion.



  • @xaade said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    Make a process that opens your browser but sleeps for X time first.

    Yeah, that would be a nice adaptation of the idea.

    Of course you still need to have another browser on the side for work stuff, but that shouldn't be too difficult (at worst, use a different browser entirely!).

    Actually, that's another idea: use a bad browser (IE anyone?) for non-work browsing. Same rule as before, you can do as much browsing as you want, but Twitter, TDWTF etc. must be done using a slow/awkward/incompatible browser (I would suggest FF22 but actually that one apparently Works(tm) if @Lorne-Kates can be trusted) (and actually it's probably a bad idea to use an outdated and less secure browser) (unless it's so old that none of the current exploit would work but then nothing will work anyway) (at that rate you might as well use links) (this is really getting out of hand) (I need some help!) (I've never written any lisp, how am I going to get out of here!) (ctrl c) (not RPL, wait) (c ctrl) (aaaaaaaahhhh)



  • @remi said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    Actually, that's another idea: use a bad browser (IE anyone?) for non-work browsing.

    Safari. 🚎


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @blakeyrat said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    Shift-right-click any folder, pick "open command window here". They could not make it easier.

    Holy fucking McShit.

    https://i.imgur.com/OodkKoX.png

    I did not know that.



  • @lorne-kates I accept all currencies.

    EDIT: also why the fuck are you using Windows 2000? Or possibly XP in 2000-mode? Jesus man.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @blakeyrat said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    @lorne-kates I accept all currencies.

    EDIT: also why the fuck are you using Windows 2000? Or possibly XP in 2000-mode? Jesus man.

    To annoy you.



  • @lorne-kates said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    @blakeyrat said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    Shift-right-click any folder, pick "open command window here". They could not make it easier.

    Holy fucking McShit.

    https://i.imgur.com/OodkKoX.png

    I did not know that.

    E_NO_REPRO. But I do have an "Open PowerShell window here". (win10) And that's with the setting that keeps command prompt in the r-click on . Yeah, who cares about consistency...



  • @blakeyrat said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    Shift-right-click any folder, pick "open command window here". They could not make it easier.

    Easier? No. But they sure could've made it a lot more discoverable.



  • @dcon said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    But I do have an "Open PowerShell window here". (win10)

    Yeah I had to use a registry hack to restore the old Command Prompt option. It's still there, just disabled with no GUI control to enable it.



  • @dcon said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    E_NO_REPRO. But I do have an "Open PowerShell window here". (win10) And that's with the setting that keeps command prompt in the r-click on . Yeah, who cares about consistency...

    Yeah mine is too. I believe that was in the Creator's Update patch notes, IIRC. Recent though, Windows 10 shipped with "Command Window here".



  • @anotherusername said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    Easier? No. But they sure could've made it a lot more discoverable.

    Opening a contextual menu with "shift" down will show you a few more options than normal. Since those options are usually "power user" features, I dunno, consider it a safety gate I guess?

    But that's old as dirt. Windows 95 was the same way.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @blakeyrat said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    @lorne-kates I accept all currencies.

    EDIT: also why the fuck are you using Windows 2000? Or possibly XP in 2000-mode? Jesus man.

    I would have guessed server 2008 myself.



  • @blakeyrat said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    @anotherusername said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    Easier? No. But they sure could've made it a lot more discoverable.

    Opening a contextual menu with "shift" down will show you a few more options than normal. Since those options are usually "power user" features, I dunno, consider it a safety gate I guess?

    But that's old as dirt. Windows 95 was the same way.

    Do they have an right click option to "open command line as admin here"


  • FoxDev

    @xaade said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    @blakeyrat said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    @anotherusername said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    Easier? No. But they sure could've made it a lot more discoverable.

    Opening a contextual menu with "shift" down will show you a few more options than normal. Since those options are usually "power user" features, I dunno, consider it a safety gate I guess?

    But that's old as dirt. Windows 95 was the same way.

    Do they have an right click option to "open command line as admin here"

    With shift:
    0_1505305203053_457e01da-0bea-473d-badc-8cab62db84ad-image.png

    Without shift:
    0_1505305248847_37c84c1a-a55e-4357-a6ca-d17e01f76dba-image.png

    looks like in Windows 10 at least literally the only difference is you get the option to open command line (but not as admin)

    or powershell i guess, On my laptop shift-rclick gives me this menu:
    0_1505305377148_5df96c82-d70e-48ed-b5de-b774fd4cdfc7-image.png


  • FoxDev

    @xaade said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    @blakeyrat said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    @anotherusername said in "Work account" productivity tips:

    Easier? No. But they sure could've made it a lot more discoverable.

    Opening a contextual menu with "shift" down will show you a few more options than normal. Since those options are usually "power user" features, I dunno, consider it a safety gate I guess?

    But that's old as dirt. Windows 95 was the same way.

    Do they have an right click option to "open command line as admin here"

    Only if you enable it via the Registry:


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