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I own a small, portable table saw.
After about three years of casual usage (hobby / "honeydew" projects) , the on/ of switch broke....
and since I am certified MS EE I "hot wired it " ...bypassed the (broken ) switch.
It is much safer now - I unplug it when it is not in use.
AI "assisted " spinning gizmo - no thanks - technology fails.
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I think they over did it. See www.sawstop.com - quite effective, but ain't no way I'm sticking my finger into the blade to test it  .
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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I had my laptop (Win10) turned off for a few days because we went on vacation and I left turned it off before traveling. I turned it back on and now Win10 is maxing out all 8 cpus to 100% with the Window Modules Installer Worker.
That seems very efficient to me.
I couldn't really tell what was going on -- but I knew that it had to be Win10 updates.
Now, as I'm typing this (on another computer) I can hear the fans slowing down a bit in the laptop and lo and behold I see that there are windows updates to apply.
It's such an amazingly bad update system.
Even after it taking over all my CPUs I still have to "Update & Restart" and wait while it is doing the actual update. I just really can't believe it.
My desktop, running Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS was also off for many days. I ran the updates and they updated in the background with no problems.
There are only two reasons I have the laptop running win10 for:
1. microchip / atmel studio
2. Steam games
EDIT - Windows Hello
When the machine finally came back up, it popped up a serious-looking message -- which took over the screen and it was Windows Hello saying,
Windows Hello said: "if you want to continue to store face or fingerprint data on this computer please click "OK"
I said, Yes, since I have a fingerprint scanner, and the message disaappeared.
That was very odd. have they been sued for data breach or something?
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raddevus wrote: It's such an amazingly bad update system.
Win11 is just as bad. I realize people here will always defend Windows, but I'll just say this... my Linux box doesn't just get randomly sluggish a lot for no reason. Both boxes get updates, but only one is unusable half the time.
And don't you dare disable updates... you'll be kicked out of the cool club and MS will come hunt you down like the dog you are. 
Jeremy Falcon
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In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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raddevus wrote: Win10 was initially rolled out are still there. Mind boggling!
why should be in another way? As they were paying atention to feedback... 
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I have a MacBook Pro and MacOS is far worse.
If I do not do a full shutdown and just sleep it, when I turn it on a few days later, with any updates, an internal OS process will go nuts and max out the CPU to such a degree, even moving the mouse is a difficult task. I have looked at the Activity Monitor (Task Manager) and identified which process that does it. I can't recall it off the top of my head.
It takes me several minutes to go through the process of doing a full shut down. When I do a cold boot after, everything is fine. Great when you have to log into a team meeting... 
Mac OS is a very buggy OS! Windows 11 is far more stable for me.
Graeme
"I fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand kicks one time, but I fear the man that has practiced one kick ten thousand times!" - Bruce Lee
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I am not sure if this is the correct place or not. We are starting to migrate ERP systems. As such our team has hired some new BA's. 2 of them came from the desktop support team. I have noticed they seem to be struggling. I asked them yesterday if they had any training or such. The reply was no. I then asked if they wanted some help to understand their new positions. Both of them said yes.
Could some of you please tell me what you think are the most important skills, duties or anything else I can share with them to help them grow into their new positions please.
cheers
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My understanding is that BA's take the needs of the client and convert them to requirements (at a high level, I'm sure they do more than that). Those requirements get prioritized for the Dev team, db team, etc. through some sort of sprint or iteration planning.
There are probably some good videos on YouTube for Business Analyst positions, etc. that would be worth watching.
From the internet, random Google search result:
Quote: This means their role is to develop technical solutions to problems in a business or to further a company's sales revenue by defining, documenting and analyzing requirements.
I think BA's also work with the QA team to make sure their testing scenarios are correct and complete and to answer any questions and/or issues regarding testing, and UAT.
modified 3-Aug-23 19:18pm.
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And there was me thinking that a BA[^]'s main jobs were drinking milk, being afraid of flying, and pitying the fool. 
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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I miss Sergeant B.A. Baracus. Great show from my childhood.
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"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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And my first thought was Bachelor of Arts.
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Thanks so much for your response
Yeah I know that part. I was thinking they might also play PM in smaller projects. In our case each BA will have a department they support. Students, HR, Finance so they will become system experts in that part of the system. And to a point that side of the business. Anything else they might be required to do outside of being the middle man between myself and the business side.
I should have been more clear in my question.
cheers
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Robert Cummings 2021 wrote: they might also play PM in smaller projects.
I would be careful with that. If you are trying to keep costs down, then I get that, but I strongly support the separation of concerns between PM and BA.
PM skillset is a whole other ball of wax. If you have the money to send them to formal PM training that would be wise, if they are not already trained PM's.
Best of luck.
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It is probably too late for your organization, but putting BAs (Business Analysts) and PMs (Project Managers) in charge of any technology project (especially in software engineering) is a bad decision.
Hiring or contracting these non-technical roles to assist the process, reporting under the authority of an experienced senior software engineer (we’ll refer to herein as the Project Lead) is a better approach when the project is large enough. On smaller projects, those roles should be done by the Project Lead.
First, they should not be given any tasks that require technology decisions. The Project Lead should carve up the project into manageable tickets (e.g. epic, features, user stories, tasks, and tests) that are hierarchically related and follow a projected timeline and adjusted as the project progresses. If BAs and PMs are involved, the Project Lead assigns them user stories and tasks as fits their area of expertise.
Second, the Project Lead is the primary contact and negotiator with both customer (internal or external) and the business leads involved.
Technology projects are best led and managed by senior engineers who thoroughly know the technology and are still hands-on to at least some degree.
Technology projects that are led by non-technical BAs, PMs, or other roles filled with non-technical people are likely to cost more, take more time, and result in lower quality.
If it is too late for your organization to properly manage the project, then you are doing the kindest and most helpful thing by offering to help those non-technical BAs/PMs so they have someone to handle the technology part, and help them learn more about the technology, which gives them “a leg up” in their career.
You are also fortunate that they are receptive to such help. I have found that all too often, the non-technical roles reject the help. A combination of pride and “not knowing what they don’t know” is often why do many non-technical folks don’t want the help they need.
Best of luck to you.
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Depends on the size and nature of the organisation, partly. Strictly speaking a BA will analyse the business, which may or may not involve anything to do with IT. They might identify areas that can be automated or computerised, and they would input their business requirements to the Systems analyst. The SA would work with the DBA and any systems architects to create specs for the developers.
Unless you (or they) have job descriptions from HR, it's maybe difficult to determine whether this is their role, or a more "full stack" version where they are expected to identify the business' needs AND deliver that as a systems solution.
Either way, recruiting BAs from Desktop Support seems a very strange approach. If you get the business analysis wrong, or even suboptimal, it doesn't matter how good your developers are, your business will suffer - badly.
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I understand what you are saying. Especially the part about recruiting from desktop support. We are a small technical college in a very rural area. Evidently HR had a hard time finding any qualified applicants. So they gave the existing employees the job. It was a promotion of sorts.
They will definitely be "full stack" BAs. Even having a BA is new to the college. And I am the only programmer on staff. I just support the integrations between all the various systems. So I guess what we need is way different from what 3M, Amazon, and other organizations with large IT staff.
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Robert Cummings 2021 wrote: We are a small technical college in a very rural area. Evidently HR had a hard time finding any qualified applicants.
This explains a lot more regarding your situation.
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Slacker007 wrote: This explains a lot more regarding your situation.
How's it go? We want a rockstar that turns down the likes of Apple, and we want to pay them $2 a month! And, we want them now!
Jeremy Falcon
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Sincere wishes for success Robert.
My suggestion is to encourage your new staff to ask a lot of questions -- especially "Why?". They need to learn the business as it stands currently as well as why the customer wants changes.
Best wishes from Minnesota - Craig
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A BA is a liaison between the tech side and business side. The tech side usually has poor social skills, and the business side usually has poor technical skills. A BA has to be the go-between between the two. Being slightly technical enough (not nearly that of a dev) to help translate what the business wants to what tech can consume and vice versa.
IMO, a BA needs something that can't be taught... a friendly, type A personally with no ego... who respects devs and doesn't fear the business. They don't have to be great at tech, but they do need to be able break things down and quantify things.
To your question...
- Just about any team building activity will work. If they're new, then get them used to the people in the tech team - especially if it's remote. Go share a laugh, etc.
- Show them the ropes for your existing business processes on the tech side... Is it Agile/Scrum, etc.? If they're not Jira gurus and you're using Jira... make sure they really learn Jira (most people never do). They don't have to be as knowledgeable as a Scrum Master, but enough to help them get a solid understanding of how to track timelines, etc.
- If they haven't met people on the business side yet, then they should. They should be proactive about this, but if they're brand new then perhaps an intro here would help too.
Jeremy Falcon
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Oh, the reason why it's important they don't fear the business side, if a bad BA is scared of their own shadow, they'll never be honest with the business. They'll usually over-promise and under-deliver out of fear. That's bad for devs. That's bad for the business.
Yes, business competition can be fierce, but most folks just want the truth. If it's going to take 2 months, then don't say it'll take 2 weeks just because someone is stressed.
Same goes for product owners as there's a bit of overlap between these roles.
Jeremy Falcon
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