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"Honestly, I don't know what surprises me more about this story. The fact that he is having such problems, that the USAF uses Excel for any task, or that their technical problems haves to go through a help desk in another country."
While I was still enlisted I had the privilege of taking some of the Excel spreadsheets that were being used in deployed environments and turning them into ASP.net/C# applications. While doing this I've learned that the Air Force relies heavily on the application, with uses ranging from tracking ration cards for alcohol in mostly dry countries, tracking sorties and briefing them to command staff, and keeping up with Survivor Radios that were spread throughout the theaters.
The main reason why there are so many of these excel spreadsheets is that the people who make them are not usually programmers and they are writing them to make their jobs easier while they are stationed wherever they are. It can also make it easier to train the next guy that comes into your spot in 4 to 6 months (if deployed) or longer if it's an actually assignment (1 to 2 years) to do the job that you were doing. After a bit of time they become so ingrained in the job that they don't go away because no one knows how to do the job the old fashioned way and then a programmer needs to come in to make an actual application to do the task.
As for the offsite IT business, I'm pretty sure thats bogus. Even tenant units have a small IT shop that can handle software installs and ghosting of a PC. I also noticed that this specific setup has 3 monitors which means its an HP computer with an ATI video card and amd processor. It also means that it's using the ATI extend features to use the onboard video as well as a PCI-E card to push up to 4 monitors and with any OS that can be a little iffy. But as many have mentioned this is a driver issue and can be updated very easily (and possible by the user going through the 'Run Advertised Programs' tool in the control panel.)
I just get so fed up with how people immediately blame the OS or the IT guys or whatever when it comes to this stuff because really all it takes it a little bit of poking around asking the right people. If this was as mission critical as he says it is I'm sure any O-5 or above could get an IT guy at the PC within the hour or at least the permissions given to the user to upgrade the driver himself. Now I work with weather software (IGrADS for any air force/army people out there) and if something goes down on operations the doors all fly open if we need something for guys in the field. The guys on the front lines in harms way are our mission 24/7/365 and nothing stands in the way of helping them out. Reply
While I was still enlisted I had the privilege of taking some of the Excel spreadsheets that were being used in deployed environments and turning them into ASP.net/C# applications. While doing this I've learned that the Air Force relies heavily on the application, with uses ranging from tracking ration cards for alcohol in mostly dry countries, tracking sorties and briefing them to command staff, and keeping up with Survivor Radios that were spread throughout the theaters.
The main reason why there are so many of these excel spreadsheets is that the people who make them are not usually programmers and they are writing them to make their jobs easier while they are stationed wherever they are. It can also make it easier to train the next guy that comes into your spot in 4 to 6 months (if deployed) or longer if it's an actually assignment (1 to 2 years) to do the job that you were doing. After a bit of time they become so ingrained in the job that they don't go away because no one knows how to do the job the old fashioned way and then a programmer needs to come in to make an actual application to do the task.
As for the offsite IT business, I'm pretty sure thats bogus. Even tenant units have a small IT shop that can handle software installs and ghosting of a PC. I also noticed that this specific setup has 3 monitors which means its an HP computer with an ATI video card and amd processor. It also means that it's using the ATI extend features to use the onboard video as well as a PCI-E card to push up to 4 monitors and with any OS that can be a little iffy. But as many have mentioned this is a driver issue and can be updated very easily (and possible by the user going through the 'Run Advertised Programs' tool in the control panel.)
I just get so fed up with how people immediately blame the OS or the IT guys or whatever when it comes to this stuff because really all it takes it a little bit of poking around asking the right people. If this was as mission critical as he says it is I'm sure any O-5 or above could get an IT guy at the PC within the hour or at least the permissions given to the user to upgrade the driver himself. Now I work with weather software (IGrADS for any air force/army people out there) and if something goes down on operations the doors all fly open if we need something for guys in the field. The guys on the front lines in harms way are our mission 24/7/365 and nothing stands in the way of helping them out. Reply
@auslander:
As a fellow programmer I commend you for a well written post. Excel does have it's uses though and sometimes it's not worthwhile writing an application when a simple spreadsheet with a few macros will do the same job. Reply
As a fellow programmer I commend you for a well written post. Excel does have it's uses though and sometimes it's not worthwhile writing an application when a simple spreadsheet with a few macros will do the same job. Reply
@Odin: My grammar is lacking I know but I was just trying to get my point across and maybe educate a few people in the process.
Reply
@auslander: This is for Odin as well, since he decided to reference your post.
3 or more monitor setups have been around for some time before the recent ATI Eyefinity development. Also Dell is NOT an Intel only brand they do have AMD setups.
As an example here are several Optiplex units. As I worked support for Dell and took calls from the USAF I can attest that they do in fact use Dell Optiplex units. This is not to say that ALL USAF systems are Dell, but they are very wide spread through out the USAF. The fact that the monitors in the shot are Dell, would lead one to believe this is a Dell setup.
[www.dell.com] Reply
3 or more monitor setups have been around for some time before the recent ATI Eyefinity development. Also Dell is NOT an Intel only brand they do have AMD setups.
As an example here are several Optiplex units. As I worked support for Dell and took calls from the USAF I can attest that they do in fact use Dell Optiplex units. This is not to say that ALL USAF systems are Dell, but they are very wide spread through out the USAF. The fact that the monitors in the shot are Dell, would lead one to believe this is a Dell setup.
[www.dell.com] Reply