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It also eats up to 1,5gb of ram sitting idle as a chat program. So yeah it’s not running unless I need it and then it gets to shut down again. Luckily we don’t use it as our primary chat tool.
FTTYI opened my email and it fucking defaulted to Copilot. Like, bitch I clicked my email. Not your half baked AI bullshit.
perfection
I have Java on my machine. So I wrote a small program that moves the mouse one pixel every minute. Forever green.
powershell script that toggles the scrolllock key every 3 minutes.
Powershell is locked down on our machines via AD policy. I used to run a tool from the Windows Store, but they locked that down too. They didn’t come for the JVM yet.
I was in a similar situation so I bought a usb mouse wiggler, shows up like a standard usb mouse once plugged in and costs like nothing on AliExpress.
It really baffled me though, shut down all tools, on a developer machine, why?
I used to hate it too but once you realize how clueless most devs are it becomes more and more understandable.
If you have Excel you can use VBA to send keycodes too. :-)
I just use teams-for-linux which has auto-online built-in.
Auto-online? 😯 I’m very curious: how do you know it has that? It hasn’t been working that great for me, Microsoft won’t always sign it in.
It’s listed as a feature and you can see it in action if you’re like me and keep displays on for 10+ mins of inactivity… I think the only conflict to it would be if your computer put itself to sleep for power saving.
I’ve had no issues with it; can’t even recall one. Sign-in issues could just be your company SSO being shit as Microsoft’s SSO so often is…
Much less resource intensive on your dev machine to just use an esp32 and write a program to pretend to be a mouse and wiggle itself. Benefit is it is completely undetectable on every platform as well.
For me it’d be better to just run the stupid Teams app on my work phone, but that’s always been a hassle because it locks itself and then I don’t always get the notifications. My primary work laptop only has 16 gigs of RAM, and having Teams eagerly gobble up a significant portion of that is highly frustrating.
There’s been several occasions where I’ve been building or debugging something, RAM being tight, and the OOM killer correctly deduces that Teams has to go. Makes me laugh every time I finally check back on Teams and realise it’s been dead for a while.
The whole “two minute timeout” is a stupid thing anyway. A non-trivial portion of my job is to read and write documentation. That takes time, and you will sit “idle” for a few minutes while reading and processing. My Windows machine would kill the BT connection to my mouse and keyboard, which would sometimes require re-pairing to get working again. For the longest time I thought the problem was the mouse and keyboard, but those problems vanished once I got a Linux dev machine.
I fucking hate everything Microsoft.
That sadly doesn’t work for my workstation, the VDI still locks after 5 mins and I need to 2 factor authenticate again. So I bought a physical mouse Jiggler for 7ish euros and I’m happy again.
I got roasted by friends calling me lazy because of it, fast forward 3 months and half of them asked me where I bought it. Now most of them have it, including several of my colleagues.
For the computer it’s an actual mouse since the input is external, so it just works. I’m always green baby ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )
Set up a solo meeting with yourself. During meeting it doesn’t change the status at all, so after you join that solo meeting in the morning set yourself to available and you will be available whole day.
That is a very Microsoft kind of behavior
This is also the way to put a real meeting your in on hold.
It makes it look like you got interrupted and had to step away.
I’m going to give you a mega useful tip.
You need to create a group. You can kick the user later and say it was an accident. Then you start a meet inside of that group. You can be the only one in the call. Change your status from Busy to available again on top. Just leave yourself muted inside of that Teams call. Your Teams will never go inactive and neither will your laptop.
If anyone is wondering yes, it can see that you were in a meeting by yourself all day
who is “it” exactly?
Information technology. The department at your company who knows everything.
Pennywise is the character’s name, IIRC.
IT department probably
As a sysadmin I sometimes feel like an “it” when I’m forced to emerge from my cubicle.
When that one power user who writes their own scripts walks by the IT area: “Come play with us!”
I just always have mine set to show away. Management stops noticing when you are yellow in meetings regularly.
Hmm, I just open notepad and use a stack of coins or something similar to hold down a key to stay active if I need to.
It’s stupid we even have to care about our status on teams. Why should anyone give a fuck about your teams status as long as you’re getting to your work done properly and on time?
Although to be fair right now I’m using a client laptop so my employer basically sees me as offline all the time but I’m reachable by teams or email on my phone.
Anyways it’s just dumb. Fun trick though, I didn’t know you could do that.
There’s a tool for Windows called Caffeine that simulates pressing the F15 key, which is almost never used by any software being that most keyboards don’t have function keys that go that high.
From the webpage:
If you have problems with your PC locking or going to sleep, caffeine will keep it awake. It works by simulating a keypress once every 59 seconds, so your machine thinks you’re still working at the keyboard, so won’t lock the screen or activate the screensaver.
I can’t install unapproved software on my work laptop, probably like most others hence I ain’t messing with that.
The best is to get a physical mouse jiggler
Preferably one that moves your current mouse. The USB dongles all have the same hardware id and can be tracked.
For what it’s worth, with Caffeine, it’s a single, portable executable, so it doesn’t need to be installed in the conventional sense, but if your IT department monitors processes or whitelists what is allowed to run, this would still be a problem.
What’s does F15 does? My keyboard only goes to F12
F12 and F3
It’s up to application software to define what it does. I have never seen a keyboard with function keys beyond F12 in person, but they do exist. Software is very unlikely to respond to F15, which is why Caffeine uses it to keep the system awake. Notably, the program can also instruct Windows to stay awake using its native mechanism instead (possibly insufficient for something like MS Teams) or another virtual key code of the user’s specification.
I do have a Mac keyboard that goes up to F16 even
I open notepad and shut the laptop lid halfway on the enter key. Always green, always working.
This is a good tip. I haven’t used it in a while but you can also log into it from web interfaces so i think it was possible to shutdown the desktop app and log into it from other places where it didn’t have the same kind of access.
I’m so glad we use Matrix at work. Our IT department even tells us explicitly not to use Teams if we can avoid it.
Hire me please xD
Let me guess, you signed an NDA and can’t tell us where.
I’m trying not to dox myself, but it’s a university in Germany. :D
Hope I can bring this kind of change to a company at some point. Matrix is the shit
How is matrix as a discord/teams replacement for work?
It really depends on what you actually need, how much setup the IT department can manage and how well the change is communicated and managed, I guess.
We use it (i.e. the Element client) mostly for chatting and another open source solution (BigBlueButton) for online meetings, but voice and video calls are possible directly with Element. Matrix lacks the out of the box office product integration for collaborating on presentations, spreadsheets or text files that Teams has. It can be extended via widgets though, which includes at least etherpad and afaik there are options for nextcloud (which has collabora) integration as well, so with a bit of setup, even that could be emulated.
So that would of course require some setup and maintenance and if the company used Teams before, some training and help for the users as well.
If you join a meeting with yourself only, you can manually set your status to available and it will never go to away.
I would expect it to say that you’re “in a call”
And you would be correct, that’s why previous comment indicated that you can then manually change your status, which will then make you appear as available. But as you are in a call, teams will no more automatically change your status to idle.
But what happens if someone calls you?
If it’s not on dnd it should still ring, not that hard to test though.
You still get messages and stuff in meetings including the audio chimes, unless you’re presenting (that sets DND)
You see/hear the call as usual, and if you decide to pick up it pauses your meeting with yourself (just like it works when on any other meeting if you get called)
Even better! /j
My boss loves sending me messages saying “Are you working today?” within 3 minutes of being idle on teams at any point in the day.
Other times if i’m idle he’ll call me just to give me some busy work or try and “catch me” not paying attention or something.
In the office I can be idle on teams for hours at a time and there’s never, ever random spot checks for productivity… and we have no objectives, goals or project management (because he doesn’t think any PM principles are effective.)
A bad boss can really make a job suck. If it was me I’d get a mouse wiggler, apparently there’s a surprisingly many physical ‘mouse movers’ out there nowadays.
People don’t quit jobs, they quit managers.
My boss bills customers for his on-site visits (technical) wherein he goes on site, plugs in his laptop, and makes me remotely do all his work remotely. I can’t wait to burn this bridge when the time is right.
Back when my company was using teams I had a script that would press a button that’s not actually on my keyboard (something like F25) every minute, so my teams was always green and it was not noticeable from my point of view
The saying is true for 95% of jobs. People don’t quit bad jobs, they quit bad bosses.
There’s a natural divot on my desk that does it for me.
But I also have my outlook calendar filled with my scheduled hours so my status shows I am always busy (working my schedules hours).
So hasn’t been a problem and it’s been years.
Mine tells me to take all appointments and do all errands i’d need to take off on my wfh days.
If i’m idle during those I still get the nasty grams, and 50/50 on any of them he asks if I took the day off because he doesn’t see it in the team calendar or HR’s PTO official system, even though there’s zero expectation for us to take PTO for a doctor’s appointment or other errand that takes a couple of hours at any point.
Guy has taken a day and a half this week to work on his own personal stuff without requesting PTO. I took 1.5 hours on one day and got nastygrams (the “I don’t see your pto in the pto calendar” (again, tells me in person not to put it in… but every time i’m remote and idle for an appointment there’s now a record in writing asking me where I am and why I didn’t take pto.)
Later, when I see the guy in person he totally understands and it’s not a problem… so what the fuck are you messaging me for like this asshole? Why? The fuck is your problem? It’s in my fucking calendar, and i’m not taking actual time off or a half day or something - so why would I put in the team wide calendar that i’m going to a doctor? They don’t need to know!
Sounds like your boss has a boss and those checkin/nasty grams are how they measure their tasks.
I’m not actually suggesting this is the case in your situation, but there definitely exist work environments in which employees are given contradictory directives so that non-compliance can be logged and used as justification later for lack of giving a raise or disciplinary measures.
That implies he is also sitting around watching Teams instead…being productive.
And at the end of the day, unless you’re working at a start-up, your business won’t fail because someone wasn’t nickle-and-dime-ing individual workers on their productivity time.
I learned from my wife that you can start a meeting by yourself using the Meet Now button on the Teams calendar, and that will keep you flagged as Busy.
I run teams in a PWA on Linux which doesn’t have permission to check if I’m using my computer or not so I’m always listed as away unless I’m interacting with Teams directly. I hate teams so much.
It’s so stupid, previously you could keep it permanently “online”
Use a program called Caffeine. It presses F15 every 59 seconds. Nice thing is that F15 is a largely unused button, so it doesn’t interfere in any way when you’re actually doing something on the computer (classic mouse wigglers are very annoying in that regard)
A proper wiggler should reset the timer every time you actually move your mouse so it never do it while you are using your mouse
And wiggle not every second too, like 1 pixel every 30 sec. That was the only thing I disliked with the cheap wigglers, they were great otherwise.
Not Scroll Lock?
that’s used in excel
Christ, what for?
with scroll lock the arrow keys move between cells, without it they scroll the sheet.
Isn’t it the other way around?
could be, i didn’t verify
Well that’s useless
does what it says though
I use it every day :D
You’re only proving my point
Sadly, blocked by my company
Is powershell blocked?
For non-devs (like me), yes.
You can try the physical wigglers? They’re like $20ish and can be plugged into a power source that’s not your work device if your company is particular about that too.
It’s basically a timer and a cheap motor that rotates a disc with a pattern that is meant to trick laser mice into thinking that it’s being moved across a valid surface. Some are better than others.
Other homemade solutions would be opening notepad and having a heavy object press a key, but that seems not ideal for random window pop-ups.
Arrow keys are pretty safe to hold down.
Caffeine’s great. I use it to keep my computer on if I’m out doing errands so I can check my emails and whatnot with a remote desktop through my phone.
I often wondered how they did that, thanks!
Using team status to know if you are working or not is both rudimentary and unreliable. There are a lot of times the status is just displayed wrong, besides, if stuff is getting done, then that is a sign you are working
Yes! If you are in a work situation where your boss is doing this, find another job. Your performance should be based on outcomes, not butt and n seat time.
Tools like this also do not work with multiple screens.
One of the beautiful things about being able to run Linux at work and use Teams in a browser is that my status is decoupled from what I’m doing on my machine. Obviously if I’m in a meeting or chatting with somebody through Teams my status will reflect that.
I bet my most productive days have me away/idle for hours on end, lol.
Yes. I wrote a script to make me green even though my employer doesn’t give a shit because I want the peace of mind even though I’m in your situation.
This micromanagement via surveillance is counterproductive any way you slice it. The peace of mind script makes me more valuable to my employer even though it might be inconsequential.
Bentham’s panopticon.
Get a USB mouse jiggler. There are hundreds of them.
https://www.amazon.com/meatanty-Jiggler-Undetectable-Separate-Computer/dp/B09NVH8HVN
They are undetectable because they are just another USB Mouse.
These other solutions are so annoying. Yes let me spend the mental energy to wedge keys downs or setup fake meetings every single time I have to take a shit.
It’s important not to plug in a USB device like that into your work PC. IT can likely see what devices are used on any system.
Instead use a physical mouse mover device that only requires power, like a USB cord plugged into a wall charger instead of the PC.
Doesn’t it show up as a mouse though ? That is what I see in Windows. I have 2 mice
Not the physical mover, no. If you plug a mouse jiggler thing into your work PC and it shows up as 2 mice, then IT can see the abnormality of that anyway because we don’t use 2 mice normally.
It likely has a distinctive vendor ID and product ID that it provides to the OS.
I just put a weight on the ctrl key when I’m away or fucking around on my phone.
It’s always interesting hearing from people that this works, because I could be working solid for 2 hours straight but not actually put my cursor in the Teams application and so it thinks I’m away
I have had that happen in the past but not recently. I would think having teams be the active window while holding the key down would have the same effect though.
??
Stack of coins on the arrow key, works wonders.
Yes but I must take it off and put it every time I leave my desk
Unlike many others in this thread, I can’t download any programs on my work laptop. I just don’t have permissions.
So I found a much lower tech way of staying green. I go to the chat with yourself chat. Then I put a 3 pound weight on the backspace button. This keeps me green forever.
With my old work laptop, I was able to press backspace then wedge a set of tweezers in the key to hold it down.
Whatever works lol.
A quarter is the perfect thickness to wedge into a key to keep it pressed
Just have a meeting with you as the only invite then set status as available. It’ll stay like that all day.
Same with my wife. Which is why I gave her an esp32 with a program on it that makes it pretend to be a mouse. It will randomly move just like a regular mouse and the computer cannot tell it’s not actually a mouse. Just plug it in whenever you want to walk away.
I used to open a blank document and put something heavy on the spacebar, too. That was until someone unveild me the secret technique of placing a spoon on the laptop’s touchpad. It changed my life.
I tried this and it didn’t work. If I rub the spoon on the touchpad, it moves the cursor. But leaving it there doesn’t seem to do anything.
Use a 🥄 on the touchpad.
I tried this and it didn’t work. If I rub the spoon on the touchpad, it moves the cursor. But leaving it there doesn’t seem to do anything.
Interesting. Maybe you could play with the sensitivity or maybe it just doesn’t work with that spoon or pad.
When I leave it there then after settling it does not interfere, yet seems to do ‘enough’. At first when I heard of this I did not think it could work but it does.
Sometimes though teams is broken and changes status all the time then it needs a reboot and goes back to working.
