Posts by Stevie

Re: Using a computer where pen and paper would have sufficed!

Access is a great tool for doing some jobs. Reading these tales of woe it is clear to me that they would have resulted in a mess no matter what technology was backing them.

Point: MS Access is a powerful little tool, with a smashing front end. I'm looking at devising a small database to hold details of database user setups, to replace an absolutely horrible legacy spreadsheet.

I could deploy it as Oracle or PostgreSQL, but then I'd need a second technology to front end the thing for display purposes, colleagues for the using of.

I cannot deploy a web server for this. I do not know Java well enough to write what would take me a few minutes, even years since I last did it, of running off a Visual Basic app with Visual Studio.

But Visual Studio cast a small fortune, and I have no license for Visual Basic.

I do, however, have a copy of MS Access. The temptation to spend a couple of hours doing the entire thing in MS Access is almost overpowering.

Re: Location location location

Well, we 'ad it tough.

etc.etc.

Re: Windows boot power draw?

I have a TAB book from the late 70's titled something like "build your own microcomputer" that bemoans the scarcity of stepper motors, that would have to be dumpster-dived for if you wanted to make a plotter since stepper motors were now considered a dead-end technology with no practical applications.

Heh.

The book also talks about how to "hack" a Mk7 teletype into a console by swapping two keycaps. Scan code differences meant the teletype couldn't simply be used as is.

Not the daffiest DIY computer device I ever read about in those heady Zilog Z80 days.

Re: I once destroyed the internet.

I once noted on a forum of people I respected that any time I did *not* prevent the CompUSA salesdrone wiping my Wndows-95 era software purchases over their "security device desensitizer" the 3.5 inch diskettes would not work and I would have to truck back to Columbus Circle in my lunch hour again.

I was informed that the demagnetizing wotsit used in pre-rfid times did not have the magnetic whoozy-wotsits to damage the disks.

But the effect was absolutely predictable and absolutely repeatable.

So to those respected forumers I say: THRRRRRRRRRP! 8op 8ob 8op

Re: This is why...

A very down-to-earth solution.

Re: All Employee Emails

Ha! I got a confusing "all staff" email about y2k NYE coverage about locked doors and entrances and finally figured out it was from our head office in the State Capital and had NO relevance outside that staff.

I wrote back that I would not be on callout because I was a filthy consultant and everyone knew we were a shiftless bunch (this was the actual attitude of those state capital staffers BTW), that I would be cowering behind locked doors as my neighbors attempted to break in to get my stores of bottled water and toilet paper, and anyway Zhoutec was coming and I would likely be kidnapped and probed deeply and often by space aliens.

I was called into my boss's office and reprimanded. His boss had been contacted by the sender of the mail who had claimed that she couldn't spend all day separating out our mail from the state capital staff and that she felt threatened by my mail.

Boss said we would have to call her and her boss and apologize. I immediately agreed, saying that the poor woman obviously needed psychiatric help and I would be recommending that to her boss.

My boss hit the roof, until I pointed out that a) there was NO threatening language whatsoever in my email and that anything she had seen in it of that nature she had conjured from the fevered folds of her own brain, and 2) that although she had no time to check her recipient list or to make a proper mail distribution list to avoid wasting the expensive time of everyone in our office, she DID have time to find out who my boss's boss was so she could complain to him.

Problem quietly vanished into the hot air it was confabulated from.

Re: installing discipline in the senders of email, that is a wholly different matter...

Are you kidding me?

I use both - Outlook at work and Thunderbird at home.

I get between 800 to 900 legit emails a day, and thousands of worthless "informationals". Withouit rules it would be chaos.

Outlook periodically announces it can't run ANY rules because I somehow no longer have permission to do that. Restart or I can't send emails - oh, it *looks* like I sent 'em, they just never make it because "no permissions".

Outlook occasionally mysteriously announces I have "run out of space' (on a cloud account yet) and switches off rules at random.

When it does either of these things my phone client clogs with witless messages from a server cluster monitor announcing it has self-cleared a backplane problem I can't do anything about anyway. Phone rendered useless as an email machine as a result of useful emails beingswamped by one-a-minute useless mails.

I've given up adding rules for new conditions. 50% of the time the update will bork switching off a random number of rules. If I wait until late at night I can switch them back on again, but not during the working day.

And lets not even start in on the need to use local cacheing to make reading emails a less-than full morning task, largely negating the point of cloud email in the first place.

Thunderbird usually works fine except for an occasional "double receipt" issue.

Re: Perhaps

And if you are driving into hard wood, wiping the threads with a bar of unscented soap helps no end.

I imagine carnuba wax would do too, in a pinch.

Re: it can be an effort to remain concentrating on the environment

Maybe for you.

I use regular old Cruise Control all the time, and have used Adaptive CC with joy when I have it available. Accident free so far. Last crash I had was a T-Bone when someone pulled out of a beer store at highway speed without looking for the rush-hour traffic that had right-of-way. That was in '88.

I use CC on journeys from as short as a couple of miles to those exceeding 1500. A great way to avoid speeding tickets on urban roads, too.

Perhaps it is more about whether one uses CC regularly, and how well the CC controls are integrated into the vehicle?

Re: some caveats with this...

Two words: Active Cats-Eyes.

OK three words.

RFID-enabled lane-keeping assist tech embedded in the road.

Re: Automated Lane Keeping Systems (ALKS)

We already have that.

We call them drunks.

Re: Monkey on my back

Are you sure you are stepping on a timer and not a hop-amp?

Re: Monkey on my back

But the pins-up chip will magically find the ball of the foot, whereas your typical Lego brick will seek out the tender arch of the foot.

This Means Something.

Re: Inappropriate garb? Me? Probably daily ...

Before the lockdown had me in permanent no-pants mode I would commute and work in jeans, nice sneakers and a very colorful Hawaiian shirt (from my extensive collection of same).

Management People would comment. I would point out I got the idea from my African-American colleagues who work in colorful dashikis. End of comments.

When Important Meetings are called I grab my suit, a dress shirt and my dress shoes from my go-bag. I get comments. After the meeting I change back and get gobsmacked reactions from the commentors.

The concept of having a change of clothes seems too radical for these high-tech colleagues to grasp.

Re: For those that are not aware of who Gimlet is .....

Nonsense! The "Gimlet stare" is descriptive of the look of someone who has spent their entire lunch hour consuming gimlets. i.e. Unfocused and lacking in comprehension.

I had a boss who would give me the "Gimlet Stare" after having some obscure aspect of database management explained to him.

Re: they did not know what "giving head" meant

The people who went through WWII couldn't possibly understand a reference made in a song that begins with a graphic description of someone trans-sexing, that reference being the fourth line in a scenario about Holly who "in the back room she was everybody's darlin'".

Jeepers. Pull it together, zygotes.

Re: Head

Or She Bop. Or Turning Japanese.

People give the "BBC Censors" a bad name that was probably earned in the 1960s after the "J'T'aime, Mois Non Plus" nonsense. I even heard some American tell me I couldn't have heard The Kinks sing Apeman on the BBC (Alan Freeman's Top 40 show to be precise) because "the BBC banned it because the line sounded like 'the air polution is fucking up my eyes' over old radios".

I love young people who weren't there telling me wotswot powered by internet knowledge.

And while I'm ramblin' with the brothers Davis, "Cherry Cola" scans better IMO.

Re: they did not know what "giving head" meant

You were lied to.

The song was Walk on the Wild Side.

And if I could work it out at 16 I reckon the BBC censors could. JMO.

[*mutters*] Right, y'bastard.

ALTER TABLE WERDSMITHS_UNAUTHOURISED_GOOD_STUFF TRUNCATE;

--

DROP INDEX MAKE_WERDSMITHS_REPORT_RUN_BEFORE_THE_QUESTION_DOESNT_MATTER_ANY_MORE CASCADE;

--

REVOKE CUSTOM_ROLE_MADE_SPECIALLY_TO_MAKE_WS_JOB_EASIER FROM WERDSMITH;

--

ALTER USER WERDSMITH IDENTIFIED BY 1o0lI1Il1!1l!;

--

ALTER USER WERDSMITH QUOTA 1 MB;

--

COMMIT;

--

--Tek that, y'ungrateful bugger.

Re: Bah!

The problems were all from the methodology, and unfavorable comparisons to the first one written - the Mini. Paddy Hopkirk co-wrote that and *he* rewrote the book on how to work on Isigonis's little gem.

The process on car #2 onwards was:

Dismantle car into smallest sub components that make sense.

Re-assemble car, writing down what you did as the assembly instructions.

Write everything in reverse order and call that the disassembly instructions.

And finally:

Don't mention needing a mechanic's pit until the last possible moment.

This is how, for example, it is possible to write instructions for removing the prop-shaft of the TR6 as "Remove the transmission tunnel cover, undo the four bolts securing the front flange to the gearbox, undo the four bolts securing the rear flange to the differential and lower the prop-shaft to the floor."

A. Friend: "Have you lowered the prop-shaft to the floor?'

Me: "Nope. I have lowered the prop-shaft to the chassis cross-member and the twin exhaust pipes."

My choices then were remove the exhaust (BAD IDEA) or loosen the engine mounts, remove the transmission mount securing bolt, jack up the gearbox and swear the prop-shaft out of the car.

To rub it in, said prop shaft was only about 18" long. It was very dispiriting how it resisted removal.

That said, most jobs on the TR6 were super-easy if you had tools. I could swap out the axle UJs, all four of 'em, in a couple of hours. Up at 9, have tea, swap out UJs, clean up, in pub at lunchtime.

Re: still wish I'd kept it

*nods*

Sold mine 6 months before they became collectible.

Story of my life.

Re: flicked the power switch on/off several times

A Catweazle Failure! Haven't seen one of those for a while.

(Catweazle was an alchemist from the Norman invasion who time-traveled to 1970s UK. Introduced to the miracle of electric light he kept turning it on - "Shine little sun!" - and off until the inevitable "fring!" moment, at which point he sighed and muttered his catchphrase: "Nuthin' works!")

Bah!

Least fave job: dismantling the chassis of a UPS so I could remove a dud battery that had grown a bunion on one side.

Reminded me of all the times I went to work on my old TR6 blithely assuming that this time the Haynes manual would have all the required steps in it, and wouldn't require an extra day for all the things the double-barrel-named idiot who "co-authored" it forgot to mention.