* Posts by Anonymous Custard

2789 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jul 2008

Don't touch that dial – the new guy just closed the application that no one is meant to close

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Re: Happened to me at school

Or taped to the actual screen, with the keyboard also handily disconnected?

Anonymous Custard
Joke

Re: Pardon?

Gordon's alive!

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Re: Timely tale in the UK

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-58694894

It was due to a fire alarm that time, but the end results were quite similar...

Nothing works any more. Who decided that redundant systems should become redundant?

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: Chuddies (sort of)

And now so do I.

Grrrr....

(although I do also now have recollection of a fond memory of a uni server that was suffering "undergrad overload" to quote the syshack, to which I of course replied that it was then obviously Wombling).

Anonymous Custard
Devil

Apparently I'll become "Damien".

I knew there was a devil in me, just hadn't realised all it needed was a Gallic accent to bring it out...

Check your bits: What to do when Unix decides to make a hash of your bill printouts

Anonymous Custard
Boffin

Re: Postscript is human readable

Had the same in a similar era when I was a Uni undergrad.

Fortunately I was on good terms with the department BOFH, so talked him into giving me admin privs on the print queue so I could nuke the jobs (after pulling the paper drawer on the printer to stop things temporarily).

And of course I never ever used the privs to jump the print queue when it was busy and I was in a hurry (or just couldn't be bothered to wait), honest guv'nor...

Anonymous Custard
Mushroom

Re: £ vs #

Although on the other hand, I was in a training course a few weeks back where the trainer (a lad almost young enough to be my son) kept insisting on calling # "hashtag" (the course was in relation to programming, not social media).

I'm obviously showing my age and advanced grumpiness, but for the last quarter of the meeting (it was done via Teams, to make it even more tedious) I had to just sit there on mute or else I'd have shouted at him as it was driving me nuts...

Anonymous Custard
Joke

Re: Not a Cossie, but...

You called? (or rather didn't)?

Anonymous Custard

Re: Not a Cossie, but...

First hire car I had in America was a Pontiac Firebird, in Boston in the winter with lots of snow and ice, managed a nice 360 degree spin on an intestate with out hitting anything.

Gotta like how the Americans handle these things. Been out to Phoenix a few times, and the "President Circle" cards (aforementioned top tier of loyalty from Hertz) basically gives you a pool of cars to pick what you want from and drive it away.

Some fairly nice big trucks (at least to my European standards), plus Firebirds, Dodge Challengers, various sporty Mercs and Subarus and my own personal choice every time I did it - the trusty Ford Mustang rag-top.

And of course, some nice open roads around there once you get out of the city to enjoy, plus not exactly renowned for complications like snow and ice to spoil the fun...

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: Not a Cossie, but...

Ah yes, the joys of hire cars.

As a much travelled engineer, at least pre-pandemic I used to be in them regularly (the running joke was I had two company cars, one from the company and one from Hertz) and so ended up at the top level of their loyalty card scheme.

Thus when we had our normal routine rentals (class B) I was entitled to a free upgrade, and usually quite a nice one as in several of their airport locations I was there so often I was (in some cases literally) on first name terms with the staff.

Always remember the look on one of our directors faces when we were both in France for a meeting with the customer, but arriving separately (I'd been there all week doing some real work, he flitted in just for the meeting). He's there in a nice shiny Ford Focus, and looking quite pleased about it...

...at least until I pulled up in a 5-series BMW.

Angry birds ground some Google Wing drones in Australia

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Re: It's happened before

I refer you to my previous answer near the top of the page...

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: Corvids vs drones

It's Aussie wildlife - a sure-fire bet in any fight against anything short of a tactical nuke.

Navigating without GPS is one thing – so let's jam it and see what happens to our warship

Anonymous Custard
Paris Hilton

Re: I guess I'm too much of a navigation geek...

It always amuses my better half that (at least before the pandemic) I can happily fly to Europe and then drive all over the place (usually into Geneva then across into southern France, but other times into Germany or Benelux) without batting and eyelid or getting at all lost, but every time I go into one of the local housing estates around here I tend to get lost.

Although in my defence that place is a complete soulless rabbit-warren of little streets that all look the same and are crammed full of identiclone carbon copy houses jammed in as tightly as possible, and they all look exactly the same after you've gone down a few of them to try and get to your destination.

It's almost like being in Fantastic Voyage and trying to navigate into the branching bits in the lungs.

Paris, for being lost and confused...

I would drive 100 miles and I would drive 100 more just to be the man that drove 200 miles to... hit the enter key

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: Remote finger

You are Homer Simpson and I claim my $5 (or a Krusty Burger).

Anonymous Custard
Boffin

One from the other side

Had something similar, except I was the one that caused the trip this time.

We have a major European customer with several fabs in various countries, and back in the day they also used to have a couple of fabs in the US as well. As we were installing a new tool there (in Phoenix) which we had several of over this side of the pond, it was deemed worthwhile to send a hardware engineer and a process engineer (me being the latter) across to help out with the install and start-up.

All went surprisingly well, and the FE's got the tool up and running a week ahead of the scheduled date when the American process engineer was supposed to arrive. So being bored, I tinkered around with it and ended up getting everything set up and qualified the day before that date. So he basically arrived, met me and the customer, took us all out to lunch and then the a couple of days later headed out again. And that was (apparently) only due to the earliest he could rebook his flight to, although I have the feeling he grabbed a company-funded mini-break when he had the chance.

Even got reports (both from the customer and internally) that it was the smoothest and easiest start-up they ever had, which of course went down well with my boss too. So then I too took the same opportunity and had a nice few days of sight-seeing too (Grand Canyon and various other bits) and headed home for Christmas.

So I’ve scripted a life-saving routine. Pah. What really matters is the icon I give it

Anonymous Custard

Re: Ah yes…

I've often had weird ones when in Israel for business. We aren't allowed cars (as we've had a couple of occasions where Japanese secondees went "sight-seeing" and ended up in areas that they shouldn't have and had to be diplomatically retrieved). So everywhere was via foot or taxi.

Working down south, but staying in Tel Aviv for security reasons, so each day was roughly an hour each way in a bus or taxi. So by about month 3, we knew every route there was between the site and TA (and there are many), and having spent several weekends there walking about knew the city well also from walking around it.

Was many a time when we had a newbie or non-local taxi driver who was relying on just Waze to get us back to the hotel, and got himself "confused". In several cases I literally ended up guiding the Israeli taxi driver around his capital city to get us back to the hotel, and on one memorable time it was an 80 seater coach (there were a lot of us doing the contact).

Ah fun times, miss them in these travel-restricted times.

Anonymous Custard
Joke

I have learned an awful lot by taking stuff apart

And got a sizeable spare parts and screws collection after putting it back together again, or is that just me?

Anonymous Custard
Joke

And as we well know around here, the problem is always DNS...

Electron-to-joule conversion formulae? Cute. Welcome to the school of hard knocks

Anonymous Custard
Pint

Re: "a multitude of fresh qualifications counted for naught"

As Grandad said "teaching new dog old tricks!"

I think I now qualify as old enough (and certainly grumpy enough) to make use of that, so please accept one or few ^^^^^ in return for it...

Astro Pi 2: New Raspberry Pi hardware with updated camera, sensors to head to the ISS this year

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: Pinky and the Brain !!!

Narf!

Anonymous Custard
Boffin

Time flies when you're in orbit...

OK, how many of you read that Peak and the Principia mission was 6 years ago and did a double-take that it was that long ago already?

Good to hear the update is going to happen though - those old uSD cards (or indeed are they SD cards?) must be showing as much wear and tear as the rest of the ISS is at the moment...

You want us to make a change? We can do it, but it'll cost you...

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: Naive...

Yup, it's the financial variant of Mr Scott's Law (aka the Scotty Principle) of estimating how long it will take (which of course also needs applying in its pure form)...

So the data centre's 'getting a little hot' – at 57°C, that's quite the understatement

Anonymous Custard
Boffin

Re: I was working in the lab, late one night ....

Although to be fair, L-N2 (and indeed any cryo-gas like L-He too) should be treated with respect.

Not just for the temperature, but for the sheer amount of gas produced when it vapourises at room temperature, and that whilst air may be ~80% of the stuff, if you get too much more of it around you quickly get into a nasty asphyxia situation. Something akin to being in the server room when the halon systems go off, but a little more subtle.

The big men in BA would be OK to pull you out, but lesser mortals who may try to come to your aid in an almost pure N2 environment will just end up dropping beside you through lack of oxygen. A pure N2 environment doesn't look any different to a pure air one after all.

One I know of both from past academic life (having L-He and L-N2 magnets quench on me) and also current day job, where we work with tools containing pure N2 mini-environments. Worldwide across the last couple of decades that I've worked on them, there have been at least 3-4 cases either of near misses or unfortunately people being killed through taking short-cuts with interlocked doors and not bothering to let things fully come back to an air environment before opening/entering.

Whenever I teach newbies about those tools and environments I always ask what is the most dangerous chemical used on the tools (and they use some nasties like Silane, Fluorine and HF). Simple answer is it's the N2, as everyone is so familiar with it and thinks it's safe as it's most of the air. No-one "fears" it like they do the other nasties, and that complacency can be lethal.

Pi calculated to '62.8 trillion digits' with a pair of 32-core AMD Epyc chips, 1TB RAM, 510TB disk space

Anonymous Custard
Joke

Re: Bah. I've done more.

Gives a whole new meaning to arm-based processors...

Scalpel! Superglue! This mouse won't fix its own ball

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Re: Ball crud

It still happens occasionally (at least prior to the pandemic) with certain brands of hotel who have such glass desks in their rooms when you're on a business trip and trying to use your laptop and mouse on the desk.

Still at least it does finally give a use for those complimentary magazines of local "attractions" etc that they also tend to dump in the room too...

Before I agree to let your app track me everywhere, I want something 'special' in return (winks)…

Anonymous Custard
Facepalm

Re: go beyond street lighting by incorporating sensors that can receive and transmit information

Can't we just have them lighting the streets?

Even that seems to be beyond them in several places around here, without trying to get them to do anything else...

See that last line in the access list? Yeah, that means you don't have an access list

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: Oh yes!

...within a certain temperature range...

Such as hell frozen over?

Always such a joy being expected to keep sales people's promises after they've departed off to create their next disaster area.

BOFH: 'What's an NFT?' the Boss asks. In this case, 'not financially thoughtful'

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Re: Historically

And even the torched cash example has been done before, over 25 years ago.

There's nothing new in the world, especially when it comes to art and gullability.

Fungible link

Samsung's foldables fall to more realistic prices and harden up

Anonymous Custard
Boffin

Re: "prices that are no longer outrageous (...) at $1,799 and $999 respectively."

I think many may have a somewhat different definition of the word to Simon.

Or perhaps Inigo Montoya is proven correct once again...

Electrocution? All part of the service, sir!

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Re: "The power lead approached the PC..."

The other "fun" of course is American sockets. They are lovely small things, about 1/4 the size of UK ones (roughly double in both height and width).

The desks in our US offices are hot-desks (seating 4 people, two on either side), with two strips of 3 sockets along the middle. Works wonderfully for those with US cables, as they fit nicely and all three sockets can be used at once.

Of course a travel adaptor, especially a UK one with a UK plug stuck in it is somewhat larger and overhangs either one or both of the other two sockets and blocks them out.

Made a good excuse to be issued with a couple of US cables though by the local office, as I was lugging around two laptops at the time (my own company one and one used for customer training). The adaptor got consigned to use in the hotel room where there was an excess of sockets and no-one else to annoy.

Anonymous Custard
Boffin

Re: "The power lead approached the PC..."

I still today see plenty of kit meant to run in country X having power cords from country Y, Y being of course the country sending the kit.

Along the same lines - I'm an engineering road warrior based in the UK but covering Europe and Israel with occasional detours further afield (Japan and USA mostly). Of course, for my laptop I was supplied with precisely one UK power cable, and told that was my lot.

Initial investment was in a travel power adapter which covered most options, but annoyingly Israel has two similar but not compatible socket sizes (different pin gap and widths). One works with European style cables/plugs, but the other is unique to them (or at least doesn't appear anywhere in Europe to my knowledge). And of course the adapter only has European option, nor t'other one.

So over the (too many) years I have "accumulated" something of a bag full of regional cables, as also some of our customers don't like us using travel adapters...

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

But it did make quite Odin...

Q: Post-lockdown, where would I like to go? A: As far away from my own head as possible

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: New "Thing" at work

Yes, but then it would be surveys all the way down (to oblivion, madness or at least a mailserver crash).

BOFH: They say you either love it or you hate it. We can confirm you're going to hate it

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: I suppose...

Or more likely the other way around...

You MUST present your official ID (but only the one that's really easy to fake)

Anonymous Custard

Re: strong ID systems ;-)

And the odd one for deliveries (at least with the Post Office if you miss them and have to go pick it up from their depot) is that they accept a credit/debit card as a form of ID. Sure it has a name on it, but nothing else that could tie it to a person.

Many times I've ended up picking up a parcel for my better half, suitably armed with her card and they've happily accepted it as ID. Always found that odd given the card name begins "Mrs", and I'm a bearded male of the species...

Beige pencil stockists on high alert as 'Colouring Book of Retro Computers' hits the crowdfunding circuit

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Clash of the titans

If you use more than one colour when filling in the Spectrum pic, does it go all blocky with colour clash?

Somebody is destined for somewhere hot, and definitely not Coventry

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: How not to filter

Wasn't she in Allo Allo?

Exsparko-destructus! What happens when wand waving meets extremely poor wiring

Anonymous Custard
Pirate

Re: My name is Inigo Montoya

Prepare to die...

Anonymous Custard
Pirate

Tagline

Shouldn't the tagline be "Hello. My name isn't Andrew. You killed my data centre. Prepare to die" ?

And was the guard left-handed?

Is it broken yet? Is it? Is it? Ooh that means I can buy a sparkly, new but otherwise hard-to-justify replacement!

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: Ah, "I will know it's new".

OK I'll ask.

Why do you keep the replacement batteries in the fridge?

Gloom-dwelling subterranean robots battle for million-dollar DARPA prize

Anonymous Custard
Terminator

Re: Then we have one legged robot

Nope.

I also hail our new metal unipedal overlords...

The lights go off, broadband drops out, the TV freezes … and nobody knows why (spooky music)

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Perhaps dad wasn't so paranoid after all...

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you...

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Re: French water meters

How come we can't do that with light bulbs or garage doors ?

@Pascal - we can do it, at least for light bulbs. The problem is that they don't want to, as then they'd go bankrupt after selling that initial everlasting one per socket when the income-stream dried up.

Same as with many white goods these days, engineered to fail just after the warranty expires.

Can't comment on the garage doors, as I haven't had one of those (or a garage to put it on) for over 20 years now.

How to keep your enterprise up to date by deploying the very latest malware

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Wouldn't Wake On Lan be a sensible option to use?

Not when the laptops in use are shut down, undocked and locked away safely in a drawer or cupboard for the night.

Apparently the policy here is more concerned about the cleaners than malware...

Hubble, Hubble, toil and trouble: NASA pores over moth-eaten manuals ahead of switch to backup hardware

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

There's only one thing more valuable than learning from your mistakes, and that's learning from other people's mistakes before your end up making them yourself.

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

The often quoted mantra here:

Knowledge is what you learn to do.

Wisdom is what you learn to do again.

Experience is what you learn never to do again.

The world is chaos but my Zoom background is control-freak perfection

Anonymous Custard
Mushroom

Re: Worst of all worlds

I can empathise and concur, although swap out Zoom for Webex in our case (whilst having the other two as well, as of course our customers all want to use something different). And currently moving from Skype for Business to Teams, although christ knows why as it's definitely a backward step (at least the hobbled version of Teams we're getting).

And at the first internal Europe-wide internal meeting they tried to hold on normal Webex, with many people sans headset, unmuted and with the beep for people joining/leaving the call enabled (and feeding back from aforementioned idiots who were unmuted). Suffice it to say the network slowed to a crawl, and no-one could be heard over the background noise and the incessant beeps and beep-echoes.

So some swift educational courses were mandated (although even now some people still can't seem to work any of them or diene to mute themselves when they're just sat there stealing oxygen), and the meetings were switched to Webex events, where everyone except the presenters are force-muted and can only ask questions etc via the chat Q&A.

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: I have found another solution for that problem

My work laptop has to go into various customer sites and cleanrooms, and several of them have a no camera policy (although this seemingly gets ignored for smart phones).

So no Mr Customer, I can't turn on my camera for your multi-hour zoom/teams/webex shoutfest, as I don't have one due to your own site policies.

And the irony is, I'm working from home in my study, and directly behind me is actually a real wall full of loaded bookshelves...

After 15 years and $500m, the US Navy decides it doesn't need shipboard railguns after all

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Then it stops being a railgun and starts being a piecemaker?

Or is that only when (vaguely) under the command of Sgt Detritus?

Oh dear, Universal Windows Platform: Microsoft says 'no plans to release WinUI 3 for UWP in a stable way'

Anonymous Custard
Unhappy

As above, so below...

So the TL:DR of it all is they're as clueless and lost on the under-the-hood API and framework side of things as they are at the surface with all the GUI and user interface "polishing" and corner-rounding.

A pinball path to progress...