Posts by skuba*steve

"Channel 5's cult Gadget Show programme"

For this, and this alone, you deserve a trip to Coventry.

TL:DR - IT team implement major systems change without testing or a serviceable backout plan.

Did they all get sacked? Because they should have all been sacked.

Big cloudy Meh

Never really saw the point of this, other than targeting folks without large amounts of local storage. I've had Plex for donkeys, running off an old NAS box stuck in a cupboard - and it's always done exactly what I needed except for the one time my home IP changed after a system update many moons ago, since which I've had a script running on a local machine that emails me if the IP changes.

Can't see any reason for pulling the plug on a subscription, it was only ever one bolt-on goody around an exceptionally stable platform.

Passwords LOL

It's a constant battle for any sysadmin - shared accounts, admin passwords never expiring, stale user accounts. When I started with my current employer they had a practice of never deleting old user accounts (in case they wanted to come back), passwords were forced to change *once a year* and half the company was using a variation of the [companyname]123.

It's not until something happens (we got hit with a Ransomeware attack late last year) that the SMT starts paying attention to cyber security, particularly if you aren't an IT-centric company; we are manufacturing, so IT is a support element rather than core to the business. It's been a battle just to get USB device control and web/mail content filtering in place, and for the most part I've had to put it all under the banner of "GDPR compliance" to make any headway.

Unless you have the backing of the SMT and above, or suffer a major security leak, the company just thinks you are being difficult for the sake of it.

Still waiting....

For my application to be approved, but I'm really keen to get in and have a look at this. I spend less and less time on Facebook as I find it really doesn't deliver what I want (what my friends and family are up to now) and more and more of what it thinks I want (promoted links and what my family and friends were doing yesterday).

@Yellow

Is this not for the UC offerings (Exchange/Lync et. al.)?

Well....I'm no fan of the bigger ISP's but in an effort to apease the good lady earlier this year I agreed to drop my BE BB, BT phone line and sky package and opted for the bundled VM cable TV/BB and phone (the argument being that it was slightly cheaper than the previous setup and we got three months "free" and therefore made a saving of circa £180 for the year).

Can't argue with the wifes logic, and it was an argument I was going to lose if I tried to stick to it.

And I have to say - 5 months in - not a quibble, compaint, issue or nark. BB service has been flawless (apart from when I somewhat naughtily get caught hammering the newsgroups during peak times, and even then I only get throttled for a couple of hours to 50% speed, which is to say 1.8MB rather than the manly 3.7MB I usually enjoy), tivo is fecking awesome, and I never use the phone.

I DO hate the router, but not enough to replace it. I've not had to call customer service once, and I even managed to get them to ditch the installation fee to get me on board. 6 months free access to spotify premium thrown in, and they're doubling me BB to 60Mb/s next month, and also giving me a free tivo box for the bedroom after I asked them for an upgrade to their new bundle.

All in all - job done :)

@AC - Stop feeding the trolls

cock.

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@ AC I feel your pain. I "Manage" the internal IT delivery for a SME (more on the medium sized), and there's myself and my junior engineer running 300+desktop/laptops, 30+ servers running a resilient EX2007 infrastructure, Dynamics CRM, Great Plains, Hyper V etc, VOIP office phones, mobile devices, datacentre Aircon etc and we are pretty much viewed as a "nice to have". We are customer facing, 1st 2nd and 3rd line support, dealing with procurements, IT budgets, project management etc.

I'm there at 4am when the file server falls over, I'm there when Jenny can;t log in, when the boardroom projector stops working, when the MD decides he wants us to start using sharepoint..instant experst in every bit of hardware or software going.

We're more than just a helpdesk....at the risk of being melodramatic the two of us ARE the start and stop of IT support for the company, but we are still seen as "the IT guys" who move printers around and sort out that niggling problem you got when you upgraded to IE8 when we have already told you it breaks the intranet.

Underpaid, overworked and underappreciated, and I wish to hell they'd change the departments name from IT support!

hhmm, not that much of a biggie...

considering it takes me around 2 days to download any decent HD content, I'm losing 6 hours out of 48? In any event I log on to my BT client from work via the web console to monitor my downloads, throttle the down/upload speed so it's not killing MY connection, let alone next doors, and usually kill it when i get in during prime xBox time, and kick it off again before bedtime.

Not defending the act of downloading from bit torrent, but if we put a bit of thought into how we do it then the bandwidth issue doesn't get to be such an issue.

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Of course, on the flip side if the oik who just cut me up at the lights and nearly made me crash subsequently gets a stop/search, and in the course of checking his car for drugs/guns/hoors they find a stolen mobile to add to the charges...I'd be pleased :)

MyFace

Has had this for a while now....