* Posts by Grant Fromage

57 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Dec 2017

Page:

Behold the perils of trying to turn the family and friends support line into a sideline

Grant Fromage

Re: Right cable, wrong hole.

Several bits of kit from around mid 80`s seemed to share a common chassis design with a filtered IEC fixed plug, and a resettable circuit breaker just above. The standard metalwork had a recess above the breaker tit that was about 0.5mm less wide than an IEC cable socket and a similar depth. Usually bottom corner RHS from the front, and you could plug the power in blind from the front, unless you squeezed it into that nice space above the breaker, the only giveaway was that it was moveable vertically while seemingly happily retained.

A number of experienced chaps fell in this trap without going round the back and going "Dohhh!!!".

I did too, Once only.

If you poke it in and it feels.....different, time to think very carefully, IMHO.

This is not, repeat, not an April Fools' Day joke: 5 UK broadband vendors agree to pay YOU daily rate for fscked internet

Grant Fromage
Facepalm

Re: About Time!

I was unable to record a conversation with a BT drone in India working from a script and I felt it appropriate to send paper to BT`s registered address to warn them I would bill them and take them to court for wasting my time

In 2001 I went broadband and 2 days later my phone stopped working but the ADSL was fine, a quick check on the line showed no exchange volts IE 50V

.My mobile at that time charged premium rates for 0800 numbers so I had to walk to the open pissoir phone booth non BT

A tedious brain free in India was only on script and insisted on doing AC test rather than listening, and the heavens opened. Drenched, unhappy. The AC test will be fine, the wiring is fine, there is no exchange battery, that is done at the exchange. If you insist I must be here and it is a fault here and send someone here I will charge you at my lowest day rate which is £200 for 8hours..

I insist on being passed to someone technically able. No I got a ticket number and an appointment soaked to the skin went home. Having said I reserve the right to take you to court and being told I cant do that "we are very big company " " I don`t care, in Britain a person can prosecute the government if he is in the right by law" ( maybe have a hard time of it though).

2 days later minutes into the "appointment" for their useless visit to me, I got a proper old BT engineer ring on my moby who told me that they had had early failures with the alcatel interfaces and my landline should now be fine, it was, We had a gas , he was 2 years from retire, I told him what the numpty gave me as BS, and he said the enmity those fools generate had made his job unpleasant as the customers are offended by being told that it their fault to start with and had made him think about early retirement.

An ex colleague from a former firm now 10 years in the ground RIP was the worlds best nit-picker, he recorded little man in India comments and his own and ended up in a position to take them to court over a sentence in their contract after having similar to the above and an indian runaround. it got to recorded delivery to BT`s registered address for serving papers ( like minds) they paid him for time wasted providing he told no-one. Asif?

I wish I had had this at the time..

Ah, this military GPS system looks shoddy but expensive. Shall we try to break it?

Grant Fromage

Re: waste

Don`t rush the last few minutes. There was a legacy phone set up with the exchange and telco and the internal which just meant safe fallover queueing in the event of a failure, but the emergency direct lines were not on this and were there so you could get direct while on satellite. on an emergency

That they had been disconnected due to no traffic caused one.

Grant Fromage

Re: waste

If accountants dislike waste so much then surely they should dispense with the redundant a, c, o, a, n and t? Oh and preface it wit useless to more accurately describe their capabilities.

Wrote the redundant bit once in a memo after payments were stopped and that lost a negotiated discount with a major supplier as a gentleman`s agreement. by bringing it under scrutiny at the other end.

" I`m sorry i don`t understand this" was the response to both the memo and the concept. And yes we all did think it initially hilarious.

That tosser cost the company more than even his salary per year and they started looking at staffing but matey trousers is secure because accountancy is of course "REALLY skilled with hard maths" I see no solid space differentials with hamiltonian operators or Fourier, or newton raphson approximations, so i say nah! basic arithmetic.

Deja vu, new company 5 years in on..... one of the owning companies buys the others out.

I can`t order spares for broadcast Vt`s, because the new accountants have made a name for themselves as above by stopping our Sony account, a part owner was a a US broadcaster who got a serious discount I cannot disclose, which stopped when they looked.

You need a promotion to a high place, oh look there is this rope swinging, do you think you could get your head in that?

Conversely I have met a very limited few who get reality and are part of the solution to making money as a something done by many together.

PS many places have emergecy DEL ( raw exchange ) phones which are supported by a 48-50V battery when it all goes down and you are on genny. If you are a satellite earthstation with TX you need at least one for stuff going on to be controlled and normally the IP PBX picks the number out, and fails to a direct connection to that line.

Having to call someone`s mobile because you know they were dealing with you is a very poor second.

Not much traffic on these, i`ll cancel them and save money.

Blue Monday: Efforts to inspire teamwork with swears back-fires for n00b team manager

Grant Fromage

Re: Use of Swear words in test / demo systems is never acceptable

No, not banking, he actually used to make TV and RF signal generators.

Hackers can cook you alive using 'microwave oven' sat-comms – claim

Grant Fromage
Coat

RF OOps

“It’s pretty much the same principle as a microwave oven,” he told The Register. “The flaws allow us to ramp up the frequency.”

Shirly "ramp up the power" ? You might find a software command to alter the frequency, but it may not do much due to real world physics.

A microwave oven uses a cavity magnetron, so called because of resonant cavities, which give effectively a fixed frequency.

At microwave freqs the dimensions of the waveguide usually optimsed fot the band restrict the frequency range that can be passed without significant loss.

It`s about an octave up to I think C band and reducing in higher bands Wideband microwave power amplifiers struggle to achieve the w/guide liimits at full power

No chance of ramping up!

For satcomms, usually Tx (/+Rx ) antennae are not huge and are pretty directional but not tremendously high powered due to the modulation techniques and using them as a steered death ray is going to take quite a long exposure. There are telltales such as signal loss, safety mandated non networked connections for transmit status ,dish positioner etc that will show.

Years ago having a return signal drop on a Tv Sat flyaway ( which is hundreds of watts @ Ku) looked out of the tent and had to chase a bystander out of the beam having walked through the safety fence labelled "keep out radiation hazard". plus the yellow picture signs.

Having explained that it was "Like walking into a microwave" ( no it`s not) just to impress the hazard........

"so if I put a sausage in there it would cook?"

"no but it would possibly go blind and not be able to father children".

Infrastructure wonks: Tear up Britain's copper phone networks by 2025

Grant Fromage

Re: That bloody woman!

We really were leaders, in 1977 we had a guest lecturer John Midwinter from BT Martlesham teaching us about monomode and multimode fibres which were going into use commercially in the next year. It all went very subdued by 1980.

Not unique, The INMOS scandal, There was government funding we had a breakthrough on memory tech of about a year ahead of everyone else and it took about 9 months to get funded by which time the exchequer could have pulled in a few hundred million or more

Shakes head in despair at clasics graduates wanker bankers and other non practicals at even shoelace tying being jointly at the helm.

And that unfortunate lady was in theory technical and a graduate. Check your private eye backnumbers. better still look at the academic records forensically. If I say what you may find, this post will be blocked by a mod, just in case.and understandably.

Fed up with no-one tech aware in the echelon making decisions badly.

Sysadmin cracked military PC’s security by reading the manual

Grant Fromage

As Heaviside said "we reverse this"

My then boss was on hols in the states for 2 weeks, he had all the back up copies in one of those under desk on wheels drawer units. One of the Cd`s had got scratched (to the naked eye that badly) and wasn`t seen as viable media. I arrived with the brains trust trying to pick the lock to no avail in full flap, " ok we drill the lock out no biggie, however...." I turned it upside down, one of the drawers sort of wilted , a GPO #6 screwdriver moved it a little further in and it unlatched from the locking bar, bingo! drawer out and removed the bar.

We got the disks made, 2 copies one for where backups should have been in the 24/7 workshop, not a managerial drawer.

. It was paperclip and several years of old crap armageddon in the drawer unit though.

Chrome sends old Macs on permanent Safari: Browser bricks itself

Grant Fromage
Pint

Older apple products used to run very hot too.

Toshiba Pentium 4 D - You could fry eggs on it, it ran so hot it could've started a fire.

Around 2002-3 amongst other jobs was working In a small tv studio in the soho warren, the director was also a graphic artist and had a mac laptop where the back was a heatsink with some whizzy power pc core. (Itanium?? pls correct if misremembered)

He`d put it down on a plastic bag from shopping in Oxford St and it laminated itself to it when he was trying animations of logo`s. I went in a break and got an iced lolly and used the wooden stick suitably whittled to scrape the mess off without damage to the shiny shiny precious artifact.

Beer sign because I earned the couple I was bought as reward. A carrier stuck to a mac doesn`t sound like shit to a blanket, but it was far worse.

Uber's London licence appeal off to flying start: No, you cannot do driver eye tests via video link

Grant Fromage

Your creepy Fakir will be with you shortly.

I know from working with them at various companies several Uber lady users. the ones that use it daytime have had no significant creepy probs.

The ones covering 24 hr working who when it started tried Uber after midnight, all stopped and went back to minicabs after only a few months after a creeped out experience soured them.

One exception who used to teach Karate in a former life was tempted to do it as a mission to go perve frightening,

Top girl!

I would never let an unaccompanied lady get into an Uber cab. It would be considered neglect of a duty of care.

Trainee techie ran away and hid after screwing up a job, literally

Grant Fromage

Re: Basic mechanical ability

This will have H+S orange twats and child safety freaking.

When less than 3.5yrs due to constrained means we lived with the grandparents. I was given a hammer, a saw, some bits of wood, corks and a glass jar full of nails screws, segs and blakeys. That was my construction set. I was told the saw will cut and hurt, you will bleed this bit is sharp, the hammer will hurt your fingers, call me if you do. Never did, nearly forgot I had a chisel too! Built some lovely Eagle comic style spaceships with the rounding of the chisel and yes i was reading before 3, and talking before 18 months, that freaks people. Gran used to say. "he started talking just over a year old and he hasn`t bloody learned to shut up yet". True.

Grant Fromage

Re: What else is new?

The firm I was working for had recruited a full time "wireman" to cut the costs of the two subbies from a firm on the same estate that they used on an ad-hoc basis.

He had a gleaming new toolkit straight out of the RS catalogue which I thought unusual.

I had a control panel to wire, I reckon it would have taken me perhaps 2 days, but i`m slow and perfectionist., there were 2 other jobs on time penalty contracts, so it was fraught.

On the wednesday I delegated it to him with cable numbers, layouts switch ID`s wiire specs.. I was in on the Saturday programming a PLC and saw only some cut lengths with numbers on by the panel about an hours worth. Monday he didn`t tun up,

On that Friday evening I had a breathing space to go to the pub and I got the story from the two proper wiremen. Matey was in flip out week before and as they had tried to help him he `fessed up, he was a carpenter, had been made redundant and someone had convinced him to bluff being a wireman (?) the glowing reference was from a joinery company and the production manager who took him on didn`t twig, only looked at that he was cheap!

Why the 'feudal' tech monopolies run rings around competition watchdogs

Grant Fromage

Re: What a surprise

The only way not to have bias is to have no knowledge or experience of anything,

Newborn babies have no bias.

If you ignore or reweight facts that is inexcusable bias

What has been established as a fact is that the pseudo friendly megacorps draw you in as mates who will only say hello to you and wave.

Which is fine for a while until you wake up and say "WTF happened?" Yes you have been been data-raped.

What's all the C Plus Fuss? Bjarne Stroustrup warns of dangerous future plans for his C++

Grant Fromage
Coat

Too many years ago from byte magazine

The man himself " to err is human, to really fsk up you need C++"

I have the mag somewhere 85?.

User spent 20 minutes trying to move mouse cursor, without success

Grant Fromage

I have too many Words and i must share. God bless Harlan Ellison.

I have no shock reactions to keyboards left. A work colleague was sorting out a very expensive keyboard and it was clogged with pubes, the lady in that position was a perfect hair colour match and I had to ask her what was going on and she came up with some rubbish about eyebrows.Eyebrow hair isn`t thick and curtly

The head of Cleaning had told me of a whoops when she had been caught bush trimming at early am, There was a high def ( by late 90`s standards) camera on a very flexible mount for letter and newspaper and other capture, she had been using this to give a view to trim the lower bits of her lady garden and that combined with time of deleted frames when turned on explains all. There were still 2 frames of her lady parts in splendid formation that were somehow locked ( not me)

I got a beer out with her to delete these, the cosmetics were ok but there was no-one home, "having sex with a dim woman remains the first step on the downward staircase towards bestiality"

Grant Fromage

Re: Speaking of which,

@ alan brown, absolutely, and I stand by the polish vodka recommend, and my other IPA used to be Deuchars before the taste was ruin`d by contract brewin`. funny how often that happens.

An assisted by crap attitude outmoved ex person I worked nearby, not a colleague, nothing in common apart from breathing, applied "rubbing alcohol" to a pinch roller that IPA didn`t scrub up rather than go through replacement and an hours worth of alignment and checks. all tapes run on that machine were contaminated and had to be dubbed across.

And of course pinch replacement after, DOH

Grant Fromage

Re: Speaking of which,

@ mycho et al this will be lengthy. and to many here old hat mostly. Ramble on..........

Have a plastic washing up bowl or better a higher sided plastic storage box to contain things that go ping, things that drop and all the bits, do the dissasembly inside.

Have either a bit of double sided or a length of gaffertape looped back stuck to the side to attach bits to in the order of dismantle, so as to reverse on reassembly.

Screws and things are hidden under labels and pads. Prodding with a pin finds under labels. A cocktail stick is good for getting bearing pads or rubber feet off. These will have a sticky layer which usually wont be good enough to reattach,* see later.

You need a guitar plectrum or old credit card sanded at about 45 degrees to a finer edge for when it all sticks together with latches when the screws are out, look at the moulding and you will see tiny tiny dimples where the little bastards lie, Mostly, YMMV.

For cleaning you need a plastic cup of water with 2 drops of washing up liquid and isopropyl alcohol, (* see later) cheap soft tooth brushe , cotton buds, ktchen towel, running water for the only plastic bits.

Do your worst, but write down any connectors or odd things for memory fail on reassembly.

If it is really gunky and has had coffee or worse coke spilt then wash it in plain water as there is nothing to lose, blow it dry with a hairdryer on cold or a heat I can keep my hand in indefinitely until no visible moisture, then stick it overnight over the back of the freezer.

Use of alcohol: if you click go for it, if not don`t.

Mice generally heve mech switches that click. Some keyboards are elastomer and may be short or long term damaged by exposure to alcohols. Anything with any sort of elastomer switch can only safely be water cleaned. They can also be damaged by new green water washable flux removers getting in.

There was a Colclene product safe on anything except the ozone layer it was a Freon derivative! (TF?)

*#1 Sticky feet, once taken off and exposed to air for the hours ( ahem,days) taken to fix something they lose their urge and go inert or gooey, alcohol wipe clean and use germany`s secret weapon UHU.

If you coat them and another sample to tacky test, when ok leave it a liitle longer , if still tacky stick em on, if you do it too soon the solvent may make it pretty permanent with some plastics.

*#2 IPA, why not Meths? The structure of isopropyl alcohol means it is better at dissolving grease and other non polar soils,( flux) while about as good as methylated spirits on the rest. It is highly refined and less likely to contaminate very expensive rubber components like the pinch wheels on on a 24 or 32 track audio recorder... If you cant get it buy polish spiritus 95% which is purer than meths as the 4.99% is water.

Weird interview questions

Grant Fromage

Not strictly meeting the criteria.

many years ago (98) I went for a an interview at one of the early video SD glueware designers, Chief engineer took me round and me being me I spotted some some things and piped up,

thinking oops.

the interview had a lady from HR looking at the ladfybird book of stupid HR questions.

I got angrier and angrier at the interruptions as did cheify, and she pulled the stupidest one " in the following fiellds how would you consider yourself able organisation, delegation, communication leadership." The last one doedn`t end in ion, but I`m at least shit lukewarm if not shit hot". She shut up. It reached a natural end and chiefy escorted me off the premisess after asking "fancy a pint?". I told him i stuffed up because that silly homunculus girl i did not like , she was looking at her notes all the time which I clocked as a question list when i stood up, and was unproffessional.

We talkd about Rf stuff and a whole lot in common, the meme I started in 84 twhen suddenly all personnel departments were being rebranded and that HR stands for "hand relief" because they are all wankers hadn`t yet got there, he laughed. Job offered, not enough dosh to do a move, HR girl let go for being too agrresive and useless . he told me after.in a call which was nice. This is pre `net

Don’t talk to the ATM, young man, it’s just a machine and there’s nobody inside

Grant Fromage

Voices from Below

There was broadcast to Europe TV shopping channel, now folded that had had a turnkey server based studio nstallation by a german company, wth 1 metre standoff computer floor for cooling air distribution.

If you needed to lay cables you could just ferret them in. . Rather than just pull the odd guide tile It was easiest to get in the rough area and via one of the floor cableways by hand wiggling through someone guides you to the right one.

On server rather than live studio an hour slot of planned work. I started crawling with a cable bundle got to one of 3 possibles and my oppo had not walked there in the time I crawled there.

" Can you see my hand" repeated several times," can you see me I`m here" nothing.

I pushed on the tiles until I found an unloaded one and emerged, with a top hat of unaligned carpet tiles in the middle of the transmission gallery,

The lady on the clip playout desk looked like she was going to faint. The poor girl had heard distantly what sounded very worrying without context coming from the floor behind the desk and thought she was hearing things.

The lady director thought it was funny in the pub debrief at shift end, knew what we were doing, hadn`t passed it on.

Grant Fromage

In the days of pen and paper, initials were double edged too ........

Straying slightly off topic but definitely in Fubar territory.

There was a book to record bits of kit which failed to repeat alleged misbehaviour even under extreme provocation when moved to the workshop. ( and not just due to being cooler, we used to heat stress them as the last test).

In most cases it was almost certainly finger trouble ("Ah the FT index is high today").AKA pebcak.

The book was called the FNS log = Fault not seen, alternatively "Fsking numpty spotted". and the piece of kit got a tiny sticker by the serial no. plate with the fns number, I usually added the initials of the complainant. It certainly flagged up repeat offenders. You did sometimes get genuine intermittent faults which were swines to find and usually took hairdryer and freezer spray to locate and replace/resolder.

Did you test that? No, I thought you tested it. Now customers have it and it doesn't work

Grant Fromage

Re: Had a close call

"Just because you made a promise doesn't mean I have to keep it for you..."

And the followon: "your incompetence does not constitute my emergency".

A close partner is " A dropoff and/or panic on your part does not equal a crisis situation for me, unless it is a potential ship sinker needing all hands on deck. That includes yours".

There should be capitals shouting somewhere in there I feel

Time after time the instigators run and hide (updating CV`s? friend phoning?) and are not contactable to aid the fix for their all encompassing fkup.

Send printer ink, please. More again please, and fast. Now send it faster

Grant Fromage

Re: Does anyone remember the big squeezy bottles of toner?

Tip: take your shirt off and shake it, never scrub toner. I did.

> And then carefully wash/rinse with COLD water.

And whatever you do, DO NOT put it in the dryer until you're SURE it's clean.

Absolutely,

I put the contaminated in mums washing machine (as a single item on reduced splosh ) for 3 coldwater rinse cycles, untill the carbon sought enough freedom, then sneaked detergernt in for the 4th. and ok 5th.

Not knowing, you wouldn`t notice. but it stuck a bit even so.

Going home on the tube looking matt black slightly oversprayed a little was only fixed by swarfega back at the folks and slapping eczma cream on to stop anti swarfega.face eruption, Niiiice.

Mum ripped the piss out of me and only concerned that there was a pre cleanup photo she could get a copy of." for the album"

That`s what happens when both parents are engineers too., In her case precision., the old man was an army one.

Grant Fromage

Does anyone remember the big squeezy bottles of toner?

Mid 80`s, terminal working on a Vax network as admin console.. The posh printer in the lab was a kyocera not an HP IIRC.

If you filled the toner hopper then it would get clumpy and streaky while still full.

SOP became shake the toner bottle and only 1/4- 1/3 fill. No-one liked doing it as static would always leave you with a lightly dusted black pouring hand and wiping a thin film off all nearby surfaces.

Someone hadn`t tightened the lid fully, not spotted ( I was afterwards).

smacked it on the bench and grabbed hold to shake, the bottle deformed squeezing the air out with a black fog of toner, over shirt and face.

The only reflective thing in the room was the screen, didn`t look good, my line manager turned into a snigger in a suit " been coal mining have we?"

.When I got to the loo it looked like the Benny Hill/Milligan joke make up for a bomb survivor.

It took so many paper towels to rectify the airbrushed half-othello look after washing fixed rather than removed it..

Tip: take your shirt off and shake it, never scrub toner. I did.

Braking news: Tesla preps firmware fling to 'fix' Model 3's inability to stop in time

Grant Fromage

Before the advent of all the brake pad compounds now available the split was fast road/rally and competition.

Competition pads may fail an MOT because at the speed the test rollers run they don`t get warm enough to exert their full friction characteristics. There is min spec when cold for road legal.

There was a classic mintex formulation (177?) and a non asbestos later version too that passed the MOT limits cold and were road legal.

I found a motorsport garage through a mate from work cos i got fed up with being told that the pads needed changing soon. In the days before ABS with over servo`ed brakes they were a boon, If you found yourself in emergency stop you could stomp with at least half a second in hand to then cadence and lock and unlock as needed and they didn`t fade with disks glowing red down a 1 in 4 for a mile in first gear ( they exist) in Yorkshire.

The biggest problem (IMHO) is driver awareness and reaction time. You need to put the fools on a simulator and see how many times they crash and maybe it will sink in. Maybe.

My driving instructor was an ex RCT HGV instructor.

It is very reducible:

What can you see?

Can you guarantee to stop in what you can see?

If not F------well slow down.

What happens if the vehicle in front has a seized engine or a transmission failure, suddenly, do you have an escape route round the carnage? Can you rely on your reactions to save you? Back off give yourself thinking and reacting time. Space=time= safety margin.

I have a suspicion from the carnage word this was from being in convoys under fire and seeing the one in front go boom, but it is undeniably sensible

I get seriously baseball bat wielding inclined with the self relievers who slot into my reacton space which would be fine at 30, not at 70ish, so I pull back to make time. Time after time after.........

The most interesting thing was that some people teaching HGV now use the mantra gears for going, brakes for slowing, but in the days of only unassisted drum brakes you used what little airpump braking you get from the diseasel engine because a 5 mile descent isn`t a wise place to assume even disc brakes will stop all those tonnes or not fade like hell and have nothing at the bottom.

The old wisdom is you select the lowest gear that will not over-rev the engine because pumping loss and therefore engine retardation in diesels is most at high revs

I think the late Ian Dury summed up the " german car so rules don`t apply to me" syndrome with

"premature ejaculation drivers" on new boots and.....

The future of radio may well be digital, but it won't survive on DAB

Grant Fromage

In The first days of this nonsense I was still working for Auntie beeb and on loan unoffcially as a pair of golden ears was not welcome at detecting Dab every time by "ambience modulation" on classical music. String quartet= FAIL

They had Nicam which worked beautifully and I could not A/B tell because the engineering was solid, based around real research into how how we hear things and it worked.

Why was that not used in DAB Doh!

If you do not take your music viscerally then you may not get this. some bits of music have a complex interaction that gives people who are sensitive to it physical responses, the most common is a sensation of ice down the spine or just a a sudden unfocussed uplift.

We are all different, there is a chunk in the Who`s wont get fooled again and Rory Gallagher playing bought and sold live that does this for me and it is a useful metric, I used this to asses MP3 encoders and decoders. The fraunhoffer codecs preserved the tickle at half the others rates. .

I should probably get my coat.

Flamin' Nora! Brit firefighters tackle blazing fly-tipped boat

Grant Fromage
Coat

Perhaps it wasn`t that serious

Surely they were just firing a boat?

(Sos, meds definitely not working)

Brit IT contractor wins appeal against HMRC to pay £26k in back taxes

Grant Fromage

Re: grist to the mill

Apologies for a missing O that speaks words, That just spotted lets just call them chanutes and remove letters.

For anyone in confusion, talk to the taxman, be honest and go for it , pressurise You do pay for them, so don`t forget that ever, they are your paid servants, literally.

Grant Fromage

grist to the mill

IR35 was brought in to address the less sensible who listened to the accuntants in trying to scheme something that was not going to last very long. The legacy is now silliness that hurts us all.

As a sole trader former employers are interpreting their tax office liability reduction to insisting that I use a service company or they cannot use me. I have already made clear the legal problems having talked to the taxman, If they want investigating that is a flag, In the meantime I `m stuck with much less work due to some venal fool`s history now screwing us all.

One of my oldest friends who was a developer implementer had tne taxman going punitive and then given a clean bill of health in the early days of this . He said don`t start a company, don`t get vat registered unless you have to, because they will ask why you have no or low turnover and you are assumed guilty. Only perfect record keeping will save you It took 3 years in employment and company confirmed shut down proven for the vatman to not keep tickling.

Selfish bastards screw us all.

I do want to find them and get east endian. They will just run away as far they can and do from being decent too.

Sorry

Admin needed server fast, skipped factory config … then bricked it

Grant Fromage

2708 and 2716 eproms literally showed this through the little round window if arse about face on some of the less sophisticated programmers, you would look to the chip and see all the liitle wires light up dull red and go out. (If you didn`t blink.). "programmer declared chip not seen" is an accurate report. I have never done this myself, ever.

That report leaves a promising person who just fkd up having a serious reconsider about concentration on the job rather than out of the door.

Those chips were once very expensive, and they only have a notch on the small face in the ceramic in the middle.

Ah, the value of the chinagraph pencil

Bungling cops try to use dead chap's fingers to unlock his smartmobe

Grant Fromage
Coat

So in one sense the corpse "gave the police the finger" ?

The meds are definitely not working today.

Wibble.

Sysadmin unplugged wrong server, ran away, hoped nobody noticed

Grant Fromage

pluggery and who knows?

Possibly the ultimate case of this was BBC world service and a gentleman who failed his probation period in the very early 80`s

There were acres of audio jackfields and a daily schedule, this was sparse after 2200 and one would with a pencil go back in time and unplug the patches very carefully. The standard BBC radio and TV lines format wasn`t helpful, it was indexed only by time and you had to be careful to scan up to 24 hours before.

The legendary George Harries told me he caught him on several occasions pulling a plug and when the phone rang putting it back, which was not an approved method of jackfield takedown,

At that time before it had the modern label of diversity aunty tried to get minorities in and lost that properly trained/qualified is not discriminatory,

On one day Sterling rang George at shift start and said " I`m going to be late I am in Kingston" Don`t worry lad we`ll see you lunchtime.

" No, Kingston Jamaica i was seeing my gran".

Penis pothole protester: Cambridge's 'Wanksy' art shows feted

Grant Fromage

Re: Obscene? Nah.

If you keep a a straight face and don`t make a big fuss then kids will never twig that something is up and will not ask about it.

If you fail and they ask and you start prevaricating, they will get that something mysterious and grown up is going on. They will almost certainly ask gran or grandad who have a different take and undermine the parents , but mostly in a good way from a distance of years and very don`t panic.

I wish i could remember who said " A thing has within it that which the observer has means to see". Keep them in the dark and you will be fine

It is known as a CDC-crudely drawn cock with Journo`s I know. I believe It goes back to b3ta.com as a meme 10+ years ago.

I may do the same on potholes I find as wheel eaters need sorting. If only lorries paid the correct portion of road tax as the damage they cause. It is the 4th power of axle loading.

This will give most things and links to original papers, But the uk TRRL and their military precedents are not mentioned and their stuff is late 40`s, perhaps what tanks do to a road is still classified.

nvfnorden.org/lisalib/getfile.aspx?itemid=261

You need to blame Winston Churchill for putting road tax into the common tax purse rather than funding road improvement.

Fear the Reaper: Man hospitalised after eating red hot chilli pepper

Grant Fromage

Re: Not clever...

Capsiascin is not toxic in any dose you can get from eating chillies known, The effects on the tissues with receptors it matches can put someone into shock, with that comes all the possibilities including death. otherwise this all looks a bit sniffy.

Capsaiscin is neutral and / or benefiical to the gut, but not to your chocolate starfish when it leaves the system.

Hot chillies are stomach benign and full of vit C and a shedload of other nice things.

Lips mouth eyes bum and even ears have plug ins for warning proteins and enzymes that were evolved for anti-bacteria immune wake up and the body functions which get triggered are known to get it from capsaicin too.

I have on a dare done stupid chillies, won a bet and had a day later only a ring stinger on afterburner.

Here's the list of Chinese kit facing extra US import tariffs: Hard disk drives, optic fiber, PCB making equipment, etc

Grant Fromage

Re: Liquid elevators

I think that might be hydraulic piston lifts/ hydraulic jacks, just an offering

Ever gone back to an old job after a really long time?

Grant Fromage

You do forget things.

I was back at a place I had been staff, they were moving premises piecemeal and I was troubleshooter. One of the children had removed a piece of kit which had been deactivated but fanned out to a number of peripherals and hadn`t worked out where they all were, most had run no`s and were on the cable schedule, found and shipped

One wasn`t and i was cursing the fool that put it in as It was now a two man cable bash with floortile uplifts in a busy area

1 metre into the bundle was a tape label saying "temp feed for xxx going to room xxx desk xxx" and at the other end plugged into the ctl panel "temp install, fed from ctl room bay.......awaiting run no. allocation from ( managers intials)" Oh someone knows how to do it, stand down. Recognition kicked in

It was my bloody writing!

10 years previously I had run that cable in on a night shift , ALONE. No wonder I blanked it after sleep.

Super Cali goes ballistic, Starbucks is on notice: Expensive milky coffee is something quite cancerous

Grant Fromage

Re: If you put it in your mouth...

...it will either give you cancer, make you fat or make you pregnant.

Shurely not the last one, certainly not in isolation, although If you are putting on all the greens you could be misled into thinking this impossibility was the cause. You could equally wrongly think it was the other impossible one on the triple scorecard.

Sysadmin wiped two servers, left the country to escape the shame

Grant Fromage

Re: Biggest point - glossed over.

"The backups actually restored."

All fiction, when in the history of IT has the backup EVER restored when you really really really needed it too (especially at 3 in the morning when its your last chance)?

My non-fiction contains success most times, but it always takes longer than the last recovery exercise on the last backup as it has got bigger, and especially when you are the sole resource/implementer in the wee smalls your sphincter does goldfish impressions until it is done and running. I have been lucky, the worst I`ve had to do is load incremental backups on an older full one, but colleagues have told me of nightmare scenarios.

Arrrgh! Put down the crisps! 'Ultra-processed' foods linked to cancer!

Grant Fromage
Coat

Re: "containing a myriad of nutrients and food additives"

Off topic , however....

What about a seven of nine?

Ah you mean the lady a fellow trek viewer friend refers to as " two of a pair"as he is breast obsessed, and actually watches more than the odd voyager episode. just for this.

I`m reminded of Benny Hill in the Italian Job.

I do agree that Jerry Ryan was splendidly embodied and the outfit showed this, but that`s just nice aesthetically, overall.

Secret weekend office bonk came within inch of killing sysadmin

Grant Fromage

The lady must have been hot and dare I say ...moist, for the aircon to generate that much condensate ( apologies, I had to, no-one else has yet ).

Dori-no! PepsiCo boss says biz is planning to sell lady crisps

Grant Fromage
Coat

Hard crisps vs Floppy crisps?

I think it`s a backward step, I assume they will be by implication smaller and less dense.

"Lady crisps" have reminded me of one of several tales from a nurse ex, that really should not be accessed prior to eating.

I am going to say minimally "chapped lips", and try to shut down the images her detailed description evoked.

‘I crashed a rack full of servers with my butt’

Grant Fromage

Sometimes there is literally a hitch

Spacing between bays, hmm.

Simple job, one company that i had a few days per month with regularly hired in stuff for sports or concerts and all the downstream odds, my job was plug it, test it and link it without taking anything running off air. ( or fail and no more work)

The video edit/severs had arrived, there was a vtr +extras loom in the bays in the racks, nothing in the rack behind me, empty bay just a loom. Concentration on job. GigE extras from the stuff for Hd to dangly lead later.

First server was at about knee height (26U up?), so I squatted down and felt a tug on the back of my belt and a sound of ripping, but from above, not behind.

A 6/8 port GigE switch on air with several other servers behind me, was tagged to me after parting from velcromount. Non-latching power from a wallwart, mains via an iec10 to Bs-13A not cable tied in.either.

FROZE!

I worked out the best sequence of movement to stand up with no pull on the cables and did it slowly until I could reach to put it all back. and did so. NOT funny. !!!

Logic says, hooks on the fixed mounts, furry on the wanderer so it is easier to clean and picks up less crud in transit, commonsense. It also stops it latching onto the back of your fleece.

There was a 3-ish metre cat 6 cable terminated in cat5 ends, hoods don`t fit connectors stressed and also this means thelatch hooks are out. and I had been caught. by one as sat down

I do not get why the bodge of cat6 .

10, even 20m of cat 5I work to GigE spec for all but counterfeit cables, Cat 6 3m of installation cable as regular pluggable/? as flexi as made of pasta and no cable grips possible, daft.

I`m losing mine slowly, but there is a world shortage of commonsense IMHO.

F-35 flight tests are being delayed by onboard software snafus

Grant Fromage
Coat

Hindsight is the view after you have used your arse to look at something, not eyes and brain

Brokern record time, restart the supersonic harrier programme that bit the dust partly due to to their F111 turkey that this now increasingly resembles.

How many slap up lunches, prozzies and drugs were involved in marketing this thing? Or was it blackmail?

People dying on trolleys after hours of waiting in NHS hospitals due this sort of bleed and waste of public money should be told, as should we all.

Lots of bucks and STILL no bangs.( apart from when the engine management software bugs out under power).

History has shown that the finest multi-role aircraft came from humble single role or extended use, like fighter/fighter bomber aircraft that were right for that, but extendible to other roles, as a bonus. A carrier based nuclear bomber turned out to be the finest zero height ground attack aircraft, and shedload of other things ( including a bar support in a Woking Mall, Buccaneer tail airbrakes open over the chavtastic cocktail bar), a wooden bomber turned out to be one of the best fighters, ground attack, reconnaisance and many more.

Most from the off designed as multi role craft haven`t done very well due to the compromises making it bloody hard and unnecessarily expensive. Do we still not learn?

" We are doomed to repeat history`s mistakes if we treat history as a stranger". Or something very close as a well known quotation, either a statesman or a scifi author person.. Icon chosen as appropriate.

User had no webcam or mic, complained vid conference didn’t work

Grant Fromage

A non work tangent

Many years ago looking from now, ago a neighbour asked a favour to have a quick look before asking someone else to repair her VHS.

Not being harsh, I had made it clear that I would do quick fixes, but not messing in depth with domestic VTR`s out of a work environment, Hours even days previously lost out of kindness, where a repair shop would have sucked teeth and gone " going to be pricey, sure you wnat it done? buy another one"

I did learn eventually..

She had all one make of kit it was midmarket, either Sony, Tosh or pana or......

Thsere was buggered if i know error code on switch on, took the lid off and found a cd wedged on top of the spools .

The matching cd player was one of those non-tray things that you poke it in through brushes and hope..

4 year old daughter wanted to play some music and had made an understandable mistake.about which unit to use, having succeeded before with Daddy.

Shared with colleagues at the time and 3 other instances with nippers doing simlar.

(ankle biter is pre war east endian for toddlers and around that age and appears likely to be the origin of nipper)

Today in bullsh*t AI PR: Computers learn to read as well as humans (no)

Grant Fromage
Coat

The usual potential " jobs threatened" stuff

The jobs that should be threatened are the PR "creatives" (oxymoron) that generate this poo without getting a `wee slappin` for it as well. (As my old mate from Glasgow styles it.)

Just IMHO..

1980s sci-fi movies: The thrill of being not quite terrified on mum's floral sofa

Grant Fromage

Re: CGI is killing sci-fi

@ Naselus:

"Looking back at history, if you get two genuinely good movies in a year, then that's actually pretty exceptional."

That is Sturgeon`s principle: "90% of everything is crud". He meant it regarding submissions as an editor who started in the "golden years" of scifi, but it applies to almost everything in media IMHO..

One of the problems with book sources for inspiration is another old maxim " a thing has within it, that which the viewer brings means of seeing". Imagination is needed to flesh out the missing bits.

Page: