* Posts by A.P. Veening

3893 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Aug 2018

Lesson 1: Keep your mind on the ... why aren't the servers making any noise?

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His reaction might cause us enjoyment (Schadenfreude).

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How did your boss react to your solution of the problem?

Techie's quick cure for a curious conflict caused a huge headache

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Re: "Ever done a little thing that made a big mess"

A problem, not his.

How to get a computer get stuck in a lift? Ask an 'illegal engineer'

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Re: Not a lift but…..

Punts just don't sink. And they are even more fun on a lake with sail.

AWS: IPv4 addresses cost too much, so you’re going to pay

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Re: IPv4 I'm selling mine

/24, so 256 public IP addresses?

Make that 254, x.x.x.0 and x.x.x.255 aren't usable.

BOFH: You can be replaced by a robot or get your carbon footprint below Big Dave's

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Re: Error in binary expression at line 61

I haven't encountered the first company yet, where bosses aren't expendable.

UK government faces calls to end IR35 double tax anomaly

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How did you manage to win that latter one? I am pretty sure more Accidental Americans (and permanent expats) would like to know.

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If you do have to take it to tribunal (and win), don't forget to claim all expenses (including time) unnecessarily made through their incompetence.

Bizarre backup taught techie to dumb things down for the boss

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Re: Training?

That is (still) because HR is at the same level of "experience" as Microsoft Office user. HR isn't even qualified to select for it.

Turning a computer off, then on again, never goes wrong. Right?

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Re: Sausage Factory

With all chambers loaded.

I would say with a pistol instead of a revolver.

Nobody does DR tests to survive lightning striking twice

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Hence that one house in every town covered in lightning rods.

In my experience usually a church if there aren't more modern (and higher) high-rises around.

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Re: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

I took the 7 til 2 slot and booked 3 hours of overtime a day, 5 days a week for years.

That is taking malicious compliance to the next level, well played.

Hacking a Foosball table scored an own goal for naughty engineers

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Re: Blank coins

That was a story by Roald Dahl.

Quirky QWERTY killed a password in Paris

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Re: Faux AZERTY

The only real annoyance is "à" which isn't always picked up by auto correct and sometimes require some copy/paste instead.

The trick for "à" is using a dead key lay-out and typing "`" and "a".

NB: "`" is under "~" (and to the left of "1"), at least on my keyboard.

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Re: Paris...

Hope the travel agent was *really* happy!!!

He will have been upon receiving the invoice for all extra costs.

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Re: All your QWERTY belong to us...

Aren't US keyboards more or less unusable in Continental Europe?

I don't think so, I am in Continental Europe and I am using the US International with dead keys lay-out, which is the same as US keyboards but with slightly different settings to make it easier to type diacritics.

Bosses face losing 'key' workers after forcing a return to office

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You never quit until you have another (better) job.

Techie wasn't being paid, until he taught HR a lesson

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Re: Unique keys

... to differentiate themselves from all the other Mohammed Cohens.

There are very few people with that name, Mohammed is a pretty exclusive muslim given name and Cohen is a pretty exclusive Jewish family name.

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Re: Unique keys

>He missed "All names, when rendered in the Latin alphabet have at least one vowel."

And have at least 3 characters

He should have a word with my ex-colleague Robert Ng.

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Re: Unique keys

Wanda Kershaw must be unhappy.

No problem in German, only in English (and American).

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Typical American government stupidity, not including a date of birth in that No Fly List so innocent children (and senior citizens) aren't impacted.

BOFH: Good news, everyone – we're in the sausage business

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BSE spread because cows 'kiss' other cows, and other similar things like licking the same surfaces.

So why did that BSE epidemic stop when they forbade feeding processed offal to cows (and other herbivores)?

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You eat your sausages raw?!

Prions survive heating too damned well, they are already a denatured form of protein. That is the reason BSE spread so quickly.

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Re: It's hard to make fun of AI

It isn't proper and correct legalese without a fair amount of polysyllabic words.

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They probably are old enough, but lost the battle with the office plants.

Now I need a new keyboard.

I finished my drink before I started on the article, didn't expect quite this level so soon in the comments.

Boeing discovers Dreamliner defect, delivery delay decided

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Why revive it, it never died.

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It took me longer than it should have to realise this was about Dreamliner and not Starliner.

By now it has been renamed as Nightmareliner.

Feds, you'll need a warrant for that cellphone border search

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Re: Last time I checked ...

Not only can, will.

I still remember how shocked American travelers were when Brazil enacted some reciprocal legislation and they had to have their fingerprints taken at Brazilian airports when they wanted to enter Brazil.

Seriously, boss? You want that stupid password? OK, you get that stupid password

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Re: Missing part

The user was intelligent; they obviously knew firstly to ask for a password and secondly not to ask for their password to be "Password", "Password1" or "12345678".

With malicious compliance, the latter would have resolved to password "2444666668888888".

Why you might want an email client in the era of webmail

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The email app is supposed to be a productivity tool. You can't say productivity and web based app in the same sentence.

You can, but there has to be a negation in there as well.

That old box of tech junk you should probably throw out saves a warehouse

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Re: The boss chucked mine out

Tell that to the council drones who insist that we have to take all the stage lights down from the lighting bars every year to get them PAT tested (PATted? RAS syndrome!), plus unplugging all the servers, switches, etc...

Just make a video recording of such a council drone insisting on PAT testing such a non-portable and working stage light and make sure it fails the test, thereby making it non-working. Then tell that drone he (or his department) is now liable for the replacement as it was destroyed while undergoing a clearly unnecessary test insisted on by him. When he starts protesting, tell him you got the evidence on video and will make it public if/when necessary.

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Re: The boss chucked mine out

I understand the replacement was quite expensive...

Karma is such a lovely bitch ;)

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Re: TBFOOTYSPHTOBKJIC

Read the article.

First ever 64-bit version of Windows rediscovered … and a C compiler for it too

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Re: Windows ME

In Germany called "Müll Edition" -> translates to "Trash Edition".

Somehow that works very well with the German reputation of never making jokes.

Microsoft will upgrade Windows 10 21H2 users whether they like it or not

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You left out Windows 2000 (or 2K), which was excellent. Windows XP only became good with SP2.

Will LLMs take your job? Only if you let them

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Re: Overly optimistic

Now that we have COBOL, management can instruct the machines directly

The same was once said about Report Program Generator, TLA'd to RPG, by now the original name is scrapped and it is just the computer language RPG.

An important system on project [REDACTED] was all [REDACTED] up

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There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.

Except for a temporary tax hike.

Is there anything tape can’t fix? This techie used it to defeat the Sun

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Re: Wait ... What?

Because modern buildings come under the heading of Intellectual Property.

As far as I am concerned, any shortcomings like described can be fixed the easy way and if the architect doesn't like it, he is liable for all the extra costs.

Datacenter fire suppression system wasn't tested for years, then BOOM

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I've been told that ICBM Submarines do run at reduced oxygen.

Why would they, the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages (as far as I can see) and the oxygen is easily extracted from seawater.

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Re: Err

Sometimes, someone will point it our to a visiting manager...

Meaning every time there is one of those extremely rare visiting managers.

NASA tweaks Voyager 2's power supply to avoid another sensor shutdown

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Re: "legacy Fortran code"

People are still writing new stuff using it, but I really hope it will be gone by then...

No chance whatsoever, Fortran and COBOL are eternal by now, the installed base is too large to be replaced.

BOFH takes a visit to retro computing land

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Re: NMOC

And for those on the continent, especially the Netherlands and neighbouring parts of Belgium and Germany:

Home Computer Museum.

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Re: Depreciation

Apparently that was my fault!

Depending upon your job description, it may have been.

NB: Scapegoat is also a job description.

Support chap put PC into 'drying mode' and users believed it was real

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Re: Washing Machine Fix

Jings, I must be getting old.

That still beats the alternative.

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Re: Buying time

Shutdown is also a command.

Thanks for fixing the computer lab. Now tell us why we shouldn’t expel you?

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Re: Wheels within Wheels

After all, those who "discovered" said file would probably be those least likely to flunk out.

True, but how well did they keep it a secret?

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You should really add another - wife's birthday.

I would ... if it were on another day, but I didn't want to chance getting confused.

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I've seen far too many Post-Its with 8 character strings stuck to monitors. (To be fair, seeing even one is too many)

I have one, but it isn't any password. Those eight digits represent the date I married (lest I forget).

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Re: Command.com

Make that 5¼"

Child-devouring pothole will never hurt a BMW driver again

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Re: Plant more trees!

It is beyond the lift capability of all UK city Councils as those are only capable at failing.