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

With Friday upon us once more, the weather forecast assumes outsized importance as we all hope for bright days that let readers make the most of their time off. So this week in On-Call, The Register's reader-contributed tales of tech support that appear on the last working day before the weekend, we bring you a tale of the Sun …

[KittenHuffer]

I cry foul!

As any Englishman would know, all the techy needed to do was to tell the operator that the weather back home was a bit dull ..... And the power of the Yorkshire man's "Tha's nowt ...." reply would soon have had a torrential downpour across the entire site!

No sun! Problem solved by cloudy computing!

----------> No cloud icon, so I had to Fail the solution instead!

[chuckufarley]

Insert 1990's meme...

...about mouse balls here.

[MrDamage]

Re: Insert 1990's meme...

I had fun rewiring the x/y axis and leaving booby trapped mice behind for people who annoyed me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Insert 1990's meme...

Reversing the CRT deflection coil/s was a jolly jape back in the day. We even had some users trained to just turn the monitor over and keep working.

One victim started to get suspicious - we had been a bit fast and loose with the random causes we attributed this to.

Anyway, she come into my office to report the building had suffered another mysterious field inversion, and found me working with my monitor side-on, and a mirror set up so the text was readable. Credibility was restored.

One of the last times, we put a relay and mercury switch in, so when you turned the monitor over, it flipped again, and was always upside down.

[d2]

Re: Insert 1990's meme...

BFTP/ ouchly better yet... instructables.com /Shocking-Mouse-Prank/

... It contained an ignition coil from an old junk car, a 6-volt lantern battery, and a mercury switch to close the circuit when the person shook or tilted the present. I got bored with it and thought I could convert it into a shocking mouse instead--here are the details of the conversion... At my office we used to look forward to the next new hire so we could initiate him into the group with a nice surprise!

[chivo243]

Not only mice

I once had to troubleshoot a hyperactive interactive screen. This screen had been in a classroom for a few years with no problems. Cue a new school year, and there's a new instructor in the room, really a great user of technology, he was smart and cheerful, most of the time. Once this hyperactive screen started disrupting his lessons, he wasn't so happy.

It only took us a couple of days to figure out that the sun was hitting the sensors around the bezel. When we proposed a solution to the facilities group, they said no way! We wanted window shades in to be put up, but being a newer building, they had to run it by the architect, which was shot down because it would lessen the aesthetics of the room. So, we put cardboard blinders in the spots on the bezel where the sun interrupted the interactive signal, that looked oh so much nicer that proper shades on the windows...

[KittenHuffer]

Re: Not only mice

Hate that sort of answer. But then I am a function rather than form sort of person.

If the damn thing doesn't work then it doesn't matter what it looks like.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Not only mice

>Hate that sort of answer.

Obviously you just incorporate the architect into the building's aesthetic. Just sit him on the windowsill - you might have to nail him in place

[James O'Shea]

Re: Not only mice

Nailing him down would be expensive, noisy, and messy. Duct tape is cheaper, easier to use, and some can be deployed to take care of the noise.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not only mice

All you're doing is suspend the noise in time, returning when you start ripping the tape off him again.

That said, you could shave his nether regions before you apply the tape, but who says you're not allowed to have any fun? After all, it has to be educational..

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Not only mice

Beware of making unwarranted assumptions. Such as ripping off the tape.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not only mice

You're right. It should not be ripped - that would be too fast.

Hmm. I seem to get vicious when I'm hungry..

:)

[Arthur the cat]

Re: Not only mice

Just sit him on the windowsill - you might have to nail him in place

Personally I think architects' placements should be more foundational – as in incorporated in.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Not only mice

We see you playing a major structural role in this project - hold up this shelf

[Admiral Grace Hopper]

Ah, architects

We were due to be moved to a new, purpose-built office, designed for the modern Data Processing* development practices of the early 1990s. Rather than a regular office full of desks with terminals and PCs on, this was to be a development space. There was a presentation in which we were introduced to the ideas that drove the design - flow! flexible partitioning with Nightingale boards! communal spaces! break-out rooms! configurable powerpoints and networking! smoking rooms! (it was the 90s). Much was made of the lighting. There were no ceiling lights, rather, "the use of a coffered ceiling and uplighters releases us from the fenestrated perimeter and allows flexible provision of general and task lighting". What this meant was that outside of the lit corridors everyone wandered around in semi-gloom like confused mole rats.

* IT hadn't fully become IT yet, it was still DP, but not for long

[Flightmode]

Re: Ah, architects

Did you by any chance work for Lumon Industries?

Oh wait, if you did, you wouldn't remember any of this.

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: Ah, architects

everyone wandered around in semi-gloom like confused mole rats

Several responses spring to mind:

"I'm in support, I'm used to being kept in the dark!"

"the light, it burns us precious!"

(Possibly as a result of extreme myopia, I have very good darkness vision - my preferred lighting scheme is far too dark for most people..)

[heyrick]

Re: Ah, architects

I keep on having to remind the person that walks around looking for things that need fixed that three of the four strip lights not working in my stock room is not a failure.

But surely you can't see?

Oh, I can see a lot better like that than if all the lights were working.

[Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch]

Re: Ah, architects

My eyes are dim, I cannot see

I have not brought my specs with me

I have... not... brought... my... specs... with... me!

I've always interpreted that as the quartermaster giving the sly nod to people making off with whatever they damn well please. I never could work out if it's sarcasm, wishful thinking or genuinely what their reputations are.

[swm]

Re: Ah, architects

I used to work in a completely dark office with just the computer screen for illumination. One night I was working, the trash collector came around and flipped on the lights and screamed when she saw me. Since I am not a tidy person there were papers everywhere. She asked about this and I said that there was some sort of an explosion and she went away completely satisfied.

We were scientists and we had a reputation to uphold.

[Muscleguy]

Re: Ah, architects

Ah yes, as a former habitué of dark microscope rooms I know what you mean. I became adept at relaxing my eyes to infinity voluntarily since there was no horizon to look at. At times I couldn’t keep the Electron Microscope room dark since I needed light to see my big photomontages of cross sections through a whole developing muscle so i could spot and label the ambiguous profiles. There were ALWAYS ambiguous profiles which had to be checked.

When the tech printed the photos in mirror image from that of the sample mental gymnastics had to be employed when navigating to the next profile. Sometimes half the montage was normal, half mirrored as a different film was used. Fun and games.

Though I became adept at seeing little clusters of myosin and act filaments in the characteristic hexagonal pattern. They look sharper than ribosomes.

[adam 40]

DP?

Sounds like a fun time in the orifice, err, office!

[Sam not the Viking]

Re: Not only mice

We had the same situation where the open-plan office had windows on three sides with lots of dappled light filtering in through the trees on the outskirts of the plot..... This light severely interfered with viewing on the CAD terminals and being an open-plan office with no real barriers, the sunshine caused a lot of irritation, especially between autumn and spring. Adjustable blinds were forbidden (mostly by the 'senior' wallahs who occupied the best locations which had a view...).

Now draughtsmen/women are very clever and artistic...... They created light-barriers on delicate, hanging threads, so they seemed to just perch in mid air. Carefully placed for optimum shielding at various times of day they used to wave gently as people walked between groups. I always thought it resembled a bazaar. But it was bizarre.....

[Flightmode]

Re: Not only mice

We had an office building much of the same design. Sunlight reflected off a glass-panelled building in the industry park down the hill from us and hit my face with insane precision. My solution was a curved row of post-its on the window next to a colleagues desk that neatly lined up with the reflections. Every Monday morning during the summer months I moved them about an inch to the right to account for the season.

[Mark 85]

Re: Not only mice but humans...

All the managers had the offices on the south of the building with a nice view. They also liked to have staff meetings in their offices on Friday afternoons. Between the after affects of a nice lunch and the sun heating the room, most of the staff would fall asleep during those meetings with manglement being outraged at those of us to drooped off to la-la-land.

[Chloe Cresswell]

Re: Not only mice

My school sun issue was mouse related. Kids couldn't use the mice, the staff could.

Issue was it was a primary school, the teacher's hands covered the mouse, the kid's smaller hands didn't, and the sensor for the horizontal input from the mouse ball just happened to be where the kid's hands didn't cover the mouse.

[An_Old_Dog]

Wait ... What?

but being a newer building, they had to run it by the architect

If the building had already been built, as was implied in the story, why-the-freak would the architect have had any sort of control over how it was "modified" afterwards?!

[chivo243]

Re: Wait ... What?

Something about copyright... This happened in NL and I can only find Dutch pages supporting this action. Here's a translation of a portion of it:

Housing the new storage areas in the existing exhibition spaces, however, leads to resistance from Verheijen, who successfully invokes his copyright in a lawsuit and eventually manages to extract a financial settlement of €1.5 million. The museum then proceeds with the implementation of Neutelings Riedijk's design.

[Phones Sheridan]

Re: Wait ... What?

Look up Building covenants. They are a thing for new builds. The buyer agrees to not do certain things for x years after purchase without permission from the seller. It’s a contract and therefore enforceable.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Wait ... What?

But shouldn't the builder deliver a product fit for use? And an architect design the same?

[Phones Sheridan]

Re: Wait ... What?

It's all down to contract. Specify cooling in summer and shade, and you'll get them. Specify, shiny, bling, glass everywhere, no obstructions, and that's exactly what you get. Fit for purpose is subjective and is something unhappy people try to fall back on after their bad idea, turns out to be a bad idea.

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: Wait ... What?

why-the-freak would the architect have had any sort of control over how it was "modified"

There may have been a building covenant (like we had on the house - the terms of purchase forbade putting a wall between the house and the road as it would mean that people turning out of the parking cresent would be unable to see oncoming cars) that prevented it - presumably because the architect was using the building as a sample of their work (and hence probably charged a good bit less).

[A.P. Veening]

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.

[Dave314159ggggdffsdds]

Re: Wait ... What?

Because the war stories posted here are usually made up on the spot, obviously.

[Happy_Jack]

Re: Wait ... What?

I think the stuff about the architect was made up. Like the rest of this unlikely tale.

[Stork]

Re: Wait ... What?

In some cases it is viewed as a work of art and therefore requires the consent of the author for any changes.

On my alma mater (dtu.dk) all replacement taps had to go through the architects as there was no other source, at least that’s what I was told by the lab techs.

[Hull]

Re: Wait ... What?

Remember when you actually were allowed to buy copies of software?

And EULAs forbidding you to modify them?

[MadDrFrank]

Re: Wait ... What?

To those that are doubtful about an architect having any say in how a building is used, I have experienced this.

Working for a multinational company in the UK, at its head office -- a large site with multiple buildings separated by rectangular grass plots with tarmac paths around them. Complaints about having to walk further in the rain were ignored and when diagonal foot-worn paths formed, bushes or flowerbeds were inserted to prevent them being used "at the insistence of the site architect".

Same company, fancy new building for office work and IT supporting research.

Untinted glass in all directions, structural support at the core, so small number of slim pillars, no blinds, no opening windows, A/C underspecified (by the architect - who was informed of expected load), desk layout specified by architect and fixed in place, partitions between workstations chest-high when sitting, ceiling lights placed so that if they were on (single switch per floor) most screens suffered reflections. A single small, unventilated cupboard for coats for 40 or so people on each floor.

When users introduced coathangers, local sunshades, or layout changes we were forced to remove or reverse them after a visit from the architect. Management told us that said person had a contractual right to control "all features of the design".

The company was swallowed by a bigger fish, perhaps with more competent (or at least more aggressive) managers, while we were still struggling with the problems. The site was sold for housing and all buildings demolished.

[Dave314159ggggdffsdds]

Re: Not only mice

I don't understand why people like you feel the need to make up stories like that. No architect would say anything like that. But more tellingly, the architect wouldn't be involved at all at that stage; the story is an obvious fiction.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Not only mice

I take it you've never had to deal with architects, especially not in the design of laboratories and the like.

One architect's career was jump-started by her winning an architectural prize for a fire station in an industrial complex. The Beeb had a fireman review it, I think in the course of the programme covering the competition. He explained how it was not very functional as a fire station to the point of being dangerous. Firemen have to run through fire stations very quickly on occasion. There were hand-rails with unprotected ends that were hazardous to someone coming round a corner and possibly running into them. It wasn't used as a fire station for very long. Nevertheless it won her the prize.

My own experience of this was with an architect who liked the idea of windows meeting at the corner of the building so that the wall above appeared to be floating without support. I suppose it wins admiration from his fellows. My boss's corner office got that treatment. It wasn't actually a very big office - we needed to maximise floor space for the labs. Consequently it didn't have very big windows. The magic corner window effect was achieved by a supporting column just inside. With smallish windows substantially blocked by a column there was little light coming in although I suppose the heat loss was unchanged. Oddly enough my boss, by virtue of having another office in another department he covered, didn't spend much time there. But it looked great if you liked that sort of thing. Ever since, if I see that sort of design I wonder what internal bodge in in place to make it happen.

[MJB7]

Re: Not only mice

You are referring to Zaha Hadid. Coincidentally I was in her fire-station this morning. It was a fire station for a big factory - run by Vitra, which makes designer furniture and is famous for having a factory site with examples of amazing architecture. The fire station is a fabulous bit of a sculpture, but is indeed useless as a fire station.

[Dave314159ggggdffsdds]

Re: Not only mice

I deal with architects every day. It's my job now - I don't do IT stuff anymore. The story is nonsense. No architect would object to internal blinds in that situation _because they wouldn't be involved_.

Incidentally, the Zaha Hadid fire station - Vitra - to which you refer is the source of a lot of what can only be called urban myths, all seemingly stemming from it not being used as a fire station for very long. In fact, though, it was never used as a fire station, and the reasons were a) that the legal requirements changed before it was completed and b) that it was built as a small fire station serving an industrial complex, but then the local government built a new fire station serving the entire area including that industrial complex. Nothing to do with Hadid's design.

The office you describe also had nothing to do with the architect who designed the building, but was the fault of whichever idiot split up the floorplan and partitioned off a small corner office in an unsuitable location.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not only mice

Where a relative lives, they were designing a new emergency center, for both EMS and firefighters. An architect was hired to design the building. The total cost of his design was nearly double the budget, and had poorly-thought-through features, like having the cleanup rooms several rooms away from the vehicle bays. My relative, a retired engineer (NOT an architect) redesigned the building from scratch, met all of the requirements for rooms/spaces, and was just under budget.

One example was bathrooms - the original architect had specified men's and women's 2-stall bathrooms, with the required obstructed sightlines from the door. My relative, thinking through that most firefighters and EMS folks in that area were men, and that the sightline obstructions are only required for multi-person bathrooms, put 5 unisex single-occupant bathrooms in the same space. That way all 5 could be used by men OR women simultaneously. Thoughtfully directly across from the conference area.

[Spazturtle]

Re: Not only mice

But it does work like that in the Nederlands where chivo243 said it happened.

[Muscleguy]

Re: Not only mice

As an inhabitant of a fairly new build school (2018 but add in not much use in lockdown still pretty new). I feel your pain. I’m the science technician. They saw fit to put my prep lab and the science store in the middle of the building. Now windows. Now we are just below the roof so they could have installed a couple of skylights and saved themselves electrickery bills for lighting. Except they didn’t give me a light switch either. The teachers get theirs but I cannot have darkness to test things as every movement triggers the lights. Previous tech was a numpty (polite version of the Teachers’ views) so probably never thought to have input to the spaces he was going to inhabit. Ran away without notice. He was probably SAD.

[ITMA]

Re: Not only mice

I have found that duct tape provides a very effective "field fix" for "mouthy" users.

Pull out a good forearm length, tear off, place firmly over users "orifice" and press firmly.

Works best if you have a Bruce Willis style haircut when applying makeshift "software patch" to "troublesome" user :)

[Mooseman]

Re: Not only mice

From a slightly different angle, we had users complaining that their interactive boards were behaving "oddly" - random cursor movements etc. Turns out (it being christmas time) that they had decorated their interactive boards with fairy lights....

[Richard Gray 1]

I need my local printer

When I was a lowly PFY, we were told that we were going to have to go to network printers around the office.

Most people didn't have a problem with that and just went with it.

One old guy HAD to have his local printer for printing his spreadsheets (no Idea whey he kept printing the damn things out).

The IT Manager said get rid of it..

The use said No

Stalemate...

Cue one evening working late when his office was unoccupied..

a bit of black insulating tape over the laser of the printer and retreat.

It could not have been placed better! It took one perfect column out of his spreadsheet.

He called up to have it fixed, so we had to take it away to be "Fixed"

He never saw it again.

[DailyLlama]

Re: I need my local printer

We had a user who complained that her local printer (on the desk opposite hers) was too far away, and she'd hurt her back stretching to get printouts from it. So Health and Safety asked me to have a look at it (knowing that I was a curmudgeon)... I duly went to the office, inspected the printer and the layout of the office, and noting that there was a huge networked MFD in the same room, I removed the local printer so that she would have to stand up and walk to the other one, thus preventing her injuring herself further.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: I need my local printer

That solution needs moar upvotes!

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: I need my local printer

We had to give each HR person a personal printer "because they were printing confidential stuff". They were forever raising calls about them ("my printer isn't printing!" - well - maybe you should put some paraer in like the front panel prompt says?) and generally were a pain in the backside.

Then we got follow-me printing which required that the user present their pass (which had a new RFID sticker attached to it) in order to print - which then logged them into the printer and showed *their* print queue.

We took great pleasure in ripping out all their printers - it was, after all, company policy that said everyone should be using the FMP system.

What we didn't tell them is that all the print jobs were audited.. Some interesting stuff got printed! (Judging by the filenames anyway)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I need my local printer

What we didn't tell them is that all the print jobs were audited

.. which is why any company dealing with anything even marginally interesting should use MFDs with encrypted storage..

[Down not across]

Re: I need my local printer

Ah, and I thought that the local printer would've been replaced with one of the networked ones so he'd get to enjoy the traffic of lots of other people coming and going collecting their printouts.

[Flightmode]

Re: I need my local printer

OP said he was a PFY at the time. What you're suggesting would have constituted immediate promotion to BOFH.

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: I need my local printer

I am sure that the then BOFH would have objected and terminated him...

[chivo243]

Re: I need my local printer

The Yo-Yo local printer... We also went through the no local printers song and dance. We removed all the local printers, because we had secure printing at MFPs*. A few counsellors and HR types made a case for local printers, you know really sensitive docs etc. The local printers returned to a select few. A few months later, we're back in the ink business, and some bean counter raises a flag with the facilites manager, facilities manager goes to IT manager, local printers are taken away. Sometime later I'm in one of these offices, and 'a' local printer is back!!! I ask about it, and get the "Oh, it's my printer from home" schtick... I took the Sgt. Shultz way out...

*It was amazing how many people were too busy to get up, and walk 10 meters for their print job...

[G.Y.]

Re: I need my local printer

What is the Sgt. Schulz way out?

[Steve Aubrey]

Re: I need my local printer

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058812/quotes/qt0214308

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I need my local printer

Your post - perfect example.

[Handel was a crank]

Been there, done that

In a previous job, one summer our team moved offices and then my mouse would start playing up but only in the mornings, but not everyday. Took a few days to work out the sun was shining into the office window into the mouse. A judicious relocation of the right-hand speaker to cast a shadow over the mouse soon sorted things.

[Anonymous Coward]

very common issue with old optical mice. Old style CFL light bulbs can play havoc with remote controls as well. Took me a while to workout it was a CFL bulb in a bedside lamp that was interfering with our Sky remote control in our bedroom. Bit annoying when you want to put on babestation whilst in bed.......

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure it wasn't, er, "pollution" stuck to the IT window of the remote?

:)

[phuzz]

I once had sort of the opposite problem:

I was a a clients office, fixing various desktop issues, and I was asked to fix something (email related?) for a particular user, who wasn't at their desk. I sat down and started to troubleshoot, but there was something wrong with the mouse. I flipped it over and found someone had taped a two pence coin to the bottom. Once I'd removed that it worked fine, and I got to work fixing whatever the problem was.

After a bit the user came back into the office, phone practically glued to their ear. Once they'd got off the phone, I showed them the fixed computer, and mentioned that I'd had to remove the 2p and they replied: "I stuck that there, it's to protect me from the electromagnetic radiation".

As I was at a clients office, I restrained myself from going full BOFH, and just said "Have you tried closing your window blinds?" and left.

After all, the sun really is a source of harmful EM radiation, as anyone who's had sun-burn can attest.

[Anonymous Coward]

shitttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt they walk among us

[Boris the Cockroach]

They sure do

One walked into work Monday....... he left today and wont be coming back.

Aerospace material..... all tagged and bagged with batch numbers and certs.

Big warning sign. "DO NOT TAKE ANYTHING FROM AEROSPACE STOCK UNLESS YOU ARE USING IT"

Now all in one bin because our ex-employee decided to unbag everything and place it in one big material bin rendering it untracable..............

(scraping the side of someone's car with the forklift didnt help matters either )

[Neil Barnes]

Not just optical mice...

In a previous life I maintained professional video recorders, from two inch reel-to-reel down to the half inch cassette machines. Turns out those cassette machines have a lot of mechanics in them for lacing and unlacing the tape to stop things turning into a horrible tangled mess. And those mechanics were controlled by a small microcontroller keeping an eye on lots and lots of leds and opto-detectors.

Oh the joy of 'helping' some inexperienced colleague by bringing a desk lamp along and 'oh, let's get a bit of light on the subject so you can see what you're doing in there...'

[Ikoth]

Dial "m" for Radar

A long time ago I worked for an IBM reseller who counted a local council as one of their customers. The Service Department took a call from a user at a newly opened office, complaining about a spurious letter “m” that kept popping up every few seconds in the middle of their terminal emulator session. An Engineer was duly dispatched and confirmed the problem. Checking the IRMA config, drivers and Token Ring cable didn’t solve the problem. A replacement PC was ordered and installed – no improvement. The senior Engineer was called in who repeated all the tests, with identical results. While sitting at the problem PC, staring through the window and pondering his next move, he noticed that across the field behind the office, he could see the radar tower of the nearby airport. After a few seconds he realised that the appearance of the rogue screen character coincided with the rotating radar dish facing the office. Some lateral thinking later, a metal sheet was procured from somewhere and placed between the system unit and the monitor. Problem fixed.

[scot stockwell]

"the mouse cursor on one of the machines became intermittently 'frisky' and jumped uncontrollably around the screen"

A colleague of mine once had this problem. But in his case it was because I had plugged a second mouse into the back of his machine...

Fun times...

[Sp1z]

This has become an even easier prank with wireless keyboards/mice as the USB dongles are pretty low-profile and easy to miss on the back of the machine.

Bonus points if the PC has a USB socket on the motherboard. Had someone stumped for weeks with that one.

[Martin an gof]

if the PC has a USB socket on the motherboard

And if it doesn't, and you have a spare header (I've fitted a lot of motherboards with more headers than the case has sockets) One of these little adapters might be useful. I first used them for FreeNAS booting - a pair of USB sticks for the mirrored boot drive, safely tucked inside the case.

M.

[Arthur the cat]

Upvoted for pointing out a useful bit of kit. I can think of several uses for that.

[cookieMonster]

You evil little shit…. I love it!!!

[Norman Nescio]

Sun outages

Those of us who have worked in satellite operations know about stray sunlight.

It just so happens that periodically, and predictably, satellites transit the Sun - or, from the observer on the ground's point of view the path followed by the Sun goes behind a satellite that your expensive data-connection is using. When that happens, the radio output from the Sun completely drowns out any signal from the satellite, disrupting the data connection for the duration that the Sun is behind the satellite.

For obvious reasons, this tends to happen during the working day; and because they are predictable, you tell your customers in advance.

And, you can be certain that someone from a customer will complain about their operations being disrupted and try to insist that the outage is postponed and done outside normal working hours.

Wikipedia:Sun outage

[that one in the corner]

Re: Sun outages

> try to insist that the outage is postponed and done outside normal working hours.

Hmm, Yehovah managed to hold it back for five minutes - Joshua 10:13 - and are we not the Gods of IT?

[swm]

Re: Sun outages

There was a case where a satellite receiving disk was aimed towards the sun and the sun rays were focused on the receiver which promptly melted. That's why they cover or paint the receiving disks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sun outages

> "the outage is postponed and done outside normal working hours"

That's easy. Adjust your working hours to not coincide with the hours of daylight. I won't even charge you for that advice.

[Paceman]

Sun in Yorkshire? Definitely a made up story. We've not had sunshine for years!

[Sam not the Viking]

Don't get your hope up...

If the sun dares to peep through in Yorkshire, there will be predictions about the forthcoming rain.

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: Don't get your hope up...

If the sun dares to peep through in Yorkshire

It's because they are beating Lancashire at cricket.

So, as you said, not much sun in Yorkshire :-)

(I should point out that my dad was born and raised in Halifax, West Vale and so qualified as a Yorkshireman. One of my nephews currently resides in Castleford.. )

[oafcmetty]

Re: Don't get your hope up...

They'd have to get promoted back up to the big boys league first!

[Tim99]

Re: Don't get your hope up...

I believe a local saw is "If you can see Pen-y-ghent it's going to rain. If you can't see it, it is raining".

This is obviously a lie - Sometimes it is (or will be) obscured by fog, sleet, or falling snow.

[Bebu]

Re: Don't get your hope up...

"If the sun dares to peep through in Yorkshire"

My immediate thought was perceptible insolation in Yorkshire rendered the story mildly apocryphal if not heralding the apocolypse.

The only time I encountered bouncy mouse syndrome was back in the late 90s or early 00s when some enterprising party from the internet had managed to remotely install VNC on the Windows PC (98me or XP?) of its unsuspecting owner and the two were having a tussle with the mouse pointer :). Disconnecting the network fixed :) followed by a reinstall.

The attack vector was through a shared print system (not my responsibility) which given one post about replacing local printers with follow-me printing and the current Papercut server security fiasco the truth of "there is no new thing under the sun" (KJV Eccl. 1-9) rings ever true.

[Doctor Syntax]

And irrespective of the county, I'd have thought sunlight would have been the least of problems on a building site.

[John Brown (no body)]

Oh yes. Printers rarely last long in a portacabin on a building site. Warranty calls often end up with "sorry, not covered by warranty for environmental reasons", which translates to "no, it's not fucking working properly cos it's full of fucking crap inside"

PPE icon 'cos I've been on too many of those sites ------------>

[Anonymous Coward]

(told before)

Contract with an aggregate supplier to provide a modem/mux unit to beam their productivity back to head office. Said modem/mux had a habit of getting installed under the conveyor belts transporting sand, cements, etc back and forth... cement dust would build up within the unit... it would get damp... fans would seize up and unit would burn out.

Not sure what killed the contract... having to explain than replacing the block of concrete was not part of the contract (one=unlucky, two=careless, more=you're manufacturing breeze blocks!)... their bean counters object to yet another pelican (large bill)... or, more likely, us running out of spares

[Dave314159ggggdffsdds]

"We've not had sunshine for years!"

Doesn't that cause problems with the tea harvest?

[Jock in a Frock]

Point-to-point microwave radio link installed on top of a BUPA hospital - Started erroring every time the aircon condenser on the roof cranked up. Turns out the microwave beam was being bent off course by the hot air venting from the condenser (think heat shimmer over a hot road bending the optical spectrum - same effect). Solution - move the microwave antenna 6 feet to the left.

[Neil Barnes]

I've probably told this one before, but... I was sent to the Delhi office to investigate a satellite downlink issue that happened irregularly around lunchtime, most days. This was in the days when a 64kb/s link was both state of the art and expensive, and needed a three meter dish to work. Checked everything, of course, and nothing at all obvious. Until one day, pulling my hair out, I went and spent a couple of hours on the roof... only to see a vulture perch on the LNB bar, spend a while eating some tasty morsel, and then fly off... a little careful rearrangement of the LNB so the vulture couldn't bend it out of the focal point and all was fine.

[Strahd Ivarius]

And then the vulture went away and opened a web site...

[Doctor Syntax]

If the vultuire had actually bitten the LNB instead of bending it we'd have to assume it was a Register journalist.

[Flightmode]

Damn, that puts my Australian spider story from two weeks ago to shame. Hat off to you, Sir.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Apologies in advance for the super-pedantry here...

A spot of insulating tape was placed inside the mouse to prevent the distant mass of burning gases – whose awesome power is responsible for all life on Earth – interfering with the sensors.

Nearly all life on Earth. At the bottom of the oceans, around hydrothermal vents, are organisms whose biology is based on thermosynthesis; the energy for which comes from decaying radioactive elements in the Earth's core. No big ball of thermonuclear explosion needed, although the existence of those radioactive heavy elements does rely on a previous thermonuclear ball going all 'splodey some 8 billion or so years ago.

[WonkoTheSane]

Re: Apologies in advance for the super-pedantry here...

Ah, but the current big ball of thermonuclear explosion collected all those radioactive heavy elements into one place and thereby formed the Earth's core.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Apologies in advance for the super-pedantry here.........

So much for the floaty empty grecian wariors helmet proclaiming:

"Transuranic heavy elements may not be used where there is life".

Icon - I'll get me coat & kit bag!

[Norman Nescio]

Re: Apologies in advance for the super-pedantry here.........

Sapphire is not an element. That always triggered me. And neither for that matter was t'other one.

That said Joanna was as lovely as ever. Both actors deserved far better than that show.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Apologies in advance for the super-pedantry here.........

I know, bugs the heck out of me too.

The closest I can come up with as they were "extra-dimensional beings", their "names" translated badly in our dimension.

Best I can do for something thats 44 years old (Unlike me whose rather older).

The series itself was something you got, or didn't get, certainly certain "assignments" could have done with some pruning, a product of it's time, budget & internal politics*.

*Having to wait for the series to return due to a strike at ITV, following the cliffhanger of "NO!" by the soldier & then having to watch that story from the start to get back to that cliffhanger was irksome!

[DJO]

Re: Apologies in advance for the super-pedantry here...

Close but no cigar - Supernovae are not energetic enough to make most of the really heavy radioactive elements, they need something far more violent like merging neutron stars.

Supernovae can't make anything heavier than Rubidium (#37). Surprisingly it's low mass stars which burn cool and long that make elements up to Lutetium (#71). For elements from Niobium (#41) to Plutonium (#94) you need to smash pairs of neutron stars together. (or a neutron star and a high mass star or possibly a pair of high mass stars).

https://science.nasa.gov/origin-elements

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Apologies in advance for the super-pedantry here...

Surprisingly it's low mass stars which burn cool and long that make elements up to Lutetium (#71).

This surprised me; I was taught that fusion only works up to Iron (due to the energy input outweighing the output after element #56) - ISTR a curve of energy vs atomic number, where it goes up rapidly, tails off and peaks at iron, and then slowly declines. I guess the heavier elements get created in that star's death throes, or by some process that can afford to put in more energy than it gets out?

I think, probably the "where do heavy elements come from" is still one of the not-fully-solved issues with cosmology. We're not great at visualising the sorts of things that go on in and around stars, and I think the maths probably gets quite tricky when looking at huge magnetic fields twisting themselves up into all sorts of contortions and interacting with plasmas at millions of degrees. Not to mention the fact that we haven't completely understood all the subatomic physics going on either (there are still a lot of unanswered questions there too, which we're trying to answer by smashing very small things together very fast).

[DJO]

Re: Apologies in advance for the super-pedantry here...

I was taught that fusion only works up to Iron

And they were right.

I'm not 100% certain on this but big stars go bang at the end of their life rapidly as gravity can no longer balance the forces trying to expand the star, smaller cooler stars can fight gravity for longer and compress far more before they go boom so they have matter that's already pretty squished together which make getting the heavier elements possible.

disclaimer - as ever with physics every attempt at describing reality is a gross simplification of what's really going on. (I'm sure Douglas Adams would have come up with a much better way to express that.)

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Apologies in advance for the super-pedantry here...

> fusion only works up to Iron

This is correct. All heavier elements are made when the outer hull of the sun, during going nova, expands and then collapses. The collapse literally crushes the atoms together with such an amount of energy heavier elements than iron are created by fusion. And you are right, you don't get energy back with that type of fusion. This blow-up-collapse cycle happens several times while doing the nova thing.

[Robert Carnegie]

Re: Apologies in advance for the super-pedantry here...

I think technically we don't get heavy elements from the nova / supernova stage of the sun, not yet anyway ;-) (icon)

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Apologies in advance for the super-pedantry here...

Yeah, but we don't need them. We are the remnants of former supernovas, and we live on a remnant of former supernovas.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Apologies in advance for the super-pedantry here...

I wonder what this produced? (Astronomers detect largest cosmic explosion ever seen)

[Dante Alighieri]

MEGA pedantry here

...burning gases...

There is fusion. there is NO burning, particularly no exothermic oxidation.

A suitable scientific response is on how the sun "burns" without oxygen

I shall pass over the ball of thermonuclear explosion as I bask in the warm glow of solar thermonuclear fusion.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: MEGA pedantry here

Well yes indeed, I was quoting the article, mind...

I'll also add that merging neutron starts themselves have a prerequisite of two neutron stars, which are formed in supernovae.

I think the formation of heavy elements in the early universe probably involved all sorts of "exotic" things such as "black hole stars" - stars so massive that they have a black hole inside but extend beyond the event horizon, so still continue to shine, and other mind-bending things like that.

ISTR some stuff recently about supernovae where modelling of the collapsing magnetic fields suggested some of those elements could be formed there as well. I guess the whole things is hard to nail down, because a lot of this stuff is based on theoretical modelling, and not direct measurement, what with supernovae being relatively uncommon, and a long way away, and pretty unlikely to be something that can be reproduced experimentally, not to mention hazardous to be within many light-years of.

[DJO]

Re: MEGA pedantry here

If you are going to be "mega" pedantic then you should also dispute the word "gases" - no gas in the sun, it's all plasma.

But you are on sticky ground with "burning" with relation to stellar fusion as stars are said to "burn" by astrophysicists and the "official" definition of "burn(ing)" relates to heat not fire so as it's pretty toasty in the sun "burn" is OK. I do understand exactly where you are coming from, but I really don't think it's of any particular importance so can be argued over just for the fun of it.

[Conrad Longmore]

Had exactly the same thing, the user couldn't work in the afternoon in winter when the sun came through the window and shone on the desk. I knew what the problem was because I had read about it in Chaos Manor in Byte some time before - for the uninitiated, Chaos Manor was Jerry Pournelle messing around with computers and it was a surprisingly useful source of tips. I replaced the mouse, so the user could work in the afternoon which I think they were none too happy about.. they also had a (for the time) massive 21" colour CRT running in VGA-only mode which looked stupid. After checking that they weren't visually impared, I installed the correct Windows 3.1 SVGA driver and set it to something more appropriate. They made a formal complaint, and I had to set it back to 640 x 480. I honestly don't think that office actually did any work at all...

[The Oncoming Scorn]

I had a late 20's* detective somewhere at the bottom end of Cornwall, complaining** he couldnt read the screen at the policy enforced screen resolution of 1024 x 768 & wanted it at 800 x 600, made me wonder how he did any investigation if his eyes*** couldnt cope with smaller finer details.

*Age, not the 1920's.

**Apparently he would make this request\complaint to any person in IT he came into contact with, even colleagues at Middlemoor knew of his "requests".

*** Icon.

[Norman Nescio]

Chaos Manor

I enjoyed Chaos Manor as well.

I remember one remark he made when people were getting excited over multi-tasking operating systems - he pointed out that his printer had a cpu, and his modem had a cpu, and that in the future, cpus would be so cheap that you'd have one cpu per task. We're not quite there yet.

NN

[PRR]

Re: Chaos Manor

> in the future, cpus would be so cheap that you'd have one cpu per task. We're not quite there yet.

We may be. Jerry simplified. I now can throw TWO CPU cores at my text-editor! (With brief breaks for time and network.) And I only have a dual-core here. I see 7- and 13-core CPUs everywhere. I read of 30-core chips and multiple chips per CPU. Also even my dual-core has a couple of threads, do AI-grade CPUs have more threads than my bedsheets? ?

And what is a "task"? Applications spawn worker trolls like pregnant salmon. Thunderbird 4, Windows 19 svchosts, Firefox 20 (for 8 tabs).

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Chaos Manor

"I see 7- and 13-core CPUs everywhere."

Apart from possibly multi-core chips with one or more failed parts and sold or used as such, which makes/models of CPUs come with odd numbers of cores?

I'm reminded of a discussion with my BIL who'd just bought a snazzy new Intel i5 based system and was bragging about it having 5 cores. I tried to let him down gently[*]

* Although I didn't really try too hard :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Chaos Manor

Read somewhere about a 8-bit home computer in the 80's - 32K of the 48K (K, not M or G!) was provided by faulty 64K chips. They would either use all chips that were faulty in the top or bottom half of the address space.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Chaos Manor

That was (is?) common.

Moore's Law meant the company would move their fabrication from, say, 1Gb to 2Gb chips and the reject 2Gb chips with failures in just one half of the memory space would 'rewired' to block that half and sold as perfectly usable 1Gb chips

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Chaos Manor

ISTR a processor I had in a previous home-build PC that was purportedly a 6-core chip, but it was actually an 8-core one without two of the cores verified. I unlocked the two remaining cores in the BIOS, and overclocked the CPU to boot (by about 10% IIRC, it had a beefy heat-sink on it with lots of copper fins) and it all still worked fine.

This was probably 10+ years ago, so details are a bit hazy. I think it was my last AMD machine.

[Sparkus]

Re: Chaos Manor

two thumbs up for the chaos manor reference......

[Roger Kynaston]

Wrong Sun

I was all primed for a story of derring do with my previous favourite hardware and OS company.

I feel robbed now!

[TimMaher]

Re: Wrong Sun

And I was going to write.. Re: “the Sun”

Just stop reading it. FTFY.

Have a beer on me——>

[jollyboyspecial]

When optical mice first became popular I had a corner office manager call me up to say that on sunny days his mouse would misbehave, but whenever he had hold of it and was therefore blocking the sunlight the problems would disappear. My first thought was "and monkeys fly out of my butt". However on reaching the sun drenched office I saw the mouse cursor moving randomly even though the mouse itself wasn't moving. I picked up a pad and held it above the mouse to create a shadow and the random movement ceased.

Expecting the issue to be a faulty mouse I'd taken a spare down with me. By good fortune the new mouse was black and wasn't affected by sunlight.

I learned something that day. Not all managers are idiots.

[Anonymous Coward]

learned something that day. Not all managers are idiots.

That must have been long ago.

:)

[John Brown (no body)]

Oh, it's still true today. There are just as many good managers as there have always been. The problem is that there are many, many more managers now.

[aerogems]

"Not all managers are idiots."

Something about broken clock twice a day...

Though that does seem like an impressive bit of pre-support calling troubleshooting for management.

[Red Sceptic]

The Sun?

Came for Kelvin MacKenzie reference - was disappointed.

[petef]

Even now my optical mouse occasionally does not move as I would like. Not wildly but just annoyingly. Inverting it for a second or so recalibrates it into compliance.

[NITS]

Not all users are idiots

Got a call to troubleshoot the (IP) phone at the fuel center of a chain grocery store. No fault found; the jacks and cabling were fine. The user said that the phone works OK all winter, and only goes bad on rainy days.

Said fuel center is more recently built than the main store and is located a block away (and around the corner, if you're driving) from the main store.

Looked around the IT rack in the fuel center, no landline network connection in sight. Walked outside, there is a microwave-sized antenna on the canopy, aimed at the main store, and an identical antenna on the roof of the main store aimed at the gas station. Line of sight is over a strip mall and past a relatively recently-constructed hotel. Which has trees lining its driveway. Which, no doubt, have grown taller since originally planted. I suspect that the leafy green microwave absorbers become more efficient at that task on rainy days.

The user's seemingly-irrelevant observations clued me in.

[ComicalEngineer]

The large company I worked for decided to close the beautiful 1950s offices which had been used for nearly 50 years, and were well liked, and move the entire engineering department to a brand new *purpose built* [but not for the purpose for which we used it] block. This meant a lot of people who lived near the old site now facing a 35 minute commute rather than 5 minutes.

The new office came with floor to ceiling windows. My seat being adjacent to a window giving me a wonderful view of the car park, the building opposite and a slice of grass and trees round the corner of the opposite building. At the last minute it was decided that the fit out of the new building was over-budget and hence certain things were deleted, air conditioning being replaced by *pressure ventilation* and the window blinds being deleted. This was OK for those on the North side of the building, but for those of us on the south side led to excessive heat and inability to read the CRT monitors that we had. My own monitor was unusable after 1030 on a sunny day.

Being engineers we came up with several ingenious methods to get round this, mostly involving taping large drawings to the windows and the use of large pieces of corrugated cardboard propped up around monitors. This was not to the liking of the powers that be who decreed that nothing shoud be stuck to our wonderful windows and that cardboard boxes must be removed forthwith. At which point VDU assessments were demanded by those affected --- and the VDU assessments were all failed as being not fit for use.

A month later vertical blinds were installed to the South side of the building, which involved a complex operation including removal of IT equipment to a safe place, moving of desks to get access (my own desk was 12" from the window) and then the replacement and reconnection of all the equipment. All of this had to be done over 3 weekends ensuring that the users could walk back in on Monday morning and commence work. Thus lots of overtime rates for the blind installation company and the IT team.

The price to fit blinds to half the building? Twice what it would have been for the original installation to the whole building.