To fix this Wi-Fi network, we'll need a crane

Delivering excellent tech support can sometimes require heavy lifting, a feat The Register celebrates each Friday with a new instalment of On Call – the reader-contributed column that shares your stories of hoisting glitchy tech back to full function. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Harold" who told us he once …

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Pile drivers, cameras, and microscopes don't mix

When I was working as lead (actually: only) developer for a digital image processing system for microscopy at the university hospital, we encountered problems due to the construction going on at the hospital. Whole new buildings were being set up. Just as a lab technician had readied a set of slides for analysis using quantitative fluorescence microscopy using my code, the builders started driving piles into the ground. Obviously, this rather scuppered the attempts to get sharp fluorescence images at about 1000x magnification, especially when using a couple of seconds of exposure time. Needless to say we were not amused. We managed to contact the foreman, who was very helpful, and agreed to schedule pile driving around our data acquisition times (he already scheduled it around the more delicate forms of surgery, for obvious reasons). When all pile driving was done, they builders actually brought cake for the entire lab to compensate for all the trouble they had caused us (which in the end, was very little).

A very nice resolution of the problem, I thought.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Pile drivers, cameras, and microscopes don't mix

Good to hear you got a 'nice resolution' to your fluorescence microscopy :)

[Graham 27]

Re: Pile drivers, cameras, and microscopes don't mix

Good to see you had a 'nice resolution' to your fluorescence microscopy problem

[Korev]

Re: Pile drivers, cameras, and microscopes don't mix

I used to work next to a factory building that was being demolished. The basement was so solid they didn't really know how to get rid of it. Eventually they tried explosives, but it didn't do much. So they went into Full Clarkson Mode™ and used more. They put the warning siren on so lots of excited geeks rushed to the side of the building to watch, all of whom ducked when a shower of stones hit the side of our building.

They later decided to cancel the explosives as apparently it took out sensitive experiments in a nearby lab building - not because a load of geeks nearly got a shower of stones!

[Pascal Monett]

Everybody like big boom.

Personally, I prefer watching them on a screen.

[jake]

Everybody like big boom ...

... in the correct time and place.

About three point seven billion years ago in Internet Time (call it the early 70s), we were pushing a new road through a property adjacent to mine in Mendocino County. This meant we had to remove quite a few redwood tree stumps. Most of the time we were able to roll them out of the ground using heavy equipment, but once in a while we had to use dynamite. Late one afternoon, we set off a shot with the intention of blasting three stumps simultaneously. The first two went off, the final one in the string did not. This is NOT GOOD.

Being late in the day, we decided to knock off and think about it overnight, leaving a trail of "warning, unexploded dynamite, DO NOT ENTER" signs in our wake.

At about 3:30AM I was awakened by a largish BOOM!

At first light, we discovered the third stump had been nicely rolled out.

[Stratman]

Re: Everybody like big boom ...

Ah yes, the exothermic method of relocating things. For anyone remotely interested in this art, I recommend searching out recordings of Blaster Bates and his after dinner speeches.

Obvious really >>>>>>>

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Everybody like big boom ...

"...on 1 September 2006 he died, aged 83. He was buried at St Mary's church in Sandbach town"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaster_Bates

The vicar and the local council wouldn't have allowed it, but the right way to have excavated his grave would have been with explosives

[ricardian]

Re: Everybody like big boom ...

Blaster Bates had at least one failure. A copper wire factory in Cheadle, Staffs experienced a total power failure whilst the furnaces were full of molten copper. Blast Bates was brought in to break up the solidified copper. Alas, the malleable copper absorbed the blast from the dynamite and the firm had to demolish the furnaces

[Caver_Dave]

Re: Everybody like big boom ...

Yes, I got it wrong once. The rotten stump wasn't as stuck as we thought and ended up in the branches half way up the next tree in the avenue.

Obvious icon!

[Mike Pellatt]

Re: Everybody like big boom ...

I was instantly reminded of Blaster Bates and the naming of Knickerbrook as I read that story.

[VBF]

Re: Everybody like big boom ...

And his classic line, when he was hired to blow up a pigsty......

"There was a thrutch followed by "A shower of sh*t over Shropshire"

[Mike Pellatt]

Re: Everybody like big boom ...

Not explosive, but for me his absolutely best story is "Mummy Will Worry"

[Doctor Syntax]

"Everybody like big boom."

Not everyone. I was glad to have missed the car bomb in our lab's entrance gate.

[Korev]

I was working near a university which was targeted by animal rights people. The bomb threats were usually phoned to the Samaritans!!!

Context: Samaritans are a UK charity which provides volunteers who listen without prejudice and judgement to people in mental health crisis

[Doctor Syntax]

You reckon it was the number they were most familiar with?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, yeah, I've had to go through the site induction of a lab which regularly got threats about things like that, it's all giggles n shits until someone actually follows through

[Doctor Syntax]

"it's all giggles n shits"

Not in N Ireland, it wasn't.

[IanRS]

Listen carefully

I once worked in what was then a government owned research centre, before it was privatised and then became a housing estate. The IRA was still active on mainland Britain at the time. The induction covered: this is what a fire alarm sounds like and this is what you do; this is the bomb threat alarm and this is what you do; this is what the incoming mortar attack alarm sounds like and this is what you do. Fortunately the third was never used, but the alert status board at the entrance was occasionally black.

[PB90210]

Re: Listen carefully

My nephew had his marriage reception in an active Territorial Army hall... there were boards on the walls announcing the current status was 'Black Bikini'

(I'm not sure what the ladies were meant to wear)

(I think it was the one that had the controlled detonation of a suspicious parcel... that turn out to be a package of leaflets about how to handle suspicious parcels)

[Korev]

Re: Listen carefully

A friend's wedding had a bomb planted by the IRA, neither him nor his wife had any connection to the security forces at all. Apparently one of Britain's crappier tabloids kept phoning guests trying to get information....

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

Re: Pile drivers, cameras, and microscopes don't mix

"The basement was so solid they didn't really know how to get rid of it."

Sound like it would make an ideal foundation

[mirachu]

Re: Pile drivers, cameras, and microscopes don't mix

Uncontrolled boom sounds like Clarkson, but the size of boom soulds more like Mythbusters (RIP cement truck).

[GlenP]

Re: Pile drivers, cameras, and microscopes don't mix

I previously worked for a metal bashing company which had a 1,000t Stanko press. We were only allowed to use it during the day as apparently it disturbed the neighbours (the council had located sheltered housing bungalows right up against the factory fence, which made no sense to us) but when in use the offices would shake every few seconds; fortunately we didn't have any particularly delicate jobs to do so it was more annoying than anything.

By the time we consolidated and closed that particular unit the press had been largely superseded by newer technology and it was scrapped - even that wasn't easy given that it was fastened down to a very large lump of concrete and sitting in a 10' deep pit.

[Admiral Grace Hopper]

Re: Pile drivers, cameras, and microscopes don't mix

My Great Aunt Rose lived across the road from a drop forge in the industrial West Midlands of England which ran 24 hours a day. The only time it affected her sleep was during Industrial Fortnight when the factory closed for the summer holiday.

[Zarno]

Re: Pile drivers, cameras, and microscopes don't mix

My mum grew up with train tracks in the backyard, and she recounted how it was quite the eye-opener (pun intended) when she moved in with pops, and the trains were gone.

[David Hicklin]

Re: Pile drivers, cameras, and microscopes don't mix

> The only time it affected her sleep was during Industrial Fortnight when the factory closed for the summer holiday

Same where my wife grew up in the Peak District and had a plant across the road (it was built there in WW2 to get away from Sheffield)

They only ran the lighter stuff overnight but even then when they shut down it was far to quiet to go to sleep

Where we live now we have goods train lines (Erewash Valley) either side (plus a street) and they can really shake the house at 3am!

[Dave@Home]

Re: Pile drivers, cameras, and microscopes don't mix

I spent my first 11 years a couple of streets away from a drop forge in Ayr.

Used to be quite soothing, the rhythm of the hammer

[aje21]

Why only temporary move for the Windows laptops?

I'm confused why they would want to move the Windows laptops back to 2.4GHz if they worked just fine with 5GHz.

[robinsonb5]

Re: Why only temporary move for the Windows laptops?

Why not move them back if that band will otherwise be unused? It at least means more devices can use the 5GHz band before congestion becomes a problem.

[K555]

Re: Why only temporary move for the Windows laptops?

2.4 gets congested long before 5. Not to mention the fact 2.4 is a giant dumping ground for RF in the first place!

In my experience, It's pretty much only useful for low speed IOT stuff or filling in where 5GHz doesn't propagate in congested areas.

[phuzz]

Re: Why only temporary move for the Windows laptops?

Except these days the 5GHz band is getting congested as well, which is why you need a 6GHz router! (And a compatible phone, laptop, etc.)

Or wired ethernet where you can.

[Lazlo Woodbine]

Re: Why only temporary move for the Windows laptops?

Apple gear defaults to 5ghz; I'm assuming this was a US school, where I'd imagine most laptops would be Apple.

Shift the Windows laptops back to 2.4ghz and you've nicely split your spectrum usage...

[Korev]

Re: Why only temporary move for the Windows laptops?

Kids to 2.4GHz

Staff to 5GHz

IT and friends to 6GHz

Can we have the BOFH icon black please!

[Paul Hovnanian]

Re: Why only temporary move for the Windows laptops?

AX.25 for the ham radio operators.

[NetMage]

Re: Why only temporary move for the Windows laptops?

I used to have a card I made that so No Morse Code (Morse in Morse, of course) use AX.25

[Paul Hovnanian]

Re: Why only temporary move for the Windows laptops?

Not to mention the fact 2.4 is a giant dumping ground for RF in the first place!

Anecdote: Back when I worked in a secure facility of a DoD (DoW?) supplier, it had come to the attention of our security department that many WiFi APs were being installed in offices of people with new-fangled WiFi capable laptops. A clear security violation.

The security department had requested that our electronics lab undertake the location and removal of said devices. Their response was to lash up some 2.4 GHz microwave reciever equipment (this was before the advent of 5 GHz WiFi) together with a high end HP spectrum analyzer and UPS on a cart. Upon encountering the techs slowly pushing their cart down the hallway, I asked how the search was going.

"We're finding every microwave oven in the building."

[NetMage]

Re: Why only temporary move for the Windows laptops?

Because 5GHz provides more performance and more channels which means more real world performance as well? It make the most sense to have everyone switch automatically so low coverage areas can use 2.4GHz but most stay on 5GHz or both and get better performance.

[BartyFartsLast]

Re: Why only temporary move for the Windows laptops?

As a radio ham who uses es'hail I endorse that message

[dmesg]

Re: Why only temporary move for the Windows laptops?

Range?

[lglethal]

Whilst working on the HP³ Mole for the Mars Insight Lander we had a lab where we had a 5m tall cylinder that we filled with soils to represent the martian regolith for testing.

We discovered we basically had to empty it and refill it every week or so, because otherwise it became too compacted to use.

Investigation revealed that the nearby Autobahn provided a tiny but continual level of vibrations that caused the soil to compact over time. Very much an unexpected result, since you couldnt even hear the Autobahn from the Institute.

This was not a big deal, it just meant emptying and refilling the test chamber regularly, but it's a perfect example that it's always the unexpected things that catch you out...

[Pascal Monett]

You've got an interesting job.

[lglethal]

It was a great project with a really great team. Unfortunately Mars didnt co-operate. Our landing site turned out to have a type of soil not seen by any lander or rover before or since. So we werent able to achieve the actual goal f getting 5m down, but we did at least get some science results.

Mars is a harsh mistress... ;)

(I've since moved on and work on far less interesting things.)

[A.P. Veening]

Mars is a harsh mistress... ;)

Reference to a revolutionary work by R.A.H?

[David Hicklin]

So there is a hidden Autobahn somewhere near the landers site causing the soil to compact ?

[jake]

We occasionally had similar issues with Highway 280 and the Stanford Linear Accelerator.

Also, once in a while we could trace issues with the Stanford Dish to Hwy 280 ...

Fortunately, 280's not a truck route. Now you know two of the reasons why. Yes, there are others, mostly esthetic and NIMBY related.

[Anonymous Coward]

A previous employer of mine built a semiconductor fab plant for a cutting-edge process. The plant had to be constructed to sit on deep, deep foundations with isolating mounts (rubber or some hi-tech equivalent) because otherwise, vibrations even from planes landing at the international airport would wreak havoc with the litho machines.

The airport was (well, still is) over 20 miles away.

[Yes Me]

CERN could detect both the phases of the Moon, and French TGV trains several km away, with LEP (the machine that previously occupied the LHC tunnel).

The Moon's gravity slightly distorts the tunnel every (lunar) month, and the TGV generated feeble but detectable ground currents.

[andy the pessimist]

Does CERN detect the traffic jam on the road right next to the site?

[Sam not the Viking]

Some years ago, we had a problem with alignment on some largish machinery which had been built on a huge concrete structure. The engineers were blamed for a poor installation but then we were called to install instrumentation and logging to see what was actually happening whilst the machinery was running. It was thought that one element (weighing several tonnes) must be changing shape during operation; unexpected, unlikely but possible.

We found a rhythm to the issues: Every twelve hours or so, things would cycle between good, poor, bad, poor, good and so on. Tides. Moving/distorting the entire building......

We joked with the project manager that he could sit in his chair outside and command the sea to go back. He wasn't a Cnut and took the banter in good humour.... The solution to the issue involved a different flexible coupling between rotating parts.

Friday --->

[GlenP]

A friend couldn't understand why her microwave internet link (in the pre broadband days when the alternative was dialup) would drop out periodically, but not at the same time every day. It was eventually traced to the fact the cottage was on the sea front and the link pointed out across the bay, every time there was a spring high tide it would distort the signal. Some realignment of the link cured the problem.

[Sir Sham Cad]

A few years ago (OK, about a decade - I'm old) we got the usual zero notice that some outpatient services were being moved to a local, new build GP surgery/residential flats building, close to the hospital.

No time to order and run in fibre so the only game in town was a laser link from the roof of the hospital wing opposite the GP building. The wing that houses our ED/Trauma/Resus services.

All worked well for a time and then the connection would intermittently drop and come back up. We began physically resetting the laser at the hospital end each time it happened and we'd see the connection come back.

Over time this got worse and worse and we just could not work out why. We did suspect that the trees between the hospital and the GP building were blocking the laser as they came back into leaf, maybe the blossom was having an effect.

We called in the company that originally fitted the kit to have a look and they ran some alignment checks at both ends. They discovered the root cause and implemented a fix.

On top of the roof of the ED/Trauma/Resus wing is the helipad for the Air Ambulance. Repeated heli-action vibrations had caused the laser head to slowly, slightly, lose alignment. The fix was a bigger mounting.

We ran in fibre soon after.

[Korev]

Maybe the Chopper could have helped with the trees

[Sir Sham Cad]

It's funny you should say that...

Actually, back in the day, when they were planning the Helipad and looking for approval, they ran exercises to ascertain the local impact of chopper noise. At the time I worked with an engineer who was learning to fly helicopters. He took one look at the 'copter used for the noise test and laughed. Aparently Air Ambulances are a hell of a lot bigger and noisier than the commercial helicopter they used for the test.

A lot of flat, high-sided buildings in the area so now you cannot tell WTF the chopper is by audio because it sounds like it's everywhere all at once.

Prior to the Helipad it used to land in the play park next to the hospital. Trees, dogs, kids be damned.

[42656e4d203239]

>>Tides. Moving/distorting the entire building......

IRIC this is the case for the LHC at CERN - they have, apparently, to adjust for the tide (such as it is) in lake Geneva distorting the ring and also passing traffic/trains can cause geometry/RFI issues.

[Doctor Syntax]

Just in the lake and not in the ground itself?

[Ken Hagan]

Both would be affected to some extent but water flows and so I imagine that the size of the effect is very different and that is the problem. I don't know, though.

[Claptrap314]

Unstoppable?

In the original story, the king made his order to shut up his flatterers.

[Anonymous Custard]

Reminds me of an old experience (back 15-20 years or so) of a customer who had just build a brand new clean room at their site for semiconductor manufacture.

Our tools were some of the first in, and were giving some issues with both particles and uniformity.

Particles we worked out fairly quickly was due to the "clean" environment not being so clean, as they'd put up all sorts of partition walls and secured/sealed them with mastic that was merrily outgassing siloxane and all sorts of other "interesting" solvents that got sucked into the tools or just landed on the wafers and screwed things up. They had a clean-up and things improved, and they got better over time anyway as the outgas subsided.

But the thickness (uniformity) problems were more puzzling. Then someone noticed that at certain times of the day (around rush hour) the tools were vibrating, and in the extreme cases were actually swaying (some of these tools are 3-4 meters tall but only a couple wide). Not exactly what you want when teaching tolerances and repeatability need to be in the sub-millimeter range...

Panicked checks were made by the customer with the folks who had built and hooked up the cleanroom and it was discovered that whilst the floating floor was in place (designed to remove such ambient vibrations from the environment) some bright spark had saved a few euro by making facilities pipework connection directly with solid pipe and without bellows. So their lovely floating floor was directly coupled and anchored to the standard floor, and so any vibrations in it.

Now consider that along one edge of the site was a major highway, usually full of big rigs and commuters, with an off-junction at the corner of the site with slip roads down another side of site...

Shall we say I learned a few more entries for my dictionary of foreign language curses and expletives, and urgent work to fix it was put in place.

We got the tools signed off and working in the end, but only after a couple of months delay and some new replacement facilities (and contractors).

[K555]

Not so accidental

I carried out some install work at a major UK airport - right next to the airfield apron. We'd cleared it with the operator, given them all of the frequencies, locations and power levels we'd be using. DFS all enabled with RADAR detection etc and been given the all clear.

It was nearly impossible to get stable links. They'd come up with perfect quality then totally drop out. Initially, I figured it was just going to be proximity to airport rain RADAR or similar that was jamming up the whole band, but something about the pattern didn't quite fit. So I dropped the power right down and ran it outside of the DFS areas. Same issue.

I then took at look with an analyser and found that whatever channel the equipment was set to, got a whole load of garbage back at high power. Initially I figured this might be some kind of reflection off a nearby structure. Then I noticed that it took a few seconds before it happened after a channel change. I then set it to a non-standard channel width and it all but cleared up.

It was never confirmed, but it looks like we were having a fight with some kind of drone countermeasures. Which is interesting, because I feel like I remember when the whole Gatwick thing was going on that one of the issues is that jammers weren't allowed, even for use by the authorities. Might be misremembering that though (or it may have changed).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not so accidental

Surely the authorities would set up the jammer in a way to not jam their own drones. I seem to recall that they floated theories that the malicious Gatwick drones were flying pre-programmed routes so not subject to control channel interference, but that eventually they realised that the repeated reports of drones were actually the authority's drones looking for the perps.

[breakfast]

Re: Not so accidental

Still so funny to me that there is no evidence for any drones in the Gatwick drone panic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not so accidental

I was at a conference in Marina Bay Sands, and was part of the team responsible for rolling out the WiFi

All was going well, until we started getting DFS events in the logs. Changi is, of course, a fair while away....

It wasn't until we saw the coast guard's boat patrolling the bay that we worked out that it was using radar!

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

(The range covers fourth graders in elementary school all the way up to high school kids.)

I'm sorry if we're going to use strange foreign measurements some kind of translation is required.

Even watching South Park has not taught me the US system. I barely understand the English one since re numbered it some time back.

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially when they could have just said "10 year olds through to 17 year olds" or whatever the numbers should be. Universal measures are useful.

[KittenHuffer]

But then it would depend on which planet you are reading this story on!

For example, if you were in the Saturn system then they would be in the range of 0.34 to 0.58 years old!

[Korev]

> Especially when they could have just said "10 year olds through to 17 year olds" or whatever the numbers should be. Universal measures are useful.

This sounds like America so they'd probably think it sounds too like metric units and use something nonsensical and assume it's the worldwide standard (see also dates, paper sizes etc)

[that one in the corner]

Today I Learned...

that the US describes the thickness of leather in ounces, where 1 oz equals one sixty-fourth on inch; at least now I can convert the inches to mm (turns out, divide "ounces" by 2.5 to get mm, near as makes no difference for a material that varies across its area).

That is it. None of the sites I double-checked this on had any clue to shed on *why* ounces equate to inches this way. Probably due to some mythic piece of leather of fixed size, one link down the side, that weighed one Troy ounce and measured to be twenty-four sheets of leather to the barleycorn. Then it was rationalised when US units broke free from Imperial.

[jake]

The weight corresponds to how much a square foot of leather weighs. It was standardized to a square foot of 1/64th inch leather weighing an ounce (even if it didn't) to make life easier in a time when illiteracy was common. This type of measurement originated in the fabric trade, and persists in other areas to this day. For example, roofing felt. 40 pounds of 40lb felt will cover one square of roof, assuming proper overlap. One square is 100 square feet.

[FeRDNYC]

Don't even get me started on pipe diameters. Or lumber dimensions! (Think your two-by-four is 2"× 4"? LOL, nope.)

[FeRDNYC]

Well, I mean, really the thing of it is that the numbers don't correspond to any ages in particular. You can have kids starting school late for various reasons so they're slightly older than the baseline. (Although usually they don't put older kids in Kindergarten because there are no entry preconditions for first grade, so they'll just start there.) In second grade and higher, where there are some expectations regarding what children have already learned prior to starting the year, being "held back" for not meeting those requirements isn't nearly as popular or common as it used to be, but in the past you'd have children forced to repeat grades, so they also end up older than their classmates. And it's still the case that other kids can start skipping grades as early as the tail end of primary school (grades 5 and 6), so they occasionally end up completing high school (9 or 10–12) at age 16, 15, even 14.

So, if a school is a K-12, it provides 13 years' worth of class levels (Kinder- and grades 1–12). But the students could be anywhere from 6–8 years old in first grade, and anywhere from 14–19 in 12th grade. It doesn't really make sense to generalize about their ages.

Besides, British media talks about O-levels and A-levels all the time, and I think I can speak for most Americans when I assure you we have absolutely no f---ing clue what the hell any of THAT means. We just let it wash over us like discussions of your politics or pub fare.

[Richard 12]

O-Levels haven't been a thing for nearly forty years, the last ones happened in 1987!

Giving the "most common" age range would still be useful.

O-Levels/GCSEs are usually at 15-16 years, A-Levels 17-18.

[jake]

Speaking as a guy who has O and A levels, and also graduated from an American high school, O levels were roughly the equivalent of a high school graduation, and A levels were roughly the same as an AA from a local Junior College.

Note that I'm in California, YMMV in other states. Also note the use of "roughly". It's there for a reason.

[Anonymous Coward]

O-levels were "ordinary" - completion of high school (~16 year olds). Have been superseded by GCSEs (General Certificate of Secondary Education) but used interchangeably by the older generation.

A-levels are "advanced" - 2 years of further education after high school, having dropped the number of subjects. There's also a concept of AS, which is half of an A-level.

And I do agree that when talking internationally, putting some context to such qualifications is useful.

[jake]

It is quite simple.

K is kindergarten, roughly 5 years old.

First grade is the first grade after that. Roughly 6 year olds.

12th grade is the last year of high school. Roughly 18 years.

It is usually split into Elementary school (K-5 or K-6), Junior High (6-8, 7-9, or 7 and 8, depending on district). Some districts opt for Middle School which can change these numbers a trifle, with many starting at 5th grade. Highschool is either 9-12 or 10-12.

Watching South Park is not a good way to learn about ANYTHING that goes on in the US ... except our almost universal dislike of the convicted criminal occupying the White House, and his sycophants, book lickers, ass kissers and assorted other scum.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It is quite simple.

Well, quite.

[phuzz]

Re: It is quite simple.

It's ok, we know that South Park isn't a documentary.

For starters I think they've only had one school shooting on the show.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It is quite simple.

So we all just have to remember 4 paragraphs of text to calculate the rough ages of schoolkids in the USA, as well as the corresponding UK ones (here in Scotland, school age ranges are different - and named differently - from England and Wales) and any European ones that may be of interest. Or the author could just have given the age range in years. Yep, thanks for that.

[Not Yb]

Re: It is quite simple.

The age range in years wouldn't be as accurate, as it's possible for children in each grade to be 2 (or more) different ages depending on exact cut-off date for enrollment and (in some cases) ability.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: It is quite simple.

What's wrong with the perfectly logical British system of: nursery, infants, juniors, secondary 1st to 5th year followed by lower and upper 6th ?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: It is quite simple.

Apologies, this is of course only the English, not British, system. Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Ely, counties beginning with a vowel and LEAs holding a personal charter from King John will of course naturally have their own system

[Sam not the Viking]

Re: It is quite simple.

For some reason, not properly explained, my old secondary school started at '2' for first-years then inserted a mysterious 'Shell' between '4' and '5'. I just thought this was normal, but then a lot of strange things go past without me noticing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It is quite simple.

My school in the northwest of England had Alpha, Beta, Removes, and then Shell, covering the 8-11 age range. And yes, that seemed perfectly normal to me at the time.

[RockBurner]

Re: It is quite simple.

Kids can "normalise" (yes, with an 's') virtually anything. Which is not always a good thing.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: It is quite simple.

Due to some musical chairs going on with the raising of UK school leaving age (ROSLA) went from age 15 to 16 in 1972.

Moving to a different (Middle) school from Junior school where my class\year kept the designation "Third Years" for a second year, before moving to "Fourth Years" & then moving to my high school in the UK which started us in the "Second year".

God I'm old.

[Albert Coates]

Re: It is quite simple.

Same here. My school had streaming for academic ability as well, so there was 2A and 2B etc, and the B equivalent of Shell was 'Remove', referred to by staff as 'The Zoo'.

[Andy 68]

Re: It is quite simple.

What's wrong with Lower 4th, Upper 4th, Lower 5th, Upper 5th, 6th Form (1st and 2nd years thereof)?

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: It is quite simple.

Where foes 1st form start?

Daughter passed 11 plus in N Ireland & started grammar school there. Then we moved to High Wycombe where they have (or had) 13 plus and was miffed to have to go back to junior school again. Fortunately the timing of the move back to God's Own County was timed for the start of 6th form college.

[that one in the corner]

Re: It is quite simple.

Is that the British system? Surely you mean nursery, pre-prep, prep (years 1 to 5), college (which starts in the third year, naturally), sixth (upper and lower) and then on to uni.

[Ken Hagan]

Re: It is quite simple.

That would be the system in state schools, of course. Public (ie, private) schools use different systems, such as: F, E, D, LXX and XX.

[TDog]

Re: It is quite simple.

Sorry, could you just say that again?

[FeRDNYC]

Re: It is quite simple.

You left out "Pre-K", because sending 4-year-olds to school is becoming more and more popular in our double-income parenting society.

[jake]

Re: It is quite simple.

Pre-K for 4 year olds is childcare paid for by the State.

I didn't leave it out, I ignored it.

[Strangelove]

Re: It is quite simple.

So, to complete the description for a native English speaker, how many grades occur per calendar year ?

we usually have 3 or 4 'terms'...

cheers.

[Oh Matron!]

Drivers be damned

I was once at a telecoms standards meeting. Possibly Osaka, but, back then, it was all a blur, in to 2000's.

Was chatting with a colleague when, all of a sudden, the air was filled with the most abusive of language

A single event on the access points had caused a particular, but default, wifi chipset driver to **** the bed.

At least 30 laptops bluescreened simultaneously!

[wolfetone]

I'm glad I came across this today, as I'm having random WiFi issues in one part of the building and I've been at a loss to explain what's causing it.

I now know to go outside and look for cranes.

[Bebu sa Ware]

I now know to go outside and look for cranes.

If delegating probably wise to specify construction cranes otherwise your twitcher PYI might pop back to inform you "sorry boss no cranes; some scruffy ducks and tatty bin turkeys."

I was once instructed to follow the highway for about 50 km and turn left at the giant moa. While that area abounded in giant bananas, giant pineapples and such like, I was puzzled why anyone would erect a giant model of an extinct New Zealand flightless bird in subtropical Australia - the native non extinct emu would make more sense.

Never found the moa. Understandable. It was of course the giant mower. (Alias lawn tractor.)

[theOtherJT]

Re: I now know to go outside and look for cranes.

I'm guessing bin turkeys are larger more rural relatives of the common urban bin chicken?

[Detective Emil]

Re: I now know to go outside and look for cranes.

Aussies like Big Things.

[MiguelC]

Well I'm also having a strange issue with my wifi. Some mornings, some of the laptops won't get internet access although they report being connected to the AP. It only happens to laptops, and not always to the lot, and never to phones, which all keep connected. Power cycling the AP solves the issue, but I found the fastest solution to be disconnecting/reconnecting the AP's wireless connection.

No cranes in sight. Any ideas?

[l8gravely]

Check the firmware of your Access Points and make sure they're upto date. But... you don't really give enough information for anyone to help.

Does Wifi stay up all night if you leave a system running? Is this at $WORK or at $HOME? What model APs are they? How many are there? Are they in a mesh network? How are they back hauled? 2.4g or 5g wifi? What model laptops? Chipset? Vendor? Windows version? Are they upto date patch wise? Does a linux install on the same hardware show the same problem? Boot a live image from a thumb drive as a check. You'll get better diagnostics for sure...

Basically, simplify your environment and collect info.

[Robert Carnegie]

If the kit is NOT supported and up to date on patches etc., then announcing that here may be best to avoid.

[Doctor Syntax]

Recycle the AP with extreme prejudice. A 3lb hammer applied to the reset button should be sufficient.

[Antron Argaiv]

My laptops plug into wired E'net whenever possible.

WiFi is a distant second choice.

[dmesg]

phones have cell signal receivers

... and your laptops don't.

Wi-Fi goes down, phones switch to cell signal for Internet access. At least, that's what happens to me fairly frequently. Case in point: today and yesterday both, I accidentally hit the Off switch on the power for the cable modem and Wi-Fi AP. Computers lost access, phones kept theirs, albeit at much slower data rates.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

"I now know to go outside and look for cranes."

Frasier or Niles?

[jake]

Mary Ann.

[tiggity]

Sandhill?

[jake]

Yes, SLAC is on Sandhill road.

Oh, wait, wrong thread.

[KittenHuffer]

Been there ....

.... don't that! Or at least something similar.

The culprit on the 2.4 GHz dropping out at home was the ultra-noisy baby monitor used by the D to monitor the GD!

The fix was to puchase a WiFi enabled camera that worked with the 2.4 GHz, rather than against it.

[David 132]

Re: Been there ....

Probably easier than wrapping the granddaughter in tinfoil.

[that one in the corner]

Re: Been there ....

Tinfoil and then fifteen minutes per pound.

I like children but could never finish a whole one.

(Apologies, but spotted the excuse to use an icon...)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Been there ....

The other other white meat!

[KittenHuffer]

Re: Been there ....

How did you know the GD is white?!?

Are you spying on me?!?

[SVD_NL]

"We looked at the spectrum analyzer and the entire 2.4GHz spectrum across all channels was blanketed by a very strong signal,"

Good catch on spotting the crane operator! If this occured during lunchtime i'd be sprinting towards the cafetaria with a mallet to expedite the microwave replacement.

[Anonymous Coward]

We had the same thing with a crew installing a TETRA mast and relay station in our car park last year. The mast came in 4 parts and the crane operator lifting the upper sections into place was working from outside the cab with a remote control panel so he could see better. Most of our laptops were OK as they are on our 5Ghz WiFi, but we were unable to use a portable barcode scanner and our credit card terminal while the crane was working outside because they are on 2.4Ghz, and our 2.4Ghz guest network was unusable too.

[Andy Taylor]

Many years ago we had a 2.4GHz wireless TV link in a house we were renting. For some unknown reason the aerial socket was in the smallest bedroom on the wrong side of the house.

Every time next door's microwave was turned on the TV signal broke.

I recently attended a talk on nuclear fusion where the speaker, who had worked on the Joint European Torus in Oxfordshire, told the story of the time something unexpected happened during an experiment that resulted in the entire device shifting a few mm. The JET lab got a call from Oxford University's Seismology Department asking if they had been running an experiment. The movement of the torus had thrown all the University seismographs out of alignment.

[Scene it all]

Ohio State University used to have a very large radio telescope of unusual design. It was not a dish, but a VERY large flat reflector the size of a football field tilted at an angle, plus an opposing curved reflector, all aimed at some 4-foot tall feed horns. The detector, cooled by liquid Nitrogen, would occasionally go off-scale high, ruining the observations. Much testing was done to find what was wrong until somebody happened to be working outside and observed a flight of Canada Geese flying low through the center of this large (the whole thing was the size of THREE football fields) apparatus. It was later found that the off-scale readings coincided perfectly with this flight of birds. The body heat of these large birds (8kg), flying right in front of the feed horns, was heating up the supercooled detectors, blinding them to the faint radio signals they were looking for.

Another case (which I will not detail here, having covered it before) involved a computer room peripheral controller resetting itself when ever the nearby building elevator started up. Whoever had installed this cabinet had plugged it into a nearby "convenience" outlet intended for the overnight cleaning staff instead of the properly filtered outlet they should have used.

[that one in the corner]

Makes a change for the computer to be in the outlet meant for the cleaner's vacuum rather the other way around.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Another Career Ago

I used to work for a offshore survey company & we had set up a hilltop beacon on a Trig point in the middle of a ancient iron age settlement with concentric rings of protective ditches, overlooking Mounts Bay in Cornwall.*

Prior use of this fairly remote location had been used successfully, until the survey\cable laying ship reported loss of signal & so my predecessor had returned to site & found the "Handle like" antenna\feedhorn had been unscrewed & removed for a new function in life presumably as a mooring point for a boat, the perp's getting a face full of microwave as a freebie (Icon).

An attempt to discourage such shenanigans was made by plastering Radioactive warning stickers over the body of the next beacon, this apparently worked until some rambler reported it to the local council.

*Thanks Aiden, for designating that as an suitable spot to set up a Trispo Microwave beacon, along with the the effort (In the middle of summer) getting the batteries, thermal generator, gas bottles & storage crates (Brambles & dirt paths were merely a courtesy detail) into position.

[FeRDNYC]

They'll need a crane,

They'll need a crane,

To take the house he built for her apart.

To make it break, it's gonna take,

A metal ball hung from a chain.

They'll need a crane,

They'll need a crane,

They'll need a crane!

·— They Might Be Giants

[jake]

Shirley ...

... if they are Giants, a crane is unnecessary for a little light demo.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Shirley ...

Factoring the 'Might' and the need for a crane together ... it would seem that they are not Giants at all !!!

They should be called ... 'They are definitely NOT Giants after all.'

:)

[Justin S.]

Radio-controlled blimp

We experienced a similar issue years ago, at a large sports venue in Southern California, when something intermittently blew-out the 2.4 GHz channels of the Wi-Fi system we provided for our guests. We wound up doing the same thing: ran a spectrum analyzer during one of the games and waited/watched for a problem. When it happened, we observed two very tight, hot streaks in the waterfall, interfering with two of the three non-overlapping 2.4 GHz channels. And we quickly realized the cause, as we watched the guy hired to fly his radio-controlled blimp around the venue do his thing.

[Miv Tucker]

Why only temporary?

Why not just permanently move the laptops to 5GHz? Have I missed something?

[Henry Wertz 1]

Microwave oven

So back in the early 2000s, I worked at the local university's surplus department, the university hospitals' computers also went through so we'd gt like 10,000 computers a year or so, and all the other equipment, we had movers and people to work on the computers (i.e. make sure drives were wiped and everything. We had a very nice tracking system to ensure no drive made it out of there without being 3-pass erased which involved both electronic tracking and physical stickers -- if a sticker fell off... which they did when it was very humid... pretend the drive is not wiped and start over.)

So we set up some pre-standard wifi devices we got (ran at something like 1 watt) and after several weeks all of a sudden, they would not even reach 20 feet. This went on for like a week. (We had it open to the public 1 day a week, the rest of the time was sorting all the crap^H^H^H^H prime vintage furniture and equipment that we brought in... plus give departments a chance to come in and buy some of this stuff back). So I'm out on the sales floor and an employee commented it seemed warm in this one corner of the floor. I walk toward this area and could hear a hum... yes, some jackass had powered up a microwave oven WITH THE DOOR OPEN and it had been running like that for a week. I snuck up to it from the side (so I wouldn't get microwaved) and unplugged it. The wifi devices then worked great again. What do you know, 2.4ghz wifi works poorly with a 1500 watt interference source LOL.