Posts by Juan Inamillion

Techie traced cables from basement to maternity ward and onto a roof, before a car crash revealed the problem

Re: Ah, the frantic blinkenlights...

Apparently....

Sonos Problems

Yes, Sonos has faced several issues that have affected its reputation and operations. In May 2024, the company released a redesigned app that was met with widespread criticism due to bugs and performance issues.

This update led to connectivity problems for many users, causing frustration and dissatisfaction.

As a result of these problems, Sonos experienced a decline in sales and faced significant financial losses.

The company has also undergone restructuring, including layoffs and organizational changes aimed at improving efficiency and addressing the issues.

Despite efforts to resolve the issues, Sonos has struggled to regain customer trust and has been criticized for a lack of transparency regarding the root causes of the problems.

Some experts suggest that the company's reliance on proprietary, closed systems has contributed to these difficulties, and propose that an open-source approach could offer a more sustainable solution for the future.

Currently, Sonos continues to work on fixing the app and related issues, but the company's challenges persist

Tech support warrior left cosplay battle and Trekked to the office

Re: Worf is delusional because

Hubba hubba…

Back then I was playing in a band in the Uk and discovered Tiswas when it was still a regional programme ‘up norf’ and saw it on hotel TV’s.Sally was (and probably still is) an absolute delight who put up with the advances of many an intinerant rock star...

Apple auto-opts everyone into having their photos analyzed by AI for landmarks

More importantly..

I and most of my friends absolutely hate what Apple has done to it’s iOS Photos app in the latest upgrade.

Hello? Is that you amanfrommars?

Hello? Is that you amanfrommars?

Missing scissors cause 36 flight cancellations in Japan

Swiss Army

I have a bijou Victorinox pen knife on my key ring which has a small 2cm blade, an LED light, a small file/screwdriver and the smallest scissors. I flew to Spain recently (from Stanstead) and panicked very slightly that they’d nick it off me. I bunched it up with the keys and thankfully it wasn’t noticed in either direction, possibly because it didn’t have the tool to remove stones from horses hooves.

Techie installed 'user attitude readjustment tool' after getting hammered in a Police station

Re: User attitude readjustment tool

KY Jelly drys out quite quickly plus you wouldn’t use sufficient to slop it all over the place. A rubber glove and squeezing KY sufficient to lube the wire as it passes through your grip would work a treat.

You are correct however re soap.

Olive oil on the other hand...

Ad agency boss owned two Ferraris but wouldn't buy a real server

Re: Interesting

I don't understand this either. On a Mac you can switch off auto updates. During my one and only time working in corporate IT for a Very Large publishing company, our building had around 400 Macs (including Mac servers) and around 100 PC's. The Macs were all locked down, nothing could be updated except manually pushed out from a server. It all worked like clockwork, certainly for the 3 years I was there!

With regard to SMB, there was a problem around 2010, as I recall, with a change to the way SMB was handled by Apple which caused problems with shares not being seen properly. I can't remember the details but IIRC we had to use a third party fix for while.

Bank boss hated IT, loved the beach, was clueless about ports and politeness

Re: Every single time

Less holes for the champagne to get in.

Shock horror – and there goes the network neighborhood

Re: The last time I heard a loud noise and things were restarting...

At least 10 years ago I was gifted a secondhand HP LaserJet 1015, a dinky little mono printer which I use at home/office. I changed the drum once and buy 3 party toners and it's never missed a beat. Probably the only HP printer I've never had trouble with.

However, around the same time I was already recommending or supplying Brother Laser printers, both colour and mono, as a solution for reliable and economic printing, even to my domestic clients. As far as I know they're all still working.

Apple lifts the sheet on a trio of 'scary fast' M3 SoCs built on a 3nm process

Unbelievable

1984 and people are whinging about Mac vs PC.

2023 and people are whinging about Mac vs PC. But faster.

40 years. So depressing....

Beta driver turned heads in the hospital

Re: Only 2.5 years in the NHS ....

>The doctor (surgeon) who trashed a PCMCIA card (and messed up the slot on the laptop) because he wanted to take it out and look at it. Except instead of using the eject button/switch/slidey thing, he used a set of forceps!!!!

Could have been even messier if he'd have been a gynaecologist...

Lyft driver takes off with cat, global search ensues

Re: That's criminal

How do you know it was the driver who ejected the cat?

Chap blew up critical equipment on his first day – but it wasn't his volt

Give it a boost

In the late 60's when I was a slightly precocious teenage schoolboy interested in electronics, I convinced my father that I could squeeze a bit more life out of our old black and white TV, that was gradually fading away.

Opening it up I located the mains transformer which, like most in those days, had various taps on it to adjust for slightly different AC mains voltages around the country. I moved the the wire to the next tap, which increased the voltage in by about 10 volts. I switched it on and my father marvelled at the increased brightness of the screen. Maximum brownie points.

Three months later there was a bit of a bang and a burning smell.

Oh well, we needed a new one anyway...

Northern Ireland police may have endangered its own officers by posting details online in error

multiple sheets

Many years ago my then partner and I co-owned a house. We were splitting up, not particularly amicably, accusations of misappropriated money from mortgages on the house etc. She sent me a document prepared by her accountant outlining what they thought the split should be with all the costings. At the bottom I saw the the tell-tale 'Sheet 1' 'Sheet 2' 'Sheet' 3 of a default Excel spreadsheet, and lo and behold there were all their workings, comments and annotations.

Needless to say she failed mightily to stitch me up.

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

Never. Ever. Attempt. Humour. At. Immigration.

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

Lots of people here aged 12 with no experience of the real world and all the dickwads in it who can make your life a misery.

Small acts of revenge which just make life awkward and not necessarily catastrophic.

Re: Just the one letter?

Re the @. I had this recently, a client asked me to take 4 or 5 laptops away and erase them for selling/passing on. Easy enough except when I came to the totally unexpected Italian one and found I couldn’t type in the @ that I had in the wifi password…

Service desk tech saved consultancy Capita from VPN meltdown, got a smack for it

Yes I’d imagine you wouldn’t want any red faces round there…

Meet the merry pranksters who keep the workplace interesting, if not productive

Backfire

Many years ago my then g/f and I went on holiday to Gomera (one of the smaller Canary Islands). It turned out the island and our hotel in particular were very popular destinations for German tourists. Sure enough every morning we got down to the pool all the sunbeds were either occupied or had towels on them, sometimes for hours with nobody turning up.

One night, late after returning from a local hostelry, definitely a bit worse for wear, we thought what fun it would be to take all the towels from the little store room by the pool and put them out on the sunbeds and see what happened in the morning. We came out at about 10am to an eerily quiet hotel and no-one in or around the pool. Obviously very curious we went to reception and asked where everyone was. The receptionist said 'It's Wednesday, all the Germans have gone on their scheduled walk round the island...'

Killing trees with lasers isn’t cool, says Epson. So why are inkjets any better?

Mono laser all the way

Many many years ago a client gifted me a HP laserjet 1015 A4 printer. I don't really know how long I've had it but I just checked and it could be used on Mac OS9 and I'm now on MacOS 12.6. I don't think I've bothered to install drivers since MacOS X first shipped. It's very fast and economical. I've probably used 4 or 5 toners (which I can buy now at £11).

The bane of my life as an Apple tech was always inkjet printers, I recommended several clients (even domestic ones) to buy colour lasers (Brother have always been particularly good) and bin their inkjets and have never looked back.

p.s. I just saw a for sale advert for a refurbished HP1015 for £145. Way overpriced realistically, you can get the similar but WIFI enabled brand new HP LaserJet M110we for under £90, but the new model uses 'chipped' toner carts at £54 each! Hahahahaha! Way to go HP!

iFixit stabs batteries – for science – so you don't have to

Re: Energy has to go somewhere

'110V site tools in the UK'

I thought this was so the tools didn't get nicked and sold for domestic use...

Evernote's fall from grace is complete, with sale to Italian app maker

Re: Found an interesting explanation recently

That's really interesting. Yes you could use 'tipping point' but that lacks the the catastrophic imperative of 'trust thermocline'. Or I may be talking bollox.

This maglev turntable costs more than an average luxury electric car

Re: Meh

What puzzled me most was looking into studio recording technology and thinking that was the limiting factor. So no matter how much you waste.. I mean spend on playback stuff, you'll never be able to reproduce sound that wasn't there.

Yep, I worked in recording studios most of my working life and can vouch for that. Always especially enlightening when some audiophile named Tarquin rabbits on about things he (it's always he) can allegedly hear on a disc on his Turbo ZXZ1000 Mega system, when I was there at the recording and I know he's talking complete and utterly bolleaux.

Bad UI killed the radio star

Re: And the lesson

Hallelujah to that and double ditto. Errr never happened to me, oh no...not ever...

Hush now: Baby talk has common features across languages and societies

Re: Ding Dong!

Clearly your mum hadn't used the alternative meaning that the ice cream van's bells meant that it had run out of ice cream...

BT strikes to start this month, 40,000 workers to down tools

Re: Go for it

Very briefly, you're talking out of your fundament.

Train drivers are put through 2 years of intensive training before even allowed to drive (assisted) a train on the network. There's a massive amount to learn about signals, health and safety (they're entirely responsible for every passenger, which can be hundreds), they have to learn individual routes so they know where they are in times of problems.

It is most definitely not pushing 'doors close' and 'go'.

And the most recent strike was not even the train drivers, it was the network staff.

Now get back to your class.

Know the difference between a bin and /bin unless you want a new doorstop

Trash storage

Client says his Mac is very slow and he's very fed up, can I fix it 'now'.

Get info on his HD shows it's very nearly run out of free space.

Check his Trash, ooerrr lots of files there, GB's in fact. So I empty it.

Yep.

"But that's where I save all my stuff!!!!"

To this day I have no idea of the thought process that says 'Save important data in the Trash'.

I'm slightly heartened by the similar experiences in this thread.

Software guy smashes through the Somebody Else's Problem field to save the day

Wiring for safety

A million years ago (well, the 60's...) a friend of mine was working in an 'electrical shop', where back in those days sold appliance which often didn't have mains plugs on the the power lead as there were still a lot of houses with old two pin sockets. When you made your purchase you told the shop assistant what plug you required, took it home and fitted it yourself.

One day an elderly gentleman comes in to buy an electrical kettle. My friend says fine, what plug do you need. The gentleman says three pin please. My friend tells the chap to very careful wiring it up and make sure it's earthed properly. He came back a few days later complaining the kettle didn't work. My friend opened the plug to check the fuse and discovered he's put all three wires onto the earth pin....

NASA fixes Hubble Space Telescope using backup power supply unit, payload computer

And still BT/OpenReach...

...can't fix the fibre connection to a client's house in Belgravia, central London, after 6 weeks of promises.

Re: Sounds vaguely familiar.. LOL

Maybe they thought you'd have it away on your toes...

/coat

The black screen of BIOS borkage haunts Space Shuttle Discovery's new home

Re: Strike the F1

I take Strike to mean 'press and immediately release', 'Press' can mean 'press until something happens'.

No?

Openreach to UK businesses: Switch is about to hit the fan. Prepare for withdrawal of the copper-based phone network now or risk disruption

Re: 1987

In 1976 BT told me there was a 12 month waiting list for a phone. The only way to get one quicker was to install a payphone - yes that's right. Oh and this was in Bromley, Kent.

Australian Federal Police hiring digital evidence retrieval specialists: Being a very good boy and paws required

Re: Ice cream distraction

Just so you know, chocolate can be fatal for a dog, along with avocados, xylitol (sweetener in candy, gum, toothpaste and some baked goods), caffeine, grapes, raisins and alcohol.

A floppy filled with software worth thousands of francs: Techie can't take it, customs won't keep it. What to do?

Not entirely unrelated...

In an earlier life I was a recording engineer in a London studio. Large multitrack (2" 16 or 24 track) analogue tapes were starting to be moved around different studios and eventually overseas, particularly the US. (Much much cheaper to send someone with a tape to New York and record a band there than to ship the band to the UK!).

However, US customs suddenly cottoned on to the fact that these tapes contained 'product', albeit unfinished music tracks, albums etc. So they started to charge import duties based on some figure that they thought these were worth. The courier would then have to make frantic phone calls to make payment. Anyway someone worked out that the courier should say that the tape was only a backup tape (there's your IT angle) with only an intrinsic value of the cost of the tape. Amazingly this worked....

Yep, you're totally unique: That one very special user and their very special problem

Re: When turn off/turn on fails

But you have to remove the teeth...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3qy4Zv4snI

Watchdog urges Tesla to recall 158,000 Model S, X cars to fix knackered NAND flash that borks safety features

Re: Great

I haven't owned a car for a long time but I rent a lot (e.g. car club or Hertz for longer period - it's cheaper for me than owning), therefore I get to try a lot of different cars. By far the biggest pain in the butts are the ones with everything in the sodding 'infotainment' system. As far as I'm concerned it's no different to using a phone while driving. Even if I familiarise myself before setting off ( Yet Another System...) I still don't consider safe to use while driving. Even having controls on the steering wheel doesn't work as you still need to work out which button does what and how many levels you have to go through to get to what you want.

The Novell NetWare box keeps rebooting over and over again yet no one has touched it? We're going on a stakeout

Re: Fluorescents...

Early 80's I bought a Philips colour tv, I think 19" maybe 21". After a year it started to play up. Had it fixed, a few months later more problems; fixed, a few months later... anyway, you get it. I eventually got a chatty engineer who told me Philips tv's always suffered from dry joints and the fix was to just reflow them every so often.

Much later I had a Philips VCR and Hifi (I was working for someone who was sponsored by Philips CD...). The hifi fell apart, literally, after a few weeks. The VCR lasted a while though. Shit software.

Absolutely avoided Philips ever since.

Who knew that hosing a table with copious amounts of cubic metres would trip adult filters?

Re: Inside joke?

Yep many years ago (before I was in IT actually) I /cough/ came across Wang Care. It was related to some computer equipment on an early very high end synthesiser (Synclavier, since you ask). The staff at the distributors apprised me of it straight way, to much nudge nudging.

Millions wiped off value of Capita outsourcing deal with English councils amid 'further contract variation agreement'

Re: Interesting choice of words

I did the same thing so... surely shome mishtake.

Did I or did I not ask you to double-check that the socket was on? Now I've driven 15 miles, what have we found?

Token ring

Client with half a dozen Apple Macs with the AAUI interfaces and connected via BNC in a token ring. On two previous occasions a connector had 'come undone' and on each visit to fix it was carefully pointed out what had happened when they 'lost their network'. The third time I insisted they checked every connection and they insisted that it was all ok . I walked in and before I'd even removed my coat I pointed to the connector on the desk... 'No No NO' they insisted they'd checked... I connected it and walked out in less than 5 minutes and charged the full call out fee.

If you suddenly can't print to your HP Printer from your Mac, you're not alone: Code security cert snafu blamed

workaround

Select generic PCL worked for my HP LaserJet 1015

Bad apples: US customs seize OnePlus earbuds thinking they're knock-off AirPods

The phrase 'clutching at straws...'

"CBP officers at JFK Airport recently seized 2,000 counterfeit Apple AirPods"

Then it was pointed out that the goods weren't packaged as 'Apple Airpods' so can't be called counterfeit.

Whoops! Better find some other tenuous reason to save our sad arse.

“Upon examining the shipment in question, a CBP Import Specialist determined that the subject earbuds appeared to violate Apple’s configuration trademark,”

Job done!

Ancient telly borked broadband for entire Welsh village

Re: One would expect

Do have a

Re: Need a rubber hammer

'clout' Now there's a word you don't hear much of these days...

This is the correct procedure though, always worked in my day.

Angry 123-Reg customers in the UK wake up to another day where hosted mail doesn't get through to users on Microsoft email accounts

Re: Recommendations please

https://www.mythic-beasts.com

Been with them for years. Excellent support and UK based.

Bunch of mugs keep risking life and limb to 'crockery bomb' sad little roundabout

Re: Oh come on...

Won't somebody think of the children!!

'I'm telling you, I haven't got an iPad!' – Sent from my iPad

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Behold: The ghastly, preening, lesser-spotted Incredible Bullsh*tting Customer

Re: Yes the users are bad

I used to be in Zen's Partner Program so I got a small commission if I sold clients their services (I was an independent Apple trader, retired now). Incredibly helpful, they'd even help out if the client equipment hadn't been purchased from them. In nearly 20 years I never had a complaint about them.

Florida man might just stick it to HP for injecting sneaky DRM update into his printers that rejected non-HP ink

Re: HP printers

That's weird, I've been replacing my Mac clients' Epsons and HP's with Brothers for several years and everyone has been happy. Especially at being able to use 3rd party ink/toner.

Never had a problem with 'drivers', plug them in and it's all good.

That awful moment when what you thought was a number 1 turned out to be a number 2

Trying to teach...

"I haven't got time!"

"Just make it work!"

Either or both....