You have no chance to survive, make your time.
Posts by red floyd
114 publicly visible posts • joined 16 May 2007
Stop installing that software – you may have just died
We need a volunteer to literally crawl over broken glass to fix this network
HP BIOS update renders some ProBook laptops expensive paperweights
MIT boffins build battery alternative out of cement, carbon black, water
Owner of 'magic spreadsheet' tried to stay in the Lotus position until forced to Excel
Your security failure was so bad we have to close the company … NOT!
PC tech turns doctor to diagnose PC's constant crashes as a case of arthritis
Friday 24th February 2023 18:52 GMT
Reminds me of this old classic story...
Shag pile PC earned techies a carpeting from HR
JEDEC reportedly set to formalize Dell laptop memory standard
Thinnet cables are no match for director's morning workout
Not to dis your diskette, but there are some unexpected sector holes
Prototype app outperforms and outlasts outsourced production version
Nothing's working, and I've checked everything, so it must be YOUR fault
Friday 7th January 2022 16:23 GMT
Been there Done that.
I had almost the exact same experience.
My company provided hardware and software to a certain green suited US government agency. The hardware was custom, the software was both for the custom hardware, and test software running on a PC.
We got a call. The test software wasn't working -- it would drive the hardware properly, but it would not receive the test results. This was over an RS-232 link.
So, I get to throw every single piece of serial port diagnostic hardware I can think of (short of a full-bore protocol analyzer), and get on a plane. I get to the site, and examine the customer's hardware -- both ours and his PC. The guy had a PC with two serial ports configured by DIP switches. Both ports were configured as COM1:. Flip a single switch to configure the second port as COM2: and Bob's your uncle.
So my company paid for a round trip flight, and per diem, for me to flip a single DIP switch.
I would drive 100 miles and I would drive 100 more just to be the man that drove 200 miles to... hit the enter key
Monday 20th September 2021 15:40 GMT
I once flew 250 miles
I once flew 250 miles (each way) to flip a single DIP switch.
We had written some test driver software that used a serial port for communications with the system under test. The software was successfully sending test command to the target system, but would not read the responses.
So I loaded up my briefcase with null modems, a breakout box, screwdrivers, and any other RS-232 diagnostic equipment I could think of, and hopped on a plane. Got to the customer's site, saw what was happening, and started to check configuration.
This was back in the days when serial ports were configured by DIP switches, and the computer had two serial ports... BOTH configured as COM1. Once I flipped the switch to set one of them to COM2, the software magically started working again.
Where's the boss? Ah right, thorough deep-dive audit. On the boardroom table. Gotcha
A hotline to His Billness? Or a guard having a bit of a giggle?
Friday 18th June 2021 17:41 GMT 
Worked with AMEX ... Twice
It worked for me with American Express, twice.
Both times were cock-ups with their travel services. The agent claimed they could not help me. The customer service people claimed they couldn't help me.
I sent a snail mail letter to the CEO, and -- wonder of wonders -- suddenly my problem was solved.
Oracle vs Google: No, the Supreme Court did not say APIs aren't copyright – and that's a good thing
For blinkenlights sake.... RTFM! Yes. Read The Front of the Machine
Friday 9th April 2021 15:21 GMT
Mine wasn't a phone call... mine was an airplane flight. OK, a 60 minute flight, but SOMEONE still had to pay for it.
A customer called to say that our software wasn't working (surprise!) with their serial port. I lived in Los Angeles, the customer was in Monterey, California. I loaded up my briefcase with everything I could think of, hopped on a plane, and was at the customer's site by 9AM. Took one look at the computer, flipped a single DIP switch (remember those?).
The computer had been configured so that BOTH serial ports were COM1. I changed it so that one was COM1 and the other was COM2. Meanwhile, my return flight wasn't until 3PM...
Oh well.
Google putting its trust in Rust to weed out memory bugs in Android development
Shelter for internet outcasts Parler slaps Amazon with fresh lawsuit after abandoning first attempt
US cyber intelligence officer jailed for kidnapping her kid, trying to hawk top secrets to Russia in Mexico
Wednesday 27th January 2021 15:30 GMT
"she has signed a document promising not to disclose a word of what was contained in the documents she stole for the rest of her life, or face the rest of it behind bars"
Of course, she signed such a document when she started working with classified data. I'm not sure how much the Court should trust her to follow this NDA....
A decades-old lesson on not inserting Excel where it doesn't belong
The power of Bill compels you: A server room possessed by a Microsoft-hating, Linux-loving Demon
Mate, it's the '90s. You don't need to be reachable every minute of every hour. Your operating system can't cope
Relying on plain-text email is a 'barrier to entry' for kernel development, says Linux Foundation board member
Wednesday 26th August 2020 15:38 GMT
Re: "plain old ASCII text is a barrier to communications"
"Ahem, Linus' mother tongue is, in fact, Swedish. His family come from the roughly 5% minority in Finland who are Swedish speakers. But your point stands: Swedish has non-ASCII characters too."
I believe that that you have fallen into the sar-chasm.
'I'm telling you, I haven't got an iPad!' – Sent from my iPad
LibreOffice community protests at promotion of paid-for editions, board says: 'LibreOffice will always be free software'
PC printer problems and enraged execs: When the answer to 'Hand over that floppy disk' is 'No'
NASA to send Perseverance, a new trundle bot, and Ingenuity, the first interplanetary helicopter, to sniff out life on Mars in July
Russia drags NASA: Enjoy your expensive SpaceX capsule, our Soyuz is the cheap Kalashnikov of rockets
NASA launches guide to Lunar etiquette now that private operators will share the Moon with governments
Britain has no idea how close it came to ATMs flooding the streets with free money thanks to some crap code, 1970s style
Web pages a little too style over substance? Behold the Windows 98 CSS file
Wednesday 22nd April 2020 16:17 GMT
I would definitely prefer the 98 style. Even better would be if the buttons made a nice "thunk" sound when pushed...
Seriously, when I took my user interface class, one of the key elements was easily discoverable (what are the elements that do things), feedback (Yes! YOU PUSHED THE BUTTON), etc... TIFKAM GUIs have completely lost those elements.
Animal crossing? Nah! Farmyard frolics, courtesy of Novell and pals
16 years and counting: How ESA squeezed oodles of bonus science out of plucky Mars Express probe
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to save data from a computer that should have died aeons ago
Monday 24th February 2020 16:52 GMT
Re: Hybrid children watch the sea
My first network was named after Greek heroes. We got in a MicroVAX that the original admin named Ulysses. So we later added Ajax (a 486/33, no bloody DX or SX) , and a couple of others with names I can't remember. When we got a Pentium II/200 box, I named it "Helen" because Helen of Troy was "fast".
Vendor-bender LibreOffice kicks out 6.4: Community project feel, though now with added auto-█████ tool
Take DOS, stir in some Netware, add a bit of Windows and... it's ALIIIIVE!
Beware the Friday afternoon 'Could you just..?' from the muppet who wants to come between you and your beer
Friday 24th January 2020 16:34 GMT
Never again
We were over at a friend's house for dinner.... Their (Windows Me!) computer was acting up and they asked if I could have a look at it. The obvious happened. My (late) wife had a lovely dinner with friends, while I was stuck at the computer for THREE HOURS. That was the day I swore, "Never again".
Now when I'm asked what I do for a living, I say, "I'm a software developer -- and no, I won't fix your computer."
The only person I perform free IT work for now is my girlfriend.
It's a no to ZFS in the Linux kernel from me, says Torvalds, points finger of blame at Oracle licensing
Linux in 2020: 27.8 million lines of code in the kernel, 1.3 million in systemd
We've found it... the last shred of human decency in an IT director – all for a poxy Unix engineer
Monday 2nd December 2019 17:07 GMT
Re: Love a team player
Been there, done that, as the underling.
The situation was procedural, thank heavens, not anything to do with a major foul-up. We needed some software (InstallShield -- this was around 1992 or 1993), and we needed it YESTERDAY. Going through normal channels would have taken about two weeks, so my manager authorized me to use petty cash to pay for it. So I did, as did two co-workers in similar situations.
Unbeknownst to us, a new VP had decided to make his mark by reducing the use of petty cash -- I'm sure you can see where this is going. The VP already had our names, as they were on the vouchers. The manager did his best to shield us from whatever consequences this tin-pot dictator VP was going to rain down upon us. He pointed out that what we had done was under his express orders and approval.
I think we still got some flak, but nowhere near as much as VP wanted, And he wound up getting some of the flak, too.
I was very lucky, this was the first manager I ever had. I wound up working for the gentleman for 17 years.
Thanks, Dwight.
That code that could never run? Well, guess what. Now Windows thinks it's Batman
50 years on: Apollo 12 failed at selfies but succeeded at dismantling a probe
Wednesday 20th November 2019 16:42 GMT 
Best. Crew. Ever.
Pete's motto was "If you can't be good, be colorful". The 12 crew managed to do both, and have fun at the same time.
Pete's "Whoopee" statement was partly to win a bet with Oriana Fallaci, because she believed that the first words on the moon were scripted and approved. She allegedly never paid the $500.
The crew were good friends, to the point that the three of them got identically colored Corvettes, and would often race them around Houston. They remained close friends until their passing.
It is actually true that Gordon made Conrad and Bean strip starkers before he would let them come back into the command module!
Just an awesome crew.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
