Posts by rototype 179 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Feb 2010
And the frighteningthing is it's still not dead - Fiat Blue & Me units in their cars use this as the background OS for the Bluetooth modules and Yes, it's reliability is poor at best and causes all sorts of system instabilities in the car when it fails. Since I don't need 'that' functionallity I eventually managed to locate (hidden under the passenger seat - need to remove the seat to physically remove it) and disconnect this unit in mine and tell the system it never existed - much more stable now. I may (when I eventually sell the car) get it repaired/replaced but this isn't a priority at the moment.
I remember cleaning the rollers on the mice in one of the English departments computer rooms one day (this was back in the day when they still had balls, ands many of the balll accesse had been superglued up to stop the little sods nicking the balls out of malice - I saved all of the crud and presented it to the Head of Department (who prided herself on how clean everything was kept) - apparently all of the kids were made to wash their for the next month or two (until the rest of the staff got sick of enforcing this) before touching the computers.
Similar story but different bank that had their main data centre under the landing path of East Midlands airport. After one incident in the 1980s (January 1989 - I lived a few miles away and could see it from the motorway bridge) when a plane made an impromptu heavy landing on the M1, they decided to build a backup data centre about as far away from any flight paths as they could in Staffordshire. (I found this bit out several years later, when working for said bank)
To be fair to the regs, I'd not want to be in a confined space with any gas cylinder if it suddenly decided to let go, be that air, O2, N2 CO2 or anything else, no matter how small the cylinder. The worry isn't about small leaks (although these would be annoying) but total failure.
Safety sign foe obvious reasons.
One of the techs in one of our offices reduced dead HDDs in his office to almost zero overnight by turning the desktop/tower PCs (that were sitting on the floor in tower configuration) over so the HDD was at the bottom instead of the top when they invariably got knocked over (this seemed to be happening several times a week and was becoming a pain in the a**e).
I have a touch screen 'flip' laptop I bought a few years ago - I fitted it with a scren protector that can be easily cleaned if I get finger marks on it. I've also got a big (24") touch screen on my main computer that gets cleaned regularly, whether it needs it or not - very useful for enlarging those product images where they don't want you to see the details.
Some of the very worst users I've come accross are the 'Professional' types (Doctors, Lawyers, Teachers) whose view is 'If I can do XXXXX then this computer can't be difficult" and then proceed to totally stuff it up and blame the tech for not making it so they could operate it without intervention and NEVER FOLLOW ANY TROUBLESHOOTING STEPS OFFERED!!! Then they say "Of course I've tried that I'm a XXXX"
"I'm pretty sure it wasn't attached to a working line at the time."
Don't be so sure, my uncle has an ancient pulse dial phone (the old bakelite type with the little drawer underneath for phone numbers) up until about 5 years ago when thet had to replace it because they needed an emergency system fitting (both he and my late aunt were well into their 80s at the time). This does now mean that he can have Internet...
What the F**k is spinach doing in there? - NOTHING GREEN EVER goes on the plate of a fry-up. I can handle hash browns (or Rosti) but the more british version is Potato waffles.
As regards cooking order - Mushrooms & onions in, then the sausages (good high meat content only, prefereably from the butcher), then the bacon & Black pudding. Tinned tomatoes in a separate pan then when the bacon is done hoof it all out onto a waiting heated plate while you do the eggs then the fried bread in what's left of the fat (add butter to it if you've been a bit sparing on the grease).
Never really been a fan of beans with breakfast or the big grilled mushrooms/tomatoes (if it's grilled then it isn't a fry-up is it!).
"Or do marketing "geniuses" care about that kind of thing?"
Of course they don't, those that even realise it (any advance on 1%?) - it's all revenue no matter wherther it's valid or not and if you're hitting someone outside your intended audience then that's a win as it's a potential new customer.
The rest of us just get more and more sick of adverts and subversive marketing both on snail mail and t'interweb.
I sometimes find being excessively honest is better than fudging things, especially when what you're being honest about seems a bit over the top or excentric/bizarre since in many cases people just don't believe you and think it's just a joke ot bravado.
A classic when fixing computers - "Should I get the 3lb Forge Hammer from the car?" - Most people just think it's a joke but those that really know me know it's not. Yes, I do carry one in the car, for removing wheels when they get stuck - well, that's the official line and I'm sticking to it.
Best part is that if someone calls your bluff in these circumstances you can prove it (and I have - several times).
Yup, managed to do this twice where I am now and fessed up immediately. First time I was just a contractor and I reckonned I'd be looking for another job next day. Turns out I told exatly the right person who then shouted over to another tech 'Hey, you know that button in X that we should never press..." and all had a sigh of relief that it wasn't one of them that'd done it. They managed to get most of the data back and the rest was rebuilt over the next few weeks but it was noted when I had my interview to go permanent that my handling of the incident was one of the reasons I was being made permanent.
My other memory of that interview was there was a poodle sitting in on it (yes, a real one - but that's a story for another time).
Second time I realised within a few seconds what I'd done (removed the access group instead of removing the user from it) and contacted the one pwerson who I knew could do something about it ASAP - as a result no major fallout and another potential hole removed.
The Macdonalds app might actually work but I'm not putting it on my phone regardless of what bonusses or points cashback offers it gives you. I did look at doing this once (there's one just around the corner from work and it'd save me 5-10 minutes standing in line with the rest of the denizens), but then I looked at exactly what it wants to access on my phone (pretty much everythuing) and decided very much against it. There's no reason for it needing access to my address book or photos, and that's just the start.
Mosty of mine were named from their reg plates or models, with a couple of exceptions...
Helen (reg on a 405), The Pig (Cavalier SRI - plenty of grunt but no refinement), Vicky (Vectra), Saffy (Zafira), Callie (reg on 2nd Zafira), Aggi (Agila), Steph (reg on mum's Meriva), Debby (Doblo) and my current one Giji based on the reg on my new Doblo, not to mention Dee (Deloris the Delectably Delightfull Deluxe) - Lambretta J50 Deluxe.
I remember there was a trick with Psion organisers and the Datapacks - the 64k (yes k) datapacks were quite expensive, but the Oxford Spelling Checker was a reasonable price (about 1/2 what the 64k datapack cost as I recall) and came on said 64k datapack - one trip through the EPROM eraser at work and I had a 64k datapack - I think most of the PSION user group knew/used this trick as well.
We had one of these a couple of years ago (pre-Covid) and they are actually worth doing (Yup, surprised the heck out of me too). A lot of this I think had to do with the presenter actually REALLY knowing his stuff (and having a good bag of funny stories to tell along the way).
Other than that most of the rest of the events we took part in the rest of the week were pretty lame by comparisson.
Interestingly I have experience that in some countries the light switch is up for on and in other countries it's down for on - I've yet to see a light switch that works left to right but I have a feeling there's probably some out there...
Got laid off once (2009), was one of the 'lucky few'* (including our then manager) that had been selected to be 'at risk'. (we're sure they selected those they needed most to go since those were the ones to go). During the next 3 weeks before we were given the final decision that we were going I think I vaguely turned up for about 2/3 of the time, almost no work getting done and our manager (again, one of those slated to go) couldn't have cared less.
* this statement means more than it first seems - see below
On the date we were destined to go it had alresdy been decided that once we were officially redundant all we needed to do was hand in our official laptop + charger + mobile (POS really) + it's charger and we were free.
What didn't go so well was the fact that one of the people slated to go (who had worked out how much he was going to get and had mapped out 2 years of travelling etc) was then told he wasn't going and that he needed to get back to work asap. I ended up about 3 months later getting the contract to go back there to work on a rollout (they hadn't shitted on me really so I went). Strangely enough I met up with about 5 or 6 others who'd been let go who were also contracting for the rollout.
I did spend some time at the branch that the guy that hadn't been allowed to leave was still stationned at - the other rollout contractors moaned that the onsite guy was very un-cooperative, when I saw who it was I quietly enlightened them as to a small bit of recent history and none of them complained any more. In another twist, one of the guys at another branch that'[d been allwed to leave was back 3 days a week on more money than he was before working full time, basically doing the same job he'd been doing before he left.
Rollout finished (and this time I was very glad to go, the project managers for the rollout were total assholes, and we managed to get through about a dozen of them before the rollout was complete). I was the last of the original batch that had been let go that were still there, some had left, others had been shown the door (to be fair those shown the door had mostly deserved it because of their attitude).
Roll forward to my next but one contract that was a local(ish) ISP that had been bought out by a multi-national software giant and they needed 'Corporatising' (as well as removing the old redundant IT kit from the estate). Strangely enough I found the guy heading up my batch of contractors was none other than the guy I'd been working for (he was the co-ordinator, not the boss) when I was full-time at the previous place. Didn't need to interview - he saw my name and said Yes without needing to think too hard about it (nice when this happens).
Turns out that they'd shat on him as well and the place had gone to the dogs after we all left - he was good at 'mitigating' SLA breaches so they invoked an almost never before used clause burried deep in the small print to dump him (the 'We don't like you so you're gone' clause). I also met a number of other former colleagues at that contract (not necessarily in the IT area either) who'd jumped ship when the writing on the wall started to reveal itself.
In my experience it's usually p***ing about with the mouse settings to make things awkward (or changing things like the keyboard language settings where inappropriate) - There's a whole raft of things you can do if you have enough time, one favourite is taking a screenshot of the desktop and setting it as the wallpaper after hiding all the icons.
"my guess is that's why the 5th book ended by killing everybody and destroying the galaxy just to make sure that nobody could make him write a sixth volume."
But the 6th volume was written, only not by Mr Adams, instead by Eion Colfer although the style is pretty similar.
Reminds me of a time when I literally got my mate to fall off his chair he was laughing so hard:
We were talking about seals (in this case for air rifles and I mentionned that the seals came in a pack
'What's a seal pack?' he asks (meaning the price)
'About 2 1/2inches' I replied.
At that age I'd probably suspect they were Dell Precisions - we still have a few at work (most well over 10 years old) and due to be disposed of as soon as there's enough space in the WEEE bin...
These things are almost literally bomb proof - claimed by my super to be one of only 3 things to survive a nuclear blast, the other 2 being Cockroaches and Tardigrays.
A place I used to work had early PCs with printers that anyone could use (it was quite a technical department) - we also had the secretaries/typists who would do your typing for you. The general rule was if you wanted to compose something on the PC you did the whole process, start to finish and printed it yourself OR you got the secretaries to do it from hand written drafts. This was done to stop the secretaries being used just to correct the formatting (and occasionaly spelling) and printing it, which was demeaning to them.
Been there, embedding control codes in a text based application to get it to produce prettier output (never did get anything for that) but I remember spending many hours sending strings of codes to the printer to see what actually did anything. This was an old wide carriage Anadex printer that no-one supported I got it for £25 from army surplus in the 80s). Still, I managed to get it working on an old CP/M version of Wordstar well enough to use it to write up my reports for college and have all the usual text enhancements (Bold, Italic, Underscore Narrow and Double Width, never managed double height though).
Even managed to get it to print basic graphics (72 x 75DPI) - enough for small items but nothing big.
Anyone remember BeoWorks? I remember V1.0 came on 4 floppy disks (720K as I recall) and would run on an XT. Very limited (as if M$ Windows wasn't at the time) but V2.0 was a lot better, although it did take more space up it was nowhere near the amount Windows used by then. Major problem was application compatibility - if you wanted anything other than what came with it you were out of luck, having said that the Office type package that it was based around was pretty reasonable.
Reminds me of the story of a couple of good 'ol boys who were on their way back from a fishing trip when the pickup they were driving blew the headlight fuse. Apparently they replaced the fuse with a .22 long cartridge (yes, a live one) and were found in the ditch a couple of miles down the road with the driver now being said Darwin award candidate.
I wouldn't knock the Titan branded stuff, I have a cheap (£50 when I bought it 18 months ago) 1500W SDS drill that's performed like an absolute trooper, recently drilling/chopping through 6" thick very solid concrete without an issue and is still as good as the day I bought it. In fact the only casualty of the entire concrete removal process was a 22mm (7/8") 450mm (18") long drill that sheared the SDS tang off.
OK, it's heavy but makes beautiful holes quickly and if necessary you can turn down the force for more delicte jobs.
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