* Posts by someone called ross

14 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jun 2010

Logitech MX Keys Mini: Svelte keyboard takes cues from Apple in more ways than one

someone called ross

Re: Price?

+1 on the K380. Been using mine with a Macbook every day since Jul '19 and have yet to change the batteries. £27 when new, can't see what this new one adds that is worth £70 more.

Pop quiz: You've got a roomful of electrical equipment. How do you put out a fire?

someone called ross

1st incident:

In the mid 80s I was a computer operator. One night a tape controller caught light but no alarms were triggered. The smoke was being sucked across the ceiling into the AC vent, right across a smoke detector. The next day we had a company come in to check out the system, turns out none of the smoke detectors were connected to the fire control system so no Halon dump, not only were they not connected there wasn't any cabling to connect them to.

2nd:

Late 90s. A terminal caught light in the computer room of the company I was at. For some reason rather than the alarms going off and the Halon dumping 60secs later it dumped the Halon first and then wait 60s to set up the alarms. Not so good for the two guys in the room at the time.

3rd:

2012ish and there was a false alarm in the hosting provider for my current company. The FM200 was triggered but they had fitted the wrong horns to the valves, the noise they created was enough to destroy most of the hard drives in the SAN, cue several weeks for data recovery, we had a duplicate DC in the US so no one saw any downtime.

For every disastrous rebrand, there is an IT person trying to steer away from the precipice

someone called ross

The title was something like Geographic Object Network...(can't remember the rest of it but I had to work hard to shoehorn it in).

Fun times.

someone called ross

Several years ago at my last company my CEO was flying out to France for meeting with the parent company. The day before he asked me to knock up some slides to explain what we were spending the money on and to justify spending more. So half an hour before his flight I emailed him the slides knowing what he'd not have time to read them before the meeting that afternoon.

He then stood up and presented project GONADS, of course it was more subtle than that but the main boss (a really likeable French guy) had very good English and immediately got what it was, started laughing and then explained to the rest of the board.

They thought it was so funny we got our cash and I wasn't sacked.

I work therefore I ache: Logitech aims to ease WFH pains with Ergo M575 trackball mouse

someone called ross

Same here, got a couple of the 570s as well but the mx ergo is so much better, especially as it uses normal bluetooth and can switch between two connections.

Conspiracy loons claim victory in Brighton and Hove as council rejects plans to build 5G masts

someone called ross

Just use these, https://www.amazon.co.uk/CROWNSTARQI-Protection-Anti-Radiation-Negative/dp/B075L2XM1H/ref=pd_bxgy_107_img_2/257-9676313-2014619?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B075L2XM1H&pd_rd_r=c52c673e-98b7-474f-b360-a2ca61ebbe15&pd_rd_w=1ADHE&pd_rd_wg=YNZyG&pf_rd_p=31fcc995-2418-43ae-a37c-f1ef453a46b3&pf_rd_r=3H3SYABCQVZ8QYX365KH&psc=1&refRID=3H3SYABCQVZ8QYX365KH, problem solved!

I have a neighbour who tried to convince my wife (a research bio chemist) that these are the dog's dangly bits!

There once was a biz called Bitbucket, that told Mercurial to suck it. Now devs are dejected, their code soon ejected

someone called ross

Re: Git

Isn't that one of the filenames it creates?

Yorkshire bloke's Jolly Roger flag given the heave-ho after council receives one complaint

someone called ross

They used to be flown by British subs so doesn't that qualify as an official flag?

One-armed bandit steals four hours of engineer's busy day

someone called ross
Facepalm

Dust in time

A long time ago I had a phone call from an important customer in London. The screen on the messaging server we supplied was blank but the light was on. I jumped on the train, rushed into town (only a 35min train journey so not too bad) and got to the client's offices an hour later. Sure enough the screen was blank, now in those days we had manual controls for brightness, contrast, etc and I assumed that they had just turned them down. This was not the case. The screen just looked like it was off (apart from the green light to say it was on), strange. For some reason I forget now I ran my finger down the screen and revealed a layer of perfectly formed dust so thick that it blocked out the entire screen. Turns out that the office next to the server room had a fanfold printer and an extractor fan to remove the paper dust. This fan just dumped it all into the false ceiling and the aircon in the server room sucked it through and deposited it over the 6ft racks and of course the static on the screen did the rest. At least it was easy to fix.

New voting rules leave innocent Brits at risk of SPAM TSUNAMI

someone called ross

Try living in Guildford

I filled in the form for all my family some time ago, ticked the box as I don't want spam. Came back from holiday to find letters for us all saying that they have set up a new on-line system for registration and have put all of us on the open register and we have to contact them to have it altered, so what was the point in filling in the form? Muppets!

Idaho patriots tool up to battle Jihad with pork bullets

someone called ross

Re: Amusing but pretty pointless.

Make the guns go 'oink oink', rather than 'bang bang'?

Natalie Portman slaps John Galliano

someone called ross

WWII

Ah, but they used the previous year's fashion, imagine the embarrassment!

MPs shocked at Taser supplier overlap

someone called ross

TSR? how appropriate

Terminate and Stay Resident, makes sense to me.

Dutch send submarine to fight Somali pirates

someone called ross

a non-lethal solution

Stick a boat on top of the sub as a decoy and when the pirates board it force them to watch Dutch TV. They will keep well away after a few episodes of 'Ik hou mijn Nederlands' and 'postcode lottery'!

Ross