Re: In other news....
How did you guess my password?
389 publicly visible posts • joined 14 May 2014
About the same time, a user was having problems with Oracle*Forms on Windows. It would GPF all the time. I opened a service request and troubleshooted for a while. Then they asked what type of keyboard the user had. He had one of those Microsoft "Natural" keyboards, which apparently had some sort of conflict with Oracle*Forms.
Several years later, I told that story to another consultant: She was "OMFG - we had that same issue too. But we never solved it - we tried reinstalling Windows, a new PC, everything. But the one thing that was in common was the users keyboard.
Manned missions have definitely told us nothing about Mars - since we haven't been there. 50 years later, we are still learning science from the Moon ones.
Any manned trip to Mars is by definition long term and somewhat self sustaining - if for no other reason than planetary alignment. The amount of science meat bags could collect on a trip is absolutely mind blowing.
In a somewhat related incident, I perpetrated what was later known as "The Ramen Event". After 30 years of successfully using a microwave, I put a bowl of ramen noodles and set it to nuke for 3 minutes. The problem was, I forgot to add water to the noodles, causing it to catch fire. Even worse, I added ghost peppers to the noodles to make it extra spicy.
I effectively pepper-sprayed the entire building. But even better, it was about an hour before a happy hour so the end result was beer o'clock started early. I have never lived this down.
From the way-back machine, I had a Commodore 64 and as a teenager had no money for the $35 macro assembler cartridge. So instead, I wrote a very simple one in C64 BASIC that supported JMP labels and such. But since the C64 didn't have a built-in editor, I also had to write one in BASIC. And it was based on EDLIN.
We *still* have production P*w*rB**ld*r apps in use. In 2020.
And while I never used Delphi, I made extensive use of Borland C++ builder which had the IDE and VCL fully implemented as classes. Despite it's GUI emphasis, I wrote server apps with it and made extensive use of the VCL classes for backend processing.
The most significant was a OCI web app that processed up to 3m calls a day until we migrated to Linux in 2011.
Many years ago, I was working on a project where I had to open a document in Office 2007. What is the very first thing I needed to do? Print it of course. Having never seen the ribbon before, I couldn't find the print button. So I asked the system admin and he admitted he didn't know either. But he gave me a trick: The old DOS shortcut Control-P still worked, along with other standbys like Control-S for save and Control-O for open.
I have been using these ever since, and the work in LibreOffice and practically every other program. I have been ignoring the ribbon ever since. Best productivity gain ever!
I had to fix a friends XP computer which had so much crap installed that it took 1/2 hour to boot.
With a Unix background I used the "rm -rf" method. I told them I would be deleting every app that wasn't something like office or photoshop. So it went something like this:
1. Attempt to remove it with control panel which would probably fail
2: c:\> rd /s "c:\program files\crap"
3: c:\> reg delete "hklm\software\crap"
4. regseeker and ccleaner (back when those were good)
5. Lather, rinse, reboot, and repeat
6. Install firefox, a decent free AV, delete IE icons, set browser defaults, etc
They were like "oh my god, this is a like a new computer". I wonder how long it lasted.
When I was stationed in Germany Budweiser (the American one) was actually illegal to sell off the American bases. There were a few dusty six packs of it in the PX, probably still sitting there from the 1970s.
Meanwhile, I would be off to pick up of a case of Parkbrau at the local Esso station.
BTW, if you ever happen to come by the Czech Budweiser, you need to try it. It is *really* good.
I have a Slik-stik arcade cabinet with a Wells/Gardener CRT, HAPPS controls and a Tornado spinner. Originally, I had Windows, but all of the games were like crap. So I installed Lincade, a dedicated gaming distro with built-in drivers for the ArcadeVGA graphics card, and the difference was like night and day.
Besides my arcade cabinet and RetroPi, I also have thousands of hours on games like Kerbal Space Program, FTL, Strike Suit Zero, and Dying Light. All on Linux. I have had to upgrade motherboards and power supplies to properly drive my NVidea 1080 - so my Linux games have a good frame rate - on Linux.
Over on this side of the pond, it is definitely about land lines. We still have an "unlisted" one and it is relentlessly robocalled. It is to the point that we don't answer unless we know the caller.
On the other hand, our cell phones have remained relatively robocall free.
Actually, pi-hole could prevent this easily:
1. Resolve DNS alias to real A-record
2. Check if on block list
3. Optionally add new record to blocklist
So if x-d.example.com really points to tracking.doubleclick.net, x-d.example.com would be added to the pi-hole block list and eventually all of these faked subdomains aliases would just become additional blocked entries
On a former contract, I worked as 1099 and got paid the hours I worked. In every real way, my timesheet was a legal document and any inaccuracies could get you canned. I had already seen it happen to more than one coworker.
So when our shitty subcontractor decided that we needed to complete our timesheets a day early - before the work had actually been performed. Included on the document was a legal statement, something to the effect that: "I certify that this timesheet is accurate to the best of my knowledge and reflects all hours actually worked."
After a dust up with the PHB of the subcontractor, I complied with the new policy. But I changed the legal statement to say something like:
"I certify that this timesheet is a best estimate of the future hours I will work this week, and may require adjustment in the event that hours actually worked differ from the estimate."
I submitted timesheets with that statement for 2 years afterwards with that legalese. No one ever complained.
I have had to kill credit cards to get rid of "pre-authorized" charges. You sign up for some service and they start billing your CC automatically "for your convenience", and then make it impossible to close the account. First offender was AOL but there have been plenty since. I no longer even bother trying to close the account - I just get a new credit card. A good way of cleaning out the leeches that attach to any card over the years. Anything I actually still use will get the new card number.
But the worst offender was PayTrust after they got bought out by Intuit. Since it was a bill paying service, they had my bank account on file and made cancelling the account even more hyperimpossible than learning to fly or making something invisible.
So I put a stop payment on any charges from paytrust - even that didn't work for awhile - they just kept running up charges until after about 6 months they gave up.
On the other side of the pond, our local K-Mart had a big sign up: "If there are more then 4 people in any line, we will open up more registers"
Of course this was with 2 registers open and 20 people in line.
Management quickly fixed that. They took down the sign.
First I asked for the $125, of course.
Then they said they said they need who provided my credit monitoring. So I gave them the name of the one provided by my corporate overlords. Took 10 seconds.
Soon they will ask you to upload some proof. So I will get either a screenshot of the email or even better, a scanned printout with a really crappy scanner.
That way they have to use an actual person to look at my attachment.
After it is all done and said, they will have probably spent a lot of billable hours to avoid paying the $125.
Then I'll take them to small claims court, and include all of the time spent trying to collect the $125.