Posts by DailyLlama

Exsparko-destructus! What happens when wand waving meets extremely poor wiring

Re: Tagline

You use that word a lot. I do not think it means what you think it means...

Microsoft releases Windows 11 Insider Preview, attempts to defend labyrinth of hardware requirements

TPM

Does China still ban TPM chips on devices sold there?

If so, how is any PC in China expected to upgrade?

BOFH: Oh for Pete’s sake. Don’t make a spectacle of yourself

Brilliant

All this gear should be mandatory to wear when politicians are on TV.

Stop. Look... Install Linux? The Reg solves Microsoft's latest Windows teaser

wishes...

I just want them to get rid of all the Candy Crush style nonsense from Professional and Enterprise editions.

Give us a stable platform to work from, without all the home user junk in it. Not that I want it at home either, tbh...

Hubble Space Telescope sails serenely on in safe mode after efforts to switch to backup memory modules fail

Re: Douglas Adams called it

Red Dwarf too:

Cat : Well, according to the Damage Report Machine, there are several small fires in the cockpit, lots of smoke and the Navicomp's fizzing.

[the Damage Report Machine explodes]

Cat : Oh, damn! Now the Damage Report Machine's exploded!

Do you come from a land Down Under? Where diesel's low and techies blunder

Re: My first gig

This kind of thing is why I no longer fix people's personal computers on the side... *shudder*

We don't know why it's there, we don't know what it does – all we know is that the button makes everything OK again

Re: Fighting thermostats

A site I worked at had two offices with individual AC units, but whose thermostats were somehow connected to the other office. User in office A decides that she is too cold, and turns the heat up, making office B too warm, where the user turns the heat down. Eventually, office A is near Absolute Zero, and office B is practically on fire, and neither user is happy...

After a few months of this, somebody figured out the issue, and the contractors were recalled to fix the problem.

Re: A Story about Magic

I was installing some spotlights on the front of my Ford Capri back in the day, and whilst holding the two lights in my hands, my brother connected one cable to the car, and they lit up.

I was wearing rubber soled trainers, and wasn't in contact with any other part of the car, so am at a loss to explain how this worked...

The common factor in all your failed job applications: Your CV

Another important thing to remember...

Is to omit anything you don't want anything to do with ever again. For example, there's a particular Print Management software (Safecom) that I never ever want to touch again, even with your hands, so it's not listed on my CV, and never will be.

Just what is the poop capacity of an unladen sparrow? We ask because one got into the office and left quite a mess

I say we pull back to the ship and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Protip: If Joe Public reports that your kit is broken, maybe check that it is actually broken

Re: Civil service paying for excuses

I had a similar thing at a previous job. My tight-fisted manager ordered us all brand new shiny laptops, but decided to save £50 per laptop by not purchasing the built in WiFi cards, as none of our sites had wireless capability.

Less than 6 months later, she's signed an order for £100 per laptop to buy Cisco PCMCIA WiFi cards for us all, as all our sites were getting WiFi installed.

Can't get that printer to work? It's not you. It's that sodding cablin.... oh beautiful job with that cabling, boss

Re: Printers are the Devil's work

We got away with the "Automated Reporting Systems Environment" for a good 6 months before anyone important noticed it.

We also got "T(company name) Information Technology System" past three very important people, before they showed it to someone as childish as us :-(

Strangely, they were all ok with "T(company name) Weekend Activities Team" as the name of the social club for over 10 years.

Brit MPs and campaigners come together to oppose COVID status certificates as 'divisive and discriminatory'

Re: Not "divisive and discriminatory", but essential

I genuinely do not understand the opposition to being able to prove that you've had the vaccination. If people can't due to a genuine medical condition (fear of needles and believing what Eamonn Holmes says do not count), then issue them the certificate (or flag on the database or whatever) to say they've been vaccinated.

Time for people to take their place in society and do their bit to protect other people, by having their jabs. If you want to go to a concert, or the big sports event, you'll need to prove you're safe to be among thousands of other people.

Personally, I can't wait to get mine so that I can get on public transport, and go to shops, restaurants, shows, films, concerts and pubs again, and if someone sticking a needle in my arm is the price I pay for that, then so be it.

Where meetings go to die: Microsoft Teams outage lets customers skip that collaboration call they've been dreading

Re: Looks like I picked the wrong week

What? That sounds like the ideal excuse to me!

Does the boss want those 2 hours of your free time back? A study says fighting through crowds to office each day hurts productivity

Re: Who got the extra time?

I got my extra time - an extra hour in bed every morning, and as soon as 6pm comes around, my laptop goes off and the rest of the day is mine.

How do we stamp out the ransomware business model? Ban insurance payouts for one, says ex-GCHQ director

I'm with Barclays, and don't get any emails from them at all (by choice). Seems the most secure method...

Yes, there's nothing quite like braving the M4 into London on the eve of a bank holiday just to eject a non-bootable floppy

I had a similar thing, had a 5 hour drive from Uxbridge to Newton Abbott to restart a server, and then a 5 hour drive back.

I think you'd cause more controversy by claiming they were competent!

Microsoft emits 83 security fixes – and miscreants are already exploiting one of the vulns in Windows Defender

Re: "One of these bugs (CVE-2021-1648) is publicly known..."

I don't think it's fair to call business sluggards, when we've all experienced bad updates breaking things, and have to have at least a week of testing to make sure that we aren't going to have to rebuild all the computers in the company because of one borked update...

Re: Oh dear

Not in the current tiers, surely?

BOFH: You might want to sit down for this. Oh, right, you can't. Listen carefully: THIS IS NOT AN IT PROBLEM!

Re: Asset Record Audit

Surely it would be under Buildings Maintenance?

I will only support chairs that can be plugged in to the mains...

Was that November's Patch Tuesday? Already? Oh, no, it's just Adobe issuing 14 emergency security fixes

No flash update...

So that's still secure, right?

Who watches the watchers? Samsung does so it can fling ads at owners of its smart TVs

I have Samsung TVs in two rooms, and I've never seen these ads... I guess the settings in OpenDNS are working by blocking the advertising domains.

UK intel committee on Russia: Social media firms should remove state disinformation. What was that, MI5? ████████?

Re: If you acknowledge Russian operations supporting UK separatism - what's the consequence?

That wasn't so much a defence as an attack by the Nazis on a former ally. And I wouldn't exactly say that Europe was "united" at the time, more under the yoke of occupation...

I highly doubt that the EU would attack Russia, that's been proven time and time again to be a terrible idea. But if united, it's more of a deterrent to Russia deciding to walk in and take over one day.

Re: If you acknowledge Russian operations supporting UK separatism - what's the consequence?

Turned out in our favour? Hardly...

The best defence against Russian aggression is a united Europe, and trying to split it apart is what Russia has been trying to do for years.

Oh sure, we'll just make a tiny little change in every source file without letting anyone know. What could go wrong?

Early 2000's

We had an exchange server that pulled from the Cluster in head office. One day I was asked to install some updates, and shove some more RAM in the box, while they did the same to the cluster. I warned my site that we'd be without email for an hour or so, and that if they wanted to stop seeing errors, just close Outlook. SO the hour came, everyone closed Outlook, and I installed all the updates on the box, then powered down to install the memory. Once done, I turned it back on, and carried on with my normal work.

About 6 hours later, someone came in to my office and asked if it was ok to use email yet, as they needed to send something out to customers. It occurred to me that I hadn't heard from head office, so I rang one of them. Who told me "Yes, we sent you an email to say it was working again"

Cool IT support drones never look at explosions: Time to resolution for misbehaving mouse? Three seconds

I'm sure we've all done this too

I've walked into rooms where there's been a problem with a printer, and without touching or saying anything, the printer has started working. I've seen other people do it too, so I know it's not just my electromagnetic field (although I often turn street lights off when I walk past them)...

From Brit telly presenter Eamonn Holmes to burning 5G towers in the Netherlands: Stupid week turns into stupid fortnight for radio standard

Simple solution

Classify these essential infrastructure attach as terrorism, just like they did when all those heroes were setting fire to the money generating speed cameras a few years back?

Stuck at home? Need something to keep busy with? Microsoft has 115 ideas – including an awful SMBv3 security hole to worry about

Re: It seems Flash, Reader, Acrobat, Creative Cloud, and the other offerings ...

Adobe Flash update 32.0.0.344 released last night...

BOFH: Here he comes, all wide-eyed with the boundless optimism of youth. He is me, 30 years ago... what to do?

Re: I can relate to this

When I started in IT, my manager asked me "Do you smoke yet?"

Astroboffins agog after spotting the first repeating fast radio burst that pings every 16 days from another galaxy

Re: Aliens? Or something more prosaic? We're hoping for aliens

It's ok, *I* got the Red Dwarf quote even if no-one else did.

There's something fishy going down in the computer lab

Please stop...

You're giving me a haddock!

Why is the printer spouting nonsense... and who on earth tried to wire this plug?

Re: Not on the wall socket

A guy I used to work with PAT tested a monitor for us, which caught fire during the test.

And passed it...

Microsoft's first build of Armium Edge now lurks in Canary channel – go have a play if you dare

Just updated a laptop to 1909....

It took about 5 minutes, including the downloads. Pretty short on content, I'd say (going from freshly imaged 1903).

Socket to the energy bill: 5-bed home with stupid number of power outlets leaves us asking... why?

Forget the risk of fire spreading through the holes in the wall

and lets just talk about the sheer number of holes in the wall. Surely that must be a risk to the structural integrity of the building...

BOFH: Judge us not by the size of our database, but the size of our augmented reality

It worries me...

That I clearly read too many of these, and I fear I am turning into the BofH...

Power to the users? Admins be warned: Microsoft set to introduce 'self-service purchase' in Office 365

But

They won't be able to install the software without admin rights... right?

You know the deal: October 2019. Pwned by a spreadsheet. Patch your Microsoft stuff

Re: We spoke too soon

I'd love to not use it anymore, but too many sites still require it...

We spoke too soon

Just seen some updates for Adobe Flash Player; v 32.0.0.270 released today.

No Adobe patches

Either everything is fine and doesn't need any more fixing, or they haven't finished writing the patches...

When the satellite network has literally gone glacial, it's vital you snow your enemy

Building to building WiFi

We had two buildings separated by a busy road, and instead of an expensive cable being laid, involving stopping traffic, digging up the road etc, someone decided to install two line of sight wireless devices.

Which was fine, until the car dealership next door had a delivery, and the triple decker car transporter parked in front of it...

BOFH: We must... have... beer! Only... cure... for... electromagnetic fields

Utter genius

I need say no more!

I have no mouth and I must scream: You can add audio to wobbles in latest Windows 10 patch

Re: Windows 10 audio _never_ works properly

I think you need an exorcist rather than a support technician...

Electric vehicles won't help UK meet emissions targets: Time to get out and walk, warn MPs

Re: Alternatively,

But no thought for those of us who are allergic to horses...

Hot desk hell: Staff spend two weeks a year looking for seats in open-plan offices

Hotdesking is awful?

In other news, the Pope is Catholic...

Could you just pop into the network room and check- hello? The Away Team. They're... gone

Re: Ever teleported a team into peril or heard something go boom on a conference call?

*makes note never to accompany you on a field trip*

Sophos tells users to roll back Microsoft's Patch Tuesday run if they want PC to boot

Re: Not a Sophos client

For the majority, yes. For the pilot groups, no.

Come friendly bit barns and fall on Slough: Equinix opens £90m data centre in London rust belt

Re: Short-sighted IMHO

And it's colder oop north, so it won't cost as much to cool them!

Town admits 'a poor decision was made' after baseball field set on fire to 'dry' it more quickly

But that's fair enough, I mean, it was a spider...