Posts by smilerbaker

Data doesn't lie, but Microsoft's new Power BI prices might make you cry

as a reporting specialist for the last 30 years.

How do you know a company doesn't have a clue about reporting tools? when they say they use power bi!

Techie cleaned up criminally bad tech support that was probably also an actual crime

new employee at gov weapons testing site

so a long time ago I worked for an IT outsourcing compnay, one of the gigs was an secret lol gov chemical weapons testing facility *allegedly. Anyway it was boring stuff plonking new very expesive laptops on scientists desks.

As you'd expect security was VERY tight, you were watched everywhere at all times, all doors needed your key card, high walls , razor wire you get the idea.

Que new guy, young, cocky, a bit of an idiot, we get a delivery or about 20 or so new laptops in (laptops at the time where 4k+ which I guess would be well over 10k in modern prices) they went in the cupboard ready to be distibuted out the next day.

New guy decides to visit the site at 10pm that evening, with his mate, security are watching and recording him from the second his car pulled off the main road, to when he parked, to when him and his mate squeeze though the door his key card opened, track him though the corridoors, to our office and catch and arrest him as him and his mate leave site arms loaded with brand new laptops.

To this day I have no idea how he thought he would ever get away with it, it was drummed into us before we were allowed on site exactly what the situation was, would we be ok seeing certain things and we of course had security clearance, his excuse was he was taking them to install software on, which was just the icing on the cake really.

Never heard from him again, no idea what happened to him, surprisingly we kept the contract

another funny story from the same site

I had to install some pc's into a lab that had a cyanide warning alarm, it had 3 'space' suits hanging up and warning signs telling you to put on a suit incase of alarm, but, there were at least 4 people in this lab, plus me so 5, if that alarm went off (and the doors would have sealed) I do wonder what hell would have broken loose.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is not an illusion, but it soon might be

DEI always discriminates against the most qualified to do the job, otherwise whats the point of it? I've seen it time and time again, oh, we're looking for a programmer of this very old, no longer mainstream obscure database, and HR have only sent me CV's from 20 something women, riiiiight (with no experience of said database)

Ex-IBM sales veteran sues for access to health benefits

what I don't understand is

a) why healthcare in the usa is so expensive, we just paid 12k euro for an operation here in europe, private hospital, ICU for a week etc, just for kicks we looked up how much the exact same op would cost in the USA, 200k+!!!

b) why do americans see healthcare as some kind of status symbol

c) why the hell americans put up with this??????!!!!!

Maersk prepares to lay off the Maidenhead staffers who rescued it from NotPetya super-pwnage

I hope the big brass at Maersk realise that when / if something like that happens again the indian outsourcers won't raise a finger to help, not in the contract sir, sorry sir, their on site staff will do exactly what the contract states, no more, no less, 5:30pm a wave of the head and home, unless you have documented everything so a 2 yr old could follow it you'll be SOL.

And once you have trained their staff for them they'll move to another pre-sales project or just leave the company, they couldn't give a toss about you or your company.

Been there, done that, didn't stipulate a t-shirt in the contract.

Poetic justice: Mum funnels £100 into claw machine to win single Dumbo teddy for her kid

Admission time

I used to own an arcade, and we had claw machines, they are total cash cows and this is how they work

You have 2 setting you can change, one for the power when the claw is at the bottom, so it grabs the booty, and one for the power by the time it reaches the top of the machine, so the power reduces as the claw lifts, and so it drops the booty while its lifting it up, very very occasionally (ie almost never) it will ignore the setting and give a win (assuming you managed to grab the booty in the first place), its always good to have a mug, sorry, punter walking around the place with cheap chinese knock off bart simpson under his arm.

If you want punters to win just max out the power at the top claw position, the electromagnet holds the prize and you win.

Another trick was wrapping some 5/10/20 pound notes round a tube, mugs - sorry, punters would always go for those, except the tubes where loaded with marbles, so you could pick them up but as soon as the marbles moved the tube would slip from the claw.

now, who wants to know about fruit machines lol

Ah, this military GPS system looks shoddy but expensive. Shall we try to break it?

waste

I worked for a telco that decided to get into the TV market, they bought tens of thousands of digital set top box's and started rolling them out, a few months into it they found that the box's couldn't be upgraded over the air and where hopelessly out of date, no problem, buy a whole new system. Old box's no longer worked, the few customers we had got pissed off and cancelled and we MADE them send the old box's back to us otherwise we'd charge them.

So we paid the postage to get the old box's back, where they sat in a warehouse (which we also had to pay for) where they staid until at least the day I left (many years later), the return postage cost more then the box was worth, someone high up seemed to think they would be also to sell them all. Last I heard (before it was all swept under the carpet) was they where going to hire someone to remove and wipe all the hard discs and sell them on.

I was once one of you, F1 star Lewis Hamilton tells delighted IT bods

its KARTING people, not carting

Women in F1 - nothing to do with money, any team would jump at the chance to stick a woman in an F1 car, just look at danica patrick (average driver at best), the sad fact is there are no woman drivers anywhere near fast enough, if suzy wolf couldn't get a drive, when her husband owned a chunk of the team and supplied their engines then that tells you all about her lap times (which where never actually published).

No team is going to stick someone in the car who is 10 seconds a lap off the pace, not that they would ever get the required points to gain a super licence anyway. UNLESS they bring huge amounts of cash with them, Stroll type levels of cash, or for the older folk Diniz levels.

I don't understand peoples gripes with Hamilton, he's damned if he says something and damned if he doesn't, you just come across as jealous idiots.

ZX Spectrum reboot scandal firm's original directors rejoin

Levy should go work for trump now, they'd be perfect together

Sysadmin trained his offshore replacements, sat back, watched ex-employer's world burn

years ago I was doing a contract for a large uk insurance co. they decided to outsource all the db dev and dba work to one of the usual suspects, all the local staff where 'let go'.

Fast forward 7 or so months and everything was going titsup, the outsources where less then useless having given all the work to fresh out of uni grads who didn't know their arse from their elbows, prime example being setting date fields to character fields on a date tracked system.

Company then went cap in had back to the team they had let go, they all came back as very very expensive contractors.

Tech support chap given no training or briefing before jobs, which is why he was arrested

back in the day I worked for an outsourcer, we had a contract at a secure site basically installing some new kit and pc's. The site we worked on also happened to do some rather scary nasty stuff for the mod so a lot of areas where out of bounds and security was very tight indeed, high fences, cameras everywhere only one way in or out, badge access on every door, the usual.

Anyway, step forward new guy, just hired and sent to our site, new guy decided it would be a good idea to try and smuggle his mate on site, at 11pm to go raiding the storeroom of new laptops, back when laptop cost around 6k a pop, security had a field day, of course as soon as he used his pass on the first door out of hours their consoles lit up, they video'd him and his mates every move from the second he entered the carpark and grabbed him as he left arms laden with boxed laptops, he came up with a lame excuse about taking them to install stuff on, of course he was fired. no idea what actually happened to him or his mate, the whole incident was quietly swept under the carpet, amazingly we kept the contract.

another funny thing on that site, they had a cyanide alarm, and chemical suits outside, a nice sign saying in case of alarm put on a suit, there where about 6 of us in the room, and only 2 suits, I often wondered what would happen if the alarm ever sounded.