Posts by The Oncoming Scorn

Sir Clive Sinclair: Personal computing pioneer missed out on being Britain's Steve Jobs

RIP Uncle Clive

How Ironic he passed away at 81 the same model number as one of his (in)famous creations.

RIP Uncle Clive - Here's a glass to yer & digging out a copy of Micro Men to watch.

Boffins say Martian colonists could pee in buckets, give blood if they want shelter

Re: I wonder if fecal matter could be used

Not without some form of corrective surgery & attachments licensed from Play-dough.

After failing to make it to orbit, Firefly Aerospace asserts it has 'arrived'

Re: No power in the verse can stop us...

".....anything with a Capissen 38 Mark II engine - they fall right out of the sky"

A practical demonstration of the difference between 'resilient' and 'redundant'

Re: An SFW tale to share?

Is this the sister with a brother in law called Svenge whose a Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian møvies: "The Høt Hands of an Oslo Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge Mølars of Horst Nordfink".

Oh! A surprise tour of the data centre! You shouldn't have. No, you really shouldn't have

Re: year 2000

It scared the fuck out of me that the Happily Ex-Mrs Oncoming Scorn, could throw back at me something I had apparently said, 9 years, 6 months, 3 weeks, 5 days, 14 hours, 33, minutes & 20 seconds in the past.

Elephants never forget & are share a memory map closely related to SO's of the female variety.

Re: Cliche

Installers - Drilling a hole (Carefully) through a glass wall into a state of the art temperature\pressure controlled* laboratory to run a cable, causing all sorts of additional alarms & alerts to start screaming.

*Door alarm sounds if door is open for > normal transit time.

Logitech Bolt devices support secure Bluetooth Low Energy – but forget the 'Unifying Receiver'

Dumpster Diving

I have a number of Logitech culled mice from the disposal route*, with UNR's (I know right & re-paired as needed via the software) & also picked up 3 K850's from a Govt disposal location. Really handy as those KB's will sync to one of three paired UNR's.

So this isn't likely to impact me for some time, but it really is a right PITA, that in the event I might have to buy new kit to have something that's not going to work with the rest of my salvaged stuff.

*Actually kinda pissed that I let a M215 & UNR slip through my fingers for $1 in a thrift store the other week.

Windows 11 will roll out from October 5 as Microsoft hypes new hardware

Let the salvaging begin!

How to stop a content filter becoming a career-shortening network component

Re: "That would not be... convenient"

Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër? See the løveli lakes The wøndërful telephøne system And mäni interesting furry animals.

Toyota resumes autonomous Paralympics buses after vehicle hit judo competitor, forced him out of match

The Register has asked Toyota for further comment.

Perhaps they think they can ignore it & wave a magic errr wand over it to make the incident disappear.

https://www.theregister.com/2010/07/22/hitachi_magic_wand/

Fix five days of server failure with this one weird trick

Re: The "inspector"

In my case fingers and pain => don't try to catch a dropped soldering iron.

Or pick one up by the hot end, as you distinctly (& correctly) remember unplugging it 3 hours earlier while working in your hotel bedroom, but failed to account for housekeeping plugging it back in when you left for lunch (To help the still extremely hungover\sobering up process) instead of the mini-bar.

Re: The "inspector"

Arms and pain is why I still remember that CRT's retain charge even after the device they are in has been turned on for about 2 seconds & then unplugged.

That and picking myself up from the other side of my bedroom.

Thanks for writing most of that for me - Have a pint of liquid painkiller.

When everyone else is on vacation, it's time to whip out the tiny screwdrivers

Re: Tiny Screwdrivers

Busman's....errrr carpenters holiday.

Father went on holiday\family visit with his toolbox.

Spent a week rebuilding two large wooden barn doors, as the attached barn had been repurposed into a garage some years before my aunt & uncle moved in.

Re: Tiny Screwdrivers

I used to pick up small screwdriver sets in Radio Shack on holidays in US\Canada before I moved to the latter.

The main reason being, the tips were interchangeable (& usually lost after returning to the UK), allowed for a decent grip with the fingers & a flexible shaft.

Re: Haynes Manuals

Plus-Gas - There's a name I've not seen in many a year.

British naval food doesn't look half bad... so we're going to try it out for ourselves

Join The Navy, See The World

Exotic places like Lundan.

Smoking smartphone sparks emergency evacuation of Alaska Airlines jet, two taken to hospital

Re: I want to know.......

Which $1,000 phone with the $1.00 battery (That's sold as an authorised service centre spare for 30 - 50 times its price as a OEM replacement) in it caught on fire.

FTFY

Samsung: We will remotely brick smart TVs looted from our warehouse

Dumb\SMART TV's & StartUp EULA's

The more I think about the lack of available dumb TV's, the more I think the next TV purchased will be a high quality projector, interconnects & a proper home theatre.

Serial numbers are usually embedded in the "About My TV" section in the menu.

Granted not much help if the screen is dead\non-responsive\damaged or simply a bare patch of space were the TV used to be, when dealing with warranty\insurance\police reports*.

*My temp storage unit (& 5 others - Padlocks cut off contents ransacked & replacement single keyed padlocks** put on the doors to mask the theft until someone noticed (Me as it happened) their key didn't fit), that I had dropped a load of stuff into recently got robbed. Lost some items of sentimental that probably needed junking so I might be a little up on the event except for the personal items of a sentimental value.

**These replacement padlocks made it easy to spot which units had been hit, thanks to the serial number by the keyhole.

MARKETING GIRL:When you have been in marketing as long as I have, you’ll know that before any new product can be developed, it has to be properly researched. I mean yes, yes we’ve got to find out what people want from fire, I mean how do they relate to it, the image -

FORD: Oh, stick it up your nose.

MARKETING GIRL: Yes which is precisely the sort of thing we need to know, I mean do people want fire that can be fitted nasally.

CHAIRMAN: Yes, and, and, and the wheel. What about this wheel thingy? Sounds a terribly interesting project to me.

MARKETING GIRL: Er, yeah, well we’re having a little, er, difficulty here…

FORD: Difficulty?! It’s the single simplest machine in the entire universe!

MARKETING GIRL: Well alright mister wise guy, if you’re so clever you tell us what colour it should be!

Re: Who is daft enough...

Somone who wants "YouTube" to work on the TV built in app, so rational goes maybe a Firmware update will fix it.

It didn't, it was the TV, bloody thing had reset its date\time.

So the data centre's 'getting a little hot' – at 57°C, that's quite the understatement

Re: I once had to do something similar in a Skoda...

You are James May, the occupant was Clarkson & I claim my Five pounds (Icon)!

Live, die, copy-paste, repeat: Everything is recycled now, including ideas

Re: Under cover

Once stayed just up the road from there Henry 8th Hotel (Icon), there was also a very good Turkish restaurant (Also icon) we frequently made a habit of re-visiting on trade show trips (Also also icon).

A new island has popped up off the coast of Japan thanks to an underwater volcano

How many other earths have you been to?

Boston Dynamics spends months training its Atlas robots to perform one minute of parkour almost perfectly

Re: Cue 'robotic overlords' panic from the internets

A multi-purpose groinal attachment. Oh yes, I can plug a number of add-ons into my groinal socket, allowing me to perform virtually any household task imaginable: buzz saw, power drill, hedge trimmer ...even an egg whisk!

Re: Boston Dynamics spends months training its Atlas robots

ED-209

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAPwh0SMzIo

Icon - I'd buy that for a dollar!

Magna Carta mayhem: Protesters lay siege to Edinburgh Castle, citing obscure Latin text that has never applied in Scotland

The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one.

Deep fried Mars?

Icon - Chip pan fire!

Re: Mars Bar

The most important part of Infinity War.

https://preview.redd.it/yakdl1simqg11.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=c04503cefbbc7236c383d4c03cae3fde5ce77c63.

Icon - Post pint nosh (If that's your preference).

Re: Mars Bar

Try deep fried ice cream, it might have worked with cleaner oil in the fryer.

Not Scotland but in the region of 1000 islands in Ontario.

Icon - Needed to purge the memory of the experience (Unsuccessfully the more observant of you will note).

Re: Sumption is wrong

'When you get arrested, you are jailed until at some point we decide we can give you a fair trial before being hanged'

FTFYB

Re: Holy Progress

Well, now, uh, Launcelot, Galahad, and I, wait until nightfall, and then leap out of the rabbit, taking the French errr Scots by surprise - not only by surprise, but totally unarmed!

Never Knowingly Underborked: Double trouble at Southampton's John Lewis

Re: All the borkage

The Insurance company, that used to be based in Norwich, suffering a water tank leak on the top floor & flooded computers & printers at least two floors down.

Come fly with me. But first we need to find a boot device

Re: Sentient Urinals?

Especially with seepage into the rat cavity.

Electrocution? All part of the service, sir!

Re: Stealing

Had a kid do that, removed the RAM out of the machine I was fixing.

Called it to the teacher, when I noticed it as this was the school for the more feral children in Somerset, the pupil was summoned back, which was a shame for him as he was almost home........in a taxi 10 miles away & so had to return to school, to point out where he had stashed it for later retrieval.

Re: the switch built in and self-detecting

I'm not going to repeat the story of the user that decided to flick the switch, while it was operating & royally screwed the MBR.

Instead spent the Friday morning rebuilding a 24V PSU for use in a weather proof sealed box for use onshore/offshore, as it was a Friday we went to the usual lunchtime meeting, on my return I fired it up without checking the Voltage selector.......

You can guess the rest....if you can't here's a icon.

Q: Post-lockdown, where would I like to go? A: As far away from my own head as possible

Re: New "Thing" at work

We had a survey at one place, last century & were assured of total anonymity.

Me being me asked the question "How can you assure us of that when there's only three or four of us in Quality Inspection & Test (We all hated our mangler, who thought he was Mr Big & micromanaged the heck out of us).

Re: Babylon Zoo

From memory, it was Midge & Chris as they partnered up for ad music, Max Headroom 20 minutes into the future* & the bloody awful **The Bloodied Sword*.

*I'd kill for a decent version of the elevator duel/closing theme, someone did cover it, but I didn't make a favorite of the link (Beer again).

**Played it twice, once while drunk on a Saturday afternoon (It was pissing down), didn't improve on my ear when I was sober.

Re: Cordon Bennet ...

I fancy a slice of Battenberg now.

Breaking Bad or just a bad breakpoint? That feeling when your predecessor is BASIC

Re: Someone elses woodchipper

Seen the one from Fargo (Movie) in Fargo visitor centre.

We can't believe people use browsers to manage their passwords, says maker of password management tools

Re: Training

or a little book.....

BOFH: They say you either love it or you hate it. We can confirm you're going to hate it

This Was So Low (USB) Key.

The thing that got the biggest & genuine laugh out loud was.

"I blame myself," the Boss says.

"So do I," I respond.

D'oh! Misplaced chair shuts down nuclear plant in Taiwan

Re: it was always the (dry) cleaner...

ZEN Repair monitors report explosive device attached to primary power channel.

BLAKE Where?

ZEN Hold three, access duct seven.

BLAKE Can the automatics neutralize it?

ZEN No.

BLAKE Why not?

ZEN There is no damage.

AVON Computer logic. Until the bomb explodes there is nothing for the repair system to repair. Zen, can you reprogram the automatics?

ZEN Preemptive interference in crew activity is forbidden.

BLAKE Oh, he'll clear up after us, but he won't stop us making a mess. (Exits, running down passageway)

AVON (Moves to follow him) You made this mess.

What is your greatest weakness? The definitive list of the many kinds of interviewer you will meet in Hell

Re: Dignity

It's great when that happens isn't it.

Re: My greatest weakness...

I have an addiction, I need to eat at least once a day.

I've got a broken combine harvester – but the manufacturer won't give me the software key

Re: Americans throw away 416,000 cell phone

Sweet 'n sour Labrador.

Icon - For those old enough.

Re: I had this experience with my car recently

Oil pressure sensor is a right bitch on a Chevrolet Avalanche* (Change the mica filter at the same time) & be prepared to lose knuckle skin.....

After that it's the stepper motor on the instrument cluster, assuming its not a catastrophic failure of the engine**.

* My last one

** I bought the second one cheap*** fully expecting a engine replacement, which thanks to Covid replacement remanufactured engines are a scarcer thing than I originally envisaged.

*** They sold it to me for less than half the price (Icon) they paid for her, with two sets of wheels, a host of embellishments & recent replacements of the other key parts that usually fail & barely did 2,000KMs with her before they blew her engine up.

Re: I do wonder how much it would cost

or goats depending on what services (Icon) you are bartering for.

The cockroach of Windows, XP, lives on in London's Victoria Coach Station

Personally it was Windows 2000 that I clung to, until I was forced to replace both the motherboard & HDD, when the spinning rust died & the world had moved away away from IDE.

Icon - Moving to XP.

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

Re: Less poor wiring than poor building

At another branch of the same three letter pharma company, this time in Stevenage....

I was happily doing my rounds of dropping off equipment & heading back to my car, when the head of security came in the opposite direction & tackled me on the frequent subject of laptops disappearing & how secure were Kensington locks, as over the prior weekend someone had got into a locked office area, via the roof void from the neighbouring unlocked office & taken said laptop. The evidence for this was a pair of dirty boot prints on the desk where the miscreant had dropped himself onto.