Posts by wyatt

Sinking ship?

Gulf War 2, lets deploy JOCS to somewhere hot and sandy. The quote for dust proofing the server containers was rejected due to cost. When all the kit came back it then had to be sent for specialist cleaning at a far greater cost.

I don't know if any of it failed out in theatre, location I was at had a vacuum cleaner which we went over the IT kit daily with. Servers were in a positively pressured container to reduce the ingest of dusty stuff.

Isn't this what the small claims court is for?

Almost pub-O-Clock and I'm out of beer. Need to ready my beer carriers (the kids) ready for a trip to the off license!

If it isn't working well yet in testing, what chance has the ESN network of using it for critical voice communications? Looks like there will be a 2/3 tier network in place for a good few years to come if calls are best over 2/3g still.

Ah, PCI-DSS. After all these years of it being part of card payment processors lives I still visit sites and work on equipment which doesn't have the basic requirements applied to it.

Not quite sure what I'm reading in this article. BT own the majority of the backhaul network and are rolling out services which use it? We know this.. Fibre is being deployed via the FTTC rollout, perfectly placed to provide access to this reducing the distance/need for the copper network.

A stressful time indeed, but if you know your application offer isn't coming until April you would be suspicious about this one! I'm in the process of applying for Primary schools for my girls. No really good ones nearby, put if I put in for a good one a bit further away there is a good chance I won't get it and be sent to somewhere even further which has lots of unwanted places (for good reason).

This is why we have universities, to teach and nurture scientists and others who have a talent that can work in fields way beyond my capabilities.

Universities should be for the elite, cost/income should however not be a barrier to produce people such as these.

A quick Google shows a company which provides hosted services, with a Apache web server internet facing, with the default accounts still enabled. I'd be pissed if this was somewhere I purchased services from.

Will companies ever stop doing this? I can't see it myself.

I can't code, I don't pretend I can and I don't want to. I struggle to read a VBS script let alone bug find the damm things. Unfortunately we have people who can and do but don't provide comments which would help when they go wrong and we (I) have to look over them to try to fix what's broken.

I wouldn't say writing code scares me, with guidance I could probably write some just that it is so easy to write crap.

Ah yes, BT did this first didn't they? I remember signing up for the extended coverage, however as they hadn't sent me a home hub just a standard modem with a USB/single ethernet socket there wasn't a way they could turn my location into a hot spot. Shame that.

It was quite useful when you could actually connect to one. Eventually I decided that I wanted 100% of the bandwidth and opted out.

Rehash? Yes.. but I still enjoyed it! I'd like a disc copy so I can watch it again and recap.

I wonder how long before the box sets are ready (yes I know, you need all 3 final movies to be released first..)?

Whilst fixing some equipment I'd broke more at a stock brokers in Birmingham one of the brokers mentioned he was having laptop issues with his children and them downloading rubbish. I advised him on the standard stuff such as AV, Malware scanners and physical security (hide the fecking thing) to which he was very happy and took me to the pub for a few beers at the end of the day.

Other than that sod all.

Reminds me of a 24hr customer who had a hardware usb dongle fail the week before xmas. I diagnosed it, raised it with the manufacturer for replacement and was told it'd be a few weeks. Que various managers demanding I double check that this was the failed part to satisfy the customer.

Loads of OT for our on calls guys as we rebooted the system every few hours to reduce the effects of the failures. Replacement part was DOA, so I looked like a knob until the replacement resolved the issue.

Useful site: www.trueurl.net

6 months at a time? Not my idea of fun, however amazing the views!

This is the first one that's make me laugh rather than smile.

Now this should be interesting! With the current inability to pass voice VoLTE as required (note: not that it doesn't work at all..) by the emergency services the replacement to Airwave is currently not going to well.

Leaves Motorola in a very strong position to get extended contracts until 2020 and then maybe beyond as well at a significantly higher cost.

All I need to do is keep rejecting the updates to turn win 7 to win 10 and eventually it won't be a free upgrade and they'll give up...

Yeah right. They've have found a way to retrospectively bill me and it'll keep on going.. Microsoft, I purchased Win 7 not 10. I don't want it, f**k 0ff.

Is it possible to build this type of redundancy/fail over when systems get this large? If so, is the time taken to switch between the two quick enough to minimise downtime to an acceptable level at a cost which is affordable?

This isn't meant to be knocking DR plans/redundancy/fault tolerance, more a question that as systems get bigger and storage more complicated is it affordable to split resources over multiple vendors to stop instances like this? It'll be interesting to see what the RCA is for this fault, if it was a EMC failure exacerbated by other faults or just a single failure somewhere which took out a lot more.

I have just tried to logon to my Flick account, not having used it for a good few years. First thing it asks for is my Yahoo email address.. I don't have one!?

Guess that's all gone then..

*I used Flickr when I was with BT and BT provided a address via Yahoo. Seems that as I'm no longer a customer I don't have a Flickr account and my alternative account details haven't been saved. Good job Flickr was the backup..

This is annoying, VM is the only decent provider in my area. BT are at last upgrading the exchange (Kings Norton) but it'll probably be another year until this happens.

I also have the problem that my work pay for the internet cost but not the phone line so need the cheapest rental possible. Something which pushes the cost to myself up depending on the provider.

However, at least now I will have a bargaining chip with VM (one day!).

I think you've answered your own question there, the only person who will win is the one who wants to access your data..

I must be one of the few that has never had a problem with Orange, having only just moved to EE we shall see about them..

When my internet was with BT I didn't have an issue either, my parents however have had to escalate their issues a number of times. Deleting their email accounts is BT's latest trick. Before that refusing to investigate a poor connection resulted in cancelling the contract. My parents next door neighbours moved from Virgin to BT and the poor people were given my parents old line.. who would have guessed the fault would move to them..

My granddad was a chemistry teacher in a grammar school many years ago, my dad has lots of tales about taking chemicals home and blowing stuff up. Sodium wrapped in newspaper and thrown in a canal lock was a favourite!

Dangerous stuff chemicals, if you're going to 'experiment' at least find out what to do when they go wrong before hand. My granddad refused to continue with anyone who couldn't answer basic first aid questions even before they got to the teaching/knowledge part of the interview.

I've not found a use for one so haven't got one, would I like one? Maybe but it would be another gadget rather than a tool so I haven't found the cash to spare on it. I've a phone/laptop/tv which fill my needs currently.

label everything as you go as well, saves us poor on call engineers workimg out whats what at silly oclock.

Oh and that cheap KVM, whats the frecking key presses to change screens???

My dad just had his BT Internet email account deleted by BT. No reason for them to do it but they did. They're convinced that it can't be retrieved, however are still trying after raising it to their 'Executive Complaints Team. I asked him if he had a copy of it and he looked at me blankly, I explained that unless he has control of his data, it is very easy to lose access. Still received blank looks..

Argos, doing some things right and some wrong.. ordered online and it was delivered damaged due to lack of packaging. Customer service arranged collection, re-delivered (having requested better packaging) with the same damage and lack of protection. Customer service arranged collection, so far they've tried to collect from the wrong address twice. Not Yodels fault as they only go with what they're told but very very frustrating for us as the customer.

On top of that refunds are a 7 (working) day wait, once the item is received and processed back into the warehouse. Another week almost 2 to wait for our money back.

Does anybody care that this particular website was off line for a period? No? Didn't think so,