* Posts by kezersoze

15 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jul 2016

Please install that patch – but don't you dare actually run it

kezersoze

Too important for proper IT practices

We consolidated our different divisional servers into a common corporate run data center in the early 2000s. We had one set of servers that we realized didn't have virus scan installed. We approached them about an outage to install virus scan and reboot the servers. They said absolutely not, the servers were too important to have virus scan on them. They had virus scan installed previously and it slowed down the systems too much. The servers ran critical manufacturing systems and reported build rates to the higher ups in that division. Their systems were about 8 years old and long past their sell by date. Lots of back and forth and they finally allowed it to be installed after it went all the way up to our CIO and he said either install virus scan on or the servers would be removed from the network. We had tickets every week when the full scan kicked off. They finally started planning on a refresh and got modern equipment, 2 years later.

Techie wasn't being paid, until he taught HR a lesson

kezersoze

Happened to me

Back in 2000 I got a temp job through a contracting company. I filled out all the paperwork and was told my first few pay checks would be mailed to me until they got direct deposit set up. I duly submitted my timecards every week and after 2 weeks had not received a check in the mail. Contacted contracting company and was told the check had been mailed but it was the post office's fault since they are "often slow" in delivery. Waited another week and still hadn't received my first or second weeks pay check. Called again and was told they were mailed and it was the post office's fault. Waited one more week and still hadn't received anything so called a 3rd time and was told all three checks had been mailed and I had cashed the first two. I told them I certainly did not receive or cash any checks.

The representative implied I was lying and in an indignant tone said we mailed them out to the address I put on my employment form at P.O. Box 1234 in Arlington Heights! I told them that was not my address. He was very annoyed with me and put me on hold while he pulled the paper copies of the forms I filled out. He came back on the phone after a long time and rather sheepishly admitted that wasn't my address. Turns out there was another person with the same name who had applied for a job years before, but wasn't hired. When putting me into the system they saw my name already in and just assumed I was the same guy.

Now the fun part. They wanted me to go to the police, filled out a report to investigate the person cashing my checks to charge them with theft. After the police were done with their report I could submit to their headquarters and they would do their own investigation and once completed I would get my pay. I told them I wasn't doing that as it was not my mix up. They said that was the only way to get my pay. I went into work the next day and told my boss what was going on. I explained I liked working there but wasn't doing it for free. He told me not to worry. He called the contracting company and said if I didn't have my checks issued by the end of the week he wasn't ever using that contracting agency again. As they were the biggest client of the contracting company they complied. I walked into the agency and made sure the person who implied I was lying was the one who had to hand me my checks. It was a nice feeling listening to him admit to being wrong after dealing with his earlier attitude

Datacenter fire suppression system wasn't tested for years, then BOOM

kezersoze

Re: What are the odds?

That's a common question when I tell the story. We weren't working in the area the AS400 was in. We were working around 8 rows away so I doubt it had anything to do with it but anything is possible

kezersoze

What are the odds?

I was involved in a maintenance window where some of the underfloor gear was being replaced. Due to the large number of floor tiles being removed at the same time the fire suppression was turned off. During one of my walks from the work area back to the control room I thought I smelled smoke. I called a couple others over to confirm my sense of smell. They agreed that something was off but we couldn't determine where it was coming from. I felt it was strongest in one are so I put my head behind a storage array and took a deep whiff, nothing. Turned the the AS400 in the next isle and did the same. Just as I was about to say I think it's this one, a huge cloud of black smoke came out. I immediately unplugged the power, ripped the network cable out of the back and we pushed that system out of the data center into the parking lot. We checked and the fire suppression system would have tripped if we hadn't disabled it for our maintenance. That data center has been running for 30 years and has never had to dump it's halon. What are the odds it would have an event in the 6 hours we had it disabled?

White Castle collecting burger slingers' fingerprints looks like a $17B mistake

kezersoze

Re: Only the first one counts?

I'm going to White Castle and ordering 20 sliders but only paying for the first one. I'll let you know how that works out

Trump pushes anti-immigrant policy into Biden term with extended freeze on H-1B and other work visas

kezersoze

Full rewrite of H1B is needed

Typical Trump, all grandstanding and no long term fixes. He's had 4 years to rewrite the rules for H1B workers and all he's done is push executive orders. A full rewrite of the program is in order to fix the low base salary that allows companies to outsource to cheap foreign workers. Set the base salary of a H1B worker to the median salary of the job they are taking and companies would not outsource so readily. This should have broad bipartisan support as both Dems and Repubs have expressed displeasure with the current system

When you play the game of Big Spendy Thrones, nobody wins – your crap chair just goes missing

kezersoze

New chairs

I had a very rotund colleague a few years ago. We received new office chairs with armrests. After sitting down on it for a short spell he stood up and the office chair came with him, courtesy of the arm rests being slight turned in and locking onto him. After considerable laughter from those of us nearby him he calmly disentangled himself from the chair and found the closest screw driver to remove the arms

Samsung Galaxy's flagship leaks ... don't matter much. Here's why

kezersoze

Re: No jack, Jack.

My issue with Apple getting rid of the headphone jack is replacing it with the lightning interface. It's a propitiatory interface that every vendor pays a fee to Apple to use, therefor raising the cost of the headphones. While I prefer to have the standard headphone jack at least Samsung and others use USB-C which is industry standard and does not artificially inflate the price.

At the end of the day it's just buying a new set of headphones, which I will do sooner or later anyway. Every so often we have newer, better standards. If not we'd still be connecting our accessories to 25 pin serial connectors

My PC makes ‘negative energy waves’, said user, then demanded fix

kezersoze

Re: "And bluetooth with Win10 is an iffy affair"

You sound like a crazy old Unix man I used to work with. Hates Winblows and anything related to modern technology, thinks computers were better when thicknet was the order of the day, monitors that were 14 inches and displayed only in one color and PCs had a turbo button

No 2017 bonus for you, HPE tells employees

kezersoze

Jelly of the month

Hopefully the bean counters at HPE enrolled all the employees in the Jelly of the Month Club

Who has 2,000 tickets to the gun show? Cisco's HCIA platform HyperFlex

kezersoze

Too soon, WAY too soon

Scary news: Asteroid may pass Earth by just 6,880km in October

kezersoze

Bruce

No, but Robert Duvall has been called into NASA for a secret briefing

Forgotten your Myspace password? Just a name, username, DoB will get you in – and into anyone else's, too

kezersoze

Friendster

I sure hope my Friendster account is secure

Windows 10 pain: Reg man has 75 per cent upgrade failure rate

kezersoze

Fine for me

I've upgraded 7 machines to Windows 10 without any significant issues. My 8 year old desktop that originally ran Vista upgraded fine. Both my parents machines updated without problems as did my sister, her boyfriends and a couple friends PCs. The worst issue was bad drivers for old graphics cards. Took a bit of fiddling, but got it working in less than an hour.

Can't say what other peoples problems are, but I've had less problems with W10 than any other version of Windows I've upgraded to.

Good luck to all

Free Windows 10 upgrade: Time is running out – should you do it?

kezersoze

I use Webex on my Win10 laptop and do not have any issues. Not sure when you tried but I've been doing it regularly for months