The lonely tech post thread.

[Sasaferrato]

Thanks. I know it won't be worth much at all, especially with the rising energy costs. I sure as hell wouldnt want it, but might get a few quid.

Currently looking for the jumpers to remove the BIOS password, but they are proving hard to find. Tried removing the battery for a good while, but no joy.

Edit. Found it. I need better eyes. Even with my glasses.

I feel your pain. I used to be able to read the smallest print, but now need reading glasses. As this was a result of cataract surgery I'm glad rather than vexed.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

I feel your pain. I used to be able to read the smallest print, but now need reading glasses. As this was a result of cataract surgery I'm glad rather than vexed.

I bet. I only started wearing them last and it's incredible how much I actually need them now. Get quite stressed if I leave them at home by mistake.

I think I'm going to have to get another set for night driving soon.

 

[Sasaferrato]

I bet. I only started wearing them last and it's incredible how much I actually need them now. Get quite stressed if I leave them at home by mistake.

I think I'm going to have to get another set for night driving soon.

The optician told me what I needed, and I bought five pairs from Amazon.

 

[two sheds]

I'm so impressed - once again - with the cataract surgery. Pretty well 6/6 (metric version of 20/20) long sight for first time in my life. I only need reading glasses/magnifying glass for type that is too small for the human eye. The other thing you notice is how designers are given free rein and end up giving loads of white space on labels combined with type that is too small for the human eye

 

[Sasaferrato]

I'm so impressed - once again - with the cataract surgery. Pretty well 6/6 (metric version of 20/20) long sight for first time in my life. I only need reading glasses/magnifying glass for type that is too small for the human eye. The other thing you notice is how designers are given free rein and end up giving loads of white space on labels combined with type that is too small for the human eye

It really is the mutt's nuts, isn't it? The first thing that struck me was the way colours completely changed, you realise that you had been looking through a brown filter.

 

[Chz]

Community Fibre finally available here, but I can't decide if I'm just going to cut bills and go faster (200Mb), or go fast for the same money (500Mb), or go really fast for a bit more (1000Mb)

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Community Fibre finally available here, but I can't decide if I'm just going to cut bills and go faster (200Mb), or go fast for the same money (500Mb), or go really fast for a bit more (1000Mb)

When I moved from the sticks in 2016 having proper broadband was ground breaking for me and I got 200mbs. It was amazing. However when Virgin wouldn't play ball one round of negotiations so I dropped to 100 and honestly didn't notice much difference. Obviously you know this but other stuff like latency and consistency are just as important.

That said when the boss was being funny about us WFH he asked we get a static IP, which meant moving over to a business package, so I got 350mbs. Which was nice. Its recently been upgraded to 800 for an extra quid a month. It's amazing to download 4k torrents almost as fast as I can write to a hard disk, but I'm not convinced I actually need it

 

[Chz]

While I was trying to make up my mind, they called back and offered half price for the full 24 months on the 500 (instead of just 12 mos). So signed up I did.
Only thing is I went for the digital phone line as well and I now need to figure out how to use Skype to dial international numbers. You'd think as an IT whiz I'd know about that, but I haven't a clue.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

While I was trying to make up my mind, they called back and offered half price for the full 24 months on the 500 (instead of just 12 mos). So signed up I did.
Only thing is I went for the digital phone line as well and I now need to figure out how to use Skype to dial international numbers. You'd think as an IT whiz I'd know about that, but I haven't a clue.

Isn't VOIP its own dark art?

I'd not used Skype for about a decade, but we got shafted by a car hire company in Turkey last year and signed up again to amazing trial deal which was a great help me call back to the UK. I'm sure there are loads of good deals though. Does it need to come through an actual phone?

Slight cross thread thing if that's OK as you said you do VMWare? I've just bought a training license so I can set up Vcenter Server in the little home lab I'm building in my new house. After a couple of trial installs I think its probably for the best I have a DNS server on the network. In the last place I just used pi hole, but not sure want to do that again. Can I do it with Windows Server DNS or is it better to look at something like dnsmasq or even bind on linux

 

[Sasaferrato]

Isn't VOIP its own dark art?

I'd not used Skype for about a decade, but we got shafted by a car hire company in Turkey last year and signed up again to amazing trial deal which was a great help me call back to the UK. I'm sure there are loads of good deals though. Does it need to come through an actual phone?

Slight cross thread thing if that's OK as you said you do VMWare? I've just bought a training license so I can set up Vcenter Server in the little home lab I'm building in my new house. After a couple of trial installs I think its probably for the best I have a DNS server on the network. In the last place I just used pi hole, but not sure want to do that again. Can I do it with Windows Server DNS or is it better to look at something like dnsmasq or even bind on linux

When I worked for HMRC we went over to VOIP. It was total chaos for two weeks, but when it settled down, you wouldn't have noticed the difference.

 

[Chz]

Isn't VOIP its own dark art?

I'd not used Skype for about a decade, but we got shafted by a car hire company in Turkey last year and signed up again to amazing trial deal which was a great help me call back to the UK. I'm sure there are loads of good deals though. Does it need to come through an actual phone?

Slight cross thread thing if that's OK as you said you do VMWare? I've just bought a training license so I can set up Vcenter Server in the little home lab I'm building in my new house. After a couple of trial installs I think its probably for the best I have a DNS server on the network. In the last place I just used pi hole, but not sure want to do that again. Can I do it with Windows Server DNS or is it better to look at something like dnsmasq or even bind on linux

I'd say the answer is whichever you're the most comfortable with. We moved to dedicated devices when BIND got to be too creaky. Though I suppose the Infobloxes run BIND underneath everything anyhow.

The CF Voip line doesn't do international, so I need to sort something out to call my mum in Canada and ma belle-mère in France.

 

[Sasaferrato]

I'd say the answer is whichever you're the most comfortable with. We moved to dedicated devices when BIND got to be too creaky. Though I suppose the Infobloxes run BIND underneath everything anyhow.

The CF Voip line doesn't do international, so I need to sort something out to call my mum in Canada and ma belle-mère in France.

One of the mobile contracts that includes listed countries?

 

[UnderOpenSky]

I'd say the answer is whichever you're the most comfortable with. We moved to dedicated devices when BIND got to be too creaky. Though I suppose the Infobloxes run BIND underneath everything anyhow.

The CF Voip line doesn't do international, so I need to sort something out to call my mum in Canada and ma belle-mère in France.

Thanks. The question is then what I want to invest the time in to learning, which is fine. At work we use a sql database for dns which then pushes it to all our clients servers, which I'm getting my head around using, but is more then I want to set up at home (at the moment).

Assume the old people aren't tech savvy enough to just use whatsapp voice calls?

 

[nick]

I'd say the answer is whichever you're the most comfortable with. We moved to dedicated devices when BIND got to be too creaky. Though I suppose the Infobloxes run BIND underneath everything anyhow.

The CF Voip line doesn't do international, so I need to sort something out to call my mum in Canada and ma belle-mère in France.

I may not be elegant - but why not just call them using WhatsApp audio (or video)
Or FaceTime

 

[Chz]

They're both the sort to turn their mobiles off unless expecting a call. Using Skype's ability to call an actual landline number seems the best thing for now. A tenner should last a few months.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

I do wish there was an open standard for video calls and modern TVs had webcams built in. My Dad would have loved it, but we never got him to fully get to grips with a smartphone (and he'd turn it off).

 

[Sasaferrato]

They're both the sort to turn their mobiles off unless expecting a call. Using Skype's ability to call an actual landline number seems the best thing for now. A tenner should last a few months.

You can have Skype on your mobile, I don't as yet, but my daughter does.

 

[Chz]

Yeah, it seems the idea is to dial their landline through our mobiles using Skype. At about 2p/min it's not too bad. Considering the phone cost us £30/mo before, going down to £10/mo while topping up £10 into Skype every few months seems a pretty good tradeoff.

 

[existentialist]

Well, it's done, and seems liveable with. To roll it back you keep your files (supposedly) but lose all your programs, and have to reload them. That is a PITA that I can do without.

Have I mentioned that I absolutely fucking hate Microsoft?

Join the club. I've been detesting Microsoft since about 1995, and they've done nothing in the intervening decades to disincline me from continuing to do so.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

So I see we get tabbed browsing in the file explorer finally for Win 11. The only problem is I nerfed the Win 11 context menu with a registry change, but it appears that the option doesn't show on the old Win 10 style one.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Call this morning from someone struggling to get on to their VM. After checking everything my end I did a remote session. Something didn't seem correct with the PC, running like a dog. I had a look round and they've got a Sempron from 2009 and it just has a single core. Amazingly it had Win 10 it. Spinning rust as well of course.

 

[Chz]

Forgot to run a snapshot for someone before signing out last night.
Naturally their evening change went pear-shaped. Much apologising from my end. Then it turns out there are no backups. After half an hour, I find the VM's disk is set to "independent". Which means that not only is it not backed up, the snapshot would have done fuck all too. Spend 3 hours rebuilding the fucking thing. So job #1 is to interrogate everyone even remotely involved in this machine and find out if there's an actual reason why the disk is set that way.

Nothing like watching your confidence evaporate when you say "Oh, no probs, I'll get it from backup" and you stare at 90 days of 0-sized backups.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Forgot to run a snapshot for someone before signing out last night.
Naturally their evening change went pear-shaped. Much apologising from my end. Then it turns out there are no backups. After half an hour, I find the VM's disk is set to "independent". Which means that not only is it not backed up, the snapshot would have done fuck all too. Spend 3 hours rebuilding the fucking thing. So job #1 is to interrogate everyone even remotely involved in this machine and find out if there's an actual reason why the disk is set that way.

Nothing like watching your confidence evaporate when you say "Oh, no probs, I'll get it from backup" and you stare at 90 days of 0-sized backups.

Well I've spent the last 30 mins reading about the differences and finding how to do it on our vSphere. I'm only slightly wiser. I can see why you might use Independent non persistent, but unsure why you'd use persistent? Does this mess with Veeam as well.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

I slightly embarrassed myself this morning by telling the boss an IP was wrong on a site server, because I need to remember to pull down the latest changes from Github before doing anything. It was still wrong, but I was looking at an out of date version. Linux and SSH still feel a little like black magic to me.

My partner is very impressed when she sees Visual Studio code open. She doesn't know what's she looking at, but looks more like I'm doing "real" work then just fucking around on web interfaces.

 

[Chz]

Well I've spent the last 30 mins reading about the differences and finding how to do it on our vSphere. I'm only slightly wiser. I can see why you might use Independent non persistent, but unsure why you'd use persistent? Does this mess with Veeam as well.

Veeam will warn once, the first time it's backed up, that there's an independent disk and it can't snap it. After that, it assumes you had a reason to do so and says nothing. This would have covered the time when we first brought in Veeam and debugged it though, so a first time only warning wouldn't have been useful next to the 100 other warnings on the very first run.

As to why you'd do it... Christ, I don't know. I run into absolutely insane shit left behind by people all the time. This isn't even the worst of it.

 

[nottsgirl]

I did some training on Outlook today. Is it just me or is there a lot of redundant functionality? I don’t see myself setting up rules any time soon. And the difference between a folder and a saved search is wafer thin.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Not a tech problem as such, but my brain is fried. I had a silly long day yesterday (including all the driving) working with Canon to set up secure printing at a client. The average user there is on the lower skilled end and they are going to come back in NY and find they can't print. So I've been trying to write documentation today as well make lots of notes for us so when I have to revisit some of the Azure AD stuff in 12 months time I can. But Teams, Emails and the Phone says no. And I keep going to fix something and find something else is working as it should. So I guess it is tech but man am I ready for xmas.

Oh also

 

[Chz]

The absolute fuckwits of OpenReach.
We tried to get the phone cable out of the DSL socket when I had the fibre put in. But they'd stuck it in there permanently with no way to extract it. Never mind, the number won't be ported for a few days...
Oh damn, we've damaged it trying to get it out. No worry, I think! I've got a spare BT plug->RJ11 cable and I'll just wire it in to the demarcation point instead.
moves phone around house
Hm, that doesn't work. Let's look at why.
unscrews demarcation socket
Aha. The problem would be that OpenReach wired Fuck All into the socket. There's literally nothing connected to it, it's just the wires from outside continuing on to the DSL socket by the PCs. What tossers!

 

[UnderOpenSky]

The absolute fuckwits of OpenReach.
We tried to get the phone cable out of the DSL socket when I had the fibre put in. But they'd stuck it in there permanently with no way to extract it. Never mind, the number won't be ported for a few days...
Oh damn, we've damaged it trying to get it out. No worry, I think! I've got a spare BT plug->RJ11 cable and I'll just wire it in to the demarcation point instead.
moves phone around house
Hm, that doesn't work. Let's look at why.
unscrews demarcation socket
Aha. The problem would be that OpenReach wired Fuck All into the socket. There's literally nothing connected to it, it's just the wires from outside continuing on to the DSL socket by the PCs. What tossers!

Are there any ISPs who aren't fuckwits? I mean Zen seem the best of a bad bunch I've had to deal with, but still.

 

[Artaxerxes]

All day racking and stacking supervision of a contractor. I don’t think I’ve been involved in another project where there’s been so little prep or documentation before it started.

Kit looks nice though