I'm a retired IT guy and there's no kind of something that didn't fucking break. I'm not a goddam engineer. My job was to locate the problem at a black-box level and get the shit running again. Contemplating the "why" of a hardware failure is wheel-spinning instead of pulling the stuff out of the ditch.
For new purchases under warranty, I exchanged them and sent the dead one back to the vendor. Let them hook it up and do diagnostics over a cup of coffee.
Yeah, I'm in a gun forum (hell, I'm everywhere) and the subject of Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed and the 3-D printed files came up, so I shared what I knew.
I got a question, "You say those files are stored in a lot of places, where can I find them?"
I said, "Google '3-D printed files' but be real careful. The whole Internet knows you're coming and you'll get eaten alive if you don't know what you're doing."
We were moving to another Mobil Oil building in Dallas and we designed the new computer room from scratch. BTW, I learned that, painful as it was, new build is a fucking blast.
Anyway, after WEEKS of one thing after another, it came time to use the backup tapes from the old site to crank up the new site. I told the lady in charge of the backup project that she was up.
We put the first tape in and there was nothing. Nothing!
Same for the whole goddam stack. We were ruined. She knew the backups were not working two months prior and never asked for help. She kept quiet about it. (relevant: computer science grad)
There was so much going on that I made sure to keep tabs on everyone and their responsibilities and the lady had emailed me every day that the backups were successful. She was lying. I don't know what her thinking was, but I handed her over to HR.
We recovered a lot of stuff from the last last backup, but ALL of the financial crap, including the main database was gone.
By then I had sent the guy I hired back to Beaumont, Texas. I called him up and told him what happened and that son of a bitch said, "You know, I COPIED EVERYTHING TO THE DESKTOPS."
I said, "No! When?" He said it was the night before we pilled the old place down. I flew him back to Dallas and he crawled over every fucking desktop in the place (several hundred) and we mined all that shit and we were up in a week.
I asked him, "Just what in hell made you do that?" He said, "Well, I was looking at stuff on the servers and I saw things like 'financials' 'documents' and all like that, and it seemed important, so I just spent the entire night stuffing data here and there out to desktops."
That's fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough.
Like you, I have an innate aptitude for logic. I was born with it. Like you, that guided my way.
I did not know that I was like that until I joined the Navy back in 1965, right out of high school.
I was at NAS Memphis for "A school," which is the first training step for electronics. About 3/4 of the way through the 8-hr a day, 6 month course, my instructor called me in and asked me:
"What do you think of geometry?"
"Hate it.
"How about physics?"
"I like it but I don't know much about it."
"Algebra?"
"Never caught on to it. I suck at algebra."
He said, "You're way past entry-level college in those subjects."
I'm like, "Whaaat? Have you seen my high school transcripts?"
He said, patting a folder, "Got 'em right here."
Then he leaned forward and asked, "What the hell do you think you've been studying?"
When I was out of the Navy some 9 years later, my younger brother was having holy hell with graphs. He simply did not understand and neither I nor his instructors had any success getting him over that hurdle.
However...
That guy can play the guitar and sing!
He can read music. He taught himself how to do that. He's a gifted song writer as well.
I've played the guitar since the 5th grade and when I start singing, people say, "Oops. Momma calling. Bye."
When my brother performs, people in the audience literally signal to those around them to please be quiet so they can enjoy his talent.
He's a semi-pro. He never considered chasing it as a full career because, in addition to the risks, he said, that would have ruined it for him.
My point is that we each have our passions.
The school system trajectory doesn't consider that at all.
I started my education at age 19 when I dropped that fucking high school diploma and, for the first time in my life, embraced shit that matters to me.
That's OK for elementary, but by middle school (junior high), it's time to recognize people's passions and aptitudes and steer them down that or those lanes.
A friend with kids asked me if the kids should learn code. I said, absolutely not. Expose them to it and see if that take the bait. If not, try different bait.
As an analogy (not car), I told him that some parents force their kids to learn how to play the piano. Know how many good pianists there are? Not many.
Forcing kids to take code is a good way to piss them off and never forgive you for being stupid.
And if a kid like the violin, buy them one and the lessons to go with it.
I put out a job call and a hick from Fred, Texas came to interview. This was WAY back, OK?
I asked him what an autoexec file (and lots of other DOS stuff) was, and he looked at me and said, "I don't know.. Do you, though?"
I said, "Yes, I do.." He said, "Wow. I'd like to know what you know!" After a few minutes, I told him to go speak to the people out on the floor (about 25 users) while I printed some stuff.
I got coffee and waited until he returned. I told him to wait right there. I went out to the floor and asked people what they thought of the guy.
"He's so nice!" "Very polite and listens." "Very interested in what we do." "A great guy."
I told him he was hired. He asked me when he could start and I said, "Your call." He said, with a grin, "TOMORROW!"
My boss looked at the resume and asked, "Seriously? High school?" I said, "Yep. I can teach him all the techie shit, but I can't teach people skills."
Most of the college grads I interviewed were taught the disgusting mantra that they were somehow specially endowed to be systems pricks.
I hear ya. There were several piles of bulldust back in those days. There was the "Quality," initiative. We had big "Q"s on our coffee cups, attended Quality seminars, had to read books about it... I got so fucking tired and annoyed with that concept.
Then came that motherfucking "Mission Statement." Marketing spent millions carefully drafting and refining that piece of shit.
After retiring from Mobil Oil, I went to work for a law firm. They started to work on a Mission Statement for their website. I went to the managing partner and told him he was wasting his time. The goddam mission statement HAD to be:
Our mission is to get you to pay us money and feel good about it.
Anything else just demonstrated that we were deceptive and we were spending the client's money on non-productive wheel-spinning.
Finally, at Mobil we got to the "Vision Statement". Companies still use a form of that:
Equifax Releases Statement Regarding Major Breach
"We at Equifax are dedicated to protecting the privacy of our customers and employ every best practice to make sure that their information is safe with us."
"I consider my current workplace a healthy working environment."
Yes:
I worked 18 years at a law firm and my coworkers and I had a good time, laughing and protecting each other from management. When the network fell down, they expressed sympathy instead of bitching and I worked hard and fast to get them back up. We respected each other and the socialization was healthy.
No:
Management was fraught with pure assholes of the idiot kind. Those dumb goddam son of a bitches thought they were being treated with respect when it was actually fear. They didn't know the fucking difference.
One of them asked me how many computers we were buying from Dell. I told her, 20, and she told me to call up Dell and ask for a volume discount.
I went to my office, called my Dell rep, asked him to give me a discount because I was buying so many goddam computers and, after catching our breath, talked about how fucked up management was. I reported to her that Dell said when we got up to the volume-buy of the state of Texas, please try again.
Yes:
The reason I stayed was the managing partner.
He was a gruff bastard He was busy, direct, decisive, dismissive, had a steel-trap memory and was, like me, a military veteran.
I learned one thing very quickly: The roles were: He was an officer and I was enlisted... roles we both had in common.
He walked in on me one time and I was kicked back, drinking coffee. He said, "Caught you!" I said, "You will never catch me. Whatever I'm doing on your dime is the very best I can do on your dime." He was skeptical and asked, "So what are you doing now?" I said, "Thinking." He asked "About what?" I said, "The problem." He asked, "What problem?" I said, "Exactly! You don't know we have a problem and I'll never tell you we're having a problem because it's my problem, not yours. When I need your help with it, I'll let you know about it."
He asked me, "So what's with the coffee?" I said, "I'm trying to think of a way to fix the problem." He smiled and said, "Carry on."
Lower management would go to him to complain about how I would not process impossible tasks they assigned and he would say, where everyone could hear him, "I don't give a shit about your problems. He does a damned good job for me and you don't matter. Now, get out."
Well I'll be goddam if TFS doesn't answer your question:
Little tangible news can explain or justify the current crypto carnage. One possible reason is that a pro-crypto member of the Securities and Exchange Commission warned at a conference this week that she's fighting an uphill battle trying to convince the rest of the SEC to approve more bitcoin exchange traded funds.... Nearly two-thirds of money managers surveyed by asset management firm Natixis still thought that cryptocurrencies were a bubble, the firm reported this week.
Now in a new study, physicists have shown that quantum shortcuts are subject to a trade-off between speed and cost, so that the faster a quantum system evolves, the higher the energetic cost of implementing the shortcut. In accordance with the laws of thermodynamics, an infinitely fast speed would be impossible since it would require an infinite amount of energy.
Slashdot Mirror
Victim blame much?
I'm a retired IT guy and there's no kind of something that didn't fucking break. I'm not a goddam engineer. My job was to locate the problem at a black-box level and get the shit running again. Contemplating the "why" of a hardware failure is wheel-spinning instead of pulling the stuff out of the ditch.
For new purchases under warranty, I exchanged them and sent the dead one back to the vendor. Let them hook it up and do diagnostics over a cup of coffee.
I had work to do.
... to look at my taxes and the 14 deductions for my 3 kids is valid.
To receive a full copy of the report, send email to thankssisyourthebest@giveashit.com.
... why their domains are blocked by my browsers ...
You know that the wheels go 'round and 'round, but you have no goddam clue as to how.
You'll have to sign up for the DementiaMention game from Zinga (in app purchases).
Well played. :)
Yeah, I'm in a gun forum (hell, I'm everywhere) and the subject of Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed and the 3-D printed files came up, so I shared what I knew.
I got a question, "You say those files are stored in a lot of places, where can I find them?"
I said, "Google '3-D printed files' but be real careful. The whole Internet knows you're coming and you'll get eaten alive if you don't know what you're doing."
Those gunheads are totally stupid.
I don't give a fucking rat's ass where shit is made. If you do, then godammit shut up and vote.
Thanks for asking.
We were moving to another Mobil Oil building in Dallas and we designed the new computer room from scratch. BTW, I learned that, painful as it was, new build is a fucking blast.
Anyway, after WEEKS of one thing after another, it came time to use the backup tapes from the old site to crank up the new site. I told the lady in charge of the backup project that she was up.
We put the first tape in and there was nothing. Nothing!
Same for the whole goddam stack. We were ruined. She knew the backups were not working two months prior and never asked for help. She kept quiet about it. (relevant: computer science grad)
There was so much going on that I made sure to keep tabs on everyone and their responsibilities and the lady had emailed me every day that the backups were successful. She was lying. I don't know what her thinking was, but I handed her over to HR.
We recovered a lot of stuff from the last last backup, but ALL of the financial crap, including the main database was gone.
By then I had sent the guy I hired back to Beaumont, Texas. I called him up and told him what happened and that son of a bitch said, "You know, I COPIED EVERYTHING TO THE DESKTOPS."
I said, "No! When?" He said it was the night before we pilled the old place down. I flew him back to Dallas and he crawled over every fucking desktop in the place (several hundred) and we mined all that shit and we were up in a week.
I asked him, "Just what in hell made you do that?" He said, "Well, I was looking at stuff on the servers and I saw things like 'financials' 'documents' and all like that, and it seemed important, so I just spent the entire night stuffing data here and there out to desktops."
Well, just shit.
... are so thin that they can't afford the tariff.
I have two major thoughts on this announcement:
1.) When (not if) the tariffs are rolled back, GoPro will regret the shortsightedness.
2.) I don't have the chops to tell GoPro what its business model should be.
Yeah, I've been exposed to the educational boutique kids. When I ask them, "What's your passion?", they demonstrate very clearly that they can blink.
That's fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough.
Like you, I have an innate aptitude for logic. I was born with it. Like you, that guided my way.
I did not know that I was like that until I joined the Navy back in 1965, right out of high school.
I was at NAS Memphis for "A school," which is the first training step for electronics. About 3/4 of the way through the 8-hr a day, 6 month course, my instructor called me in and asked me:
"What do you think of geometry?"
"Hate it.
"How about physics?"
"I like it but I don't know much about it."
"Algebra?"
"Never caught on to it. I suck at algebra."
He said, "You're way past entry-level college in those subjects."
I'm like, "Whaaat? Have you seen my high school transcripts?"
He said, patting a folder, "Got 'em right here."
Then he leaned forward and asked, "What the hell do you think you've been studying?"
When I was out of the Navy some 9 years later, my younger brother was having holy hell with graphs. He simply did not understand and neither I nor his instructors had any success getting him over that hurdle.
However ...
That guy can play the guitar and sing!
He can read music. He taught himself how to do that. He's a gifted song writer as well.
I've played the guitar since the 5th grade and when I start singing, people say, "Oops. Momma calling. Bye."
When my brother performs, people in the audience literally signal to those around them to please be quiet so they can enjoy his talent.
He's a semi-pro. He never considered chasing it as a full career because, in addition to the risks, he said, that would have ruined it for him.
My point is that we each have our passions.
The school system trajectory doesn't consider that at all.
I started my education at age 19 when I dropped that fucking high school diploma and, for the first time in my life, embraced shit that matters to me.
I agree.
For me, I started learning the stuff that matters when I left home at age 19 for the US Navy.
I selected electronics; ate up the math and physics and was a damned good troubleshooter.
I had to do an extra year in high school to graduate.
I had to unlearn the bullshit like Washington chopping down a fucking cherry tree.
... because everyone is taught the same shit.
That's OK for elementary, but by middle school (junior high), it's time to recognize people's passions and aptitudes and steer them down that or those lanes.
A friend with kids asked me if the kids should learn code. I said, absolutely not. Expose them to it and see if that take the bait. If not, try different bait.
As an analogy (not car), I told him that some parents force their kids to learn how to play the piano. Know how many good pianists there are? Not many.
Forcing kids to take code is a good way to piss them off and never forgive you for being stupid.
And if a kid like the violin, buy them one and the lessons to go with it.
This.
I put out a job call and a hick from Fred, Texas came to interview. This was WAY back, OK?
I asked him what an autoexec file (and lots of other DOS stuff) was, and he looked at me and said, "I don't know.. Do you, though?"
I said, "Yes, I do.." He said, "Wow. I'd like to know what you know!" After a few minutes, I told him to go speak to the people out on the floor (about 25 users) while I printed some stuff.
I got coffee and waited until he returned. I told him to wait right there. I went out to the floor and asked people what they thought of the guy.
"He's so nice!" "Very polite and listens." "Very interested in what we do." "A great guy."
I told him he was hired. He asked me when he could start and I said, "Your call." He said, with a grin, "TOMORROW!"
My boss looked at the resume and asked, "Seriously? High school?" I said, "Yep. I can teach him all the techie shit, but I can't teach people skills."
Most of the college grads I interviewed were taught the disgusting mantra that they were somehow specially endowed to be systems pricks.
I saw people stutter and actually break out in a sweat trying to communicate using corporatese.
I called as I saw it.
My first review went like this:
"Captain, the users LOVE you. However, you don't conform well to the corporate culture."
Amazed, I asked, "Do you even HEAR what you're saying? Who the hell do you think we work for?"
Thank you for the respectful, insightful comment.
My years with Mobil Oil are well-reflected in the Dilbert comic by Scott Adams. :)
I hear ya. There were several piles of bulldust back in those days. There was the "Quality," initiative. We had big "Q"s on our coffee cups, attended Quality seminars, had to read books about it ... I got so fucking tired and annoyed with that concept.
Then came that motherfucking "Mission Statement." Marketing spent millions carefully drafting and refining that piece of shit.
After retiring from Mobil Oil, I went to work for a law firm. They started to work on a Mission Statement for their website. I went to the managing partner and told him he was wasting his time. The goddam mission statement HAD to be:
Our mission is to get you to pay us money and feel good about it.
Anything else just demonstrated that we were deceptive and we were spending the client's money on non-productive wheel-spinning.
Finally, at Mobil we got to the "Vision Statement". Companies still use a form of that:
Equifax Releases Statement Regarding Major Breach
"We at Equifax are dedicated to protecting the privacy of our customers and employ every best practice to make sure that their information is safe with us."
... and the answer is, "yes" and "no."
"I consider my current workplace a healthy working environment."
Yes:
I worked 18 years at a law firm and my coworkers and I had a good time, laughing and protecting each other from management. When the network fell down, they expressed sympathy instead of bitching and I worked hard and fast to get them back up. We respected each other and the socialization was healthy.
No:
Management was fraught with pure assholes of the idiot kind. Those dumb goddam son of a bitches thought they were being treated with respect when it was actually fear. They didn't know the fucking difference.
One of them asked me how many computers we were buying from Dell. I told her, 20, and she told me to call up Dell and ask for a volume discount.
I went to my office, called my Dell rep, asked him to give me a discount because I was buying so many goddam computers and, after catching our breath, talked about how fucked up management was. I reported to her that Dell said when we got up to the volume-buy of the state of Texas, please try again.
Yes:
The reason I stayed was the managing partner.
He was a gruff bastard He was busy, direct, decisive, dismissive, had a steel-trap memory and was, like me, a military veteran.
I learned one thing very quickly: The roles were: He was an officer and I was enlisted ... roles we both had in common.
He walked in on me one time and I was kicked back, drinking coffee. He said, "Caught you!" I said, "You will never catch me. Whatever I'm doing on your dime is the very best I can do on your dime." He was skeptical and asked, "So what are you doing now?" I said, "Thinking." He asked "About what?" I said, "The problem." He asked, "What problem?" I said, "Exactly! You don't know we have a problem and I'll never tell you we're having a problem because it's my problem, not yours. When I need your help with it, I'll let you know about it."
He asked me, "So what's with the coffee?" I said, "I'm trying to think of a way to fix the problem." He smiled and said, "Carry on."
Lower management would go to him to complain about how I would not process impossible tasks they assigned and he would say, where everyone could hear him, "I don't give a shit about your problems. He does a damned good job for me and you don't matter. Now, get out."
HA! What a guy. What a fucking guy.
Have some kids.
Come back when you're an authority and not an armchair asshole.
I snorted. lol
... back when I was a suit.
At a meeting, I told management that we had a major problem.
My boss corrected me saying, "We don't have problems, we have opportunities."
I said, "OK, then I have nothing to report."
A big wheel raised his hand to my boss and said to me, "No, go ahead and report."
I told him. "We have an opportunity that's causing a major problem."
Well I'll be goddam if TFS doesn't answer your question:
Little tangible news can explain or justify the current crypto carnage. One possible reason is that a pro-crypto member of the Securities and Exchange Commission warned at a conference this week that she's fighting an uphill battle trying to convince the rest of the SEC to approve more bitcoin exchange traded funds.... Nearly two-thirds of money managers surveyed by asset management firm Natixis still thought that cryptocurrencies were a bubble, the firm reported this week.
You're a lazy son of a bitch.
Now in a new study, physicists have shown that quantum shortcuts are subject to a trade-off between speed and cost, so that the faster a quantum system evolves, the higher the energetic cost of implementing the shortcut. In accordance with the laws of thermodynamics, an infinitely fast speed would be impossible since it would require an infinite amount of energy.
Oh yeah, that's gonna leave a mark.