The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Had to reboot my monitor - yes my monitor!

When I turned on my computer yesterday afternoon I was faced with a blank screen. I pressed the monitor's on/off switch - its LED went out and didn't come on again <sigh>. Cooked dinner, read some more of Tony Judt's Postwar and went to bed early - which meant I woke up in the early hours.

My plan was to replace the monitor with a spare. After disconnecting it from the UPS, on a whim I reconnected it and pressed the on/off switch; LED came on, Dell logo shows its pretty face, couple of seconds later my Gormenghast forest wallpaper was in front of me.

Why! Who ever heard of having to cold boot a monitor. There's nothing special about it, doesn't make coffee or play jingebells - Dell S2417DG on a 6GB GeForce GTX 1060 card.

BR

Yes, I have heard of that. Hubby's monitor started going weird on him. He decided that since he had nothing to lose he would take it apart and clean it. It looks better now than when he got it.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

Perhaps it is the monitor cable or the connection that has a problem, not the monitor itself.

The monitor's working OK since I unplugged it from the UPS and immediately plugged it back in again. If it happens again I'll plug it into a regular power outlet. More likely the problem is with the UPS, which is quite old.

Now they've gold-plated our electricity grid, I probably don't need the UPS. But Sod's (Murphy's) Law says if I decommission it then we will get a series of blackouts.

BR

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

The monitor's working OK since I unplugged it from the UPS and immediately plugged it back in again. If it happens again I'll plug it into a regular power outlet. More likely the problem is with the UPS, which is quite old.

Now they've gold-plated our electricity grid, I probably don't need the UPS. But Sod's (Murphy's) Law says if I decommission it then we will get a series of blackouts.

BR

Or idiot drivers?

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Or idiot drivers?

Yeah, I'd rather they drive into the power poles than drive into the peoples.

BR

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I've called them, and the lady at support told me "it might take 24 hours for the phone to pick up the sim card." So, I asked her if she meant that it might take 24 hours for the activation to come through (which I could understand); I told her I was of the opinion the phone should be seeing the card, but not necessarily be able to use it yet. No, no, she told me... the card was activated, and it could take 24 hours for the phone to detect that the card was inserted.

I think that's BS. I still think the phone should see the card and then tell me "No Service" or something like that, until the activation comes through, but it literally says both sim card slots are empty. (It's a dual sim phone, and I've tried the card in both slots.)

That indeed sounds like BS. I do not see any reason this can be true. Activation on their side yes, but not on the phone. I must say that even if the SIM is not activated, you still should see it with the notification that it is not activated. The phone only can know this when they actually check the software on the card. It sounds like you have a defective SIM. It happens, I had it as well some years ago.

[latepaul]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I ran Cygwin back when but got cured of it. Are you building under Cygwin or MSYS?

Cygwin. Technically we build with Visual Studio we just use unix tools in some places to manipulate some of the source files.

I use MSYS2 for some of my personal stuff and I prefer it. Mostly for not having to deal with the Cygwin installer.

But preferring it and having the time to work through any issues, let alone persuading other folks to switch, they're two different things.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Now they've gold-plated our electricity grid, I probably don't need the UPS. But Sod's (Murphy's) Law says if I decommission it then we will get a series of blackouts.

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Or idiot drivers?

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Yeah, I'd rather they drive into the power poles than drive into the peoples.

Or did you mean video drivers ?

BR

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Or did you mean video drivers ?

BR

I hadn't thought of video drivers.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Sigh. Why does _something_ always go wrong that is outside my control or planning?

When I get the new card next week, I'll press it out of the holder as a Mini or Micro-sim first, so I can try it in one of the spare (old) Nokia phones I've got lying around. If it works there, I'm assuming it'll work in the Moto G5, or the phone is defective.

I did it the easy way.

Went to JB Hi-fi, asked to look at their cheapest phones, was offered a Huawei, an LG and a Nokia - all $199. I asked, why would I give you 200 bucks for one of those when I can go up the road to Officeworks and get a Moto for less than 150.

The sales person tapped away on her sales gadget and after a bit of to-and-fro she eventually said she could do the Nokia in black for $160. Done I said, providing you help me get it working. As we did that I asked, so where's the doco -- what's doco she asked

Half an hour later I walked out with a working phone.

Given its Christmas Eve I assumed the joint would be full, but it wasn't, very un-busy. Obviously everyone is buying on-line where you can't haggle, where you can't hold a proper conversation, where you can't get the sales person to work for their shilling, or share a smile amidst some friendly banter.

Don't tell me shopping online is faster. I also went to the grocers and bought cheese, salami, potato salad, kombucha, bread etc -- and a pork pie. And I got some exercise walking to the bus and back etc.

BR

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I did it the easy way.

Went to JB Hi-fi, asked to look at their cheapest phones, was offered a Huawei, an LG and a Nokia - all $199. I asked, why would I give you 200 bucks for one of those when I can go up the road to Officeworks and get a Moto for less than 150.

The sales person tapped away on her sales gadget and after a bit of to-and-fro she eventually said she could do the Nokia in black for $160. Done I said, providing you help me get it working. As we did that I asked, so where's the doco -- what's doco she asked

Half an hour later I walked out with a working phone.

Given its Christmas Eve I assumed the joint would be full, but it wasn't, very un-busy. Obviously everyone is buying on-line where you can't haggle, where you can't hold a proper conversation, where you can't get the sales person to work for their shilling, or share a smile amidst some friendly banter.

Don't tell me shopping online is faster. I also went to the grocers and bought cheese, salami, potato salad, kombucha, bread etc -- and a pork pie. And I got some exercise walking to the bus and back etc.

BR

It may depend on the region and the type of store. I wouldn't even attempt the big box stores or the Texas based grocery store this month. You can't even get in the parking lots.
Now the grocery store chain we like is not as busy. We are going to change stores though because the Market Street store has better everything and is well stocked.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Now they've gold-plated our electricity grid, I probably don't need the UPS. But Sod's (Murphy's) Law says if I decommission it then we will get a series of blackouts.

Power where I am is good enough that I've never felt the need for a UPS.

I do get occasional issues where a breaker blows and must be reset, but that's at best an annoyance. Most things come back up. My desktop must be restarted, but it boots from SSD and comes up quickly.

The application I'm running use usually Firefox, but its current state is saved and I tend not to lose things in that case.

I did have an interesting experience years back. I got home from the office, and was about to have dinner when my office called. The night shift was having trouble logging into one of my servers. I could get in just fine via SSH from home...

I lived in walking distance, so I covered dinner and wandered down to have a look I found everyone sitting on their hands. Not only was the Solaris server that was the main one used down, so was the Novell server. I restarted both and my irony meter pegged off scale as I watched the big mutha UPS they were plugged into glitch and put both down again.

Unplug servers from UPS, find other places to plug them in, pull UPS for repair/replacement, restart servers, do cleanup, and get everyone back on line. At 10pm I could finish interrupted dinner.

Go to bed, and get awakened at 2am by a call from the night lead supervisor. She's trying to fill out nightly production reports, and having problems getting to the NT server where the forms are stored. I blink sleep out of my eyes, suggest a couple of things she can try, and say "If they don't work, leave a note on my desk. I'll send them for you in the morning."

I get awakened again at 2:30am by the night supervisor. She just wants to tell me she could get to the forms and send the results, and I didn't need to worry about it. Er, leave a note on my desk?

The next day was an integration meeting, because we were being acquired and merged, and were discussing how to integrate our respective IT setups. The SVP who hired me said "How are you, Dennis?" and I said "Tired!" and explained why. When I got to the 2am and 2:30am calls, his eyes got very big, and he said

"Why is she calling you at that time in the morning over something that trivial?"

"It's because she doesn't know it's trivial. She's trying to do her job and dot Is and cross Ts. I respect that, which is why she's still alive. She needs to be informed by her boss that stuff like that can wait till morning and she doesn't need to wake me, and yes, I've already had that conversation with him."

She was later released by the company, and my "read between the lines" assumption from the announcement was "Too stupid to do the job."
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by latepaul

Cygwin. Technically we build with Visual Studio we just use unix tools in some places to manipulate some of the source files.

Which tools, and what manipulations?

And to make it more fun, Win10 with an optional install that is part of the Creator's Update adds libraries and utilities that let you run Ubuntu command line tools from within Win10.

I use MSYS2 for some of my personal stuff and I prefer it. Mostly for not having to deal with the Cygwin installer.

I prefer it because MSYS stuff is built with MS runtimes, not the Cygwin1.dll, so I have less of the "these things exist in different worlds and bridging the gaps between them is a pain."

But preferring it and having the time to work through any issues, let alone persuading other folks to switch, they're two different things.

Note the time period Howard Chu mentioned about how long it took to become standard practice at Mozilla...
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Dennis

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Don't tell me shopping online is faster.

LOL. I _have_ to shop online nowadays. Most of the things I decide to buy I can't even get at a normal store in a 25 mile radius.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Don't tell me shopping online is faster. I also went to the grocers and bought cheese, salami, potato salad, kombucha, bread etc -- and a pork pie. And I got some exercise walking to the bus and back etc.

Whether shopping is faster online depends on circumstances.

I live in New York City. Everything I need on a daily basis is available within a couple of blocks walk. My SO shops in Chinatown on Thursdays for things like roast port and beef neck bones for soup, and that's a convenient subway ride.

Online shopping is mostly for tech gear, but I get the best of both worlds. My preferred computer retailer is in the borough of Brooklyn, and a hop, skip, and jump away by subway. I can order online, have the order picked, and go pick it up, same day, instead of order now and get it delivered sometime next week. Because I usually need this sort of thing now rather than later, that's a considerable boon.

But then, I live somewhere where things are in convenient walking distance. I recognize that others may not have that advantage.
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Dennis

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Whether shopping is faster online depends on circumstances.

I live in New York City. Everything I need on a daily basis is available within a couple of blocks walk. My SO shops in Chinatown on Thursdays for things like roast port and beef neck bones for soup, and that's a convenient subway ride.

Online shopping is mostly for tech gear, but I get the best of both worlds. My preferred computer retailer is in the borough of Brooklyn, and a hop, skip, and jump away by subway. I can order online, have the order picked, and go pick it up, same day, instead of order now and get it delivered sometime next week. Because I usually need this sort of thing now rather than later, that's a considerable boon.

But then, I live somewhere where things are in convenient walking distance. I recognize that others may not have that advantage.
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Dennis

Hey Dennis,
Awesome typo. Are they roasting where ships come in or are they roasting wine? Both sound interesting. Can't say I've ever had roast port. I am having roast pork for dinner.