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Or he has very small cows.
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| # ? Nov 14, 2010 16:30 |
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| # ? May 22, 2013 11:25 |
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Derpes Simplex posted:Or he has very small cows. A microcowsom?
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| # ? Nov 14, 2010 17:19 |
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Captain Capacitor posted:It's a possibility. I've heard some of the actual server-quality machines running and these sound completely different. But hey, can't complain about free stuff. It's the only way we can get hardware. Certainly been there, when I worked for a non-profit. Generally things were donated if the donors felt they were completely and utterly worthless and just didn't want to go to the tip. Most of them were indeed completely and utterly worthless. We did eventually get a "server" and named it Methuselah...
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| # ? Nov 14, 2010 17:30 |
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poo poo that pisses me off: spending six hours crimping cat5/cat6 cable, with my only advice being "Here's the crimper, here's the plugs, it goes white-green, green, white-orange, blue, white-blue, orange, white-brown, brown. Have fun!". (Guess how many I did back-to-front due to crimping the plug the wrong way around?) Incidentally, apparently my duties as a DBA are going to include learning to wire patch panels neatly, since I'm apparently going to be in charge of re-wiring our patch panels (which, to be fair, need it. I've seen neater plates of spaghetti). How do I learn to wire a patch panel like a professional, or is this a case of telling my boss "I can do it, but if you want it to look professional, hire a goddamn professional
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 06:48 |
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That's how I normally wire a crossover. Not that it matters I don't think, most I've seen have the first 2 orange though. Ze boss here flipped his poo poo because he thought I was going to deploy Quicktime (staunch Apple hater, tends to spend the morning guffawing at El Reg's smear campaigns). It was actually just for one of the 2 machines that drive the rolling screen demo things, but the very sight of it led to huge conclusion-jumping.  "DO NOT install that! You will KILL the machines, they will grind to a halt!" "I'm not going to! Don't panic!" (just *installing* slows it down? Whatever)Shortly later: "What's THAT video?" "That's just the web version I'm testing, in the web browser" "It'd better not use Quicktime!!" "Nah, just Flash." "Oh that's ok then"I guess Flash doesn't slow machines down, then... (I know people will be split down the middle on who to agree with on this one, given the Marmite reception that Apple seems to get)
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 10:48 |
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I'm not a Quicktime fan - because the official free player is terrible, usually forces you to install iTunes and/or Safari, and always installs my pet hate Bonjour - but I wouldn't let that get in the way of a business need. Well, so long as I could find a way to deploy it without Bonjour.
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 11:19 |
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Quicktime Alternative + Media Player Classic HC?
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 11:42 |
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Always an option. Ended up converting the video to WMV anyway, since the machine in question hasn't got enough teeth for H.264.
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 13:01 |
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"an" option? Isn't that "the" option? I don't even recall the last time I had QT installed. It didn't come with Bonjour or iTunes or Safari back then. Hell, I'm not sure all of those had been written at the time.
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 13:37 |
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Lum posted:Quicktime Alternative + Media Player Classic HC? QT Lite?
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 14:17 |
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enotnert posted:I'm gonna go this one with weekendly. . . Crawlspace? Man, that's gotta suck. Is it ridiculous that I have J-Hook Paths in my attic? 
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 14:27 |
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devmd01 posted:Is it ridiculous that I have J-Hook Paths in my attic? No, that's what we refer to as "planning ahead" and is vastly preferable in my book to pounding the walls full of staples.
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 14:43 |
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Midelne posted:No, that's what we refer to as "planning ahead" and is vastly preferable in my book to pounding the walls full of staples. i spent two hours there trying to get his ibm t42 to connect to a brand new 300+mbit ap so he could "use his computer in the garden, i've seen other people do that and i want it too". oh and bridging the old ap and the new one or using the tp in the sons room to extend the wifi wouldn't work. we hardly have any business with them anymore since we're "too expensive", i guess they have a lot of other suppliers who gladly work for free. this is a company who runs filemaker 8.0 for daily use, but when we ask them what they use it for nobody can answer. also there is no one in the company who knows how to fix filemaker when something breaks and they refuse to migrate to something else. i'm so looking forward to upgrading their old 1x2ghz, 2gb ram, 75gb sbs2003 to a new server running sbs 2008. ===== how do you people deal with customers who do nothing but complain about your work / fee / whatever? what makes me take it so personal, i feel like crap each time i cannot make them happy. i'm not sure my socialphobia is to blame drinking is not a legit answer in this case. i'll keep feeling bad until i'm drunk.
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 15:21 |
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underlig posted:
Send them a bill and when it becomes overdue, you send their rear end to collections. You're running a business, not a charity. They're more than free to find someone else. When people complain about our rates, we pretty much tell them "you get what you pay for". We're $100/hr in 15 minute increments - hardly a high-fee consulting firm. There's plenty of $150-$250/hr companies around here. There's also several $50-$80 firms (no surprise here that they're all worthless). We've had people drop us over a difference of $20/hr and guess what happened? A company came in that knew nothing about their environment and completely buttfucked them with hours and hours of downtime for several weeks until everything got smoothed out. Great business decision there! It's amazing to think that so many people STILL think that computer/network help is insignificant and that we only do it "because we love fixing computers".
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 15:50 |
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underlig posted:how do you people deal with customers who do nothing but complain about your work / fee / whatever? what makes me take it so personal, i feel like crap each time i cannot make them happy. i'm not sure my socialphobia is to blame Explain your prices ahead of time. If they sign the estimate and the estimate is pretty close to the final cost of the project, then who gives a gently caress about whether they enjoy paying what they agreed to pay once the work is done? If they don't want to sign the full price estimate, recommend a project scale more in line with their more modest financial desires or send them elsewhere; this is not the kind of customer you want to give sweetheart deals to and retain for decades. It makes you feel bad because that's what they're aiming for.
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 15:54 |
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After a while, I just disassociated myself from the work. I did what needed to be done, and got everything in writing. If they didn't want me to fix their problem, I would write in detail about their refusal and say that the problem still exists after my house call. If I have a problem with data recovery/ backup of data, I have a sheet of EXACTLY what they needed backing up. If they suddenly say, "Oh, where are my files for EZ Card Maker 1998," I'll either show that those files weren't listed in things to back up or the evil, scary virus on their computer destroyed them. That, and on particularly lovely days, I drink and chain smoke
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 16:07 |
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Little thinly-veiled f'ing tests your boss gives you, like my current one: We keep having issues with wireless keyboards and mice in conference rooms - always replacing batteries, losing conn, etc. She wants me to "think outside the box" and see what I come up with as a solution, even though she said she did some research and has an idea of what she wants. Why can't you just tell me what you found and ask me how viable it is?! Is there a better solution besides wiring them, which really wouldn't work in these rooms anyway?
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 16:19 |
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Count Sacula posted:Little thinly-veiled f'ing tests your boss gives you, like my current one: We keep having issues with wireless keyboards and mice in conference rooms - always replacing batteries, losing conn, etc. She wants me to "think outside the box" and see what I come up with as a solution, even though she said she did some research and has an idea of what she wants. iPads, at a guess. Bosses know best, that's why they're your boss 
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 16:29 |
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Midelne posted:Explain your prices ahead of time. If they sign the estimate and the estimate is pretty close to the final cost of the project, then who gives a gently caress about whether they enjoy paying what they agreed to pay once the work is done? If they don't want to sign the full price estimate, recommend a project scale more in line with their more modest financial desires or send them elsewhere; this is not the kind of customer you want to give sweetheart deals to and retain for decades. Adding a proviso to that estimate paperwork that gives you 5% overage isn't a bad a idea either. That's saved a lot of headaches for me in the past.
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 16:42 |
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Count Sacula posted:We keep having issues with wireless keyboards and mice in conference rooms - always replacing batteries, She wants me to "think outside the box" and see what I come up with as a solution, even though she said she did some research and has an idea of what she wants. Tesla coils and chainmail in the conference room. Need to keep those batteries charged. A program that controls the vibration of the conference room (recently isolated and put on springs). The whole room vibrates at the required frequency to use powermat receivers hooked up to the mice and keyboards.
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 16:54 |
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devmd01 posted:Crawlspace? Man, that's gotta suck. That's nice. . . I currently have things quick tied together, and laid along the paths they'll be on once I get a chance, and have a full day or two to crawl under there and appropriately hang them with stuff like that. It's just a trick with it being such a tight space, and dealing with the fact and there is duct work just kind of what the gently caress evered all under there that I have to work around.
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 16:55 |
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quote:Should I just delete this email?
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 17:17 |
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devmd01 posted:Crawlspace? Man, that's gotta suck. This gives me some ideas. I want to change some stuff in my house, including getting some network jacks. That looks really good.
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 17:17 |
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Our parent company's email issues were resolved at 7PM on Saturday, and in the process made their network less of a black box to me based on certain other behavior I was able to observe in how the issue was fixed/not-fixed. We're currently two separate AD forests, both running Exchange installs. Because of some oversights in the parent company's purchasing process, I do not have an active spam filtering solution in place on my end. The parent company reputedly relies on a McAfee edge appliance to filter spam out before it even hits the server, which sounds pretty nice. Many of our employees now only use their parent company mailbox, and their corresponding mailboxes on our side have been set up to forward to Active Directory contacts containing their parent company email address. Bog standard so far. Complexity follows. Parent company has two domains, for convenience - call it parentcompany.com and prntcmp.com. All of the above AD contacts were configured by their IT people for prntcmp.com, and forwarding has gone its merry way for ages now. I've received an unbelievable number of complaints about the spam content of the parent company mailboxes, but have been unable to really do anything about it because I have no administrative access to the parent company's side of things to even look at how things are setup, much less change anything. As a workaround for another email issue (they hosed something up on their end, mail server authoritative for prntcmp.com was no longer responding), I changed every goddamn AD contact in our forest to point to the equivalent @parentcompany.com address. Abruptly, I'm receiving fifty NDRs a day with "550 Denied by policy" that are clear and obvious spam from the subject lines, where I would previously receive one or none on an average day. Suspicious, I email my parent company mailbox with GTUBE, one to my @parentcompany.com address and one to @prntcmp.com, both of which point to the same mailbox. And goddamn if they didn't somehow manage to not implement spam filtering - at all, of any GTUBE-compliant sort - on @prntcmp.com. I don't think their Exchange administrator likes me very much, but I suspect he's going to like me even less after this.
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 17:19 |
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enotnert posted:That's nice. . . Thanks! Naramyth posted:That looks really good. And again! 16U is probably overkill right now but why the hell not, i'm sure I could cram plenty of gear on there if I felt like it.
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 17:41 |
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Apparently we've hired a new developer who only kind of speaks English and he's bombarding me with IM's. The best typo so far is spelling "again" as "Asian" somehow.
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 17:54 |
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devmd01 posted:Thanks! Stop it, you're making me jealous. Also making me remember that I still need to crawl back in my closet and get all the cabling and poo poo cleaned up. It's a mess in there at the moment, coax and cat6 flying all over the place oh my.
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 18:24 |
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Guy at the other site decide to made all the \users\smithj shares hidden. Not sure why, it's such a pain in the rear end to tell someone how to re-map them. Just un-hid them all. Why the hell did he want to do it this way?
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 18:36 |
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Thel posted:How do I learn to wire a patch panel like a professional, or is this a case of telling my boss "I can do it, but if you want it to look professional, hire a goddamn professional A "1U" switch doesn't mean anything here, since it could be 4 ports or 48 ports. At least its not the retarded Bay 450's and there 1.5U or whatever it is. Get horozontal wire management units. I don't like the finger duct kind with the covers, I prefer the ring kinds. Separate your equipment with them. If they're 48 port I like to put two in between but you will run out of rack space probably if this is a typical relay/equipment combo rack in businesses. Get vertical wire management units for the sides if you can (couple hundo each maybe for nice aluminum onces), or get the velcro with a hole/grommit on it and attach that to hold your cables on the side. I like Chatsworth products ( for home use: http://www.chatsworth.com/uploadedF...s/11583_cut.pdf and you can turn it sideways dur ) and they make this velcro. For the neatest looking, split the rack down the middle and cable to each side as best as possible. For the switches start at the middle and roll out. It helps if you have network support assuming multiple VLANs so you can move things around and update your doc. Roll excess cable down the vertical wire management. If it's going all over the floor its too long and get a shorter one. Standard is not to use your home made cables and order the appropriate length. For the patch panels then you can lay them in neatly and go up to the jack you want. The patch panel isn't likely to "fail" and as long as you keep your cabling neat you can remove it (especially with the ring managements and not the stupid fingerduct ones) to patch to a new jack. The switch may fail or need to be upgraded and then not having your poo poo all over the place will pay off in being able to quickly slide it out and go. I just label with the port number so it's plug and play for one unit at a time. We even had a fire which melted a shitload of cables and filled our gear with soot (kept running <3 bay 450's) and this allowed us to quickly get new cabling in place and manipulate the equipment. J-Hooks rule, but I also got some heavy duty zipties with a grommit that I zipped up at one house to the joists, like a bridle ring. Left them loose so they can be fished through (crawlspace) and ran 2 cat5e 1 rg6u qs to each outlet. Other house was double the RG6 for no reason other than I had it and we used J Hooks. poo poo that pisses me off today: People that neaten solid wire cabling by rolling it up and ziptying it into a wad rendering it useless for maintenance, and this thing pictured below. When it's not working, the eth send and receive lights are solid but the link is actually down, so it appears broken. When it's working the light on the left flashes a bit and ethernet works as intended. If it flashes too much then its not working right either. Screw that. It's a SHDSL link device by the way, and a pair of these and a pair of copper between two places gets you a 1.5Mbps link that can save your rear end if you're really in trouble.
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 19:39 |
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Thanks for the tips on the Vista/7 for the intel mobo driver thing I complained about. Haven't went too far, but at least the network card started working which is good enough for me since I'll always be RDPing into the thing anyway. Odd thought for the day: The ad that comes up on this page is for Always tampons. I guess we talk about protection too much in this thread.
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 20:05 |
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This Dell POE switch is like 2" too deep for this cabinet
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| # ? Nov 15, 2010 20:49 |
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Bob Morales posted:This Dell POE switch is like 2" too deep for this cabinet turn the brackets around ?
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| # ? Nov 16, 2010 02:15 |
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underlig posted:how do you people deal with customers who do nothing but complain about your work / fee / whatever? what makes me take it so personal, i feel like crap each time i cannot make them happy. i'm not sure my socialphobia is to blame There comes a time in the life of all businesses where the owners come to the conclusion that anyone and everyone is ripping them off all the time. Their employees all steal from them constantly and never do any work and any businesses they employee are ripping them off and overcharging. It happens to all small businesses, it could take 6 months or 10 years but eventually it happens. This is especially true if the owners wife is also the accountant because then money disagreements become personal. There is nothing you can do about it, and if you're an employee and this happens its time to move on.
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| # ? Nov 16, 2010 02:39 |
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It doesn't help when the small business in question is knowingly ripping their customers off, overcharging and various other unscrupulous activities. Obviously I couldn't give a specific example for legal reasons, but activities that might cause me to seek alternative employment in any particular job could include things like altering contracts after the customer has signed them and selling very old refurbished kit as new or requesting that I install pirate software on customer computers, even though in a small business I'd probably turn a blind eye to a bit of piracy on expensive software like Office.
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| # ? Nov 16, 2010 10:47 |
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Partycat posted:turn the brackets around ? I actually just did this -> 
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| # ? Nov 16, 2010 11:47 |
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Bob Morales posted:This Dell POE switch is like 2" too deep for this cabinet We had a client who brought in a voice/data company to setup VOIP phones and do all of the cabling runs in their new office - about 60 drops. They setup a 2 post rack and a few patch panels, with a giant trunk of cables coming straight down from the ceiling to the back of the rack. One patch panel is at the top (for the cabling to be used for phones), and then underneath is their 1U VOIP box and a Dell POE switch. Under that is the second patch panel with the data runs to be used for all of the laptops and PCs (voice and data were separated). Needless to say, I'll never forget the look on the guys face when he tried jamming that huge Dell POE switch through the rack, only to meet the resistance of the trunk of cabling behind it. And it had no pull. The whole rack had to be moved in order to make room for the switch.
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| # ? Nov 16, 2010 13:24 |
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Partycat posted:turn the brackets around ? Already did, still too deep. I am going to try to find one of those shallow 90 degree power cables, but I still think it's going to touch. Why'd they make this thing so loving big? It's literally a pizza box.
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| # ? Nov 16, 2010 13:31 |
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Pop the top. It's probably half empty inside. Little fab work and you're good.
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| # ? Nov 16, 2010 13:32 |
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SynMoo posted:Pop the top. It's probably half empty inside. Little fab work and you're good. Sure, because everybody in here is a competent metal fabricator that can do so without violating warranty! "Hello, Dell Business Support? This switch isn't working, it's one of your special-order compact models." "hahaha get the gently caress out"
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| # ? Nov 16, 2010 13:44 |
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| # ? May 22, 2013 11:25 |
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Those things usually have about 8 fans along the side of the case, so it's probably not a great idea to shorten them.
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| # ? Nov 16, 2010 13:47 |
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