Working in IT 3.0: xp_cmdshell

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Working in IT 3.0: xp_cmdshell

Thanks Ants: May 21, 2004; #essereFerrari

CloFan posted:

So this line controls the HVAC system for the entire campus.

They're renovating the building that houses this, and IT was called to move the fiber and we found it like this. Been like this for 12+ years. Oh and during renovation, no one thought to include 120v power to the switch closet, so I've got extension cords running from the next room over so that the building can be online. And the budget doesn't allow for extra expenditures at this time, so this setup is permanent.

Is that...duct tape? Holy poo poo.

# ? May 20, 2018 20:06

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 16:21

Dr. Arbitrary: Mar 15, 2006; Bleak Gremlin

Schadenboner posted:

Our office building today is literally 90 degrees with the exception of the kitchen.

It took me waaay to long to realize you weren't talking about an angle.

# ? May 20, 2018 22:03

An Enormous Boner: Jul 12, 2009

CloFan posted:

So this line controls the HVAC system for the entire campus.

They're renovating the building that houses this, and IT was called to move the fiber and we found it like this. Been like this for 12+ years. Oh and during renovation, no one thought to include 120v power to the switch closet, so I've got extension cords running from the next room over so that the building can be online. And the budget doesn't allow for extra expenditures at this time, so this setup is permanent.

How do you fix this? Do you push to call contractors?

# ? May 20, 2018 23:17

An Enormous Boner: Jul 12, 2009

Do you leave fiber wrapped up in toilet paper and piss hairs? Is this how the world works?

# ? May 20, 2018 23:27

CloFan: Nov 6, 2004

It's 21 year old MMF, one of these days the administration will spring for the overhauled networking infrastructure. Then I won't ever have to deal with that. Right?

# ? May 20, 2018 23:29

Gucci Loafers: May 20, 2006; Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?

Super Soaker Party! posted:

What? That's insane why don't you just give everyone Macs and be done with it. You admins trying to lock everything down - I would never work with you and everyone I know would just laugh at this. Everything's moving to the cloud anyway soon you will be completely irrelevant and your jobs unnecessary, so you should just give in and forget this stupid Windows nonsense.

(I may not have gotten the tone exactly right, it's hard to write this stuff since I"m no longer 11, i.e. when I cared deeply about which OS is best)

Super Soaker Party! posted:

What? That's insane why don't you just give everyone Macs and be done with it. You admins trying to lock everything down - I would never work with you and everyone I know would just laugh at this. Everything's moving to the cloud anyway soon you will be completely irrelevant and your jobs unnecessary, so you should just give in and forget this stupid Windows nonsense.

(I may not have gotten the tone exactly right, it's hard to write this stuff since I"m no longer 11, i.e. when I cared deeply about which OS is best)

Uhh... I�m one of the folks who wants Bluetooth.

# ? May 21, 2018 01:05

H110Hawk: Dec 28, 2006

H110Hawk posted:

Right now I'm doing a p2v backup of my windows 10 hot garbage so I can flatten it and install ubuntu and run Windows 10 in a VM for outlook/excel stuff.

Trip report, ignoring all of the failed steps: Used disk2vhd to make a vhd of my running system. Unchecked vhdx, checked use shadow copy. 186G file generated. Loaded file into Virtualbox, made sure UEFI was checked, added a new blank 256mb disk, booted to Windows 10 Pro installer CD. Partitioned the disk, formatted fat32, assigned it letter P, and used `bcdboot C:\Windows /s P:` to setup the boot files. A long time later I got to a login screen. So far no licensing nag screen, word, slack, and dropbox work, Outlook yields an error about opening folders and logging into exchange. :iiam:

Oh and it is punishingly slow, but that is likely more to do with the 186G VHD file is mounted over SMB to my synology. (Hah, and my R/O SSD disk cache is up to 53% from 12%.)

This sort of windows tomfoolery is all new to me. The last time I did anything "serious" with windows it was NT 4 SBS.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/disk2vhd
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/winpe-install-on-a-hard-drive--flat-boot-or-non-ram

# ? May 21, 2018 01:09

the spyder: Feb 18, 2011

I've been out of the job seeking world for a few years and I figure here is a good place to ask. I need to clean up my resume and I swear there was a service years ago in SA mart- is this long since gone?

# ? May 21, 2018 01:22

George H.W. Cunt: Oct 6, 2010

the spyder posted:

I've been out of the job seeking world for a few years and I figure here is a good place to ask. I need to clean up my resume and I swear there was a service years ago in SA mart- is this long since gone?

The dude sold it and the quality has since gone way down with a massive price increase. Better off finding something on fiverr

# ? May 21, 2018 01:25

MC Fruit Stripe: Nov 26, 2002; around and around we go

I like to ask a similar question every 12 to 18 months because I am selfish and never want to be out of the loop.

MC Fruit Stripe fucked around with this message at 07:47 on May 9, 2019

# ? May 21, 2018 01:32

the spyder: Feb 18, 2011

George H.W. oval office posted:

The dude sold it and the quality has since gone way down with a massive price increase. Better off finding something on fiverr

Thanks! It's time for a company-change and I want to give it the best shot.

# ? May 21, 2018 02:09

Methanar: Sep 26, 2013; by the sex ghost

MC Fruit Stripe posted:

I like to ask a similar question every 12 to 18 months because I am selfish and never want to be out of the loop.

What books or websites would everyone recommend? Can be as general or specific as you like - anything from "how to IT" to an esoteric Kubernetes blog. Any IT related topic is fine. Share your best sources of information!

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3653857&userid=204963&perpage=40&pagenumber=18

# ? May 21, 2018 02:14

nullfunction: Jan 24, 2005; Nap Ghost

I haven't had a ton of reading time these last few months, but I did just finish the O'Reilly Microservices book, and it's a pretty quick read. Good if you're looking for an intro to the topic.

I just started Distributed Systems the other day, and I somehow doubt I'm going to make it through all 700 pages. :smithicide:

Methanar posted:

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3653857&userid=214401&perpage=40&pagenumber=4

# ? May 21, 2018 02:32

dogstile: May 1, 2012; fucking clocks
how do they work?

Tab8715 posted:

Uhh... I�m one of the folks who wants Bluetooth.

It's a parody post.

# ? May 21, 2018 09:49

Thanks Ants: May 21, 2004; #essereFerrari

MC Fruit Stripe posted:

I like to ask a similar question every 12 to 18 months because I am selfish and never want to be out of the loop.

What books or websites would everyone recommend? Can be as general or specific as you like - anything from "how to IT" to an esoteric Kubernetes blog. Any IT related topic is fine. Share your best sources of information!

I like "The No rear end in a top hat Rule"

# ? May 21, 2018 11:08

guppy: Sep 21, 2004; sting like a byob

Thanks Ants posted:

I like "The No rear end in a top hat Rule"

I read this book and I was really disappointed by it. It's a few pieces of advice that I can almost guarantee you already know, wrapped in 200 pages of "I'm saying 'rear end in a top hat' in a business book! Look how transgressive and funny I am." Here, let me help you skip reading it by dispensing the advice myself:

1. You're probably a dick at work sometimes, and you should stop. Monitor your own behavior to make sure you're not the one being a dick.

2. When someone else is a dick at work, try to tune it out until you leave for a new job.

There! I saved you $15, which is the price that Amazon has the nerve to charge for this piece of poo poo. This and Throwing The Elephant by Stanley Bing come up as recommendations now and again, and they are both garbage containing virtually no actionable advice, I wish I hadn't bought them and you shouldn't either.

# ? May 21, 2018 12:02

Vargatron: Apr 19, 2008; MRAZZLE DAZZLE

guppy posted:

2. When someone else is a dick at work, try to tune it out until you leave for a new job.

Basically what I did, so yes.

# ? May 21, 2018 13:17

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Tab8715 posted:

It�s disabled entirely but there�s slowly becoming an angry rebellion of users that have wireless mice, keyboard and headsets that are annoyed. Every new device that cons out these days is Bluetooth.

Bluetooth is disabled here too, so I bought an USB Bluetooth transmitter and just use that. And yes, that's a very dumb idea and now that I think about it I should probably just bring in my wired trackball.

# ? May 21, 2018 13:25

Judge Schnoopy: Nov 2, 2005; dont even TRY it, pal

While it's not IT related, I think 'the subtle art of not giving a gently caress' is good reading for anybody getting into the industry. It's important to learn early what to care about and what to brush off to avoid burnout.

# ? May 21, 2018 13:35

Schadenboner: Aug 15, 2011; by Shine

Krispy Wafer posted:

Bluetooth is disabled here too, so I bought an USB Bluetooth transmitter and just use that. And yes, that's a very dumb idea and now that I think about it I should probably just bring in my wired trackball.

Is this it? https://www.amazon.com/Kensington-Orbit-Trackball-Scroll-K72337US/dp/B002OOWB3O/

# ? May 21, 2018 13:39

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Schadenboner posted:

Is this it? https://www.amazon.com/Kensington-Orbit-Trackball-Scroll-K72337US/dp/B002OOWB3O/

Close:

https://www.amazon.com/Kensington-T...ngton+trackball

# ? May 21, 2018 13:49

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

guppy posted:

I read this book and I was really disappointed by it. It's a few pieces of advice that I can almost guarantee you already know, wrapped in 200 pages of "I'm saying 'rear end in a top hat' in a business book! Look how transgressive and funny I am." Here, let me help you skip reading it by dispensing the advice myself:

1. You're probably a dick at work sometimes, and you should stop. Monitor your own behavior to make sure you're not the one being a dick.

2. When someone else is a dick at work, try to tune it out until you leave for a new job.

There! I saved you $15, which is the price that Amazon has the nerve to charge for this piece of poo poo. This and Throwing The Elephant by Stanley Bing come up as recommendations now and again, and they are both garbage containing virtually no actionable advice, I wish I hadn't bought them and you shouldn't either.

There are essentially two types of books on business philosophy. One is the David Heinemeier Hansson style, like ReWork, in which there's a lot of lore and doctrine surrounding the author's viewpoints, but basically no rationale supporting any of it aside from the author's survivorship bias. See also: Ricardo Semler's Maverick. They're entertaining and often inspiring stories about how a workplace can look, but they're not universally applicable, and they contain no guidance to show you if you should be trying to apply them to your workplace or not. On the other side is someone like Bob Sutton, whose books are a bibliography of great research. See also: Steve McConnell. If you don't care about the research, and only want the author's opinions, avoid writers like Sutton and stick to the Malcolm Gladwells of business. You'll finish the book a lot faster, which will leave you lots more time to read the next author's unsubstantiated opinions and form your own.

Sutton's book is not supposed to be actionable. It's supposed to be empowering as you manage up. And not to belabor the point: most of the advice in the book is modern canon in the inclusive and often liberal circles of technology management, but was extremely unorthodox at the time the book came out, when the mythology of the 10x programmer was at its peak.

On the other hand: a lot of Bob Sutton's books do repeat the same points and the same research when read against each other, so if you have already read Good Boss, Bad Boss or any of his other more recent books, I would still advise against The No rear end in a top hat Rule due to sheer duplication.

Vulture Culture fucked around with this message at 14:35 on May 21, 2018

# ? May 21, 2018 14:30

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

Hey, let's cement all our career cynicism in eponymous laws! Examples:

Goodhart's Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

Here's Vulture Culture's Law:

As storage becomes cheaper, and the cost of preserving and retaining worthless data approaches 0, the business value of a hard disk remains fixed even as capacity increases.

# ? May 21, 2018 14:38

Judge Schnoopy: Nov 2, 2005; dont even TRY it, pal

Vulture Culture posted:

Hey, let's cement all our career cynicism in eponymous laws! Examples:

Goodhart's Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

Here's Vulture Culture's Law:

As storage becomes cheaper, and the cost of preserving and retaining worthless data approaches 0, the business value of a hard disk remains fixed even as capacity increases.

So essentially, "Garbage data expands to fill the capacity of available storage"?

# ? May 21, 2018 15:07

Schadenboner: Aug 15, 2011; by Shine

Judge Schnoopy posted:

So essentially, "Garbage data expands to fill the capacity of available storage"?

It seems more like a corollary to Parkinson's law, really.

# ? May 21, 2018 15:14

dogstile: May 1, 2012; fucking clocks
how do they work?

If I could drill one point into a book over and over again, it would be "How long do you think this should take to do? Double it and tell your boss that number".

I look like a goddamn superstar compared to when i'd give them accurate deadlines and stuck to them.

# ? May 21, 2018 15:20

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

Schadenboner posted:

It seems more like a corollary to Parkinson's law, really.

This was definitely not brought on by an instance where the engineering time to clean up a bunch of S3 buckets cost more than just keeping the data in them until Amazon V'ger attempts to destroy the planet.

# ? May 21, 2018 15:22

rafikki: Mar 8, 2008; I see what you did there. (It's pretty easy, since ducks have a field of vision spanning 340 degrees.)

~SMcD

dogstile posted:

If I could drill one point into a book over and over again, it would be "How long do you think this should take to do? Double it and tell your boss that number".

I look like a goddamn superstar compared to when i'd give them accurate deadlines and stuck to them.

http://projectmanagementhacks.com/project-management-skills/

# ? May 21, 2018 15:25

Schadenboner: Aug 15, 2011; by Shine

Krispy Wafer posted:

Close:

https://www.amazon.com/Kensington-T...ngton+trackball

Is the ring lightly clicky (<- I don't know how to describe what that means other than feeling like turning the scroll wheel on a Microsoft Mouse)?

# ? May 21, 2018 15:26

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

Schadenboner posted:

Is the ring lightly clicky (<- I don't know how to describe what that means other than feeling like turning the scroll wheel on a Microsoft Mouse)?

You know, I don't recall as I haven't used it in a couple of years. I can't remember if it had resistance, but at the same time I don't think it moved entirely freely. I'll know soon enough as I become that guy with the trackball again.

# ? May 21, 2018 15:45

Dr. Arbitrary: Mar 15, 2006; Bleak Gremlin

dogstile posted:

If I could drill one point into a book over and over again, it would be "How long do you think this should take to do? Double it and tell your boss that number".

I look like a goddamn superstar compared to when i'd give them accurate deadlines and stuck to them.

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

# ? May 21, 2018 16:18

Schadenboner: Aug 15, 2011; by Shine

I always found the Peter Principle to be legit useful when talking with people (that is, every job is held by someone who was good enough at their last job to get promoted to this job but not good enough at this job to be promoted out of it).

# ? May 21, 2018 16:21

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

Dr. Arbitrary posted:

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

Mustmayostardayonnaise's Law: a feedback loop exists between Hofstadter's Law and Parkinson's Law.

Schadenboner posted:

I always found the Peter Principle to be legit useful when talking with people (that is, every job is held by someone who was good enough at their last job to get promoted to this job but not good enough at this job to be promoted out of it).

Less cynically: every job is a learning experience, not just yours, so be kind to others

# ? May 21, 2018 16:35

H110Hawk: Dec 28, 2006

dogstile posted:

If I could drill one point into a book over and over again, it would be "How long do you think this should take to do? Double it and tell your boss that number".

I look like a goddamn superstar compared to when i'd give them accurate deadlines and stuck to them.

"15 minutes is an hour, an hour is a day, and a day is end of the week." - Your schedule moves and changes with the wind, and everything takes way longer than you think it should. Doubly so when talking to outside teams. If you're talking to your boss about prioritization then make sure to be crystal clear about what you aren't doing in order to accomplish this new task. "That should take around an hour, I would have to stop working on X to do Y. OK?"

If the answer is "stay late and do both" that's fine, but it should be said out loud.

# ? May 21, 2018 16:49

Agrikk: Oct 17, 2003; Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.

dogstile posted:

If I could drill one point into a book over and over again, it would be "How long do you think this should take to do? Double it and tell your boss that number".

I look like a goddamn superstar compared to when i'd give them accurate deadlines and stuck to them.

This is not quite the Rule of Civil Service: double the number and increment the unit up one for any duration. 10 minutes becomes twenty hours, two days becomes four months, etc.

The original number is probably valid if you were alone and working uninterrupted in a vacuum with no external dependencies. But you aren�t and you aren�t and you do so have, so yeah.

# ? May 21, 2018 16:57

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

You can also think differently about the way your team approaches interruptive work so that this doesn't constantly happen.

# ? May 21, 2018 17:30

kensei: Dec 27, 2007; He has come home, where he belongs. The Ancient Mariner returns to lead his first team to glory, forever and ever. Amen!

Friends, who do you use for your SSL and DNS? I want to move to one provider for both, and am wondering what you all use. I am leaning Namecheap but would love to see alternatives.

# ? May 21, 2018 17:47

Bob Morales: Aug 18, 2006; ~~Just wear the fucking mask, Bob~~

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

kensei posted:

Friends, who do you use for your SSL and DNS? I want to move to one provider for both, and am wondering what you all use. I am leaning Namecheap but would love to see alternatives.

GoDaddy....no problems with them really, that's where the domains were when I got here.

# ? May 21, 2018 17:54

H110Hawk: Dec 28, 2006

kensei posted:

Friends, who do you use for your SSL and DNS? I want to move to one provider for both, and am wondering what you all use. I am leaning Namecheap but would love to see alternatives.

What are your requirements?

DNS: NS1 is the clear leader in DNS tech right now.
SSL: Why not letsencrypt? Otherwise sort by price least to greatest.

Don't use Godaddy it's awful. Their phone support is great, their chat support is of negative usefulness.

# ? May 21, 2018 18:15

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 16:21

deedee megadoodoo: Sep 28, 2000; Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one to Flavortown, and that has made all the difference.

I like Cloudflare.

# ? May 21, 2018 18:18

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