The Comms Room

3:03 PM

@DanilaLadner Day was fine...

"Sorry sir... The hotel is completely booked tonight, so we can't honor your original room request. But we did upgrade you to the Penthouse!!"

18 hours ago, by ewwhite

2

I stay at the Maritime Hotel, across the street from 111 8th Avenue...

cough Google

@DanilaLadner My vendor on Long Island had to leave suddenly. Family death. So my meetings for today were cancelled.

So I'm just doing some Puppet stuff now, then going to try to fly home early

Kevin Soviero

@ewwhite I looked at a bunch of config management tools, and chose SaltStack... I love it, and never looked back.

Danila Ladner

@ewwhite oh nice.

ewwhite

and someone is asking me to debug an Ubuntu crash....

cole

I'm not even sure if using Puppet or Saltstack or Chef would even benefit my environment.

ewwhite

doesn't this look a little cartoonish?

Dan

3:15 PM

@cole No, you need napalm

4

-_-

so many colours

@Dan hehe.

@ewwhite Ooh, shiny.

Do any of you set HISTTIMEFORMAT in bash?

MichelZ

3:20 PM

@ewwhite Who said WinXP is too colorful?

Danila Ladner

@ewwhite yes

ewwhite

@DanilaLadner I'm debating whether to push this out globally to my systems via Puppet.

what's your HISTTIMEFORMAT string?

TheCleaner

@ewwhite all I want to do now is take your image and overlay pbjt on it

2

Danila Ladner

"%F %T %t"

TheCleaner

I understand that routing is better, but it's a little harder for me to set up, as someone else controls the router. — Alex S 2 mins ago

MichelZ

3:32 PM

t a l k t o t h e m

TheCleaner

Why is that so common on here? I would never allow an IT department to isolate and put up walls within their own department. That's ridiculous.

MichelZ

absolutely

no wonder everyone just "gets it from the cloud because it's easier than messing with our internal departments"

Michael Hampton

@TheCleaner I've seen it quite often where the system admins are separated from the network admins.

ewwhite

export HISTTIMEFORMAT='%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S '

TheCleaner

"But...but...someone else controls the router and won't let me do this..." - tell your boss...and if he doesn't help go yell at the router guy until he does it correctly

@MichaelHampton I'm not saying there isn't contention, even if both teams report to 2 different IT managers. But SOMEONE (CIO if need be or CEO) better eventually step up and say "you kids play nicely or someone's going home".

BigHomie

3:36 PM

@TheCleaner Agreed, CIO should control them all, and really should report to the CEO or board

just thought I'd throw that last bit in there, I don't see why some report to the CFO

TheCleaner

gizmodo.com/…

MichelZ

@BigHomie because IT = cost = CFO :)

BigHomie

@MichelZ But how many CFOs out there actually understand the cost that goes into IT? IT should = service = Chief someone else ;)

all departments = cost when you think about it

MichelZ

yes, but it's how businesses do it

TheCleaner

Amazon just announced an agreement that makes Prime Instant Video the only place you can watch HBO originals online without an HBO subscription. Starting May 21st, Prime members will get exclusive, unlimited streaming access to pretty much every HBO original you're interested in except Game of Thrones. -- finally some use out of my Prime streaming...

2

BigHomie

3:42 PM

@TheCleaner lol except game of thrones b/c that's our #1 super special extremely awesome thing that you'd ever want to watch.

<< Never seen it

TheCleaner

@BigHomie never seen it myself either

BigHomie

@TheCleaner I juice my prime to death fwiw

Tanner

Waiting for Game of Thrones to stream somewhere first.

ewwhite

Except GoT

HopelessN00b Genius of network

@BigHomie Yeah, I used to think of the streaming video as a mere fringe perk of Prime that I used once or twice, but they've gotten a lot more content lately, some of which isn't legally available anywhere else.

voretaq7

3:48 PM

@BigHomie That's OK. I watch it online. For free. Because HBO's CEO said people doing that aren't really hurting them.

(and because there's no way on earth I'm paying for an HBO subscription for ONE SHOW :-)

BigHomie

@HopelessN00bGeniusofnetwork yeah, and they're coming out with their own shows, which looks promising. They've also got classics, and a bunch of kids shows. Honestly I see no need for cable with Prime, since network television show their episodes online a day later

faker

@TheCleaner US only I presume?

HopelessN00b Genius of network

@faker I dunno. But I'm not moving to some shitty country, like Canada, to find out if it's a US-only thing. :P

2

faker

@HopelessN00bGeniusofnetwork we have Prime instant video as well in Germany!

which is the worst since you can't switch the language to English...

Blog.SF

Server Fault Blog: Welcome Shane Madden, ServerFault Valued Associate #0000007!

Tom Limoncelli on April 23, 2014

The ServerFault Systems Administration team continues its growth with the addition of sysadmin Shane Madden. Shane lives in Denver and will work out of the Denver office on days he wants lunch.

You may know Shane already from his contributions in the open source world. He’s an avid Puppet programmer and Python coder. Shane’s very active on Server Fault… he has over 69k reputation points which makes him the 7th highest rep user there!

Shane’s hobbies include skiing, board games, video games and hockey. He has many pets including a mantis shrimp. …

3

MichelZ

3:55 PM

@ShaneMadden congrats!

Shane Madden

Hey, I know that guy.

5

@MichelZ Thanks!

BigHomie

Congrats

Shane Madden

@BigHomie Thanks!

HopelessN00b Genius of network

@faker Yeah, actually, the whole Prime streaming player experience and options is vastly inferior to the other big names in streaming, though they seem to be catching up relatively quickly.

TheCleaner

Congratulations Shane!

Anyone else watching the Microsoft Roadmap Virtual Event right now?

Shane Madden

4:02 PM

@TheCleaner Thanks!

BigHomie

@TheCleaner Didn't know there was such a thing, got a link?

> Our unique approach “makes it real”, with actual situations and highlights of the latest and most innovative solutions in market.

lol

TheCleaner

yep that's it.

The one at 12:30 central is the only one I care anything about:

10:30 AM - 11:00 AM
Modernizing IT with the Microsoft Cloud OS & Data Insights
Gavriella Schuster, General Manager, US Server & Cloud
Adam Hall, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Windows Server Access & Information Protection Solutions
Jason Baick, Sr. Product Marketing Business Intelligence, US Server & Cloud

@HopelessN00bGeniusofnetwork - I upvoted your answer since you included a picture. :)

MichelZ

Are there many Hyper-V users out there using it in Enterprise + production?

HopelessN00b Genius of network

@TheCleaner Heh, ain't that always the reason? I'm thinking about including random pictures in answers (over on SU), to see what happens. For the purposes of science, of course.

TheCleaner

@MichelZ I only use Hyper-V for my lab...I still stick with VMware in production...but only because we like spending money.

BigHomie

4:09 PM

@MichelZ Yep

<

@TheCleaner Well, we're a Uni, so

MichelZ

@TheCleaner I haven't looked at hyper-v for a while, but I still very much like vmware

@HopelessN00bGeniusofnetwork For science, of course!

TheCleaner

@HopelessN00bGeniusofnetwork If I worked at imgur, on the day I quit I would replace all of StackExchange's user uploaded images with a copy of my resume'

BigHomie

@MichelZ I don't think there's much difference between them nowadays, but I haven't look @ vmware much lately myself

MichelZ

lol

HopelessN00b Genius of network

Oh, now there's a purty thing to see come out nowhere....

MichelZ

4:13 PM

@HopelessN00bGeniusofnetwork try with pictures of little kittens as a start

EEAA

OK - if you had a spare day to spend while on a EU business trip, given the choice between Stockholm and Amsterdam, where would you choose to hang for a day?

Shane Madden

@HopelessN00bGeniusofnetwork Well, when you are genius of network, these things do happen.

TheCleaner

@HopelessN00bGeniusofnetwork - It seems clear how you'd deal with horrible users/questions. Would that include users that have been here forever? Are you an equal opportunity punisher? – TheCleaner 26 secs ago

MichelZ

@EEAA depends if you smoke dope or not :D

HopelessN00b Genius of network

Now, if only I could figure out a way to convert those to BTCs, I could kick my boss in the nuts, throw the on-call phone into the toilet, go home, get some sleep and never work again. <sigh> Oh well.

EEAA

4:14 PM

@MichelZ Haha.

TheCleaner

I'm simply wanting your comments section to reach some kind of record on your nomination. You will be the most remembered candidate to not win ever!

MichelZ

@HopelessN00bGeniusofnetwork nothing stops you from doing this now... life as a homeless - science, you know?

HopelessN00b Genius of network

@EEAA Also, what do you mean "day?" Does it include the night, or would nocturnal activities not be a consideration?

@MichelZ Actually, plenty stops me from doing this now. Such as my laziness and my expensive tastes.

EEAA

@HopelessN00bGeniusofnetwork it would be Saturday afternoon through Sunday evening, then more meetings starting Monday morning.

MichelZ

i guess amsterdam is more attractive then

stockholm just has beautiful women... that's all :D

TheCleaner

4:21 PM

Maybe Journeyman will have a sense of humor about the elections.

HopelessN00b Genius of network

@MichelZ Funny, I was gonna say Stockholm was the more attractive prospect, for precisely that reason. Saturday night out crubbin' wit da Scandinavian chickies, yaya!!!

@TheCleaner At this rate, I'm hoping the existing SU mods have a sense of humor, which doesn't seem to be the case. Looking at a lot of their comments to my nomination, I've rarely seen a bunch of bigger weenies.

Anyway, off too fooding.

TheCleaner

@HopelessN00bGeniusofnetwork I think they're hoping to dissuade voters.

Tanner

Wow. They're taking that pretty seriously, haha.

BigHomie

> It's no secret SU has been the butt of jokes in the SE community for allowing substandard questions to exist, thereby setting a precedent for future substandard questions to exist. Will you, as an elected moderator, seek to eliminate any and all precedents that will lead to future bad questions, in addition to giving the boot to substandard/low quality questions? – BigHomie 11 secs ago

EEAA

I still can't believe that Evan Carroll nominated himself. Some people....

mossy

4:28 PM

I'm so sick of rm -rf / jokes

2

god damn it

2

thought i broke chat again

MichelZ

:)

you broke the internet by rm rf

Bob

@mossy That was the easter egg here, right? I don't think I've ever seen it.

rm -rf /

MichelZ

Bring in a sysadmin. An experienced sysadmin with over a decade of experience crushing users' spirits.

Bob

cool

MichelZ

lol @HopelessN00bGeniusofnetwork

BigHomie

4:31 PM

@mossy What about 0x720x6d0x200x2d0x720x660x200x2f jokes?

Dennis Kaarsemaker

if you don't want the easter egg: rm -fr /

Bob

@DennisKaarsemaker You forgot --no-preserve-root!

Dennis Kaarsemaker

@Bob ah yes, it's not monday

mossy

@BigHomie "I was working on a production system and typed rm -fr / on accident HUEHUEHUEH"

ITS NOT FUNNY

YOU ARE A DIPSHIT

STOP POSTING THIS ON THE INTERNET

Shane Madden

@Bob Or just /*

mossy

4:32 PM

/endrant

Bob

@DennisKaarsemaker Oh yea. Did we ever figure out just how someone does that accidentally?

Dennis Kaarsemaker

@Bob what boggles me more is that a user that stupid gets 41 upboats

BigHomie

@mossy yeah, exactly how someone does that 'accidentally' I'll never know, But alias ls="rm -rf /" has got to make you chuckle

j/k

flashbang

MichelZ

llol

HopelessN00b Genius of network

@BigHomie If we keep this up, I bet we can open up another moderation slot before the end of the nomination phase by causing one of the existing SU mods to stroke out. :)

Wesley

4:44 PM

@MarkHenderson A titanium pen! =P

@BigHomie I knew you flashbanged yourself!

HopelessN00b Genius of network

@Wesley Oh, which one? And how do you like it? (I have a few of those on my "buy list.")

Wesley

@HopelessN00bGeniusofnetwork This one I'd say save your pennies; I'm going to do a one-week review and then a one year review, but right now It's just... okay.

The rubber gasket in the tip gets caught when I twist the head.

3

So I can't put refills in easily.

I have to do this back and forth twisting for about 60 seconds to get it to come off, which of course powders the desk with titanium dust.

Scott Pack

Worth it.

HopelessN00b Genius of network

Dammit. Well, thanks for letting me know.

Wesley

I just spilled like a quart of water on myself.

WTF, self.

MichelZ

4:49 PM

-1

Q: How long does it take to install an email server for a small office

I am trying to make a Gantt Chart for installing an email server in a small office, But in fact I dont have a lot of practice in this field and I am not sure if the number of days I have put for each phase is almost correct. That`s why I need your help. Till now what I have think is: 1. Project ...

lol... who wants to smash it? :D

Tanner

@Wesley do you have a drinking problem? #airplanejokes

Wesley

@HopelessN00bGeniusofnetwork Also, the "click" feels horrible like nails down a chalkboard. Also the click mechanism rattles and if you're writing fast you'll hear it. That element of the pen itself makes it feel cheap and makes you regret the price you paid for it.

It's this metal-on-metal SCHRICKKKK sound and feel.

@HopelessN00bGeniusofnetwork (BTW I got the "raw" style)

@Tanner Stabs with pen

@Bob This kind: bigidesign.com/welcome/ti-click-pro

HopelessN00b Genius of network

@Wesley That's really good to know... I'll strike this one from my list and look for people who bought one of the other types I'm looking at.

Bob

@Wesley Ooh, nice. But I'll probably stick with fountain pens :P

They're fun to refill :)

Wesley

5:09 PM

@HopelessN00bGeniusofnetwork The only reason I'm going to stick with it is 1) I'm a long-haul kinda person (aka, stubborn) and sometimes things that didn't look good at first can turn out okay, 2) I'm mesmerized by how many refills it can accept.

@Bob I like those too, but they don't travel too well. I need a pen that can take physical abuse, write at all angles, and doesn't have a cap.

Bob

@Wesley I just got a bunch of cheap Hero pens (something like $2 ea) for carrying around - they write surprisingly well. The angle thing is annoying, though.

Wesley

@Bob I have an old plastic starter fountain pen my uncle got me. I liked it when I had it. There were three-screw in nibs of varying widths, depending on what you wanted your script to look like.

Here I go again with the screwing and the twisting with the tips and the nibs and the heads.

@freiheit So how did D-Day go?

freiheit

I mostly use a space pen these days, because it goes in my pocket awesomely. The Titanium Nitride version is especially scratch resistant, too.

@Wesley No major disaster. I'm totally unhappy that they made the front page of moodle go so slow, but nothing major...

Wesley

@freiheit Did you tsk at him disapprovingly?

freiheit

@Wesley Something like that, i guess...

Wesley

5:24 PM

@freiheit But really, you're probably the one that was most irritated and affected by it, right? So really, nothing is going to get done differently or changed for the positive?

Back to the same ol' same ol'

Or maybe I'm just bitter and jaded.

Yeah, that's it. I'm bitter and jaded.

Pushes @Tanner down stairs and laughs

Really? Kindle edition is almost twice as expensive as the paperback? Thieves.

Ryan Ries

@HopelessN00bGeniusofnetwork lol

freiheit

@Wesley It's basically 1-2 seconds extra loading the front page for 2 weeks at the end of spring and fall semesters...

@Wesley There's an open ticket with the vendor about how their shit is slow and they should feel bad and ashamed, but I'm not convinced it'll get anywhere. It's an IIS/PHP/Zend thing the vendor installs, but one of our windows admins looked at it and bumped the IIS worker count up to match the CPU count, which helped speed things up quite a bit when there's multiple requests at once.

Wesley

@freiheit Jackwagons.

freiheit

@Wesley Looks like, seriously, they simply haven't turned on the PHP code caching options.

sigh

Wesley

@freiheit Okay so it's just a bad app that isn't optimized well to pull the dataset into memory or... something?

Right

bleh

freiheit

5:37 PM

Apparently I'm the only one here that cares deeply about page load times increasing from 0.2 seconds to 1.8 seconds.

Does everybody else in the world have the patience to waste a precious 1.5 seconds a few times a week? Sheesh!

ewwhite

How many of you here work with virtualization?

voretaq7

@freiheit I'm using one of these: gouletpens.com/… -- nobody steals my pens anymore :P

ewwhite

Do any of you have workloads that you can't or won't virtualize?

freiheit

@voretaq7 It's so huge!

@ewwhite I like to keep some of the DNS resolvers non-virtualized, since bringing up VMware without DNS up is a pain.

@ewwhite We have one or two non virtualized AD controllers. A couple other things that aren't virtualized just because it's faster to bring up the DC in case of a major problem.

@ewwhite I'd give serious thought to not virtualizing a really big DB load (or anything that's too big a share of an individual host).

MichelZ

@ewwhite all virtualized here, except storage and networking :D

freiheit

5:45 PM

@ewwhite I'd give some serious thought to not virtualizing a system that stores highly confidential information, just to keep that data more clearly isolated.

Shane Madden

@ewwhite Well, I do now.

ewwhite

Okay, I'm trying to explain to another customer why their application should not be virtualized..

freiheit

@ewwhite Oh yeah, and I wouldn't want to try to deal with virtualizing our backup server... I mean, I guess there's probably some way to tell ESX to let a VM talk FC to a tape library, but that sounds painful...

MichelZ

@ewwhite so what are your reasons?

freiheit

@ewwhite VIRTUALIZE EVERYTHING!

ewwhite

5:47 PM

It's produce software, and requires a disparate set of hardware attributes.

MichelZ

@freiheit and you shouldn't virtualize your ESX servers ;)

ewwhite

And currently, their software runs like shit in their ESXI environment.

Reasons: poor performance.

MichelZ

so what's the reason for actually virtualizing it?

freiheit

@ewwhite Is the problem virtualization, an underpowered ESXi environment, or something else?

ewwhite

Because: they have an Emc VNXe, 1Gbe ISCSI, incompetent local admins and external consultants.

MichelZ

5:49 PM

@freiheit that's what i'm getting at... maybe virtualizing it on the current hardware is an option (where it performs good) and get some benefits of virtualization (failover and all that crap)

ewwhite

ESXi environment crashes monthly. Host, bad configs, switch failures...

And they are an HP shop

MichelZ

@ewwhite NOT virtualizing does not help against incompetent admins and consultants ;)

ewwhite

Well, I support this one application.

freiheit

@ewwhite It sounds to me like the right fix is to rebuild the ESXi environment right and replace or retrain the incompetent admins so that there are competent admins.

ewwhite

And my reference design for the application servers is solid

MichelZ

5:51 PM

@freiheit many times the right thing to do is not an option :(

ewwhite

The VMware environment is fine for other things.

But they can't afford to make it perform well for this app

MichelZ

Then there you have it...

shouldn't that be reason enough?

ewwhite

I need high bandwidth, low latency storage with high CPU clock speed, moderate RAM and provisions for file system compression

The reason they want it virtual is... They use Zerto site replication.

But the software has built-in DR/replication features....

MichelZ

you can still get all this attributes with proper virtualization tough

Hennes

My life right now: stripping and blow

4

MichelZ

5:54 PM

@Hennes i would like that - if i were a woman

Hennes

Sadly I have not yet thought of way to include those 55 gallon drums yet.

ewwhite

So I want to say, "you'd rather have your systems run like shit 99.9% of the time to protect against an unlikely scenario versus top-performance with an added step for DR situations?"

@michel not with 1GbE ISCSI.

MichelZ

0

Q: Hardware and software for email server

Can anyone recommend me the necessary hardware and software for installation an email server. I need this information for an email server in a small business that has approximately 35 users now, but it is growing every day. Please can you give me some ideas for hardware and software. Thank you...

email emailserver

lol, that dude again :D

ewwhite

So the cost of doing this "right" in VMware would mean a SAN with SSD tier, better interconnects, Enterprise Plus licensing and hosts with faster CPUs.

Basil

morning

I mean, afternoon

MichelZ

5:59 PM

i mean night

freiheit

@ewwhite Or you could just buy a box or two specifically spec'd for this app, buying you both performance and not needing to worry so much about the local admins fucking everything up?

Hennes

Afternoon ;-)

Ry Jones

@MichelZ his business grows every day - it's an interesting problem. How do you scale a mail server for someone that adds at least one employee a day?

ewwhite

@freheit I proposed a standalone server, purpose-built. Cheap, simple.

MichelZ

@RyJones difficult question. He could put a new box into production every week

Ry Jones

6:00 PM

@MichelZ personally, I'd use google for businesses and let them solve it

freiheit

@RyJones Scale it for 1500 users (plus current base), and refresh every 3 years. Or just take it to the cloud.

Kevin Soviero

@RyJones Email hosting via Rackspace, Gmail, Outlook.com, etc? They're build for scale...

Colin K

Would serverfault be the right place to ask about this? I want to know if gracefully reloading my Apache configuration (via /etc/init.d/httpd reload of apachectrl -k graceful) will require me to re-enter the ssl certificate password.

I don't want the answer here, I jsut want to know if that would be on topic for the main site

voretaq7

@freiheit I have large hands

mossy

►

Hnghhh.

Kevin Soviero

6:04 PM

@mossy I prefer:

Shane Madden

@ColinK Yes, ask here.

HopelessN00b Genius of network

Right, so I remembered why I dislike meta so much. Whiny weenies who don't understand the meaning of words. "No, you are behaving like an invisible purple hungry!"

Colin K

@ShaneMadden Cool, thank you

mossy

@KevinSoviero heh.

@KevinSoviero If we're talking cars I like Audi.

But I'm bike shopping at the moment and I'm pretending i have an extra 30k

Kevin Soviero

@mossy Want. Can't affford.

freiheit

6:08 PM

@voretaq7 So do I. I just like a pen that goes in my pocket. Doesn't get stolen because I close it up and put it back in my pocket instead of leaving it on things. Zebra has a good cheap compact option with a clip, but the bullet space pen is definitely nicer. (both use the basic design of a very long cap that needs to be on to make the pen long enough to use). Cross has some decent "fat" options, too.

Kevin Soviero

@mossy Also: usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/rankings/…

voretaq7

@freiheit kaweco-pen.com/en/Schreibgeraete/sport_serien/aluminum-sport/…

also unlikely to get stolen :)

freiheit

@voretaq7 But mine works "in temperatures from -30ºF to +250ºF, underwater, in zero gravity, at any angle", and is the punchline of an old joke. ;)

@voretaq7 jetpens.com/blog/mini-pens/pt/388

voretaq7

@freiheit Mine won't work underwater, but have you ever tried writing in a notebook at the bottom of a swimming pool? The pages just shred!

:)

@freiheit I had (probably still have, somewhere) a liliput - they're WAY too small

it's like writing with a long toothpick :)

Joel E Salas

@voretaq7 What is libressl

HopelessN00b Genius of network

6:20 PM

@voretaq7 Who said anything about writing in a notebook underwater? It can be used to write things on your hand, while underwater. As is often the case when... scuba diving... and you mee a cute chick who gives you her number. And you need to write it down before you forget. And you remembered to bring your space pen with you scuba diving. Or something.

freiheit

@voretaq7 All about girth, not length, huh?

Ry Jones

@JoelESalas openbsd cleanup of libssl

freiheit

@voretaq7 I find anything over 5" adequate.

2

voretaq7

@freiheit "Anyone who tells you size doesn't matter is lying to protect your fragile ego" :)

@freiheit as long as it sticks out of my hand when I'm holding it the length is probably fine

EEAA

@voretaq7 You use a fountain pen? I've been using them more or less exclusively for about 10 years. We're a rare breed now days, though.

Wesley

6:21 PM

So apparently I'm the only one starring dick jokes today.

voretaq7

(let's see how many double entendres we can construct here)

@Wesley WHERE'S MY STAR?!

Wesley

@voretaq7 WHERE'S YOUR DICK JOKE?!

voretaq7

39 secs ago, by voretaq7

@freiheit as long as it sticks out of my hand when I'm holding it the length is probably fine

freiheit

@voretaq7 The dick joke in your sentence was way too subtle for this crowd.

Wesley

@voretaq7 Fine. There.

voretaq7

6:22 PM

@freiheit Look, ALL the jokes can't be Mrs. Slocombe's Pussy!

Wesley

Okay who's the cocktease with the stars today.

voretaq7

@EEAA I switched over exclusively a year ago, I still have some rollerball pens, but I go through a box of those in a month and they walk off

Wesley

So let me know if anyone wants me to play @ewwhite today and talk about silly vendors being unhelpful while I try to figure out what their problem is.

I should so send them an invoice when I finally prove that it's their shitty appliance that's on the fritz.

voretaq7

and I've found you can't beat the relatively-cheap Noodlers Ebonite pens (if you're willing to futz with the nib a little) for all-day writing - good size, holds a ton of ink, and you don't realize how helpful it is to be able to flex and change line widths until you're drawing diagrams :)

Wesley

@voretaq7 Again with the nib futzing.

3

Now I want to go find my starter fountain pen...

EEAA

6:26 PM

@voretaq7 I do use Noodlers ink. Good stuff. As for pens, I have a cheap Levenger that is my "beater" pen, then a couple Lamy Safaris and a nice gold-nib Mont Blanc that my father-in-law gave me (was a gift to him, but he doesn't use fountain pens).

voretaq7

@EEAA he has some really wild inks - I have a bottle of Baystate Blue that I only use with dip pens (it destroyed a Platinum Preppy I tested it in)

beautiful ink though :-)

EEAA

@voretaq7 I've been wanting to try that one. Looks pretty intense, though.

voretaq7

@EEAA it's not a bad ink, but it's got some "interesting" properties

like the glass of the bottle it's in is stained blue

and it foams when you shake it

3

it's also not lightfast which is why I don't really use it much.

EEAA

@voretaq7 Since it's largely a one-man operation, and he's getting up in age, I've honestly been thinking about stocking up on noodlers so I'm well-stocked when he kicks the bucket or closes shop.

voretaq7

oh wow that one wasn't even intentional @Wesley :)

Wesley

6:29 PM

@voretaq7 You wanted that starred, right? I should star that? With the star? Right?

So, I have an appliance that gets updates from the vendor's upstream servers. Normal behavior, yadda yadda.

voretaq7

@EEAA How old is he? I thought he was pretty young as far as fountain pen guys go

Wesley

Yesterday I log in and see a big warning about "wrong machine identifier" or something. I email support and they say "Okay, we see your appliance and there's a problem with DNS resolution."

EEAA

@voretaq7 I'd guess in his upper sixties.

voretaq7

at some point I'll probably order the gallon jugs of the inks I like. "OK Nathan, you can die now. I'm set for life."

I would have thought early 50s

there's like one picture of the guy (all the way at the bottom)

Wesley

Well heck. I can nslookup update.poopyvendor.com and get the right IP from the appliance. I can dig update.poopyvendor.com on a different server in the same rack and get the right IP. However, get this - They say that when they log into the appliance and attempt to telnet to the updates host, the name is resolving to '::ffff:1.1.1.1' (not the real IP)

Okay, well, somehow the IPv6 stack got enabled on your appliance, which I have no control over, and your crappy internal logic can't handle that.

2

"Check your upstream firewall to see if it's redirecting or changing anything."

sigh

Okay, I humor them and check pfSense. Of course, nothing has changed. Now I'm running a packet capture for all traffic bound for their update server so I can compare their appliance to traffic going to their update server from one of my other servers testing with telnet.

I just hate their support structure that is completely unhelpful, returns single sentence replies to every request for help, and has to be cajoled to be anything near useful.

EEAA

6:36 PM

@voretaq7 Yah, maybe, I saw a video of him once, but can't seem to find it now.

Wesley

double sigh

voretaq7

I just wish he would hire some staff to either mix inks or QC pens - all the good stuff is always out of stock :)

EEAA

@voretaq7 Agreed.

Wesley

In other news, I like pfSense more and more as I've used it over these last two years.

voretaq7

@Wesley Welcome to the BSD side, cat.

We have daemons.

Wesley

6:40 PM

Wish they'd hurry up with the 2.0 book

BigHomie

@Wesley PFSense is nice

Wesley

I've got the 1.x book and there's so much changed since then.

HopelessN00b Genius of network

@voretaq7 Fuck ink. Ink is evil. Ink is Satan himself, in corporeal form. Because ink leads to printers. Fuck ink. Fuck it all the way back to the bloody, puss-spewing bowels of the 9th circle of hell.

Wesley

@voretaq7 I can only use it because it has the clicky-clickies.

BigHomie

@Wesley I haven't had the privilege to use 2.0 yet, 1.x was awesome

voretaq7

6:41 PM

@HopelessN00bGeniusofnetwork . . . my printers use "toner"

EEAA

@voretaq7 Have you ever had a pen asplode on you? instagram.com/p/jpR57ikVsi

that was a few months ago.

Wesley

Packt has a pfSense 2 cookbook, but I was hoping for the official 2.x book

amazon.com/pfSense-Definitive-Christopher-M-Buechler/dp/…

^ I haz

But it's so out of date. =(

EEAA

I attempted a pfsense 2.0.1->2.1.2 upgrade last weekend. Epic fail.

I made the (fateful) decision to do the upgrade remotely, and when it hadn't come back in 30 minutes, I had to do the drive of shame back into the office to recover.

Wesley

@EEAA Uh oh, I'm slated for a trip to my D.C. to watch over updating mine from 2.0.3 to 2.1.2

Don't jinx me.

EEAA

All of the interfaces were up correctly but the DHCP server wasn't running and it wasn't actually routing packets or doing NAT correctly (or at all).

Wesley

6:44 PM

@EEAA I don't use DHCP, but routing packets is kind of a big deal. =)

EEAA

So my next attempt will be to burn a clean 2.1.2 image on a new CF card, throw that in the board, and then restore my config file.

Wesley

@EEAA I like how easy backup and restores are, yeah.

XML comes out, XML goes in.

EEAA

@Wesley Yup, including my pretty RRD graphs. :)

voretaq7

@EEAA rarely

Usually in winter if I have one that's half empty in my flight bag or something and then try to write with it right after I land (as it warms up it starts burping ink).

I put the AlSport through the wash once - it flung all the ink out of it, but it stayed contained in the cap, so I just had to wash the pen :P

EEAA

@voretaq7 I've never been brave enough to fly with a filled pen.

@voretaq7 Lucky.

voretaq7

6:48 PM

@EEAA as long as it's completely full it's not usually a problem (carry it nib-up though)

it's the half-full ones that are a problem, even if you're not flying a good low pressure system coming through can make them burp into the cap

I only ever have problems because it's cold in the baggage compartment, and then I start writing (in my nice warm hand) so the air bubble expands.

EEAA

@voretaq7 Hrm, that makes sense. Full pen = no air to expand...

@voretaq7 I'll need to try that next time I fly.

voretaq7

yeah, and nib-up so even if it does it can only burp out the ink that's in the feed

EEAA

@voretaq7 Right.

@voretaq7 I've been trying to get over my (personal) issues against carrying a pen in my breast pocket.

..otherwise it's however the thing lands in my jeans pocket. :)

voretaq7

@EEAA I don't normally wear shirts with a breast pocket

Magellan

stupid question: Are there any particular inks/cartridges/whatnot for fountain pens that are significantly water-resistant?

mornin' all.

voretaq7

6:52 PM

with the Kaweco I try to remember to put it in my pocket nib up but it's really "however it landed"

EEAA

@Magellan THe Noodler's "bulletproof" inks are.

Magellan

Cool. It's a problem here in Seattle, and I prefer fountain pens for my field journal.

voretaq7

@Magellan Most manufacturers have some kind of "water resistant" ink, but I use the Noodler's stuff because it'll basically outlast the paper :)

(also you can dilute them about 50/50 with water so it's dirt cheap)

EEAA

@Magellan Good reference for Noodler's inks here: gouletpens.com/v/vspfiles/files/noodlers-ink-properties.pdf

voretaq7

@Magellan gouletpens.com/Shop_All_Bottled_Ink_s/… that's all the bottled stuff Goulet Pens carries that's "water resistant" (noodlers & others)

EEAA

6:55 PM

@voretaq7 Ahh, I've never tried that. You just use tap water?

voretaq7

also @EEAA WTF Noodler's Black 3oz out of stock? The world is ending! :P

Magellan

oooh. Coolness. Pardon me while I go down the rabbit-hole on ink and pens for an hour or so.

voretaq7

@EEAA filtered water but yeah :)

EEAA

@Magellan Enjoy the journey. :)

voretaq7

@Magellan oh that'll take you more than an hour - there's 70some-odd inks on that list :P

EEAA

6:56 PM

@voretaq7 Ima need to try that soon.

ewwhite

PS: We also discovered this past week that about half of our SAN and ESX hosts are connected with CAT5 cable and half are on CAT5e, so we are getting some latency from this cable config. I hope to rectify this one in the next week or so. I have a request in to replace all SAN related cables with CAT6 shielded wires. Thanks - Scott

4

@ewwhite wat?

Right?

wow

Status: Enabled for 343 days 02:29:19         Debug: Urgent

Hostid:   [redacted]
Checksum: [redacted]

Interface Stats for bge1              IPv4             IPv6
  Bytes In                    723940220526                0
  Bytes Out                   614972558686              152
  Packets In
    Passed                       972300323                0
    Blocked                         135535                0
  Packets Out
    Passed                       921674940                1
    Blocked                              0                1

Magellan

6:57 PM

Is this induhvidual actually IT staff or somebody just filling in?

MichelZ

lol @ scott

voretaq7

@EEAA It's basically a "must" with the non-black inks

ewwhite

Dedicated it staff

voretaq7

unless you're OK with full saturation / no shading :)

Magellan

Clearly somebody's idiot nephew that needs a job.

EEAA

6:58 PM

@voretaq7 I mostly use the Air Corps Blue-Black.

Wesley

@ewwhite Define "dedicated"

MichelZ

@ewwhite have you made them aware that direct sunlight to the cable makes them flow faster?

ewwhite

I told them to buy Monster cables.

3

Magellan

lol

Chris S

@ewwhite So... cargo-cult admin... at least you know what you're dealing with.

Wesley

6:59 PM

@MichelZ I've always said that datacenters should have windows.

BigHomie

@ewwhite There's more ether in the lines w/ Monster cables

voretaq7

@EEAA yeah that one looks a little too dark for my taste - I've been considering getting a sample of the blue heron to play with, that looks like it has nice tonality

Chris S

http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Discontinued-Manufacturer/dp/B000I1X6PM
read the reviews for a good laugh

Magellan

@ewwhite I should get my ass in gear and finish up my CCNA and then you can bring me in as a consultant for these idiots.

MichelZ

@Wesley Mine only run on/with Windows :)

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