The Comms Room

WesleyDavid

1:42 AM

Hey, I have an idea for a new badge. How about a badge for how much total reputation you've given away for bounties?

500 rep gets bronze, 2500 silver, 5000 gold?

@TomOConnor Someone is salutation hunting? I have a mind to do that myself, but limit myself to two per day.

Also, I've found some interesting search queries for unanswered questions that I think I can frack for reputation.

cackles

Journeyman Geek

i think there's one badge for the first time you do it

that said, i know of someone who answers nothing but bounty questions

WesleyDavid

@JourneymanGeek mhmm, I think it's for when you manually award it on someone else's question.

Journeyman Geek

ya

WesleyDavid

woohoo, 500 point bounty really gets eyeballs onto a question don't it

Journeyman Geek

ya ;p

WesleyDavid

1:47 AM

As much as I tease SuperUser, I do like having it as a resource for just this reason, and I consider the rep I earn as insurance for needing to ask questions like this one.

Now, of course, I need to spend this upcoming week earning that 500 back so I can have it in case of another oddball problem.

I made 80 rep today, so only lost 420

"only"

Journeyman Geek

lol

It is useful, just needs some filtering out

and every so often we get crap migrated over ;p

WesleyDavid

@JourneymanGeek Yeah, sorry about that. We tended for a while to migrate everything there. Now, I almost never vote to migrate and almost always vote to close.

Journeyman Geek

@WesleyDavid: well, in general. SO is quite bad about it too

WesleyDavid

If professional IT people can't be bothered to ask on the correct site, then they can copy and paste it.

Journeyman Geek

lol

WesleyDavid

1:58 AM

StackOverflow has made an art form out of atrocious migrations.

If bad migrations were an olympic event, the olympic committee would have to forge platinum metals just for StackOverflow.

freiheit

@WesleyDavid You sure they wouldn't need a few iridium medals in there, because platinum isn't quite precious enough?

WesleyDavid

@freiheit I was thinking about drilling some rubies into the Hope diamond.

freiheit

@WesleyDavid Go with red emeralds instead.

WesleyDavid

2:47 AM

Wow, did I just misspell metals for medals?
Someone kick me down some stairs.

I wish I had a decent reason for that, but sadly I think it's just because I'm an idiot.

WesleyDavid

3:27 AM

Seriously, WTF Norway.

Dead Snow

Dead Snow () is a 2009 Norwegian horror film directed by Tommy Wirkola, starring Charlotte Frogner, Stig Frode Henriksen, Bjørn Sundquist, Ane Dahl Torp and Jenny Skavlan. Plot A woman, Sara, (Ane Dahl Torp) is being chased through the snows of Norway. She is ultimately cornered and eaten by zombies in World War II Schutzstaffel (SS) uniforms. Seven students on Easter vacation arrive at a small cabin near Øksfjord. The cabin is owned by Sara, Vegard's (Lasse Valdal) girlfriend. The group begins to drink and party until a mysterious hiker (Bjørn Sundquist) arrives. He tells them the da...

WesleyDavid

4:21 AM

Odd, I've always pronounced it "BUY-ose"

0

Q: Is it pronounced bi-Ahs or bi-Ohs

For as long as I've known, I and everyone I've encountered pronounces BIOS as bi-Ohs. Since listening to the Stackoverflow podcast I'm still surprised to hear Jeff say bi-Ahs. Just when I thought it was an Atwoodism, Michael Pryor made the same enunciation on episode 51. Right or wrong, how is...

bios

Journeyman Geek

5:23 AM

is that on topic? ;p

Mark Henderson

@WesleyDavid - you still around?

WesleyDavid

6:11 AM

@MarkHenderson Am now, for a bit. Sup?

WesleyDavid

6:27 AM

@MarkHenderson Sydney, hmm? Australia is looking nicer and nicer to me... especially as the political debates continue on.

Now any nice single Australian girls that would like to sponsor me? =P

Ward

@WesleyDavid bi-aus (like the first syllable of Australia)

WesleyDavid

@Ward Heresy.

Oh, and I have to say, Canada is rounding out the top 5 places for me to expatriate to. But... but... Y U SO COLD?!

Ward

And it's off-topic.

We aren't cold in Vancouver, but we got more rain today than you probably get in a decade.

WesleyDavid

@Ward Prolly. I grew up in Oregon though, so I could handle it. Mebee. I didn't particularly like it though. I think was meant for Arizona.

Thus, I might flee to Brisbane or Melbourne

But remember, to me, anything below 65F is cold. =)

Ward

6:44 AM

Unless you stick to the coast, OR gets a lot hotter than we do.

WesleyDavid

I grew up in the Valley. Very temperate. People are usually flummoxed when I tell tham that OR is 2/3 desert - or at least chaparral. High and dry.

Cascades to a lovely job of scraping all the orographic rain out of the weather that rampages through the coast and valley from the Pacific.

Mark Henderson

@WesleyDavid I uhh couldn't help but notice that you flagged a question that you had not only upvoted, but starred ;)

And I was just going to make fun of it, but the moment has passed :P

@WesleyDavid Melbourne is cold. Brisbane is quite nice

Melbourne gets about two weeks of really nice weather every year, around early January (so, about now)

WesleyDavid

@MarkHenderson The upvote was mistaken. The star - well - it was still interesting. =P

@MarkHenderson Gold coast. WTF THE HOTTIES!

Mark Henderson

@WesleyDavid Gold Coast is like Las Vegas. All around a bit gross and fake, but if you're into that... then go for it ;)

WesleyDavid

Seriously, they must kill the ugly ones when they hit 13 or something. Either that or ship them to other states.

@MarkHenderson Gross and fake? Dude, I'm American. I didn't even notice.

=D

Mark Henderson

6:50 AM

Just south of the Gold Coast is the Sunshine Coast. It's a much nicer place to have a holiday if you're into beaches and what not

But not if you're into silicone

WesleyDavid

@MarkHenderson I just want the temp to never get below 65F.

And not more than a month of below 75F

And palm trees.

Mark Henderson

@WesleyDavid What's that in C?

WesleyDavid

Lots of palm trees

Mark Henderson

(checks google)

23.3C

Ok, don't go to Melbourne then :P

WesleyDavid

18C to 24C

Awww, really? I thought it was warmer there.

Mark Henderson

6:52 AM

Anywhere in qld would be nice for that

WesleyDavid

Brisbane has always been my #1 spot. I know a lot of people there.

Mark Henderson

Melbourne gets the current and winds directly from antarctica

WesleyDavid

Know a few in melbourne though.

Mark Henderson

I used to go to school and there's be ice on the ground (no snow though)

WesleyDavid

Two in Perth

What's Perth like? Ever been there?

Mark Henderson

6:52 AM

I live in Sydney now, the weather is much nicer. During a normal summer 20C would be a pretty low minimum

Perth? No never been there, but I hear it';s really nice. And it's hot there too

WesleyDavid

@MarkHenderson Ice. Ick.

Mark Henderson

@WesleyDavid Stick to anywhere in the northern 3/4 of Australia and you'll be fine :)

WesleyDavid

Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney - which one has the highest cost of living, you think?

Mark Henderson

Anyhoo dinner is about cooked so I better go and fiddle with it so that it looks like I'm doing something

Sydney is the highest

I live in Sydney and it's about the 6th most expensive city in the world. It's got a higher cost of living than New York City

Brisbane would be the cheapest

Followed by Melbourne

WesleyDavid

ouch, wow

high than NYC?

Mark Henderson

6:55 AM

If you want to live within 20km of the city, then expect to pay around $500,000 for a 2br apartment

WesleyDavid

@MarkHenderson Fine, Alice Springs it is!

Mark Henderson

If you get to within 10km of the city, $500,000 gets you a studio

WesleyDavid

@MarkHenderson D= Yeeeesh. So a downtown loft is out.

And USD to AUD gives me the muddy end of the stick too.

Mark Henderson

My wife's cousin is buying a townhouse about 5km from the city. It's setting her back almost $2m

Anyway Im out cya

WesleyDavid

Oh wait, we're back to edging out the AUD

k, later!

@Ward CAD is beating out the USD still I see.

Journeyman Geek

6:56 AM

that seems loony

WesleyDavid

So at the moment, Australia is looking financially better as an expatriation option. =P

Ward

@WesleyDavid They've been close enough for a while that we mostly don't pay attention.

Except we found Costco gives a good exchange rate on cash cards, so we get a bunch of C$ on those before each trip south.

Mark Henderson

7:27 AM

We got our first Costco in Australia about 2 years ago

And we got one in Sydney about 6 months ago

Never in my life have I seen so many people cramming into one place

Ward

@Holocryptic When I first saw it, I thought SciFi and Fantasy.SE was useless mental masturbation, but now it has PONIES!

scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/friendship-is-magic

Iain

7:40 AM

G'day

Zoredache

8:07 AM

Has the Internet gone insane? How can a DNS registrar not support glue records? serverfault.com/a/347982/984

Iain

@Zoredache has the internet ever been sane ?

Journeyman Geek

8:21 AM

@Iain: not since september

Zoredache

Bah, his registrar supports it, he just is confused by an post on a forum about ipv6

Iain

@JourneymanGeek indeed

pauska

Good morning

tombull89

8:44 AM

Already in VtC, nm.

Iain

:2937973 they are variably sympathetic to that sort of flag. If it was mod hammered then they may listen, if it has a better home elsewhere then they will remigrate otherwise you are as likely to get a declined as a helpful.

Chopper3

mornin'

tombull89

@Iain I'm not terribly worried about my SO flag weight, to be honest.

pauska

9:03 AM

Holy cow.. looks like Wes managed to make an even worse out-of-context quote than me

tombull89

9:42 AM

From a technical support base on deploying an MSI package:

When you run it, it will create the client application on the clients, minus the link to the database in the client's "FuseCore.config" file. Once it's run, you will need to create a FuseCore file with the correct server path in and use a batch command to upload this to all of the machines that have the OxBox installed on them.

D:

push out msi to computers, then upload the config script? whatisthisidonteven

THIS. THIS is why I hate trying to deploy stuff, because in the time it takes for me to research and configure and test and tweak and test I could have gone and done a manual install on all the computers that needed it.

Chopper3

that does indeed suck

tombull89

oops. meant to edit the product name out.

but yeah, annoying.

Journeyman Geek

lol

tombull89

Thing is, I really should know about msi deployment by now.

Journeyman Geek

@tombull89: this sort of thing is why i was bitching about why there should be a universal batch install generator ;p

tombull89

9:52 AM

I'm gonna have to ask a SF question at some point to help me get my head around it all. Granted, there's answers out there but it's impossible to filter the decent stuff from the crud.

</monday morning rage>

Journeyman Geek

lol

I'm having a shockingly good monday

Chopper3

Me too :)

Journeyman Geek

I just discovered i can defer my reservist callup

which means i don't need to miss classes

tombull89

oh wait...you can deploy the config file. Looks like it's a form of robocopy deployment.

-_-

ITHedgeHog

Morning

t1nt1n

10:04 AM

Morning

Journeyman Geek

@tombull89: Geek's law of computer problems. Immediately after you ask for help or bitch about it, it becomes painfully obvious ;p

Chopper3

11:03 AM

we have these syslog servers and I noticed their IOPS were just silly, 1100 or so, so I did that trick of suffixing a hyphen to the paths in syslog.conf and they're down to 1-2 IOPS! - boom!

SmallClanger

@Chopper3 What does that do?

Chopper3

basically saves up the log writes to disk for a second and does it all on one go rather than line by line

pfo

it's just a setting to no do sync'd IO

Chopper3

so where a line in syslog.conf said "something /path/filename.log" you just make it "something -/path/filename.log"

but just for that file, not the filesystem

pfo

@Chopper3 it's not doing write coalescing - it's plain buffered IO instead of direct IO

Chopper3

11:10 AM

well yes, tried to explain it as easy as I could

pfo

which can be way more off than a second on a modern system - so be cautious you could loose some entries in the syslog

but i'm sure you're well aware of what direct vs buffered IO is ;)

Chopper3

they also go off to our splunk box to we won't lose them

pfo

@Chopper3 which version of rsyslog are you running?

Chopper3

can't remember and I've just logged out of that machine (having a shower in a moment) sorry

pfo

@Chopper3 on rsyslog3 the "-" are ignored by default as there is no sync IO going on there.

@Chopper3 check this rsyslog.com/doc/v3compatibility.html

Chopper3

11:14 AM

ah well it's not rsyslog then, just regular syslog

pfo

@Chopper3 the part about "Output File Syncing"

OMG!

Chopper3

I don't get a say in that kind of thing really tbh, bit low-level and company-standard tbh

pfo

you're on RHEL/OEL? then it's probably syslog-ng

i'm not aware of any distro that is using vanilla syslog in 2011

Chopper3

OEL 5.6

getting a haircut in a bit so really need to jump in the shower sorry - back later

pfo

later!

Scott Pack

1:37 PM

@pfo RedHat went the rsyslog route.

pfo

good to know

Scott Pack

The 5.x series uses vanilla syslog by default, but rsyslog is the officially supported other syslog.

pfo

Chopper may run into a problem with the "-" infront of the paths since it's ignored on rsyslog3.x

ah ok, so the plain vanilla syslog is default?

Scott Pack

The 6.x series uses rsyslog by default.

@pfo Affirmative.

pfo

ah good to know

thx for the info!

Scott Pack

1:39 PM

Considering I was using puppet to manage syslog, it turned out to be very important information to know. Added some complexity to that module, to be sure.

Bart Silverstrim

1:51 PM

Should I bother learning how Basil made the starred comment of reversing and mirroring Chernoff's name? I always assumed it was Unicode alchemy, although it's probably a website that will do it automatically.

jscott

@BartSilverstrim fliptext.org

Bart Silverstrim

Do I have to turn in my sysadmin cape if I didn't care about this technical alchemy until idley pondering the meaning of my life?

jscott

@BartSilverstrim Naw, your cape is safe. I'd only know the site as it's incredibly popular with middle school students here.

Bart Silverstrim

Isn't it weird when you hear about something that's really popular in <area> with teens, but teens in <own area> are clueless about it?

Skeptic podcast with Steve Novella he was talking about a game his 12 year old daughter plays with her friends that's really popular where they blurt out things that are as random as possible. I've never heard anything of the sort around here.

jscott

2:08 PM

@BartSilverstrim I'll have to plead ignorance on this one. It doesn't sound familiar.

Bart Silverstrim

Didn't to me either.

Then again he's a neurologist in an upscale area I think in CT. Maybe they have popular games like "ostracize the middle class kid who doesn't drive a Beamer."

"HA HA you're too poor to drive a Hummer!"

t1nt1n

I can drive a Hummer. Its just the Petrol that I cannot afford.

Bart Silverstrim

"I bet YOUR daddy doesn't even own a private jet. Do you have to fly COMMERCIAL?!"

jscott

@BartSilverstrim The district here isn't what I'd call "affluent", but there are plenty of cars in the student parking lot which I couldn't justify for a student-driver.

Bart Silverstrim

I'm amazed to see that today. Not all that common here, though...there are just a few that make me stop and think. Recently we had a student driving a logging truck though.

jscott

2:17 PM

Logging truck? Surprised they didn't search it for "weapons" like axes/saws and then expel the kid under Zero Tolerance.

Bart Silverstrim

shrug Things initially surprise me then don't anymore. Common sense isn't common.

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