« first day (1445 days earlier)      last day (3822 days later) » 
00:00 - 14:0014:00 - 00:00

00:24
@MarkHenderson The elderly here still write out paper checks at the registers which accept debit cards.
00:50
I've decided that Sonatype Nexus is the stupidest POS I've ever dealt with.
This isn't really the appropriate venue for religious debates. Take it elsewhere, such as chat. — Michael Hampton ♦ 2 hours ago
rofl
hm. Bit of an odd question, but if you could carry around a small screen for plugging into 'headless' systems, would you go for something as small as possible, or larger/better resolution?
(planning on picking up a 'bare' screen/circuit board, for home server use. I'll be moving it around a lot, and it may be a useful realworld tool, but can't decide between 7 inches and shitty resolution, and what's basically a 10 inch old style ipad screen)
of course, I could just pick up a slightly more expensive, bigger USB screen, but where's the fun in that? ;p
@JourneymanGeek a screen? To plug into headless servers?
like a crash cart?
@ewwhite: pretty much
or part of one
Wanna know what I use?
XD. Sure.
01:04
connects to laptop via USB
Reverse-KVM??
Or what do you call it?
I'm looking at one of these dx.com/p/… and a wireless keyboard
USB crash cart
its a bit ghetto, but I might also end up needing to use it on a DVD player ._.
01:06
@ewwhite Thanks. That made all the difference in the world for my Google-ing.
and damn, that's nice, but way out of my current budget.
That one must cost extra.
:)
@JourneymanGeek I have two.
one has spotty USB keyboard access. Fixable, but I couldn't deal with the downtime
@ewwhite: I can completely see how that makes sense
01:10
So if you want one...
:)
Maybe in future. I suspect I'm asking about this sort of thing partially so I can define the problem I'm trying to solve better.
gotcha
(some of which I wouldn't need to worry about if I wasn't waiting on results, applying for jobs, and working on a strict budget, and occationally hiding hardware from the parentals)
;p
I saw a question about configuiring Azure was closed as OT. I want to know how Availability Sets work with writable storage. Is this the wrong place to ask?
Sorry, hello!
@Louis I don't think so.
01:14
Ah, okay. I was thinking Super User was wrong too. Web Apps sound right?
No, this would be it.
Really? Great, thank you :)
@Louis: what's the question?
it might be something other than the broader topic that got it closed
Make sure it's a good question. If it's clearly answered in the Microsoft documentation, it probably won't qualify.
Oh, @ewwhite, just ran across this while doing some cleanup
0
A: Affordable combined Ruby/Rails/Redmine + Subversion hosting?

Nick O'NeilIf your looking for Linux based with the option to have it managed there is Logicworks. They have a Developer Utility Server currently in beta. http://www.utility.noc.logicworks.net

-3
Q: Easiest Faraday Cage for a comcast router

Michael PotterI believe Comcast has turned my router into a public hotspot. I believe this because an xfinitywifi network has appeared in my neighborhood. Even if it is not my router I want to know it is not my router. I do not want to spend time trying to figure out if it is my router as even if it is not ...

@MichaelHampton Nuts...
He moved on long ago
ex-LW people tend to do quite well
several at Amazon, one runs HBO's streaming infra, others have started companies...
01:24
@ewwhite After they see firsthand what not to do?
@MichaelHampton it seems to be a good launching pad
I'm better off having been there
@ewwhite I'd probably suggest putting it in a microwave on high, for 10 minutes...
@JourneymanGeek Do you want the question? He wants to migrate it
@MichaelHampton: I'm not sure. I don't see a 'real' problem there
In essense its a really wierd purchase recommendation
@JourneymanGeek Comcast converted its residential customers' set-top integrated TV/Internet/phone units into WiFi hotspots so other Comcast customers could roam onto them.
01:32
ahh
oh hell
Someone probably needs to explain this to him.
In small words.
I'm sure he's asking the wrong question
or more precisely, its a x y problem
Yeah, that it is.
@MichaelHampton really?
@ewwhite Yep. Anywhere you see xfinitywifi is one such device.
01:35
oh, nifty
I've been using those
@MichaelHampton: I've commented, suggesting he edit it from being an x y problem, and I'd be happy to accept the question with those edits
we have nationwide wifi ;p
I need to set mine up, there's an AP at the local party block office local grassroots/residents commitee
@JourneymanGeek Your nation isn't that large...
@MichaelHampton: No it isn't
but that is why we have Nice Things (tm)
@JourneymanGeek They're all imported :P
@JourneymanGeek I have a tiny Ununtu server hosting several WordPress sites at the moment. It's my understanding that to have it backed by the uptime SLA I'll have to add it to an Availability Set. It's also my understanding that I'll have to create a new VM, identical to the existing one, to have to smallest set.
01:39
@MichaelHampton: yeah.
@Louis: I mean the closed question ;p
@JourneymanGeek Thinking about this, I would need to move the wp-content sites...
I am so done with this work that involves writing a bunch of java
@JourneymanGeek oh
@JourneymanGeek Haha, I don't know, but it was also about these sets
@FalconMomot: done to doneness, or done to fuck this shitness?
if by the holiday party I'm still stuck doing this bullshit I'll be interviewing at facebook or hitting up google again
01:40
It's Java. "Fuck this shit" is always the right answer.
yup.
I'm really at the end of my ability to deal with the fact that no matter what I do this code will be shit.
the rest of the code is amazing, and the research is amazing, and everything is novel and awesome
and then there is this steaming pile of java.
@JourneymanGeek I think this was it. Me and the asker are both confused about how two distinct VMs should handle data consisitency.
which fortunately I am progressively making less and less relevant, a process which perversely involves writing java.
01:42
@Louis: hmm
I think the question is a wee bit simplistic
@JourneymanGeek I was thinking have all the wp-content stuff reside on a seperate piece of storage. But I don't know if that makes sense
Mind if I ask a few questions?
@JourneymanGeek It is, I'm just doing this a favor for friends! I'm a Mac admin [cowers]
Am I right to assume that the database for the wordpress sites is elsewhere?
@JourneymanGeek Right, the databases are all on their own peices of cloud
01:44
ahh ok
@JourneymanGeek The VM is just running apache
> <me> there is absolutely no need to write that class identically for every storage method extant.
<me> the whole point of the abstraction layer is that you don't have to.
<not-me> this is not C++
<not-me> stop thinking like C++
<not-me> this pretty common java stuff the way its built already
And that's why Java is such a shitty language
ahh. At this point, I think I have no clue.
@MichaelHampton yeah.
01:46
Haha, okay...I'm thinking about how to ask this clearly, so it'll be up sooner or later
it doesn't help that there are a couple ways you can actually do some of the things right, but people yell at me when I use them.
i.e. you don't need to write trivial accessors and mutators for every property
In software engineering, don't repeat yourself (DRY) is a principle of software development, aimed at reducing repetition of information of all kinds, especially useful in multi-tier architectures. The DRY principle is stated as "Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system." The principle has been formulated by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas in their book The Pragmatic Programmer. They apply it quite broadly to include "database schemas, test plans, the build system, even documentation." When the DRY principle is applied successfully, a ...
Beat them over the head with that.
very, very important!
and like
the vast majority of people get that!
almost every single person I work with gets that!
01:47
hmm
just not "not-me".
@Louis: this looks like what you're trying to do hanselman.com/blog/…
@JourneymanGeek Didn't search that one up--I'll give it a read!
(man, I really wish my old uni offered their mini research/library course online. I swear that was the most useful 2 hours of class I have had. My google-fu is awesome ;p)
@JourneymanGeek I had an entire course on it; went through all kinds of things like how to find primary sources, how to use repositories, evaluation of sources, etc.
extremely handy
sigh
I am very sad right now.
02:01
@FalconMomot: That was probably the single most useful course I've had ever
@JourneymanGeek Thanks for the link. While it did explain how I can clone my VM, I have to believe the concept only works for static VMs where the disk content doesn't change. I'm only overseeing WP sites, so while having remote DBs helps, things like picture or video uploads still go to the wp-content folder, which is what's throwing me off. Every time a user uploads a picture the VMs will stray.
@JourneymanGeek So, I'm trying to understand Azure storage, and hoping I can have the wp-content folders live on some remote piece of storage.
@JourneymanGeek If that make sense
@JourneymanGeek If it doesn't make sense, they'll be perfectly happy with the current uptimes and savings from not having these ghosts devices. I just got excited.
@Louis: kinda
but wouldn't having a shared storage VM kinda mean a single point of failure?
0
Q: badblocks only takes 32-bit integer as start/end values

Mark HendersonI have a 4TB drive with a 4096 byte block size. I want to check a very specific set of blocks, around the 7,000,000,000th block or so for bad sectors. However, badblocks seems to only support int32 as the stop and start block counts, which means that it's impossible for me to specify this range ...

Bad day
02:16
I really need less java pollution in my life
the people responsible for this are terrible people.
 
1 hour later…
03:24
Gorram piece of crap.
Java crap, natch.
03:40
oh, it gets fucking better
now I am closing files
because someone thought files were closed implicitly in a number of cases where they were not
I am really happy that this code is not in production
04:10
@JourneymanGeek Not in Azure. In cheapest option gives you 3 replicas. It grows generously from there. It's really cheap. Even the shadow VM, which is why I was so excited about setting this up the right war.
04:32
@JourneymanGeek Our SAN keeps two copies of all data on two different nodes. Inside each node is RAID 10, so there's two copies inside each node. There are two network links for each node. There are two SAN links from each server to each switch. There are two switches, and each node link goes to a different switch.
So there's 4 copies of everything, and two links to make sure that at least one of those copies is accessible
05:18
@FalconMomot :(
@MarkHenderson: how do you keep the nodes synchronised?
well copies of the data
@JourneymanGeek I don't
HP LeftHand does it for me
I just throw more nodes in the pool and it effectively re-stripes it
I've had a look at the traffic flow, and when I read, it balances the reads over all avaliable nodes.
When I write, it writes to a single node, and that node replicates to the other nodes
06:14
morning
yo
death to everything.
G'day
@FalconMomot Bad day at a the Java mines ?
06:37
@Iain yeah I'm almost to the point of writing notice, rather than writing more of this crap
someone talked me out of doing that earlier, but I'm still very tempted unless I can get some confidence that this will not be my problem in the future.
Bummer
yup
there's a meeting tomorrow so we'll see
it's just these little things
like... I need to copy a file from one place to another, but the place it's going wants an actual file, but sometimes the input is a stream from something else, and so really I want a fifo, but I have to buffer the whole thing on disk instead because java can't make a unix fifo apparently
the other canonical solution is to start a new java process that copies input from stdin to stdout... seriously?
java just so totally fails as a tool for actually getting anything done
so why is it $toolOfChoice for $project ?
somebody else really likes it.
07:04
bleh.
Mom decided to help me 'job search'
@JourneymanGeek That could be... interesting
about half of these need me to be mandarin speaking
the rest are basically clerk jobs
I've bitched about this to her before. Last time she tried, I applied to the library, and I can't remember what was that other one.
I believe I can say "idiot" in mandarin, so at least i could help you get a helpdesk job
I wouldn't mind helldesk
I would. I'd rather go back to cashiering at a grocery store.
07:07
meh, its computers.
no, it's not. It's lusers.
@JennyD: I worked in the family business for 8 years. I can deal with lusers.
Back when I worked helldesk, there was a floor above us and the roof/floor was partly open so they could sometimes hear us. One day I was out getting a cup of coffee and one of the people working above said "oh, hi, seems you're having a good day."
I said yes and how did he know.
"I haven't heard you swear or throw things today."
Ah well, at least it was a stepping stone to sysadminning :-)
I just need that stupid piece of paper , and to get myself a chance to do my thing.
You have the talent and skill for this business
07:11
heh, thats about the only things that keep me going somedays ;p
07:21
Is it just me or did kasperd read this question ? serverfault.com/questions/623860/…
it looks fine at a glance but I didn't really read it all either
I'm going to go away and probably go to bed
perhaps after coming up with some venom for my meeting tomorrow
@FalconMomot You need to read the question and Kasperd's answer
prehaps not then
lol
his edit of 8 minutes ago fixed it right up I think
07:24
;)
07:42
lovely question
with that expertise we will surely have another data breach soon by his company.
2
and why the hell does he not have some root server... they cost nothing these days.. what does it matter if it takes him ~1 hour or so for a full portscan..
08:00
damned, too late.
Dan
Dan
Morning all
so it is
and I'm heading for the biannual health check so I can't have coffee or chocolate
I really don't like Mondays
Dan
Dan
Would it sadden you to know I'm sat here with a Caramel Latte and a chocolate croissant
Morning all
Tuesdays after a bank holiday are the worst kind of Monday
08:07
@Dan I could use one of those, in the morning
Dan
Dan
@FalconMomot It's odd - a few years ago I never had breakfast, now I can't miss it
@Dan Not sadden so much as induce rage
@DennisNolte for sure man... I can't believe some people.
like
I don't think I'm especially prodigious
Dan
Dan
@JennyD hugs
@Dan Thanks :-)
08:08
but surely there are more people in this field that have basic expertise and common sense?
oh, we again got a "right to be forgotten" Google index takedown
Dan
Dan
@JennyD If it makes you feel better, they were extortionately priced
@Dan It does :-)
And I did get a morning cup when I got up, so it could be worse...
Dan
Dan
Just a routine medical, I hope?
Yup, java dev is not in my job description. I think I'm going to complain very loudly tomorrow and then refuse to write another line of it for a month.
08:10
@faker just relink it, problem solved :)
@FalconMomot i would take java over android, or BLE dev every day..
@Dan yeah, we get one every two years or so
@DennisNolte I'm not a developer at all, which is deliberate.
@DennisNolte I kind of want to get into development, but I really don't want Java
@FalconMomot well, neither am i, guess i stressed the part of i am able to write small scripts too big in the interview :)
and I'm not good enough to get erlang work...
08:11
@DennisNolte heh
there is lots of development being done in C++.
also in C#.
and the usual one shining project in java, customer facing, no security, ye we all know that one i guess.
yes, I try very hard to avoid letting that happen
@FalconMomot you will fail, and get sad, as every other sysadmin before you vs the power of java :)
@DennisNolte I'm not actually a sysadmin either.
@FalconMomot then wtf are you actually doin ?
ah audits
ok.
08:14
security assessments and penetration testing, and... research.
@FalconMomot yeah, I've done a bit of C (patched qmail, if you can believe it)...
nice
C (not C++) is kind of a pain to work with though
@FalconMomot yes, I get frustrated having to juggle memory handling myself. Isn't that what computers are for?
my favourite aspect of any language is a lack of idiomaticity
I'm fairly good at perl, I can get around in python and I love erlang but there's not much scope for getting better at it as a sysadmin.
08:16
memory handling is not all bad of course, but I could do without the malloc and cast idiom in C.
functional programming is neat
but I think the only real opportunities for that lately are in safety-critical stuff that needs to be verified, and in telecom. I don't see much of it otherwise.
I used to work with a mail system where the backends were qmail and we had an erlang-based HA/LB system, so that's where I learned it
Dan
Dan
C# is still my fave language ever
Facebook's chat is written in erlang
and by in telecom, I mean writing software for phone switches and DSLAMs and stuff
nice
I really like C++ because it just allows me to write out what I mean, where I find java more like weaving a web.
also the lack of header files in java is really frustrating
and the lack of multiple inheritance
I've never been good with OO languages, it's just hard for me to visualise what I'm doing. I did get a bit better at the Python course I took though
08:19
it forces a lot of weird design decisions
python is not so bad because it's very permissive
OO is actually extremely easy, but java is bad for OO.
my first serious programming project was written in a mix of Clist and Rexx Exec for an IBM mainframe TSO/interactive session.
I've messed about a bit with ruby too
yeah, I have no thoughts on ruby at all.
Dan
Dan
@FalconMomot It took me a long time to quite get my head around it - but I think once you "get" it, objects make the world so so easy. Just remember that the answer to every answer is to make a new class!
@Dan yeah, no.
08:21
class all the things
the answer is to make classes that represent and implement actual data entities and discrete subsystems.
Dan
Dan
Sounds too programmery for me
well it requires a person to think about what their data entities and subsystems actually are
17
Q: Object-oriented shell for *nix

Robert S CiaccioPreface: I love bash and have no intention of starting any sort of argument or holy-war, and hopefully this is not an extremely naive question. This question is somewhat related to this post on superuser, but I don't think the OP really knew what he was asking for. I use bash on FreeBSD, linux,...

@FalconMomot there is actually OO for bash ..
unsurprising
08:28
ye but still feels weird.
the other thing to remember too is that OO is not the solution to every problem
(java also fails hard at that)
the cleanest way to express something is, often as not, "conduct the following transformations on this finite state or stream"
in which case constructors and factories and singleton mechanics and interfaces and go methods are just noise
08:54
@FalconMomot there is no single thing that is the solution to every problem
@JennyD tell a java programmer that!
well I suppose they will say there are a variety of OO patterns to choose from ;)
@FalconMomot I prefer not to speak to them :-)
I wish!!
btw this little bit of C++ trivia is cool:
09:11
Tuesdays after a long weekend are the worst kind of monday. I thought you would like to know that @JennyD
@RobM I certainly agree.
Looking at the spiceworks mailing list: "What is the best system imaging software besides Symantec". Anyone else thinking that's like "What's the best way to improve your running speed, besides amputating one of your legs" or is it just me?
rofl
Wouldn't best be really relative?
@RobM "What's the best morning coffee besides decaf"
Hell yes. And of course did they bother stating their requirements so that people could take a swing at even a subjective answer? I think we all know the answer to that.
decaf is the worst kind of coffee
09:15
@RobM yes
it's like monday in a cup.
morning @Chopper3
YOU ARE IN A LEGACY CODEBASE > RUN TESTS YOU HAVE NO TESTS > READ SPEC YOU HAVE NO SPEC > WRITE FIX YOU ARE EATEN BY AN ELDER CODE HACK.
2
you are in a maze of goto statements, all alike
Dan
Dan
09:31
@RobM Haha, to be fair I've had great success with Altiris
I need to really get to grips with SCCM - won't have a lab powerful enough until we move house though
sccm is a bit of a beast!
You have firm house plans then or is this a "sometime in the future" thing?
Dan
Dan
I don't know if to be happy or sad - I'm probably on hour 6 of a goddamn annoying issue. I just did a "last ditch" Google in a Sherlock-esque "if all other possibilities have been exhausted what you have left, no matter how improbable" etc kind of way and it looks like I may have hit the jackpot
@RobM Oh yeah, firm - pure savings now
If work carries on, I'll have a company war chest and house deposit by the end of Jan. We'll need another few grand on top of that to cover fees etc, but hopefully we can save that while looking
very nice :-) I remember you saying things were working well with the consulting
Dan
Dan
@RobM Honestly, it's been life changing so far.
good
I know I said it wasn't for me, but I'm glad it's working so well for you
Dan
Dan
09:41
Thanks mate
It's one of those things - right place, right time. I never thought I'd do it, to be honest but I just couldn't think of another option that I fancied. I'm certainly not evangelical about it.
damn. My farts stink
3
thanks for sharing @MichelZ
@Dan wow, that sounds great! I hope it'll keep on!
Dan
Dan
Well, that's taking a bloody long time to track down
09:45
@dan well I think you were part of the way to it already for as long as I can remember
I like what Lync does, but I suspect it's never going to stop being a pain in the hoop
@RobM I knew that this kind of stuff is interesting for this room :)
@RobM Lync is a pain in the hoop? Why?
The client can sometimes misbehave in fun ways!
Also, I like how MS have published it for Android phones but not (as of the last time I checked) Android tablets.
it can, but more often it just works
(if you use an on-premise server... don't even think about lync in the cloud, it's weird!)
Guess what tablet platform my senior manager fell in love with and purchased some of before asking me how to install Lync on them, rather than asking me if it was possible beforehand.
We have Lync via O365. So yeah.
yeah.. that's bad :)
both of them
09:57
aaaaaaaaaaaaand one of my laptops here at work, the windows 8 one that I really wanted to use for something, has just developed a hardware fault
Dan
Dan
10:12
Does anyone Lync-y know if there is newer than this support.microsoft.com/kb/2825630
Not really sure what i'm looking for or where
We're running 15.0.4641.1000
Not quite sure where from, running office 2013 with all WU updates applied but not sure if Lync on my machine was installed as a basic part of the suite or if it was pulled from o365
searching my version number gives support.microsoft.com/kb/2881070 @dan
Dan
Dan
Ah, that looks nice and new
Cheers Rob
any time Dan
10:47
@RobM Hi, I'm away at the moment but my macbook fires up and refreshes all my tabs every so often so that I appear online most of the time :)
11:04
@Chopper3 ah... no worries, hope you're away doing something nice. Those macs will take over the world one day
11:27
@RobM just had a week in iceland, now back in martha's vineyard for 10 days, speak when I'm back ok.
of course, enjoy yourself, sir :)
 
2 hours later…
13:17
So, Oracle is being sued for "racketeering activity". About time... too bad it's only applicable to the Obamacare debacle, though.
Hi there
sup
13:32
Greetings folks.
hey
Dan
Dan
@cole Was thinking of you earlier
@Dan well...that's a weird fetish to have.
Dan
Dan
@cole There's a trans person here is a very senior project management role. She's been working here for months and I haven't heard of a single comment. So, I guess I just wanted to say that some places are full of good people
@Dan yay
Dan
Dan
13:38
The world will get there, but sadly it's slow as hell and full of cunts
My director sent out an email about language in the office
Dan
Dan
That's good of them
yea
13:59
I can be rude and crude as you like but there are some things that are just fundamental to human dignity and it saddens me that there are adult people still thinking it's ok to hate on other people just for being themselves.
00:00 - 14:0014:00 - 00:00

« first day (1445 days earlier)      last day (3822 days later) »