The Comms Room

Dan

12:20

Is there anything more irritating than people blaming you for something breaking because you happened to do the IT equivalent of walk past

ethrbunny

good morning - quick question?

Dan

@ethrbunny Shoot, dead in here today though

pauska

12:48

@ethrbunny the answer is ก็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็ กิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิ ก้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้ ಠ_ಠ ก็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็ กิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิ ก้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้

RobM

ḟ͑͒̾ͩ̃s̉̂̿̊̀̒̃͊ͨͧ̋͒̃k͑̊ͯ̈́ͨ̈́ͧͨ͊̀͗͆ͥͫ͑ͫͬ̽̈́iͯͪͬ͊͑͐̋̃̂̉̃̉ͨͯ̉͊n͌̽̄ͩ̏̊g͛͛̍̅ͥ̀ͫ̌ ̇̀̎̾ͮͣ͊͛̋̏̋̆͆͊̇̃ͪmͯ̊̊̒̂̔̍͂̊̿̀͗̽̐͌̐̉̓̉ă̈͒̚r̓̆ͮ̅ͫͪ̉̌̾̾͐̌̍k͑̌͊̽͛̊̒͊d̀̾ͬ̏ͤ͋̅̊̎ȍͤͯ̆‌̅̐̈ͨ͋ͯ͒̋̄͋w͋͆ͤ̄͗͑͊ͬͮ̎̐ͥ̋̈n̅ͬ͗ͪͨ̂̄͑͊͌̈

Dan

So, when did we all become 12 year old script kiddies ;)

RobM

About 30 years ago for me ;-)

Chris S

Could someone double check that I haven't completely lost my mind:

0

A: How to ignore upper directory .htaccess Options?

Simply specify what you want at the current level (and subseqently). If you want it all disabled just: Options None Or if you want to disable particular features for example: Options -Index -ExecCGI Or if you want to enable additional directive: Options +Includes If you want just one fea...

tombull89

When The Bridge started flaggin it yesterday.

RobM

12:56

What's the bridge's problem anyway

Dan

@tombull89 I've flagged Rob, countdown to ban

RobM

good idea

Dan

@RobM They have no sense of humour and take it all far too seriously

tombull89

@RobM I don't know...it seems to be only regulars get flagged.

RobM

t͒̉̅͗̓̑ͣ̓̔̆h̾̈͊̂ͭ̍̊ͧ̌̿͆̿ͬ̚eͬ̏ͧ͌͒͒̄̌ͫn͌͒ͦ̐͛͌͛̀ ̌ͣͤͦ̇͆̎̚m̍ͬ̐̆ͫȁ͗̓͛ͣͯ̿ͬ̈́̆̾ͧ̀͂̈́͐ÿ͌͐͒͒ͥ͊ͦ̍ͨ̉ ́̄ͧ͒̆̊̈́̌̓̓̅̄̏t͊̊ͭ͑h̿̎ͩͫͮ̿͛̚e͌̓͆͐̀ͫͥ̅ͨ͂ͬ̓y̑̇͐̎ ̎̉ͥ̈́̃͋ͫ̄gͩ͊ͣ̈́͆̔ͫ͆e̅̃̋̎̍̔ͧtͯ̀̉͒̿͌ͣ̆̽́̍̉̏̚ ̅ͥ͊ͤ̃̈̓̾̌͆͋ͣ͑̄̄̋f̈́͋ͧ̈́̄̊́͐ͪ̋̏̓͂͋u̇͂̃͋̒̚̚c̈̊̂̓͆̉ͩ̐͒ͯͤ́̐́̄kͣ̂͑͂ͨͭe͌̃̀̑ͬ͑̾̇͊̃̈̓̏ͨ̉́̏‌́dͧ̐̑ͣͭ̅́ͭ̅̀̐͐ͪ͗

tombull89

12:57

I'll find out.

Dan

@ChrisS Yours makes sense to me

tombull89

@ChrisS seems good

Chris S

Thank you; it's early and I get the dumb, can't brain

RobM

looks fair enough to me Chris

tombull89

This did make me smile yesterday:

in The Bridge, 23 hours ago, by Sterno

I just keep hearing "TomBull gives you wings!" in my head.

Chris S

13:00

lol; shouldn't be too hard to shop the bull logo into a TomBull gravatar

RobM

:)

Dan

Facebook does demonstrate how small the world is. My old next door neighbour (Similar age to me) has just got a job working a girl I worked with at my first job. And now they both work at a school I used to do IT for

tombull89

@Dan working a girl?

Dan

@tombull89 Yeah, back when I was a pimp

3

MDMarra

Gentlemen, gentlemen

tombull89

13:10

@MDMarra where?

MDMarra

nowhere

just testing

I'm exhausted after the marathon of sorting through the data from one of @ewwhite's clients last night

Dan

@ewwhite has @MDMarra bitch whipped. You heard it here first.

HopelessN00b

@MDMarra ewwhite's clients, proof that some people should be legally prohibited from using computers?

3

MDMarra

@Dan It's not whipped when you're getting paiiiiiiid

HopelessN00b

@MDMarra There's a joke about a dominatrix and a prostitute in there somewhere.

MDMarra

13:25

"What are the abbreviations you use for each building you have. I'm going to use them to make the AD structure"

"Fill in this spreadsheet with each user, their name, their desired email address, and their site"

Then user creation fails for like 1/3

They filled in different site codes than what they gave me the first time

HopelessN00b

@MDMarra Oh, that's not so bad. That's what we call a weekday around here.

MDMarra

Except it was to make a complicated OU structure that was 80+ OUs

and a couple hundred accounts

I wrote the powershell to do it in like 15 minutes and then it took two hours to track down why it failed and re-write

HopelessN00b

@MDMarra Well, two more billable hours because stupid client. So, more money because they have less brains. Sounds like a good thing to me.

MDMarra

Yeah, still frustrating when you get incomplete or incorrect data

Chris S

@MDMarra Not that I disagree with that statement in the least; but when was the last time you got 100% correct and parsable data?

MikeyB

13:29

@ChrisS Fucking NEVER

MDMarra

@ChrisS "What abbreviations do you use for your building" shouldn't be hard!

Chris S

Anyone else annoyed by how many words they have to add to the browser's spell-check dictionary??

MikeyB

@ChrisS Not really - set to English (UK) and turn off spell check. DONE.

MDMarra

Then all of a sudden Distinguished name not found. CN=user,OU=MEXICALI... doesn't exist

well no shit it doesn't exist, you didn't tell me to make it!

HopelessN00b

@ChrisS Yeah, that gets old real quick.

MDMarra

13:31

@ChrisS Also, I had to use .ToTitleCase() since they filled in about 1/3 of the names in all lowercase

Chris S

I'm fairly good at spelling, when my hands type the words my brain is thinking at least. Then I get the red squiggly, and have to wonder if I screwed it up or if FF just doesn't know that word. Like "parsable"

MDMarra

Not that it was much of a hassle to fix, but who the hell writes a name in all lower case?

Chris S

@MDMarra I use lowercase exclusively if I can. That or camelcase. Makes the LDAP components stand out

MDMarra

This was for First Name and Last Name

Which I use to derive DisplayName from

Chris S

Ah, yeah; that's different.

MDMarra

13:33

They were given a spreadsheet with the following headings to fill in: username, first name, last name, site, email domain (they have 4)

Chris S

Should make one of the sheets "sites" and another "e-mail domains". On the "users" sheet, do a conditional format to tun the cell Bright Red if they enter a value that isn't on the other sheet.

MikeyB

@ChrisS VLOOKUP and Conditional Formatting are a great way to implement foreign keys :)

ewwhite

They are used to using CAPS LOCK full-time because of the Produce Pro software...

MDMarra

@ewwhite But this was reverse capslock!

ewwhite

MDMarra

13:40

Don't worry, it's nothing a little (Get-Culture).textinfo.totitlecase() can't fix!

@jscott upgrade to Windows 8 now. I've found the killer feature

The PowerShell ISE is amazing

jscott

@MDMarra Go on... I'm interested

MDMarra

The new ISE has cmdlet search, cmdlet autocomplete, different views

etc

jscott

Like in WMF3?

MDMarra

oh

yeah same thing

jscott

Or something even cooler?

MDMarra

13:43

Carry on

jscott

:) I still don't use it. I know, I know. I should dedicate some time to that.

MDMarra

Looooove the ISE

jscott

So does my coworker. He showed me the new features (which are cool) but I haven't been able to jump in. The debugger is neat too.

Chris S

The PowerShell ISE takes a solid 3-5 seconds to load on my relatively new, SSD, 8GB laptop... Notepad++ takes somewhere around 0.25 to 0.5s. If I had the ISE open all the time, no problems, but I hate having to wait those extra seconds every time I open it.

MDMarra

On what OS?

HopelessN00b

13:50

@ChrisS So... why not leave it open all the time?

Chris S

@HopelessN00b I've already got half a screen of tabs; as every user of Win8 I've seen does

MDMarra

It always opened in about 2 second on Windows 7. The first time I launched it on W8 it took 10 seconds, but subsequent launches have been almost instant with a mechanical HDD and 4GB RAM

Chris S

Just relaunched, 3 seconds.

MDMarra

Just the fact that you can run commands right in the ISE while scripting in the actual editor portion is great

Does notepad++ have a plugin for that?

Chris S

It used to take longer on Win7 for me... was the older version

pauska

13:52

guys.. support.microsoft.com/kb/2775511

I installed it last night

every problem we had with group policy preferences disappeared

MDMarra

nice

Is it in WSUS?

Oops, gotta prep for this interview in 7 minutes

back later

Chris S

@MDMarra Probably, but I don't have it. No auto-complete either. I wouldn't argue that Notepad++ is even close to equal, but for a minor script modification (which is my most common task) the speed difference keeps me from killing people.

Iain

@ChrisS the documentation says that you're correct

Chris S

@Iain I'm pretty sure he didn't try it or he's having a different problem and not explaining with enough detail (eg no AllowOverride Options)

ewwhite

How about a REAL question... I have a new client. They will be buying a 3-host vSphere cluster. What to use for storage? I've proposed a homebrew NexentaStor box with appropriate ZIL and L2ARC SSDs and 1GbE or 10GbE networking or an HP P2000 G3 SAN, attached via Fiber or 6Gbps SAS. The client is asking ME to choose.

RobM

13:55

@pauska that hotfix is pretty darn cool

ewwhite

Price is roughly the same.

Chris S

@ewwhite If you like the client the former; if not so much the latter. But only the SAS SAN if you hate them.

Iain

@ChrisS I don't think he tried, he's either misremembering the documentation or he's been told half the story

Chris S

He's from the East side of Michigan... That says something. =]

ewwhite

@ChrisS Why? What's wrong with the SAS unit?

I'm working on one right now.

Chris S

13:58

@ewwhite I just hate SAS SANs... Labeling a SCSI communications bus as a "Network" feels dirty

ewwhite

You don't have to do anything special for VMware. It just works.

dual paths, too

Iain

@ChrisS is that like me calling someone a scouser ?

ewwhite

but the fiber unit isn't much more.

Chris S

Hrm, maybe the situation has changed slightly since I last looked into it.... Still feels wrong.

jscott

@MDMarra I can't find it in WSUS searching by "2775511"

ewwhite

13:59

My main issue is that ZFS performance versus everything else in this price range looks like:

but the HP san has dual paths, which are not easy to get in Nexenta.

Chris S

@ewwhite Is Promise still around?

I remember when I liked their crap back when I was a teenager.

ewwhite

Yeah, I have too many at my job

replacing them with fiber HP P2000 G3s

Chris S

I probably still have a ATA33 card around if I dig deep enough

ewwhite

@ChrisS so it's irresponsible to give someone a DL380 with some disks in it and call it a SAN, right?

Granted, I have plenty out there in the field...

MikeyB

@ewwhite Call it a SLAN.

ewwhite

14:03

well, I need to email customer back...

and I'm torn

Chris S

I think you'd have to be more specific than that... The P2000 is little more than a Opteron based server board with some drives attached and an OS designed for pushing data...

HopelessN00b

@ewwhite I think I'd favor the Nexenta too, if that helps.

ewwhite

@ChrisS with two controllers in it.

Chris S

True... But you can do that with a pair of DL380s if you really wanted

ewwhite

I think I'm pissed that there's no affordable way to have full dual-paths on a Nexenta box without buying two servers, using fully-meshed SAS cascaded between enclosures and an additional software plugin.

Cole

14:05

My doctor's office just called me my birth name......no idea why

ewwhite

where the P2000 is a plug-and-play appliance whose OS is on a compact flash card

@ChrisS it then makes the ZFS solution cost twice as much as the P2000 G3.

@HopelessN00b whyso?

performance alone?

Chris S

I'm surprised nobody makes an enclosure with two MBs/Power/etc and a single SAS plane across the front. Seems right up SuperMicro's alley

I love my P2000 G2 unit, even if 4x 1GbE is starting to choke performance.

HopelessN00b

@ewwhite Yeah, but now that you mention the cost of dual-paths on it... I dunno.

ewwhite

@ChrisS They do.

@HopelessN00b I just don't have dual paths...

I mean, I have multiple network links...

LACP and all of that.

but if the server goes, so does storage

it hasn't happened..... yet

Chris S

@ewwhite supermicro.com/products/nfo/sbb.cfm

I should have known... It was under Storage instead of their Server section... Meh

ewwhite

14:10

so is the decision to live with a cap on performance 100% of the time to protect against a <1% chance of failure, or get better performance all the time with a higher chance of downtime?

Chris S

Something new to drool over

HopelessN00b

@ewwhite Yeah, I think that's a cost/benefit decision you have to make.

@ewwhite What's the cost of downtime?

ewwhite

@HopelessN00b it's a web development firm. Presumably low.

And it is HP gear, so normal warranties apply.

HopelessN00b

@ewwhite That the being the case, I'd be biased towards performance. Mitigating a low risk of a low cost event doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

ewwhite

@HopelessN00b But it is something that should exist for my franken-ZFS setups.

Chris S

14:31

@pauska It has to be downloaded from the Windows Update Catalog? WTF MS?!

I like how the "Send Feedback" button takes you to a page where you can select from the MS Forums, The Fix-It Wizard, and a few other options that have NOTHING to do with sending feedback about their sh*tty website

HopelessN00b

@ChrisS Undoubtedly by design, them not wanting to email bombed with "your shit sucks!!!"

RobM

D̲̪̠͕ͥ͑ͧ̾̒̚e̯͍̺̊̉͐͊̊̊̆̔v͙̊̒̑ͨ̾O͕̙̘̝ͪ̂̽̆̎͒ͬ̀ͯp̯͂͊͑́̀s̲̘͆͆́ͥ fail part 2,000,900: plumbr.eu/blog/we-got-hacked

HopelessN00b

@RobM Are they still hacked, or does their marketing department just suck?

RobM

with sites like that how would you tell?

HopelessN00b

Their app finds memory leaks to presumably help developers make their code less sucky. So, why, on their front page do I see:

??????

tombull89

14:47

@HopelessN00b wait...that's not a good thing.

Is it?

RobM

Yeah. Very odd.

Whether that's a typo or not, it's certainly not a good advert

HopelessN00b

@tombull89 So you see why I'm a bit confused.

tombull89

@HopelessN00b Yes - surely you want it to use less...?

RobM

You'd think. Or if they're saying "yes there's a bit of an overhead from our tools but its worth it" then those numbers are not convincing.

HopelessN00b

By the same token, after reading that article, maybe they are just doing things completely ass-backwards, and proud of it. Being proud of fucking up did seem to be the theme of the article, anyway.

pauska

14:50

@ChrisS just open the update catalog on your wsus server, it'll give you an extra button to import directly into wsus

RobM

just a bit

Chris S

@pauska I'd prefer a standard download link to a FTP server, and the SHA1 listed... I get to use their ActiveX downloader, hope it doesn't bork my server, or use it on a client where I have to manually select the download destination, takes 5 extra clicks just to download, no way to verify the file was downloaded correctly and not corrupted or compromised... I thought we were in 2013 people?! ActiveX downloader?!

Iain

@RobM It's just typical of the mid/low level devopery we see on the front page every day, Lets build a stack and just keep adding bits to do new things without reading the documentation to find out what can be done with what we already have

JohnMerlino

1

Q: Why doesn't my server respond to ping?

I wonder why my server(s) don't respond to ping? Check this one: klusteranalytics.com $ ping klusteranalytics.com PING klusteranalytics.com (50.17.214.205): 56 data bytes Request timeout for icmp_seq 0 Request timeout for icmp_seq 1 Request timeout for icmp_seq 2 But it does resolve: $ curl ...

ping

why does this guy say "ping is not a suitable method of checking if your site is alive."

Kyle Brandt

Any puppet guys know if this is still true with puppet 3?

HopelessN00b

14:58

@JohnMerlino because it's not.

Kyle Brandt

1

Q: puppet propagate variable from node to erb template?

Is it possible to declare variable in node and than propage it way down to the erb template? Example: node basenode { $myvar = "bar" # default include myclass } node mynode extends basenode { $myvar = "foo" } class myclass { file { "/root/myfile": content => template("myclass/m...

puppet

In other words, can you not set a variable for a node and reference it in a template?

JohnMerlino

@HopelessN00b why not?

Iain

@JohnMerlino because it's true

HopelessN00b

The only thing you can reliably test with pings is whether or not your target will respond to pings.

JohnMerlino

ping tells you if your server is responsive

if you dont get a response back, then something is wrong

Iain

15:00

@JohnMerlino to pings, yes.

JohnMerlino

so if you dont get a response, then yuour site must not be live

HopelessN00b

@JohnMerlino No, if I do get a response back, then something is wrong. All my servers are set to block ICMP traffic.

Iain

@JohnMerlino that's not true

ewwhite

Word.

Iain

@JohnMerlino you wouldn't get a ping response from any of my http servers bu you would get a http response

HopelessN00b

15:02

@JohnMerlino So, when httpd or IIS or whatever crashes, and you get a ping response back, your site must still be working, since your server's sending ping responses?

JohnMerlino

then what do you use ping for?

MDMarra

@JohnMerlino Ping uses a part of the TCP/IP stack called ICMP. Ping is the term for making an ICMP echo request. All it's doing is saying "Hey, if you're configured to respond, holler back!" You can absolutely have ICMP fail but have every other service on the box work just fine.

JohnMerlino

ok well then I guess telnet or ssh is more accurate

I use ssh personally

MDMarra

Now, blocking ICMP is usually a bad thing to do because of MTU path discovery and all that, but that's up for debate

I usually never block ping (or any ICMP) but plenty of people do

RobM

The only truly valid way to test whether or not a website works is to request a page from it.

Iain

15:06

@JohnMerlino if you want to ensure that $service is working then you have to interact with that service in the way it's expecting so if you want to check that mail is working you have to talk smtp to it or your webserver, then speak http to it and so on.

RobM

Lots of monitoring software will let you do that, and scan the page that's returned for an expected phrase

HopelessN00b

@JohnMerlino What? You use ssh or telnet for...? webpages? ICMP requests? What???

RobM

There's a big difference between "server is up" and "service on that server is behaving well"

MDMarra

@JohnMerlino Tailor your monitoring for what you care about. If it's a web server, do a GET and parse the response for text that you know won't be on a 404. If you care about LDAP, do a lookup for a dummy object that you know should always be somewhere. If you care about file servers, try and enumerate a directory that has static contents and verify that you get the expected response

Just pinging something doesn't mean that the services on it are up, down, or anywhere in between.

HopelessN00b

@RobM For that matter, I've even encountered instances where the server was effectively down but still responding to pings.

tombull89

15:08

Same, I had an issue with a server when it's fileshares wasn't accessible, and RDP wasn't working. Pings were okay but I had to get into iLO and reboot the machine.

RobM

@HopelessN00b me too. Some servers process basic IP at a very low level so they'll respond despite being in the middle of a major hang or partway through a shutdown or startup. Windows for one.

MikeyB

@HopelessN00b Had a linux firewall once where you couldn't ssh into it, but you could ping it. Turned out userspace had crashed, but the kernel was still merrily shuffling packets around.

HopelessN00b

@RobM Yup, completely froze partway through a shutdown. Still responded to pings fine.

RobM

computers are fun!

2

MDMarra

@MikeyB You think that's bad?! I'm on day 2 of using Windows 8!

Userland?! WHICH ONE!

RobM

15:10

@MDMarra how are you finding it?

Dan

@MDMarra I'm alright with it now, we've made our peace. It doesn't show me metro apps and I don't explode it

RobM

I'm trying Windows 8 again

HopelessN00b

@MDMarra Windows 8, where a non-functional userspace is status-by-design.

MDMarra

Nah, I actually like it

Lots of good stuff in it

Chris S

There are pieces I like, and parts I don't... Overall it's a wash I think.

RobM

15:11

There's lots of good stuff in it. That's never been in doubt. It's just that there's lots of bad stuff too.

Cold T

afternoon all

Chris S

It's still morning here =[

ewwhite

Should I be scared when I look at a Cisco ASA and see a bunch of ezVPN connections to it?

MDMarra

If they had just released Windows 8 as an incremental update to windows 7 with the flat UI and updates that they rolled out to the desktop portion of the OS it would be wonderful

Cold T

how is everyone doing today? it is Friday after all

RobM

15:12

I've got utilities installed that disable most of the suck and now it's really nice. And essentially, "Windows 7.9".

MDMarra

Apple got it right with frequent dot releases to OS X

RobM

hey @ColdT

I'm good, I especially like the bit where it's friday and I'm going home in about 15 or 20 mins

Iain

@MDMarra apple got it right by not unifying their tablet and desktop UI

Cold T

@ewwhite depends, is vpn configured for Easy VPN?

Chris S

@MDMarra I heard rumors of a second Win8 release with a "Classic Start"... But who knows.

Cold T

15:13

@RobM lucky for some, i will try getting away at 4.30 but doubt it

Dan

@ChrisS Not while Steve "I'm a twat" Ballmer is in charge

MDMarra

@Iain they've ported some of it over, like Launchpad. But they did it right. The iOS elements are the ones that take the back seat and are optional. You can use a mac forever and never open Launchpad. Unfortunately, you can't avoid the Metro launcher in W8

@ChrisS I wish

MikeyB

@MDMarra No, I think that's AWESOME

Cold T

anybody work at Havering College here?

MDMarra

You know what's actually really bad? Outlook 2013. It's so freaking hard to use with the flat UI

It shouldn't be hard to see what's read and what isn't at a glance. Or even who sent what

RobM

15:15

That office UI isn't great to be honest

JohnMerlino

@MDMarra when you said to do a GET request, you mean like with a utility like curl?

Cold T

@MDMarra i got to agree with you, the whole office 2013 is incredibly flat UI

MDMarra

@JohnMerlino Are you making your own monitoring software? Why reinvent the wheel here. Use something like Nagios/Opsview/Zabbix/etc. Unless it's just for like 1 server, then use Monit or something

ewwhite

@ColdT it is... these appear to be site-to-site VPNs that weren't configured as normal IPSec tunnels.

MDMarra

@ColdT I do like a lot of the flat ui elements, but MS went too far, I feel.

ewwhite

15:16

@MDMarra what you know 'bout Monit?

MDMarra

I'm forcing myself to use it without changing themes and stuff

Cold T

if its a site to site, then i doubt anyone would set up Easy VPN to create IPSec tunnels

MDMarra

@ewwhite I trialed it for a little while when evaluating monitoring systems a while ago. Nothing more than a one night stand :)

HopelessN00b

@ColdT Oh, don't be so sure. I've seen that.

Cold T

@MDMarra flat UI is useful but when you got quite a bit going on, flat UI becomes awful

ewwhite

15:17

@ColdT But they did... it's crappy. I'm undoing it.

Cold T

@HopelessN00b that wouldn't be the greatest setup using Easy VPN for a site to site connection

MDMarra

@ColdT I accidently video called people over lync 2013 the other day trying to figure out what the different buttons do since nothing is labeled

Cold T

but you're probably right, people do set it up like that, no idea why; there is a better way to these site to site

@MDMarra no tooltips?

HopelessN00b

@ColdT Because they don't know any better, or they just have a hammer, so everything looks like a nail.

MDMarra

@ColdT There are, but I mixed the buttons up

Cold T

15:20

@HopelessN00b nice metaphor, i agree everything looks like a nail when you don't know INs an OUTs

MDMarra

I hovered over everything when I first installed it, then went on my way

Went to add someone to my contacts list. Boom, video call.

Cold T

@MDMarra hope you wasn't do anything that you shouldn't have been whilst looking for the 'x' button!

MDMarra

haha

nah, I was at work

HopelessN00b

@MDMarra Yup, Balmer's a stupid twat. What can ya do?

RobM

buy a mac

Cold T

15:21

i got to say, office 2010 UI with the ribbon works really well

HopelessN00b

@RobM Ugh. What, are we trying to end up with the worst UI possible?

RobM

Heh. I like my Mac so :p

tombull89

Heretic! Burn the heretic.

Dan

@RobM That's the second report to the Bridge in one day, RobM.

tombull89

My Zalgo got 8 stars. If anyone else did it they would have been chat banned.

Dan

15:27

@tombull89 Shall I try?

Or do I get banned from everywhere, cos closing this Chat Room is like going cold turkey from heroin

tombull89

@Dan chat ban is per-room, AFAIK. But like I said, it's only regulars that get banned.

Dan

@tombull89 Ah

tombull89

Case in point: When Voretaq posted a Yelling Bird tweet in because I dared him to. No flag, nothing.

Dan

Peculiar bunch, no offence.

I'm getting hacked off with the weather now

Michael Hampton

How slow are you trying to make it? — Michael Hampton 14 secs ago

Dan

15:38

@MichaelHampton My thoughts exactly

Adrian

mornin' gents.

Apparently my boss at $job[-1] is leaving. Talk about strange.

jscott

@Adrian They couldn't hang after you bailed?

Adrian

@jscott More or less, Yeah. He tried to see a way through to modernize after I left, and decided it was time to leave it for the next guy to do it his way.

Funny thing is, the previous boss at $job[-1] was working as a temporary Dev contractor, I found out that boss-man was leaving at the previous boss' going-away party last night.

It's been 15 years since at least one of the 3 of us was working there.

I don't envy my old grand-boss, she's a sharp classy lady. Has a lot of tough decisions to make and soon nobody left around there that she trusts.

Cold T

hello adrian, that would be the head of IT role is it?

got your email :)

Adrian

@ColdT what?

Dan

15:53

Anyone got any midrange hotel recommendations for the centre of Manchester?

Cold T

your boss, that would be the Head of IT role? i saw your email come into my inbox a little earlier via JISC

Dan

@ColdT Isn't Adrian in the US?

Adrian

@ColdT As far as I know, we've never exchanged emails.

Cold T

oh my bad then, maybe wrong Adrain!

Adrian

@ColdT There's several of us roaming around. I'm on the US West Coast.

Cold T

15:57

ahh ok, there was an Adrian that emailed us from another place saying his boss leaving and they were looking for a new person. Thought it could have been the same Adrian, not to worry

Adrian

@ColdT no worries. What makes this whole thing funny is that last week I got a layoff notice 3 months into a 9 month contract. I need to keep moving up though, and going back there on any kind of permanent basis would be a career-killer.

voretaq7

@Adrian take the CIO job and run :P

Adrian

@voretaq7 I know you're making the funny, but the truth is that nobody who's ever taken that job has had a viable career path afterwards.

I'd need to start planning a 2nd career path the day I took the job.

voretaq7

@Adrian PRINT JOURNALISM!

WesleyDavid

16:12

@Adrian Bike messenger.

voretaq7

(True story: we had a CS major at the alma mater who just couldn't hack it. He finally had a meltdown and switched majors: CS/Engineering -> Print Journalism)

WesleyDavid

@voretaq7 Out of the frying pan, into the gaping hell maw of an active volcano and pyroclastic flow of magmadeath. I like his style. 9/10 - could use more bears

Adrian

@WesleyDavid Already a saturated market for that here. Too many scrawny hipsters working as baristas in the morning, bike messenger after 10am, and playing in a band at night.

voretaq7

@WesleyDavid Out of the frying pan and into the decaying remnants of the supernova that was the print industry :P

WesleyDavid

16:33

@voretaq7 Still needs moar bears.

@Adrian but yeah, how long do you think you're going to last and are you already sending feelers out to jump ship?

Adrian

@WesleyDavid This job is done on the 5th. But the response to my resume' posting is very good. I've only sent one resume' out, the rest have been calling me. 2nd phone screen scheduled for this morning and another recruiter that wants me to call her today to discuss.

And half the leads are for straight-up FT positions. Linux talent is a hot commodity in this town currently.

WesleyDavid

Sometimes I like to look at recruiter emails and try and figure out what their client does based on the technologies used. "From the looks of things, your client is a pornographer trying to be SOX compliant using a series of FOSS projects that you've never heard of before and probably copied and pasted the wrong listing from a competing recruiting firm's website?"

So, here's one out of Cupertino:
Xserve/MacOS Installation and admin exp
Exp with Tomcat App Server deployment and configuration
Exp with MySQL dB - deployment, configuration and Admin
Scripting exp - Perl, Shell etc
Exp with Linux Installation and Admin
Exp with Oracle dB Installation and Admin
Exp with Solis ConfigurationMust Have
5-7yrs exp within a similar role
Xserve/MacOS Installation and admin exp
Exp with Tomcat App Server deployment and configuration
Exp with MySQL dB - deployment, configuration and Admin

Why on earth would anyone still be using Xserves.

Or OS X Server, for that matter, seeing as how deprecated it is and relegated to Mac Minis or desktops the size of a Nimitz.

But it is Cupertino.

@Adrian Very nice, sounds like you're in your element.

@Adrian Also, I need to knuckle down and finish off that resume series that I wrote. Can't believe it's still sitting in my blog.

Adrian

16:55

@WesleyDavid Yeah, It doesn't suck to be in demand.

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