Punkie

That explains why it’s so hot outside.

I have had two tech jobs like that, even before COVID, starting in 2016. The first time, it was a company that outgrew their workspace. They put us in ‘rent-an-office’ spaces for a bit, and then my boss started working from home a few days a week. Then he allowed me to. We moved to a new office, but it was always empty in my section. That was fine, too, but the commute was terrible, so I started doing 2 days a week, then once a week, then a few times a month. I rarely saw my other coworkers in person, and nobody said anything aloud.

The next job started because of COVID, and when they started doing RTO, they also wanted to do “hot desking” (no assigned seating) and open office plans, and I was not having that. I was not going to work in a “cafeteria” like setting. So I got contracted work and have worked from home 100% for several years now. Nobody has office space, and we work all over the world to collaborate. I get paid very well.

I hope i never had to go back to an office. I reach retirement age in about 15 years, and I am hoping to make it.

Someone did a study at MIT about tin foil hats, and found that not only do they not screen radio interference, in some cases, can actually magnify them.

Conclusion: The helmets amplify frequency bands that coincide with those allocated to the US government between 1.2 Ghz and 1.4 Ghz. According to the FCC, These bands are supposedly reserved for ‘‘radio location’’ (ie, GPS), and other communications with satellites (see, for example, [3]). The 2.6 Ghz band coincides with mobile phone technology. Though not affiliated by government, these bands are at the hands of multinational corporations. It requires no stretch of the imagination to conclude that the current helmet craze is likely to have been propagated by the Government, possibly with the involvement of the FCC. We hope this report will encourage the paranoid community to develop improved helmet designs to avoid falling prey to these shortcomings.

About 20 years ago, I used to keep Lego Bionicles at my desk, but had to stop because pranksters would do this, and then HR would make negative comments.

I was burned afoul by a former admin who, instead of diagnosing why a mail service was failing, labeled a script as a /etc/cron.d file entry as “…” (three dots) which, unless you were careful, you’d never notice in an "ls " listing casually. The cron job ran a script with a similar name which he ran once every 5 minutes. It would launch the mail service, but simultaneous services were not allowed to run on the same box, so if it was running, nothing would happen, although this later explained hundreds of “[program] service is already running” errors in our logs. It was every 5 minutes because our solarwinds check would only notice if the service had been down for 5 minutes. The reason why the service was crashing was later fixed in a patch, but nobody knew about this little “helper” script for years.

Until one day, we had a service failover from primary to backup. Normally, we had two mail servers servers behind a load balancer. It would serve only the IP that was reporting as up. Before, we manually disabled the other network port, but this time, that step was forgotten, so BOTH IPs were listening. We shut down the primary mail service, but after 5 minutes, it came back up. The mail software would sync all the mail from one server to the other (like primary to backup, or reversed, but one way only). With both up, the load balancer just sent traffic to a random one.

So now, both IPs received and sent mail, along with web interface users could use. But now, with mail going to both, it created mass confusion, and the mailbox sync was copying from backup to primary. Mail would appear and disappear randomly, and if it disappeared, it was because backup was syncing to primary. It was slow, and the first people to notice were the scant IMAP customers over the next several days. Those customers were always complaining because they had old and cranky systems, and our weekend customer service just told them to wait until Monday. But then more and more POP3 customers started to notice, and after 5 days had passed, we figured out what had happened. And we only did Netbackups every week, so now thousands of legitimate emails were lost for good over 3000 customers. A lot of them were lawyers.

Oof.

Having moderated forums back in the day, I can answer to some of that motivation.

First, some people are just bullies. A sense of tribalism forms around bullies, who feel the need to act out and repeat the abuses they have endured. Hazing stems from this, too. Cruelty masked as “you should know better,” advice. Given too late.

Some have a smug sense of superiority, and want to keep it that way. Less smart people means they stay king of the mountain. Others are scared their own lack of knowledge will cripple them if they don’t keep the potential competition down. Insecurities drown out any sense of empathy.

Some people hate themselves so they punish others in retaliation. Like, trying to erase past cringe by making others hurt to even the score.

A few are sick of “the same fucking newbie questions again and again and again,” but still hang out in newbie forums for some reason.

I was for about 15 years post high school, but her life was rough and I was always the one initiating contact, so we drifted apart. I hope she okay. Smart woman, gifted arist, terrible parents.

really just doesn’t do what I needed to do.

This has been my experience, or sort of does what I want it to do, but I have to rethink what I need it to do instead of something really simple. Like a “new type of shared file system” that replaces NFS/Windows sharing. So instead of files in a standard file system one can manage with a file browser, it has “indexed” your files in such a way that the actual files are renamed into data chunks, and one “finds” files by their non-intuitive search engine that can’t do even basic search engine tricks like “AND/OR” searches, wildcards, and the results are hit and miss. “But it’s faster and more elegant!” So how do you restore from backup when the system fails? “When the system does whatnow?”

Yeah, no thanks. I can recover files from a file system much easier than some proprietary encoded bullshit fronted with a bad search engine over a proprietary and buggy index.

When I was 19, I had friends from high school who were still younger, and one of them was my friend Julie who had helicopter parents (she would have been 17-18). I was doing security at an event where the radio headsets we had were super-shitty, and the guy running security was a dumpster fire on his own. Julie’s parents forbid her from going to the event, and grounded her to her room. Then her dad called the hotel where the event was being held, was told Julie had “run away” to this event, and that I was somehow responsible. Given she was a minor, the event runners were understandably concerned, although they were frustrated that Julie’s dad was unable to describe her in a way that was useful: “Asian, wearing black, or a tee-shirt, or something. Ask Punkie where she is.” So they contacted the head of security to find me on my rounds to see if I knew what this crazy man was talking about. The head of security said “okay” and did nothing.

At some point, the head of security was fired for a variety of reasons, and this increased the level of miscommunication. Meanwhile, Julie’s dad was calling every few hours, demanding to know where his daughter was. And soon there was a concerted effort to find me, which was complicated because of the communication issues. By the time someone found me and the connection was made, my response of, “I have no idea, Julie said her dad forbid her coming here,” was not what they wanted to hear, and met with skepticism “You’re not hiding her, are you? Like she ran away with you in some tryst? She’s 17 and you’re 19, that could have legal ramifications!” No. We’re platonic friends, I don’t know where she is. if I tried to bonk the poor woman, she’d clobber me.

Meanwhile, Julie’s dad finds Julie in her bedroom, right where he left her. Julie later told me that she was ignoring her dad calling for her, and didn’t “come downstairs” like he demanded because she assumed it was a trap to get her punished for leaving her bedroom while she was grounded. So naturally, her dad assumed she wasn’t in the house. Because he called for her and she didn’t answer.

Poor Julie. Her parents were crazy-nuts.

“… I was now… a fem-MAN!” [Orchestra music swells]

I hate to be honest, but I used Amazon Prime a lot because:

1. I cannot drive. Thus, getting to the store is difficult.
2. I must bring in 3-4 items a week, so yeah, I save on shipping.
3. Auto-subscriptions save a little.
4. I have priced a lot of stuff over the years, and while Amazon is not always the best, the convenience is impressive.
5. They have, multiple times, been incredibly helpful with customer service. Like above and beyond.
6. COVID and nobody masks around here. I have an autoimmune condition, so it’s important that I not leave unless it’s a medical appointment or similar need.
7. They just have stuff I can’t find anywhere. Yes, as some have said, caveat emptor, but that’s true for all the stores.

I also save a shit ton of money. When I used to browse Walmart or Target, I used to buy a lot of shit I didn’t need. I don’t get as distracted with focused buying. I also order from Aliexpress if I can wait 30 days, and I have only been ripped off three times in several years, for a total of maybe $35.

I’m not saying my way is better, and certainly not if it’s better for you, but it’s been a godsend to the house-bound.

When I used to run a book store in the 80s, two magazines were the largest (and 99% ads): bridal magazines and Computer Shopper.

Having seen these in a demo, they have weight triggers to prevent that. Also in or demo, one got stuck on a power cord, the other on a electrical plate in the floor.

I am dumb. What would cops want with my prescription information? I’ll probably understand if someone gives me examples of how this could be used against me.

“The simple act of coordinating human resource decisions with IT department actions, such as revoking account access for dismissed personnel, would significantly mitigate such risks.”

HAHAHAHAH… ahh… yeah, like that’ll ever happen. How do I know my users have been deleted? When I find out by accident 90 days later. I have worked for several companies where HR doesn’t do shit for IT. I find out employees have been hired when they show up to my desk, asking for a login and laptop. I find out they were let go when the 90 day expiration report shows who got expired for not logging in for 90 days. “Jim’s admin password expired.” “Jim left in October.” I have worked for companies where the simplest of forms, a form generated by an email or a popup in some ticketing system only requires checking off a checkbox… nothing. Can’t be arsed.

I got all of that except “shag ye x,” because it sounds like “shag (fuck) you x,” where “x” is the subject that is a bit vague. Like, “I’m trying to shag you, love?” or “Fuck your ex,” as in, the last person you broke up with?

Inserted ‘taunts’ in the code, including references to “grok”

Uh. OK.

I mean, I understand the Heinlein word, but what does that have to do with his motivation?

Worked for a company in 1998 that had all the employee data on an excel spreadsheet: everything from emergency contacts to date of last paycheck. All of HR. And “for security” it was stored on a floppy disk. One single disk. Which was put back in the safe every close of business. One day, the disk got corrupted. The “backup” was an end-of-year printout, but any changes since then were gone.

My wife stayed in a rural town near Shichigahama for a week. Nobody spoke English except a few students. But the citizens did speak Japanese louder and slower, showing that’s a universal trait. It actually helped, as my wife knew SOME Japanese.

I am not a gamer so my fans only spin up when the vents clog with dust or I am doing some high end rendering. I’d never do water cooling because a leak could kill everything. I have lived through floods.