News: 1597994113

The are few things more frustrating than being in possession of the right kit but being unable to string it together due to mismatched pinouts, interface versions and/or the necessary adapter. This can work to your advantage though. I enjoyed the confused look on the cleaner's face when he realised that there was no longer any point in unplugging our office file and print server to feed his vacuum cleaner as we had got sick of the nightly reboot and fitted Walsall plugs and sockets.

No reason to change the wall sockets. You label the existing ones, and explain to the cleaner very clearly which sockets he can use.

If it happens again, you change the cleaner.

No need to replace plugs, just separate the cleaner from the keys ...

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the cleaning staff. It's their job to clean the place, floor to ceiling, board room to bog, watering plants, replacing dead light bulbs & emptying the trash in their wake. The modern world wouldn't run without janitorial staff. Extending this to include the labs that evolved into computer centers in the 1950s wasn't even thought about, it just happened. Janitorial staff having the keys to the entire kingdom (as it were) was the norm.

But computers are fickle. And jealous. They don't appreciate sharing power with vacuums.

So we in the glass room started putting our collective foot down in the late 1970s/early 1980s. It wasn't until the late 1980s that it started becomming uncommon. By the late 1990s it was as rare as hen's teeth. The last time I witnessed a janitor coming unannounced into a data center "in the wee hours" was 2005 ...

A good plan, but this was the start of desktop computing in our organisation and we had our little skunkworks built in the office. The data centre was for the big iron and our puny little servers weren't allowed to pollute the scrubbed and cooled air which they breathed.

For future reference, they make locking outlet covers that fit over an inserted plug or plugs, preventing the removal of same. The locks are trash, easier to pick than a file cabinet, but they work for this kind of thing. Under twenty bucks, and usually in stock at your favorite purveyor of sparky stuff.

There are many IT tales regarding random reboots due to cleaning staff or tradespeople unplugging kit. One would think they would have been told upfront not to unplug anything they did not plug in and if they do, it's instant dismissal.

Having different socket/plug configurations doesn't stop someone unplugging to only realise their plug won't fit.

Our problem wasn't that she unplugged our kit, but that she plugged the hoover into a UPS socket. Turns out the UPS couldn't supply enough juice. Totally our fault, how was she to know? We had to buy some those little plastic covers that stop kids poking stuff in the plug holes, and fit them to the unused UPS sockets.

Never buy an UPS with a 'regular' outlet. Get one with C14 outlets, then connect servers or whatever with C13 to C14 cables.

If you have any 'regular' outlets in the server room, they should NOT be connected to the UPS. And they should be as far from the racks as possible.

That works fine until Cisco start supplying routers with C5 (Mickey Mouse) power connectors

(I did try to point this out when we received the first batch... did anyone listen?... "the UPS (C13-C14) cables don't fit")

Even if you tell Facilities they don't pass the message on to the company they hire, even if they do there is such a turnover of NMW staff actually doing the work who aren't told that eventually it happens.

[makes a quick visit to the museum]

http://plugsocketmuseum.nl/British2.html

Thanks. I searched for Walsall plugs and ended up here: https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/Overview.html

It's not like I've more important things to do.

I had never heard of Walsall plugs before. Perhaps not that unusual, but I was born in Walsall... so thanks very much for the learning experience!

We also make Wheelbarrows and Saddles.

Good plan, but should have smashed it directly in front of the rest of the tech (TV, computer etc) in the house.

Pour encourager les autres.....

Ah, the Crowley approach.

"Say goodbye to your friend. He just couldn't cut it..."

Appropriate icon -->

I've just finished re watching Good Oman's, I think it's time to re read the book

took his hammer and smashed it to very tiny pieces

"The Stepfather" Anyone?

A true engineer, even though it wasn't him who fixed the computer. Every engineer, irrespective of his field, owns multiple hammers.

(mine range from one weighing less than an ounce (for initial threats to clocks and watches) to a fourteen pound lump hammer (for threatening walls and/or car parts)).

The latter one being the Precision Alignment Device often required when installing kit. I like to leave mine on display when the grown-ups do a walkaround in the hope they'll ask what it's for. I can picture the horrified looks on their faces...

Ah yes in the world of kitcar builders you need some tools.

Tool 1: A Hammer

Tool 1a: A large hammer

These are essential for light persuasion when a bolt doesn’t go through a hole due to a burr, up to full force when loosening rusted bolts.

But they are also useful when fitting things to racks (the strange ones which aren’t quite 19” wide. And for creating a larger hole to get a cable through a wall, although building maintenance doesn’t like that.

Mine range from the 10x10x24 inch Douglas Fir mallet that I use when assembling timber frame bents to a small brass one that I use to tap pins back into clockworks and the like.

Horses for course & all that.

Quote

"A true engineer, even though it wasn't him who fixed the computer. Every engineer, irrespective of his field, owns multiple hammers.

(mine range from one weighing less than an ounce (for initial threats to clocks and watches) to a fourteen pound lump hammer (for threatening walls and/or car parts))"

Speaking as a professional engineer, the one hammer you should not be without is the thor number 2 copper/hide mallet.

Partly because its small enough to be easily handled and large enough to give stuff a good wack, but mostly because its just the right size to throw at the rapidly departing operator who just f***ed up 6 hours of hard work ......

"Mr manager.. the engineering superviser just tried to kill me with a mallet!"

"He must like you then"

"Hows that?"

"You're still alive....."

Had hammers on my IT support trolly for over 20 years. If the Newton Test fails, the hammer is next.

The only thing that makes it embarrassing is when the user insists "Oh no, it can't be that" before being proved wrong.

Morel of the story, never dismiss a possible cause unless you've tested it and are absolutely 100% certain. Otherwise you risk making yourself look like a plonker!

Which of us has never ended up calling the service desk to log a fault after returning to find a 'dead' laptop, getting irate because the 1st line engineer was insisting you checked the power supply was plugged in and then having to apologise profusely when you find out someone had unplugged the power supply and you had been running on battery all morning.

Not quite my teenage self but a few years ago I was involved in a Data Centre migration. Part of the reason for the migration was to get rid of the, sometimes very, old kit. One of my dinosaurs was an old Ultra 1 running the Council's waste management system. They had finally been cajoled into migrating to a newer application but only at the last minute. There wasn't time to run my regular script to write multiple passes of /dev/urandom onto the very slow disks. So, they day before we vacated the Computer room I brought my hammer in and had a lot of fun.

Not 'long long ago and far far away' but in fact in the last few days, I have a very old 7" tablet I use as an ebook reader. It was very cheap and I keep using it because if it ever breaks it is not the end of the world and I can grab something newer to replace it. But I am in IT so...

I couldn't connect it to the PC to upload any more books and nor could I connect over Wi-fi, Hmmm... Tried everything but eventually went for Factory reset

Went through startup config but failed activation phase - waited a couple of hours and 'as if by magic' now OK

Plug it back into PC - Still no joy. About to bin it but then had a flash of inspiration, grab the Win7 laptop which is in the cupboard because I had dropped it and fractured the display (but it still works so why throw it away?). Connect external monitor, connect the tablet and Bingo...Tablet doesn't like Win10 (mark of quality I would say)

So, upload all those books then....except the tablet has been out of support for a while and the App I used is no longer available although some similar ones are there and are Free

New Apps only take .epub version and my books are mostly .mobi - That-s OK, I have the books on a linux laptop which also has a format converter - and also has a dodgy power connector (yes, I dropped that one too...so sue me, at least I had a few replacement power blocks). Begin the process and leave it to it's stuff

Come back to linux laptop to find the battery flat and the power connector has gone from iffy to dead, it was both the power brick connector and the laptop power connector that had been damaged when it fell - Grab the Port replicator to charge it that way, Ah no key but I can disassemble the port replicator to remove the lock so I can dock the laptop - battery charging but even after 2 hours laptop will not start either docked or undocked

Remove disc and connect using SATA to USB adaptor and discover Windows does not like disc format

Go back to original store of files, download converter, run conversion, upload files and discover that the Apps are actually not worth the money paid as once you start reading a book you can only select a new book by closing the App

Work out how much time I have spent and tech I have used/killed in the process of trying to keep a 8 year old £20 refurbed tablet going instead of accepting it had reached EOL and bought something from this decade

Good on you for having a go though!

These things become a battle of wits, don't they? You get to the point where failure is not an option - spend hours banging your head against the problem; finally get it working, then realise it's a bag of crap and chuck it away a couple of days later.

This is the reason I have drawers stuffed with iPaq's and the like. I'm secretly hoping the wife bins it all when I'm not paying attention.

I'm actually looking at a I bought my wife 10 years ago at the moment. earlier this year I wanted a network monitor so rebuilt the thing spend an eon patching it, downloading utilities etc. over about a week in my rare spare time. By the time it was ready to use Open Reach had finally acknowledged that every house in the village having sub 10mbps connections and losing them at least once an hour actually was a fault and they repaired the cable.

But maybe the fact I now have a functional network monitor is a form of insurance? I must power it up again at some point and let it update itself.

Consider Lithium as an Android ebook reader. So far the only issue I have found is that it doesn't do sort by author/series/whatever as Kobo does. But no adverts, no helpful selections, lovely.

It's the stubborn refusal to be beaten, while engaging in an illogical degree of endeavour, which marks the human species out from its more sensible competitors. I have done this kind of thing more times than I can count, and although my life might have been largely wasted (ahem), I have learned a great deal along the way - some of which I can occasionally remember.

And more importantly, on good days I have experienced that sweet moment of triumph when something finally works against all expectation (and common sense) - a feeling which makes it worth getting up in the morning.

And which is all the sweeter for providing an excuse for liquid reward---------^

The family clearly had their own blinkenlights before they had a computer! Cheers to forward thinking...