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Latest News and Blog Posts from Wayne “Pendragon” Owens.
Epic Epoch
Today is a special day in the geeky calander.
Unix or Posix time is a means computers, part of the internet, and millions of systems across the world use for time keeping, calculating, and things like that.
Well today @ 23:31:30 (11:31 and 30 seconds PM to some) the posix time will be 1234567890
Just thought I’d mention this geek milestone.
Why oh Gods, Why?
So we have a new customer, lets call him “MPD“.
Simple job (in theory) He’s fallen out with his web designers/holders and needs his site putting up somewhere else, (or he split from company and wants to go into competition, I did not ask which). Now he had a copy of his site, and database, so it just needed uploading, and tweaking so it could pretend to be dozens of different companies… Easy!
OK, data uploaded, db converted from access to mysql, testing site…. Part doesn’t work. Checking… OK we missing loads of tables, inform MPD and get “oh, didn’t i give you latest version!” new DB got, uploaded…
So yesterday afternoon MPD came into the Insane Asylum under pretense of getting a quote for a site re-write. But no! all afternoon spent going over code “tweaking things” since the code is not a live version and has bugs. And its written by the person who hid the bible code in the bible.
At one point i spent 2 hours trying to find a file in use to fix one problem, only to find out MPD had put wrong values in.!!! Arrrggghhhhh!!!!
Then this morning, MPD phones up again to say the site mysteriously stopped working since it was fixed day before. After checking, i notice the files have a timestamp on them of midnight, so i check he did nothing to them “no i done nothing.!” “no i done nothing” “oh. you mean change things, yes i did that”
MPD only uploaded code copy from his laptop overwriting my changes!
I HATE CUSTOMERS!!!
Jibba Jabber – Part 1
In the words of a Modern day philosopher :-
Mr. T “Got no time for the jibba jabba!”
Well the Governor of the Insane Asylum has decided the Inmates need a new communication system, to cut down on the expense of plumbers to fix broken pipes from our current system of tapping on the heating pipes with a metal cup.
So an email was sent forth from the Governor asking peoples opinions on what Messaging system they would prefer, and what do they like. Some of the responses are below :-
- PostIt Notes (My suggestion)
- ICQ
- Skype
- MSN/ICQ/AIM/Yahoo/ANy
- Walking over to person and Talking. (another one of Mine)
Then As the debate got sillier and sillier, involving Walkie-Talkie radios and Zombie invasions, I decided on the following Insane idea.
I vote for a telnet talker, and bots running on all our servers so they talk on there as well telling us when they not feel well, so we get preemptive IM chat from the servers before they break.
OK, so its all just Banter amongst the Inmates, nothing serious, right?
Wrong, The Governor comes to visit me in my nice padded room all happy and excited.. “I love your idea, can we really do that? it would be brilliant, I’ll let everyone know we going for our own IM system”
So I’m now looking at an install of Jabberd2 on one of our servers, getting a series of clients to recommend for Linux, windows, iPhone, and getting all Inmates onto one locked down system. Before getting our monitoring software to talk using it, and then making mini-AI’s for all our servers.
Oh and a support account to run from a widget on our customer only website…..
Its a good Job I am brilliant!!
Have you ever been stuck in a revolving door.
OK. Over at the Techno Insane Asylum we have a small problem. Our Windows Systems Administrator has left, and has left our windows servers in a bit of a state. We urgently need some work doing, to try and rectify about six years worth of neglect.
Now our biggest problem is. Nobody has been appointed as the new systems administrator. Which means, currently there is even less work being done to the servers than there was before. This has recently come to a head, since an important customer has requested a service we can not currently provide without some urgent update work.
So we’ve had a couple of meetings now to try and sort out what’s needed. And to work out what order they need doing, and when they need doing. The only thing we have not discussed is, getting a Windows System Administrator to do the actual work.
So todays meeting went along the lines of working out what was needed. The director chairing the meeting then decided the best thing we could do to quickly get ourselves up to speed, was to ignore the half dozen or so windows servers we have out in the field and deploy a new Windows 2008 server. This new server would be fully up to date, and meet our customers needs. So we can put the other stuff on the back bone. All sorted and decided..
Now, we just need a windows administrator to build the 2008 server (which no one in the asylum has ever used) so we can get it out and running to save us having to pick a windows administrator….
At this point in the meeting (after checking I was not armed and able to put them out of my misery) I retreated into my own little world…
You know its going to be a bad day when…
Your there warm and comfortable in bed, semi awake, at peace with the world. Then.
AWOOGA AWOOGA AWOOGA
“Mutter, WTF!!! arrghhh… Whys my alarm going off on a Sunday morning!“
Grab phone, silence alarm, and stare at phone in accusation, how dare it wake me up on a Sunday, Why do i have an actual sound of an alarm as my wake up noise, and more important, why is my phone saying its Monday??
“I was installing stuff on it last night, Have I reset the date/time? what have I done now? stupid thing!……. err hang, wasn’t it Sunday yesterday, which means its Monday today. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!”
So far, Things are not looking auspicious for a good day. But look on the bright side, good foot forward, and on for the day!
Then there was the commute into work, which is normally a nice trip in, but not today. No, Today I get hit with several sets of roadworks, tractors, JCB’s and for half the trip fog making visibility down to 2 meters, so everyone travels at 10mph……….
I hate Mondays!
Alternative Alternator
A Bit of Background…
MONDAY: Well the battery warning light on my car came stayed on slightly longer than normal on the morning’s commute to work. And it stayed on every time I was under 2k RPM on the way home. So I thought “Ahhhh! somethings up! Must get that looked at”. Probably the Alternator.
TUESDAY: OK. The battery light is now on almost permanently unless I am flooring it! Alternator, has defiantly gone, I must pop by the garage tomorrow.
WEDNESDAY: To quote from a famous film ‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!‘ I Jumped in the car this morning, to shoot to work. The plan was to drop the car off at the garage on my way. What I got was Derrrrr, Derrr, *nothing* The battery is as flat as a very flat thing that’s been jumped on by an obese elephant.
OK, It is easily fixed. I phoned up my Dad, and got him to pop over with jump leads. Get the car started and take it to the garage for repair. What could go wrong? What could go wrong!
1) I phone up all the local auto-elec’s and garages to get the best quote and see who’s got parts. Several say they can order part, may take a while to get in and it will be about £200+VAT.
2) I phone up a place that only sells Motors & Alternators. These guys inform me that for my type of vehicle, it could be one of 2 types of alternator. Up to the year before my car its Type1 from the year after my car its Type2. For my exact year of car, They do not exist! (Why did I say “What could go wrong“),
3) I phone up the people who actually MAKE the alternator. We are now getting somewhere. These guys admit the alternator exists (A Start), but they don’t actually have any in stock, and will not be getting any for the foreseeable future!
ARGGHHHHH!!!! why is nothing easy! what could go wrong?
Luckily there’s a local place that repairs motors, and plays about with such things. So I stripped the engine to get the alternator out (Bloody thing also runs power steering, servo breaks, oil pump, most the engine is plugged into the alternator). I shoot it over to this place, and cross my fingers that they can repair it…
Four hours later, I now have a reconditioned and repaired Alternator for just £50.
I’m back on the Road.
Busby Update – Part 2
Now as you are aware, I have not broken Busbys systems since going live with the project. I was thinking it was all flowing well and they had got “used” to me now, so the end of all my problems…
Then came the Christmas shutdown period, and I came back to work tried to log into the Busby firewall with my Activ-identity card, and eye scan, DNA tests, etc only to get told “Account Disabled“? Moi? Account Disabled, do they not know who I am?
So i drop an email to my contacts there asking wtf? and after my main technical contact tried everything he was capable off he admitted defeat and passed the problem up the food chain to the Sys.Admin. Which was nice of him… Then 30 minutes later I get an email from said Admin, along the lines of!
“We do not deal with user account problems, please go phone the normal customer helpline.”
Use the normal helpline, that the average mortal off the street would use? Do they not know who I am? We will see about that.
A further 30 minutes later and I get an email from the same sys.admin who had sent me the following.
“Hi, yes Our Boss was in a meeting earlier, and just popped in, err it seems we are authorised to help you with your problem, and err she asked could we do it as a priority, so ignore my earlier email, I’ll get it all sorted for you”
Harmony has returned to the Universe, Moi? The CodeNinja a mere mortal? I don’t think so.. ;o)
See dear Reader, It may sometimes be “what you know” but it is always “Who you know”
Livejournal
I was reading on t’interweb about the Russian owners of Livejournal laying off most of its staff without any severance packages, and since all of these people are in the technical area, leaving only sales people left its a bit of an interesting time.
So being a IT person and therefore a BIG advocate of OpenSource. I decided I had better back up my data. For those of you interested in such things, or wishing to back up your own data I suggest a program called ljarchive. It is a good idea as you could have years worth of memories you may loose.
After downloading my data, I sat there with my back up of several years of pointless drivel from Livejournal, inspiration hit. Where better to store a backup of my old blog, but in the archives of the new blog?
So, quick import of data from the ljarchive file, a tweak on posting info, and bob’s your great uncle. And this blog suddenly backdates several years. I have hidden all the MEME’s, most the Insanity, and all of the plans for global domination.
IT workers + Coffee = Peace
There should be a form of Caffeine-Breathalyser fitted to all computers that prevent incoming emails unless the operator has a sufficient amount of caffeine in their system to cope with lUsers.
For my example I shall use my morning.
9am: Get into office, log into everything, say good morning to fellow staff, people on the internet, go grab a coffee. (1st work coffee off day)
9:45: Check emails (Caffeine levels too low) Receive email from “FFS”. Email basically states with lots of SHOUTY emphasis that I have not set up a live & development server correctly, and have set both to be same machine, with no access to development one, The email then goes on to list the server specs at me.
Now. This is where the caffeine lockout should have been enforced. Unfortunately, due to this IMPORTANT piece of IT hardware not yet being invented, there was nothing preventing me replying to the email, and CC’ing the MD of FFS in as well for good measure. Basically pointing out the ineptitude of the developer emailing me, and the fact he has no clue as to what he is doing, did not bother checking, or doing anything before disturbing me in an aggressive manner. It was a work of pre-caffeine level Rant-Art.
10:16: MD of FFS emails a groveling apology.
Please, will someone invent the “Caffeinalizer cutout”!
Busby Update – Obscure Code
I thought I would just give you some update’s on the fun of Busby’s “Obscure Code”.
AKA: The bane of the Internet.
Update 1.
After months of development, and testing we now have data files that meet the hundreds of requirements imposed on us by Busby. The file was uploaded to their Main test server, Inserted into the system which then promptly crashed.
The File was then checked over by “humans” to make sure it complied, which it did. It was reinserted into the system, and Crashed!
No one knows why. There is nobody left from the early days of the Internet, who know how any of this stuff works!
Update 2.
As you are aware, this project is all about integrating with some old archaic parts of the Internet. For those of you interested in how old, I spotted a variable $Noah.
We recently hit a problem where every test we put through broke their system in such a way that they could not reproduce the error even using the test data we provided. Got to love old code.
Their engineers worked night and day for the last week and have finally fixed the problem. They have rolled back the code to a month ago before they made any changes.
I believe the old Internet code has become self aware, and is resistant to change.
SkyNet is coming.
Update 3.
It gets better!
After a week trying to evaluate My last “Data File” Busby have decided they are unable to evaluate the data due to their system still being broken from my last test.
So to speed things up they are simply granting me access to their Live system.
Oh the power… A new system to find the bugs in…