Useless Conversation

[Evildrider]

Is it wrong to want to firebomb the woods nearby to stop the sound of cicadas?   

[Sky]

How can you hate the sound of summer?

Now, the cat and fox in heat, ok.

Re: The Reaper KS: The sooner you pledge, the sooner we can unlock that goal. Those giants will definitely unlock, we should easily hit 2.4-2.8M by close. $3M is not out of the realm of possibility if there are a lot of other fence sitters out there. But again, the sooner you jump in off the fence, the more gets unlocked, which drives more pledges, etc.

Hell, I'm tapped and still trying to figure out how to pull out another hundred for double vampire because it's such an insanely good deal.

[Minvaren]

The sound of summer was Iron Maiden, outdoors.

Now I can't hear Iron Maiden indoors over the sound of the cicadas...  But luckily it just rained, so there is blissful quiet.  

(turns on Iron Maiden again)

[Chimpy]

Today's Autodesk hate brought to you by their idea of "distributed license servers":

The idea of a distributed license server is nothing new, and is done by many companies. It is meant to allow for redundancy in case one server stops working or needs to be patched etc. In Autodesk world, apparently, a distributed network license means ALL SERVERS ON THE LIST MUST RESPOND OR NO AUTOCAD FOR YOU!

So this morning (while I was in a meeting) I got an email from my boss asking me to look into this error message which was blocking literally everyone from being able to open an autodesk product. I do a quick ping test to the two servers at the campus software licensing gurus, number 1 responds fine while number two is a black hole. One of the servers was apparently functioning totally fine, but the other one malfunctioning meant the distributed license didn't work.

We tested an install with a single license server just pointing to the one that I was able to ping and it worked gloriously.

 

So now I get to, tomorrow, start pestering the license management people about getting stand-alone licenses for at least the people that manage all of the drawings for campus as they cannot function without 24/7/365 access to AutoCAD.

[Hammond]

Thats odd.....

Big surprise it doesn't work the way they say it does.  It is only supposed to turn off whatever licenses are assigned to that particular node.  Good luck convincing someone of a standalone license. Do you guys support borrowing a license?  That could be a shorterm workaround.  Our network licenses support up to 30 day checkouts.

On a side note setup some monitoring on your servers.  I get emails / sms on my cell phone if anything important goes down like this.  If you got no budget setup something like Nagios for monitoring its opensource so its a freebie.

[Viin]

I saw Autodesk's stock fell a ton today, must be karma.

[Chimpy]

On a side note setup some monitoring on your servers.  I get emails / sms on my cell phone if anything important goes down like this.  If you got no budget setup something like Nagios for monitoring its opensource so its a freebie.

The servers aren't tied to our department. They are under the umbrella of campus IT. I have NFC how they didn't know it was down for more than 12 hours, we are going to be asking them some serious questions.

And this is not some small potatoes organization I work for, it is a Big Ten university.

[Hammond]

Probably someone ignored the pages or thought you know Autodesk would like work properly with redundant servers. .  As far as the comment about no budget you would be AMAZED how many IT groups run on a shoestring and ignore things like proper monitoring.

[Merusk]

I saw Autodesk's stock fell a ton today, must be karma.

Went up .62% actually.  After-hours they're dropping, though.   The news tacked on to the stock ticker says they had a below-average earnings report for Q2 and lowered the forecast for next year.  Considering that my industry is still shaky this doesn't surprise me much.. add-on international uncertainty and I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop on being unemployed again. 

In other news we just had a client cut $100k worth of work.  Considering they're a mufti-national involved in logistics and freight I'm a bit worried about what that means for the economy as a whole. 

[Sky]

Those giants will definitely unlock

Oh shit, that only took 3 hours. This thing is getting beyond amazing. If you think you ever might possibly maybe might think about owning minis, you should probably throw a Benjamin at it. The rewards are getting stupendous.

[Selby]

Symantec really is god-awful.

The sad thing is that 11-12 years ago the corporate edition of Symantec was actually a good piece of software.  Somewhere 6-7 years ago their products started to go completely in the toilet and got considerably more expensive.

[Ingmar]

Backup Exec still works fine at least.

[Ironwood]

No, it fucking doesn't and for those CLOWNS out there that are considering Symantecs iCloud backup or Ant-Virus, let me just tell you, as an accredited reseller, that it's a bucket of shite and you should AVOID IT LIKE THE FUCKING PLAGUE.

Seriously.  Cloud my arsehole.

[Merusk]

Those giants will definitely unlock

Oh shit, that only took 3 hours. This thing is getting beyond amazing. If you think you ever might possibly maybe might think about owning minis, you should probably throw a Benjamin at it. The rewards are getting stupendous.

Goddamnit.   Not like I needed that $200 anyway... it was just sitting there in savings. 

Vampire, Clockwork Dragon, Undead Dragon and all 4 paint kits ($72 for paint?! Fuck, they got more expensive than I remember)

[JWIV]

Those giants will definitely unlock

Oh shit, that only took 3 hours. This thing is getting beyond amazing. If you think you ever might possibly maybe might think about owning minis, you should probably throw a Benjamin at it. The rewards are getting stupendous.

Goddamnit.   Not like I needed that $200 anyway... it was just sitting there in savings. 

Vampire, Clockwork Dragon, Undead Dragon and all 4 paint kits ($72 for paint?! Fuck, they got more expensive than I remember)

Wife will most likely murder me, but TAKE MY MONEY

[RhyssaFireheart]

Those giants will definitely unlock

Oh shit, that only took 3 hours. This thing is getting beyond amazing. If you think you ever might possibly maybe might think about owning minis, you should probably throw a Benjamin at it. The rewards are getting stupendous.

Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala

[Ironwood]

OK.  Here Goes.

Suited and Booted.

Let's DO THIS SHIT.

 

[JWIV]

Hrm.  We may have broke something here.  Trying to up my pledge (Stupid clockwork and Nethyrmaul dragons are too awesome to not pick up), and amazon is being all shitty right now.

And fixed.  God, I wish I hadn't seen the words double vampire, it invites really bad math of oh hey, I'm almost at 200, and then I could drop both sophies for another $50 credit and then get X, Y, and Z and its like free!  But in now for Vampire, Clockwork, and Nethyrmaul and a few others and hopefully avoiding temptation.

[Sky]

Yeah, the payment system was just borked, apparently. Should be good now, though. It's a fairly slow part of the day, but still cost at least $5k to Reaper. Merusk, excellent choices; I doubled up on both those dragons. You might want to skip the IMEF paint collection, there are only maybe ten IMEF/NOVA troops in the whole vampire pledge.

As far as paints being expensive, it's $3.29/bottle retail so at $1.50/bottle KS price it's a steal. But yeah, it no be cheap to get up and running, which is why I did it through store credit for old magic cards :)

[Merusk]

Yeah, the payment system was just borked, apparently. Should be good now, though. It's a fairly slow part of the day, but still cost at least $5k to Reaper. Merusk, excellent choices; I doubled up on both those dragons. You might want to skip the IMEF paint collection, there are only maybe ten IMEF/NOVA troops in the whole vampire pledge.

As far as paints being expensive, it's $3.29/bottle retail so at $1.50/bottle KS price it's a steal. But yeah, it no be cheap to get up and running, which is why I did it through store credit for old magic cards :)

Yeah I wasn't complaining about the KS price but that retail prices on the paints seem to have skyrocketed in the last 10 years.  I remember my RP "official D&D" paints only costing me $1.50 a jar for the 'expensive' ones like "Paladin Blue."

I bought 4 paint kits, I can easily make it 2 of the basic set and one of the other 2, which I probably should.  I figure I'll go through those basic colors quickly.  Still, the only colors in the IMEF set that I can't see using are the neon yellow and alien goo.  There's lots of undead, mechanicals, armor and elves that would make good use of the rest.

[Sky]

I'm happy for those two colors because I recently picked up this limited edition McVey mini, first thing I thought of when they revealed the colors:

[Engels]

Sent Trippy a pm about it, but just in case, and for a lack of a better place to put it, my Chrome is putting up a malware blocking page when visiting the last page of the Funny Pictures Thread. Says there's a URL in there that is bad hurty.

[Evildrider]

Sent Trippy a pm about it, but just in case, and for a lack of a better place to put it, my Chrome is putting up a malware blocking page when visiting the last page of the Funny Pictures Thread. Says there's a URL in there that is bad hurty.

You aren't the only one.

[Yegolev]

No, it fucking doesn't and for those CLOWNS out there that are considering Symantecs iCloud backup or Ant-Virus, let me just tell you, as an accredited reseller, that it's a bucket of shite and you should AVOID IT LIKE THE FUCKING PLAGUE.

Seriously.  Cloud my arsehole.

I like you more and more as time passes.

Although I have decided I need to take some Cloud Classes since everyone is headed that way.

[Engels]

Does everyone here know that a "Cloud' is normally just a share on a cluster of machines running some version of *nix with some web or mini client frontend for the customer?  I mean, unless something has radically changed, haven't we had this 'cloud' since we could type 'ftp Yada.yada.com at a command prompt? 

[Samwise]

I'm fond of saying that the Cloud is just a new name for what we used to call the Internet.

It connotes more than that (distribution and clustering and virtualization and failover and all that magic stuff), but no end user cares about any of that shit.

[Trippy]

I'm fond of saying that the Cloud is just a new name for what we used to call the Internet thin client timesharing.

[Merusk]

Does everyone here know that a "Cloud' is normally just a share on a cluster of machines running some version of *nix with some web or mini client frontend for the customer?  I mean, unless something has radically changed, haven't we had this 'cloud' since we could type 'ftp Yada.yada.com at a command prompt? 

FTP isn't pronounceable (or sounds rude if you try) and doesn't conjure mythical images and comforting fluffiness that lets people part with their dollars easier.

Real estate is location, location, location.  Tech is friendly, fuzzy, forgettable.

[Salamok]

The cloud is literally the clip art on a diagram the depicts unfathomable voodoo web services hosted somewhere on the internet.  It is any web service that you plan on using that is available on the internet and not under your direct ownership or control.  It is such a bullshit term perfect for all the self important tards in charge who do not have to understand or maintain any of this shit.  I hated it back when it was just a graphic that meant "don't ask questions about this area here" and I hate it now that it is some magic buzzword that clueless people mumble while pretending to know something.

[Cheddar]

I'm fond of saying that the Cloud is just a new name for what we used to call the Internet thin client timesharing.

This.  Though, from a potential profit standpoint, its pretty huge.

Key is on security.  IT Security is going to blow up over next 5 years.

[Yegolev]

The cloud is literally the clip art on a diagram the depicts unfathomable voodoo web services hosted somewhere on the internet.  It is any web service that you plan on using that is available on the internet and not under your direct ownership or control.  It is such a bullshit term perfect for all the self important tards in charge who do not have to understand or maintain any of this shit.  I hated it back when it was just a graphic that meant "don't ask questions about this area here" and I hate it now that it is some magic buzzword that clueless people mumble while pretending to know something.

This is how I think of it.  Remember all of those network diagrams where people had all the lines go into a "cloud" shape that represented the WAN or LAN or anything out of the scope of the presentation?  Well, they drew it so much that the fucker came to life and now it's a corporate initiative.  Even more interesting, all the lines go into it now and none come out.

In Real IT Professional terms, I think we call it SaaS or IaaS.  Some people make up new things to use for the first letter, but it's all the same.  When talking to clients with money and no interest in tech, we call it Cloud Services.  The core is a mental shift for executives who are being made to feel comfortable that all of their infrastructure and data is now in the hands of a mismanaged global corporation that could give two shits as long as the check clears.

[Engels]

Don't get me wrong, I think the advances in virtualization are actually quite phenomenal, but I honestly think that the whole storage phenomenon has exploded because storage has become so plentiful. We can get out of  garden variety SATA drives what even as little as 8 years ago we could only get with very expensive SCSI racks. Throw in an SSD for any exchanges that require responsiveness and we call it magic.

I guess the bottom line is that I'm grumpy about how many people are living in an incredible age of technology and all they want to think of is a magic cloud that spews shit and how Curiosity only is taking boring photos of dirt.

[Paelos]

Executives hate dealing with an IT department or IT people in general. These are people who buy Ipads because they are cool and easy.

I'll be pretty honest too, I know IT people and I respect what they do. I'm not horrible at keeping shit together on my system or fixing the minor problems on other coworkers, but I know enough not to go fucking around with our servers. That being said, I've found most IT folks we've hired for our small company system to be wildly unprofessional. From dress, to demeanor, to generally talking down to their customers.

I know where that attitude comes from, because in general people are complete idiots about their systems and want to do shit that's not feasible. However, it's not much different from me trying to explain basic finances to people who have no idea how the tax code works. They SHOULD understand the basic premise that you have to pay taxes. Some don't, and that's where you have to remain professional instead of calling them moronic douchebags. That is until they leave the room and you vent with your other pros.

[JWIV]

A friend of mine had an interesting take on this in terms of cloud and talent, so I'll just pimp out her blog for a minute here.

http://cloudpundit.com/2012/08/24/servers-are-cheap-talent-is-expensive/

[Hammond]

Youch don't get me started on IT people with bad attitudes.  When I was working ISP support I got to deal with waaaaay to many IT people over the years.  I would dare to guess that 90% had at the minimum one of the problems you said.  Not to mention outright fraud in some cases.

I think my favorite one EVER was a small company that had a outsourced IT guy to do the work on their machines.  They picked  outfit where a typical onsite dispatch was a minimum $150 dollar dispatch.  So they were having issues with their DSL connection and the typical first thing you try is to reboot the modem. (yea yea I know typical tech support bs right?) 90% of the time that would actually fix the issue. So this IT guy would not let people touch their modem because it took a "expert" So they would not touch the modem to do the actual reboot.  They paid this guy literally 4 times that I know of to drive out and reboot this modem.....


As far as the "cloud" goes I am with Chedder though there is going to be a MASSIVE boom in IT security.  Also you think things are complicated now just wait.  Things are going to get so intertwined its going to be a bitch to figure out where shit is going wrong.  The outages that have happened in Amazon's, Azure, and Blackberry's data centers are just a taste of messes to come.