Useless Conversation

[Bunk]

Just had a free health screening at work.

BMI 23  - good
WHR 0.87 - good
BP 110/78 - good
Glucose 4.6 mm - good

Cholesterol 7.4 mm   

Guess I won't be buying Italian Sausage for a while. Going to have to come up some cooking alternatives to the frying pan as well.

[Soln]

out of curiousity, how did they do these tests "at work?"  something mobile and fast? 

[Bunk]

Used one of the offices. She took my weight, messured my height, took my blood pressure, then took two blood drops to check Glucose and Cholesterol with little portable meter things. Then gave me a whole bunch of pamphlets, and a letter to take to the doctor to recommend I get bloodwork done. Whole thing took about 15 minutes.

[Soln]

thanks, I didn't know they had portable cholesterol meters.  Great stocking stuffer :) 

[bhodi]

So, Oracle! They came in talking about all the new guidelines for Sun that they are revamping, and this is how it's going to work for sun hardware.

Say you have a server, new, with box warranty for 1yr, or existing that aren't currently under support. All hardware now has to be 'certified' to be covered by maintenance, and it costs $800 to certify, AND it requires downtime to run a diagnostic. Then...it's up to Oracle if they choose to cover it, it's not even guaranteed.

Say you have your support agreement - 800 servers. A server comes out of box coverage and you want to add it. You can't. You have to initiate a new support contract for that one server on its own, they won't just tack it into the global policy. It would wait until the next year's renewal, which in itself is insane - you'd basically need an "Oracle Support Clerk II" to handle all the paperwork.

They seemed surprised that we told them flat out we'd be moving away from Sun if they din't come back with a support contract that we like.

[Ironwood]

Fuck me, that's insane.  And insanely uncompetitive.

It's good they're trying to create jobs though.


 

[Chimpy]

Perfect way to get people to buy your brand new, highly touted hardware.

Upper management at Oracle has obviously been exclusively in the software as a service market for so long that they think that they can use that exact model in everything.

[Ingmar]

So, Oracle! They came in talking about all the new guidelines for Sun that they are revamping, and this is how it's going to work for sun hardware.

Say you have a server, new, with box warranty for 1yr, or existing that aren't currently under support. All hardware now has to be 'certified' to be covered by maintenance, and it costs $800 to certify, AND it requires downtime to run a diagnostic. Then...it's up to Oracle if they choose to cover it, it's not even guaranteed.

Say you have your support agreement - 800 servers. A server comes out of box coverage and you want to add it. You can't. You have to initiate a new support contract for that one server on its own, they won't just tack it into the global policy. It would wait until the next year's renewal, which in itself is insane - you'd basically need an "Oracle Support Clerk II" to handle all the paperwork.

They seemed surprised that we told them flat out we'd be moving away from Sun if they din't come back with a support contract that we like.

You should perhaps be thinking about moving away from Sun regardless of the contract anyway, we've noticed some pretty significant performance problems with Sun hardware compared to roughly-equivalent Dells in our new Oracle setup. Our Sun stuff is choking badly on things that can't multithread, like for example Symantec backup agents. A backup that takes 7 hours on one of our Sun/Solaris boxes takes about 40 minutes if we copy it over to a Dell/Linux box and pick it up from there instead.

Granted I'm not a Unix guy but that seems like a pretty big gotcha. Seems to be a question of how the processors work mostly - the Sun stuff has a billion cores but any given core is pretty shitty by itself.

[Musashi]

Certification shenanigans have been SOP since the 3900.  I knew a fat guy IBM CE whose job, near as I could tell, was to come to my warehouse and eat my donuts while putting stickers and tape on machines after I told him the audits were complete.

[Chimpy]

Dear Netflix, when your "watch instantly" feature stops working and says to call you at a given number if the issue persists, please set up your phone system to do something other than be dead silence for 2 minutes and then say: "Thank you for calling Netflix, we are experiencing higher than normal call volumes. Please try your call again later" then hang up.

[Yegolev]

Hey .... the 360 just died.  E74.

[Ingmar]

Is your game room built on an old cemetary or something?

[Chimpy]

Hey .... the 360 just died.  E74.

You may need to get your electrical checked out for voltage on the ground. At the very least get some power conditioning for your electronics. You have way too much shit blowing up for it to be mere coincidence.

[Ard]

Good god man, stop pissing off Zeus, he's pretty high up, if not at the top of, the asshole diety list, and likes zapping things with bolts of lightning. 

[proudft]

Yeah, at least get a multimeter or something and check your voltages.  Our neutral corroded once and the voltage in the house shot up to like 130-135.  Didn't notice until the refrigerator blew up.

[Soln]

UPS would also help smooth out power

[rattran]

Or you could learn to love your ps3 more. I rarely fire up my x360 in fear of death. Should just sell the damn thing.

[Lantyssa]

They seemed surprised that we told them flat out we'd be moving away from Sun if they din't come back with a support contract that we like.

Fuck me, that's insane.  And insanely uncompetitive.

Sun and SGI lost all of our business years ago because of stuff like this.  We're a small research group and grants rarely cover equipment costs these days, much less insane support contracts.

[Ironwood]

It's fun watching the older companies die, isn't it ?

[Selby]

Sun and SGI lost all of our business years ago because of stuff like this.

Same with us.  The contracts for support are nuts.  There are still a handful of older machines running legacy equipment or just because they haven't been gotten rid of, but these days it's all about Dell and anyone else who is willing to deal with government contracts and not gouge (mostly because you can't justify the cost when sending in the request for DoE and then they kick it back wanting bids and quotes and justifications...).

[Minvaren]

here, but when did Cracked turn from absurdist comedy to edgy insightfulness?

[Musashi]

An igloo made out of cocaine.

[bhodi]

Firing orphans out of cannons.

[JWIV]

Fucking junior staff.     If you agree to work on Saturday for a project that _must_ be completed before Monday, and I agree to be on-call for the questions that you are going to have about it,  you sorta have to actually WORK ON IT SATURDAY.   Especially when I explicitly state that you can NOT call me on Sunday.

God damn it.   

[IainC]

here, but when did [link about things that you think will make you happy but actually wont]

An igloo made out of cocaine.

Firing orphans out of cannons.

Fucking junior staff.

 

[Ironwood]

I resisted.  You clearly failed the save.

[Strazos]

So I'm moving tomorrow. Having only lived here for a year, I managed to amass far more stuff than I had originally thought...taking much longer than anticipated to pack it up before tomorrow morning. 

At least for my next move I get movers to do it for me.

[Bunk]

I went through the following in my youth:

Three guys sharing a house, we all had to be out on Saturday. No moving truck - using two pickups and a car, to move to three different places and a storage locker. We started packing up around 10:00 AM Saturday morning.

[Yegolev]

Or you could learn to love your ps3 more. I rarely fire up my x360 in fear of death. Should just sell the damn thing.

I had two PS3 die this summer, currently without one.

Anyway, not sure what mental problem I ha.... OK I do know, I am burned out from working too much.  So I just now get the idea that my eight-year-old power strip might be the cause and it is replaced.  I will see about having my electrician check the voltages on the circuit as well, had not considered that.

Meanwhile, I bought a new 360 in anticipation of the old one being irreparable.  I am struck by the apparent reversal in consoles I find.
Original PS3: shiny black, WiFI, internal hard drive, touchbuttons, many storage options (SD, CF, MemStick, USB)
Slim PS3: matte black, mechanical buttons, few storage options
Original 360: white, no Miis, lamprey hard drive, mechanical buttons, no WiFi, no HDMI, etc
New 360: shiny black, WiFI, internal hard drive, touchbuttons, front USB work for data xfer (2.0 apparently)

All I need is a white PS3 Slim and the transformation will be complete.

The new 360 is noticeably snappier than my Elite.  I also do appreciate (once again) the fact that I don't have to have my previous console running in order to transfer my data.

[WayAbvPar]

I went through the following in my youth:

Three guys sharing a house, we all had to be out on Saturday. No moving truck - using two pickups and a car, to move to three different places and a storage locker. We started packing up around 10:00 AM Saturday morning.

Yeah my old roommate and I did that- took a day off work, rented a big ass truck, filled it, emptied it, and then went and played in a softball game. GOD I was tired. Had 3 beers after the game and was asleep by 9. And this was back in my younger, less completely out of shape days!

[Yegolev]

I do have to give Sony points for quality.  Their PS3 return packaging is top notch.  Plastic bag, styrofoam end caps, professional full-color instructions.

[Chimpy]

Better keep the instructions for the next time.

[schild]

Cracked.com has had the best writing on the internet for YEARS now.

Everyone here needs to read John Dies at the End (written by the Cracked.com editor). And not just because the acronym for it is JDATE.

[Yegolev]

Better keep the instructions for the next time.

Framing them.

[Paelos]

Cracked.com has had the best writing on the internet for YEARS now.

Everyone here needs to read John Dies at the End (written by the Cracked.com editor). And not just because the acronym for it is JDATE.

I can second that. I read it a few years ago and it was both creepy and hilariously absurd in equal measure. The writing style is very unique.