Thank you Marmite Toasty! I'll savor these goodies and let you know how much I enjoyed them.
P.s., the breadsticks were yummy. I'm still working on learning how to cook the "soldiers" to have the marmite with.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Marmite Goodies
Thank you Marmite Toasty! I'll savor these goodies and let you know how much I enjoyed them.
P.s., the breadsticks were yummy. I'm still working on learning how to cook the "soldiers" to have the marmite with.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
What does the 'End' mean?
As I mentioned in the previous entry, I'm limited as to how far I can walk - which in turn, limits the time my mind has to mull over this or that. That said, this is what sprung up yesterday...
What does the 'End' on this sign mean? It is about 25 yards (or 25 meters for you metric folks) from the speed limit sign to the stop sign at the end of the road beyond it, as you can see in the picture.
So - does it mean the speed limit is 25 mph (40 kph) until you get to the end of the road - which is very visible - short of a pea-soup dense fog? Wouldn't you normally drive that way?
Or - does the 'End' mean that the speed limit of 25 mph (40 kph) ends at this spot and you can just floor it and go up to 55 mph (88 kph) the maximum unposted speed limit until you have to stop?
Err, well make that, until you are supposed to stop, they never enforce this stop sign, ever, and only a few people actually stop and fewer still bother to indicate which way they are turning.
Or - does it mean something else altogether?
And in any case, do you really need the word 'End' on this sign?
Is this an example of bureaucratic stupidity and taxpayers being ripped off? It probably cost $5-10 to put the 'End' on the sign - but who knows what 'we' paid for it.
Do I sound like Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes yet?
What does the 'End' on this sign mean? It is about 25 yards (or 25 meters for you metric folks) from the speed limit sign to the stop sign at the end of the road beyond it, as you can see in the picture.
So - does it mean the speed limit is 25 mph (40 kph) until you get to the end of the road - which is very visible - short of a pea-soup dense fog? Wouldn't you normally drive that way?
Or - does the 'End' mean that the speed limit of 25 mph (40 kph) ends at this spot and you can just floor it and go up to 55 mph (88 kph) the maximum unposted speed limit until you have to stop?
Err, well make that, until you are supposed to stop, they never enforce this stop sign, ever, and only a few people actually stop and fewer still bother to indicate which way they are turning.
Or - does it mean something else altogether?
And in any case, do you really need the word 'End' on this sign?
Is this an example of bureaucratic stupidity and taxpayers being ripped off? It probably cost $5-10 to put the 'End' on the sign - but who knows what 'we' paid for it.
Do I sound like Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes yet?
Friday, October 3, 2008
Bumblebee - Christmas Tree
With the Personal Torturer's (PT) kind permission, I was allowed to walk a little bit (1 to 2 miles) yesterday so the Virtual Walker is back! Just between you and me, I think he got himself locked into a parked car and it took him this long to figure out how to get himself out. Anyway, once he calls in and tells me where he is, I'll start writing more about ye ol' merry (umm) UK.
Since I couldn't walk all that far, my thoughts didn't have time to percolate and turn anything ordinary into a life changing epiphany (I mean my life, not yours). Lucky you.
And I was a little preoccupied with the thought "Well, how does one explain a mapped server hard drive"? I won't go into any detailed explanation of that but in breaking the puzzler down in my head while walking, I thought, "Well, at some point you would mention a network cable" - being that the subject at hand revolves around a Local Area Network (LAN in geek-speak) or "the computer network". The computer network I was thinking about is not the "Internet" but rather a network of computers connected together in an office or business place and more recently, at home.
Anyway, before I babble off-tangent, the network cable is the cable going from your home computer to perhaps a cable-modem, DSL-modem, or a router/switch/hub device (e.g., the common blue linksys boxes or similar). This cable reminds me of a telephone cord on steroids. Now, an ordinary telephone cable is a pretty marvelous thing - even as the world goes wireless.
Before I go on - I realize what I'm discussing right now has nothing to do with mapped server hard drives - but... if I had had permission to walk further, I might of been able to get to that. :)
I'm sure most of you have never seen (or would prefer not to ever see) a phone cord with bare wires - I mean, the plastic do-hickey on the end is so much nicer. Well, back in the day of the woolly mammoths and the loincloth-wearing club-bearing grunting men, telephones were wired directly to the wire without using the plastic do-hickey. Gasp! They used screwdrivers and other icky things.
Being that primitive phone wires were installed unheated caves and such, the folks that designed the wiring decided, that the individual wires were kind of fragile, so let's stick a couple extra wires in there... in case we break one (or two). So the telephone, which only "requires" two connecting wires, has a cord with four wires in it! And the plastic do-hickey, if you look at many of them, only has two gold leads (the center most two). The "extra" wires were eventually used by phones that could deal with a "second phone line" and those phones will only work with a plastic do-hickey that has all four wires run out to the gold leads, a pair for each phone line.
So - how is a poor soul to know what wire goes were? I'll tell you how. Back in the those woolly mammoth days of yore that I spoke of earlier, I went to an engineering school - and was told righty-tighty and bumblebee-Christmas tree were words of immense wisdom that every engineer should know - my learning those words, along with the a few 'laws', such as 'Sh*t flows downhill' and 'You can't push anything using a rope' made me one of the elite technocrats at the time.
Righty-tighty is what you use when using a screwdriver, wrench, or just replacing a lightbulb. Turning the object or tool to the right (clockwise) makes the thingy tighter. To get it out, you turn the otherway. Voila! My life became so much easier the day I learned that.
Bumblebee-Christmas tree is how the phone wires are paired. Yellow and Black make a pair, and Red and Green make the other. And if you are normal, you want Christmas tree before you want a bumblebee, so the first phone line uses the red-green pairing. When I learned this gem, after months of difficult college life - you know, with the partying, beer drinking, dances, and the late night Sorority house visits to obtain panties, there wasn't much time for book-learning.
And now for the truly mind-blowing stuff - a network cable is just like a phone cable except it has eight (8) wires in it and they are blue, green, orange, and brown. Wait you say, that is only 4 colors. Yep, the other four wires are the same colors but have a white stripe on them. And what do you know, they don't use all eight wires - they only use four...and they usually go into the plastic do-hickey this way:
Billy Joel sings it best, "Don't ask me why..." I have to go back to graduate school and get a pHD or something - in order to learn how I'm supposed to remember this wiring arrangement.
Since I couldn't walk all that far, my thoughts didn't have time to percolate and turn anything ordinary into a life changing epiphany (I mean my life, not yours). Lucky you.
And I was a little preoccupied with the thought "Well, how does one explain a mapped server hard drive"? I won't go into any detailed explanation of that but in breaking the puzzler down in my head while walking, I thought, "Well, at some point you would mention a network cable" - being that the subject at hand revolves around a Local Area Network (LAN in geek-speak) or "the computer network". The computer network I was thinking about is not the "Internet" but rather a network of computers connected together in an office or business place and more recently, at home.
Anyway, before I babble off-tangent, the network cable is the cable going from your home computer to perhaps a cable-modem, DSL-modem, or a router/switch/hub device (e.g., the common blue linksys boxes or similar). This cable reminds me of a telephone cord on steroids. Now, an ordinary telephone cable is a pretty marvelous thing - even as the world goes wireless.
Before I go on - I realize what I'm discussing right now has nothing to do with mapped server hard drives - but... if I had had permission to walk further, I might of been able to get to that. :)
I'm sure most of you have never seen (or would prefer not to ever see) a phone cord with bare wires - I mean, the plastic do-hickey on the end is so much nicer. Well, back in the day of the woolly mammoths and the loincloth-wearing club-bearing grunting men, telephones were wired directly to the wire without using the plastic do-hickey. Gasp! They used screwdrivers and other icky things.
Being that primitive phone wires were installed unheated caves and such, the folks that designed the wiring decided, that the individual wires were kind of fragile, so let's stick a couple extra wires in there... in case we break one (or two). So the telephone, which only "requires" two connecting wires, has a cord with four wires in it! And the plastic do-hickey, if you look at many of them, only has two gold leads (the center most two). The "extra" wires were eventually used by phones that could deal with a "second phone line" and those phones will only work with a plastic do-hickey that has all four wires run out to the gold leads, a pair for each phone line.
So - how is a poor soul to know what wire goes were? I'll tell you how. Back in the those woolly mammoth days of yore that I spoke of earlier, I went to an engineering school - and was told righty-tighty and bumblebee-Christmas tree were words of immense wisdom that every engineer should know - my learning those words, along with the a few 'laws', such as 'Sh*t flows downhill' and 'You can't push anything using a rope' made me one of the elite technocrats at the time.
Righty-tighty is what you use when using a screwdriver, wrench, or just replacing a lightbulb. Turning the object or tool to the right (clockwise) makes the thingy tighter. To get it out, you turn the otherway. Voila! My life became so much easier the day I learned that.
Bumblebee-Christmas tree is how the phone wires are paired. Yellow and Black make a pair, and Red and Green make the other. And if you are normal, you want Christmas tree before you want a bumblebee, so the first phone line uses the red-green pairing. When I learned this gem, after months of difficult college life - you know, with the partying, beer drinking, dances, and the late night Sorority house visits to obtain panties, there wasn't much time for book-learning.
And now for the truly mind-blowing stuff - a network cable is just like a phone cable except it has eight (8) wires in it and they are blue, green, orange, and brown. Wait you say, that is only 4 colors. Yep, the other four wires are the same colors but have a white stripe on them. And what do you know, they don't use all eight wires - they only use four...and they usually go into the plastic do-hickey this way:
Billy Joel sings it best, "Don't ask me why..." I have to go back to graduate school and get a pHD or something - in order to learn how I'm supposed to remember this wiring arrangement.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
How Not to Secure Your Computer
I took this picture while at one of of my clients yesterday - seems like they lost some files and called me, all in a panic, and asked me to investigate - they even sent someone over in a car to drive for me!
When I got there, the owner says to me, "Iggy, we really need those files! Please help us figure out where they are or how they got lost." So I rolled up my sleeve (singular), cracked my knuckles and looked around.
I wonder if leaving a username and password on your monitor in a very busy and public hallway might cause a problem? Thankfully the client isn't a hospital or credit union!
Well, it turns out, the monitor belongs to the person that moved the 'missing files' that were in her 'My Documents' folder to a subfolder called 'Your Documents' because she just knew they weren't 'her' documents! I spent a couple minutes moving the files to the 'mapped server' hard drive where they belonged and would automatically get backed up each night. I then did some user training.
I left the place thinking of Ron White's immortal words, "But let me tell you something, folks: You can't fix stupid. There's not a pill you can take; there's not a class you can go to. Stupid is forever."
Oh well, I needed the money.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
