sean: it’s kind of like you stuck your head in a concrete mixer, that’s full of midgets with drum kits and now your complaining about the banging, you daft fucks
My friend Sean, on a customer who has every single Windows non-info-level event log entry emailed to them - and then complains to him about the amount of mail they get from their monitoring system.
Tags: technical
China tells living Buddhas to obtain permission before they reincarnate
Apparently if you’re a living Buddha (ie pretty much anyone, potentially) and you happen to reside in China you need a permit before you can reincarnate(!)
Um, yeah, that’s going to work out really well.. Think of the logistics much?
What if the permit is non-transferable? (being a bureaucracy you just know they’ll fsck that up)
How are they going to know? If you look at the concept properly there’s no guarantee you’re coming back as a human - could be a flea or a shark or an insurance salesman. Are the PRC going to ask them for their papers?
It’s like they’ve been taking lessons from the Australian Tax Office. 
Good luck with *that*, ya tools 
Tags: buddhism
I was a NANAE (news.admin.net-abuse.email, the Usenet anti-spam frontline) regular back when Sanford Wallace decided - with great fanfare and all manner of self-aggrandisement - to cease email / usenet spamming. $DEITY knows how many cyberpromo-sourced spam messages IÂ got back in the (pre-DNSBL pre-Bayes pre-anything-but-procmail-filters) day.
Those that thought he’d just lay low for quite a while and keep on spamming were of course dead on the money. Once a lying, thieving scumbag, always a lying thieving scumbag.
Now this - he’s been banned by court order from MySpace. I’m no fan of Murdoch (I believe News Limited own MySpace now) but a cage-match to the death between the two would be something I’d pay to see.
Enjoy the (lack of) fruits of your dishonesty Spammy…
Tags: web
Sorry to readers / visitors again for another extended outage. This one is again not my doing but this time there’s been a happier ending.
I elected on Friday to churn my ADSL service to Internode (a fairly large ISP here in Australia) as they provide a decent service and I get a discount as a member of the System Administrator’s Guild of Australia.
Their advertised turnaround time was 20 days(!) so I’d put in my intention to close my current DSL service (see previous posts) in 30 days as required by contract. The story of what happened there has already been posted below
This time, I dropped off-air at around 11 (or so Nagios told me) - I actually went home to check the console to see a bunch of CHAP password errors. Opened my ticket with WC and added that I’m offline again, can someone have a look. Of course, they have no idea.
As it turns out, Telstra had switched my line over to the Agile DSLAM used by Internode some time that day - but noone told me, Internode and Webcentral. I only cottoned on when a reboot of my router saw it train using ADSL2+ modulation and a line speed of close to 18Mbps. A call to Internode got me the login details needed, some IP config changes, tickets to update DNS and voila - I’m back baby at a much swifter speed!
So this tale has a happy ending.
Tags: networking, technical, web
In case you’ve been living as a hermit for the last 9 months, the new Harry Potter book has been released this weekend.
I’m not that much of a fan (seen the movies though) but each to their own. However the hardcore fans, they’re a worry.
The Trekkies I can handle, the Star Wars nerds can be a little odd (although the stormtrooper outfits of the 501st Legion are impressive).. Seeing adults dressed in velvet witches hats and robes on a Saturday outside of the QBD bookshop in the city centre is an entirely different kettle of fish.
I may be a mere Muggle but I know hardcore geekery when I see it. First this, next week they’ll be furries or cosplayers (google it, lazy people!)
An escape to the local Borders I thought would result in a better experience (I was eyeing off a copy of Chapter House Dune now that I’ve finished Heretics of Dune). The queue to buy Deathly Hallows was literally out the door and into the street, but no sign of weirdos dressed as Dumbledore.
Until the 2nd floor - the guy at the information desk; you guessed it, an admittedly first-class Dumbledore costume on the staff member on duty for the day. Fsck me…
I resisted the urge to ask him if he should be dead, tempting as it was.
Guess I’ll try again next weekend when I have some free time and there’s a lesser concentration of uber-geeks.
PS. Like the new theme?
Tags: life
Apologies for the outage even though it’s not really my fault. I gave Webcentral (who supply my ADSL service) the necessary 30 days notice for account closure on Monday only to find the service cut off on Wednesday afternoon because two staff members failed to read the ticket and issued an immediate closure - I was ssh’d in from work at the time and just saw the session time out.
In total, I was off for 2d 4h 48m 23s according to my internal Nagios monitoring service.
The people responsible will be shot. 
Tags: networking
Good Things:
- Tina Wallmann has gotten a Zoo Weekly cover, a fairly good photoset (wish they’d lay off the airbrush though, she doesn’t need it) - nicely done, proud of you mate
- Dad leaves for Bangkok on Friday night for a heart operation - hopefully this will give him a bit more time and a much better quality of life than he’s had this last 12 months.
- I’ll hopefully be on faster connections at home soon - moving to ADSL2+
Bad Things:
- It’s another 3 weeks before the new DSL can be set up, and I’m still owed expenses money from an old employer - which I want to use to pay off arrears. Get yer arse in gear!
- AXUS RAID arrays suck horse dong. The serial connection options are crap and the front panel config is a joke. How the hell am I meant to reset a failed box to factory settings, pray tell?
Very Bad Thing:
- I hope (perhaps in vain, but I have to remain positive) that I’ve not lost a good friend this week. Those who know me well know who I mean and perhaps what’s happening. I hate to see a great mateship end in such a horrible manner and I’ll do my utmost to avoid it - you know full well I’m understanding so don’t be afraid to talk to me, to thrash things out and work out what I swear on a stack of sutras is just a miscommunication somewhere along the line. If not, we’re both going to suffer for ages - a case of lost camaraderie and good times sullied. I don’t want that and I know you don’t either.
Tags: friendsdonewell, life
I’ve historically been loathe to take on social networking sites, knowing from past experience both as a user and administrator the pitfalls and headaches they can be.
Plus, some people using them are just plain fucking weird and/or gratuitously offensive because they think they’re anonymous (have I got bad news for *you*!).
I prefer to do my networking in 3space (ie the real world for you non-geeks) as the written word tends to be limiting when you want to get an idea / emotion across.
But I’ve relented.
I’m not exactly sure what prompted it, but I’ve signed on for LinkedIn, the nice, polite professional networker’s site and lo, in less than 3 weeks I’ve got 20 connections. Mostly these are old cow-orkers but hey, I’m not knocking it. It’s disgustingly simple to use and for a professional, especially one in technology-related fields beats writing a resume and having some dolt of a headhunter (not) read it.
I’ve also taken on MySpace (see my June 19 post) as I wanted to make a comment on a friend’s profile but can’t without an account.
So far it’s not beaten me yet but it’s interface and general tendency to shove ads down your throat grates a little. I’ll hack on the site when time and patience permit but it’s not a priority as I like my sanity.
On the other hand, it’s refreshingly humbling to be a complete n00b online, as being new to something on the Internet is a feeling I thought I’d forgotten. I’ve not racked up the same number of connections as LinkedIn (lots of spam and bogus friend requests though!) but for what it lacks in quantity it makes up for in quality[1] - only three friends (that Tom bloke gets around doesn’t he?[2] :-)) but two are the nicest girls I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in Tina and Angie - thanks heaps for the additions, you’ve made my week and I as always wish you well in anything and everything you do.
Next stops: del.icio.us? (I already do Digg and Mugshot)
Oh, and RSVP / Lavalife even though I dread the idea (and I still have only crap shots of myself - which will not help matters.)
*picks up hiking staff and wanders off*
[1] Even with the horrible photos in my profile
[2] Yeah, I know he’s the MySpace “guide” - 404 Humour not found there eh?
Tags: web
