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Admin
First twich first twich first!
Admin
And that's why coffee should be banned!
Admin
I bet Ricky was a lot less happy about the network refurb after the CEO read the ad in the back of his magazine about those RS232-based networks.
After all RS232 has much bigger numbers than 10base2, it HAS to be better!
Admin
You have to co-insure your coffee for that genuine double safe taste.
Admin
"unlike switches, which intelligently route packets to the appropriate destination"
No. Switches direct frames. Routers route packets. Yes, people who don't know any better use the terms incorrectly, but we know better, right?
Admin
"People don't cause network outages...people who drink coffee do!"
Admin
"A difference which makes no difference is no difference."
Yup, we know the difference between routers and switches. We also don't need to prop up our fragile egos by pedantically harping on the contextually-trivial difference. How's that for a WTF?
CAPTCHA: saluto. We saluto all the pedants in the TDWTF community.
Admin
Admin
actually the originaly statement is correct in the context used. in comparisson to hubs, switches are intelligent.
also, in comparisson to the ON (original nitpicker), I am intelligent.
Admin
Pedantic harping makes up at least 1/3rd of the posting here, on a slow day. Heck, just look at the thread from a few days ago that takes a page and a half to discuss whether "IBM" qualifies as an acronym, or it is just a meager abbreviation.
And people wonder why us nerds get picked on...
Admin
I was trying to trace down a network problem in this old building once. Ancient coax, strata of cat3,4,and 5, and this crazy muzak system that was so poorly wired that you could shock yourself touching the volume knobs.
I went to the central switch and started testing lines. Never could find the exact line my repeater was on, probably because about 1 in 10 lines played muzak right out of the tone wand, from the ethernet lines being laid across the tops of the speakers in the ceiling.
Can't imagine what the problem was.
Admin
Glad you found a bar low enough to fit under...
(Sorry, you set that one up way to pretty to leave be)
Admin
Admin
Why did they delete my comment? Are you censoring comments now to avoid embarrassment??
From Mark - Whoops! Actually, I had meant to add a "fixed!" but ended up hitting the delete.
Admin
Coffee DRINKS should be banned. I actually kinda like chocolate covered espresso beans.
I'm convinced working with 10base2 was a bigger cause of PTSD than the first gulf war and the Jackson 5 combined. That stuff bred nightmares. every install had some solid core coax, some RG-59, three terminators (?????), coax taped to a wall somewhere, cable draped (unprotected) across rooftops, and that's just a short list. They all had "bad net days" nobody understood. They all penalized everyone for individual mistakes.
It is a shame so few today have experienced the joys of multidrop coaxial network topologies. My opinions about collectivism (socialism, communism, et cetera) were forged in the fire of 10base2 network hell. That single cable threading through everybody's life really showed how fragile an overly interconnected world would be. One person's innocent failure would cause all to suffer. One little mistake...the choice of solid core instead of tinned stranded core, would degrade all lives. One nervous tic... someone shifting a cable or fiddling with a connector, would cost so much. When you were using 10base2 you were part of a collective in the purest meaning of the word.
Interconnected means fragile.
Admin
I'm afraid that they seem to delete comments in here a lot, too much if you ask me ~ I'm considering giving it up ~ and it's not as if the comments that get deleted are offensive or anything
Admin
But let's just keep building bigger corporations, bigger governments, bigger bailouts, bigger plans and programs. What (more) could go wrong?
Admin
Admin
The endpoint connections, however, would frequently disconnect, and I had to go through all the PC's, checking which one was the first to have NE2000 errors.
Oh my, you just brought back nightmares!
Admin
Any other ex-BNC-ethernet users looking at that stock photo and thinking "Aargh! Unterminated connectors, no wonder half of the computers can't connect, and the other half are dropping 70% of their packets."?
Admin
Who thinks IBM is an acronym? Obviously it isn't. Not sure why that takes a page and a half.
Admin
Admin
"And people wonder why us nerds get picked on... "
Obviously you meant "And people wonder why WE nerds get picked on... "
Admin
Gosh, here I thought that the rhythmic "thump thump thump" noise was going to signify something quite different.
Oops.
Admin
This is why I'm a tea drinker. Well, this and the fact that I'm in England and over here it's actually the law.
Admin
I'm thinking, "And people wonder why YOU nerds get picked on... "
;)
Admin
There's packets inside the frames. Why does everybody need to know about the technical details of the second layer?
Admin
Who thinks IBM is an acronym? Obviously it isn't. Not sure why that takes a page and a half.
I thought IBM was a company. :)
BNC connectors cause me nightmares. In the early 90's, in Central Florida, in the middle of summer I was tasked to install network cable in a house trailer used as an office. The only way to easily do this, avoiding going through walls, was to crawl under the trailer and use holes drilled through the floor.
Knowing the cables would be outside and that they had metal connectors, the owner exercised his right of paranoia and wanted all external connectors sealed. His solution was to use expanding foam in a bag with the connector stuck in the in the middle. (Don't ask.)
I pointed out the problem with this, mainly inaccessibility to the connectors if anything went wrong, but he insisted. Whatever. I just wanted to get it done and get out of there.
I did my best, but that expanding foam was nasty, sticky stuff. I got it all over me. Including stuck in the hair on my arms (I hadn't thought about wearing long sleeves). After the 2nd or 3rd cable, the burning started. I realized that I had rolled over a nest of red fire ants. And they were getting into the foam, which pissed them off considerably. Instinctively, I tried to brush them away, but that only spread the sticky foam and angered the ants further. It also cemented them to me, most within biting distance.
Oh and did I mention the crawl space was big enough for me lie down, but not sit up, much less crawl? Yeah, it was a tight fit, which didn't help my claustrophobia much. So here I am, in a crawlspace under a trailer on my back, foam in my arm hairs, angry biting ants glued to me, trying to figure out where the drilled holes are for this cable I've got to install. It was easily a five-minute "scoot" to the edge of the trailer to get out.
Which I did, as quickly as I could.
I got about half done with the "external" wiring and told the owner that he'd have to get someone else to do the rest, but I could direct them. And he did.
Oddly enough the "sealed bag" topology worked for a number of years without issue and was used until the old 386 workstations were replaced with newer machines that had RJ-45 connectors and used a switch. This time the trailer was wired from the inside.
Admin
Admin
Succinctly:
You are a loser.
Less so:
Your standard is that one should not even make reference to function if you cannot correctly and completely describe the underlying machinations. You're not a mechanic, right, so how do you get your car repaired? You're not CIA trained, right? So, how do you cook food? You might be an electrical engineer, so perhaps you can insert electrical plugs because you can cite Ohm's law and drawing a system diagram?
I'm willing to bet you don't act like this off the intergoogles and cyberwebs, because if you did you would most certainly have your teeth knocked in.
Admin
Admin
Same time frame.... I cut my teeth (and often considered my wrists) on Token Ring.
Loved beaconing adapters.
Admin
And yours too, apparently. ;-)
(couldn't resist)
Admin
Admin
Admin
"When he emerged and peeked around the corner, he was met with the department's resident coffee expert. He could extol the virtues or curses of every kind of coffee made and every roaster in the area. And as it happened, he had just returned from percolating his morning dose."
I smell BS. A coffee expert would NEVER percolate their Joe. Percolation requires boiling water and steam which is WAY too hot for proper bean extraction. Plus the liquid repeatedly cycles between the burner and the grounds, over-extruding the beans and burning the coffee. Sheesh, though you could pull one over on us, nice try.
Admin
I definitely read this article expecting quite a different outcome: Java the programming language, not Java the coffee, doing the damage.
Admin
That was low :D.
Admin
Congratulations, you just reached the coveted Second Place Slot on the list of "Jobs I'm Glad I Don't Have." So far, no one has managed to top my b-school OM professor who once told his class, in some detail, how to clean a rendering plant.
Admin
He's the coffee connoisseur, and he drinks percolated coffee? I think they have bigger problems than BNC connectors!
Admin
What's the over/under on whether that comment gets highlighted or deleted?
Admin
"11:03 a.m! Another five bucks for me, bitches! Lick the contract. Liiiiiiiick it!"
Admin
Sure he is, just ask him!
Admin
Of more importance in this story, is hubs (or "multi-port repeaters"). They don't repeat packets. They repeat electrical signals. That means incomplete and mangled packets pass through in their incomplete or mangled state. It also means an unterminated segment causing a reflection can make every transmission appear as a collision, which is then also repeated back to the other segments and no-one can transmit anything successfully. Some MPRs would isolate an unterminated segment, but still have a fault briefly while the segment went bad, such as when Mr Coffee kicked the cable.
Admin
You've never worked with Token Ring, then, have you?
Token Ring is what you'll find interconnecting the Devil's computers in the seventh level of Hell. It is an abomination. And 16 megabit, twisted pair Token Ring, is the nightmare of nightmares.
Thanks for letting me vent. Shared media sucks, but Token Ring sucks and is 3x more expensive than its 10/100BASE-T counterpart.
Admin
Ahhh...a kindred spirit.
Token Ring sucks!
Admin
Admin
At one contract job I had, they had problems with their token-ring network. Not only was the cable run pretty much over the maxiumum recommended length (100m IIRC), but the installers had run it down the inside of the elevator shaft instead of drilling a hole for it in a wiring closet somewhere. So when the elevator went by with a full load, the network would occasionally have a teensy weensy outage and all the connected PS/2s would have to reboot.
Admin
Admin
Shouldn't that be meagre (although I notice dictionary.com likes meager - maybe this is another Yanks vs the rest of the world...)?
Although, I suspect you might have meant mere?
</troll>