The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2012-01-04 Reply Admin

Boog:
I think the desirable condition is money in the bank. People who don't know any better often still have money and are even more easily convinced to give it to our employers. And then we get some. Without marketing, you might not have a job

So, to summarize, you think you need to make money by doing something useless*, because there are no useful things left to be done.

Really?

Useless, because by your own admission nobody would buy it of their own initiative, so it has to be shoved down their throats by marketing scum.

2012-01-04 Reply Admin

The Great Lobachevsky:
It isn't right next to the sink, but we have the restroom/server room going on in my office. It is in the ladies' room, so it is funny seeing guys in there on the occasion they had to access the rack (almost worth the inconvience of walking to another restroom)

Not sure whether that gets you off the Sexual Harassment charge - "I only went in there to touch the rack..."

2012-01-04 Reply Admin

Ralph:
So, to summarize, you think you need to make money by doing something useless, because there are no useful things left to be done.

Same question to all you unemployed people. You can't think of anything of value you could produce for anyone in the world? So you're just going to sit around on your butt waiting for some rich guy to hire you and tell you what to do?

Or are you going to go camp at the local occupy protest and whine that all the rich people are evil and should have their money taken away from them so that they can't hire anybody any more, and their money should be given to you for doing nothing, so you can keep sitting on your butt?

2012-01-04 Reply Admin

_:
Not Zunesis (really):
I see our little sociopath is back to annoy us.
FTFY
Sockpuppets are fun!

It really wasn't Zunesis. I know because I posted it and I am both Not Boog and not Zunesis.

2012-01-04 Reply Admin

Not Boog:
_:
Not Zunesis (really):
I see our little sociopath is back to annoy us.
FTFY
Sockpuppets are fun!
It really wasn't Zunesis. I know because I posted it and I am both Not Boog and not Zunesis.

Strange how people will toss around the accusation of sockpuppetry or deny it so readily. What does it matter? Does it make you feel less trolled or relieve the annoyance?

herby · 2012-01-04 Reply Admin

Jason:
Every time I see patch-cable spaghetti like that, I love the fact that I now work at a major telco.
The folks that do the cabling are all ex-field installers, who have practically military parade precision on their cabling. Every one of the rooms I've looked in on has been clean and orderly, no snarls anywhere.

This is because they were taught that "Neat wiring doesn't fail". The problem is that many network cabling installers don't understand this axiom.

For the clueless: If it failed, it wasn't neat!

2012-01-04 Reply Admin

Joseph:
The Great Lobachevsky:
It isn't right next to the sink, but we have the restroom/server room going on in my office. It is in the ladies' room, so it is funny seeing guys in there on the occasion they had to access the rack (almost worth the inconvience of walking to another restroom)
Not sure whether that gets you off the Sexual Harassment charge - "I only went in there to touch the rack..."

And what makes me so much worse than this guy? I make the same joke (granted it's a bit more colorful) and get scorn heaped on me, and a couple other dildos do it and everyone just ignores them! There's TRWTF! Mistreatment of the local flavor!

If I were your neighbor, I would so fuck your babies' throats to death! Fuck!

2012-01-04 Reply Admin

Boog:
Joseph:
The Great Lobachevsky:
It isn't right next to the sink, but we have the restroom/server room going on in my office. It is in the ladies' room, so it is funny seeing guys in there on the occasion they had to access the rack (almost worth the inconvience of walking to another restroom)
Not sure whether that gets you off the Sexual Harassment charge - "I only went in there to touch the rack..."
And what makes me so much worse than this guy? I make the same joke (granted it's a bit more colorful) and get scorn heaped on me, and a couple other dildos do it and everyone just ignores them! There's TRWTF! Mistreatment of the local flavor!
If I were your neighbor, I would so fuck your babies' throats to death! Fuck!

Uhm, perhaps it's comments like your last there. Perhaps it is very much because it is more colourful (and I'll admit, today's effort was reasonably tame by your standards - although perhaps that's the point, you are now being punished for past transgressions). Perhaps you were that other guy. Perhaps noone has had a chance to dump on that guy(don't, just don't). Or perhaps people just hate you.

What do you care? It doesn't seem to stop you posting irrespective (if anything, it makes your posts worse).

2012-01-04 Reply Admin

Nagesh:
This is normel setuation in Hyderabad.

Presumably, that is also normel spelling there

2012-01-04 Reply Admin

PiisAWheeL:
Ralph:
Stop a moment and take a good long look at that first picture. In fact, make it your wallpaper. That's because you need to understand that at least 99 out of 100 people would find nothing wrong with that.
That's how much the average luser knows and cares about our precious IT systems. They expect it to be always on "like the electricity in the outlets" and to "just work" yet with no planning, care, design, maintenance, or cost.

Yes, I hate it, and I'm sure you do to -- but I'm right and you know it.

What's the solution? Educate the lusers? Isn't that our solution for every chair-keyboard-interface problem? And how has that been working out for you so far?

Someone sold the world on the idea that information systems are easy and brainless, and now here we are.

Thats because HARDWARE needs to be SOLD to the PEOPLE with the MONEY, hence GOOD MARKETING is needed to drive the industry.

Without marketing, PAUL ALLEN would still be a hobbiest sitting in a garage somewhere ordering ram chips to solder to his newest motherboard.

So you have to make it SOUND brainless and easy, or else no one buys in.

FTFY

2012-01-04 Reply Admin

Maybe he can't find the right port for the user because that 6506 is UPSIDE DOWN!

smxlong · 2012-01-04 Reply Admin

PiisAWheeL:
The Great Lobachevsky:
It isn't right next to the sink, but we have the restroom/server room going on in my office. It is in the ladies' room, so it is funny seeing guys in there on the occasion they had to access the rack (almost worth the inconvience of walking to another restroom)

That sounds like a sexual harassment suit just waiting to happen... especially if there are no female's in the it department.

What do human excretory functions have to do with SEXUAL harassment? Ensure the restroom is empty, put up a Maintenance sign, go in and do what you need to do.

Buncha damned children, seriously.

2012-01-04 Reply Admin

smxlong:
What do human excretory functions have to do with SEXUAL harassment?

Because "sexual harassment" is the only "crime" where the victim gets to decide whether the act was criminal or innocent.

Think about it: you walk into a bank intent on robbing it, you know it is going to be a crime. Or steal a car, or kneecap a debtor...

But the "victim" gets to decide whether an "advance" (could be most anything, really) was or was not "welcome" -- after the fact! Even days or weeks later, when a consenting act is followed by a failure to call often enough, or on the other hand, calling too often.

So, yeah, bitch could be sitting in the restroom, or most anywhere, and someone does something that annoys her... bingo! I've been harassed!

2012-01-04 Reply Admin

Jerry:
smxlong:
What do human excretory functions have to do with SEXUAL harassment?
Because "sexual harassment" is the only "crime" where the victim gets to decide whether the act was criminal or innocent.
Think about it: you walk into a bank intent on robbing it, you know it is going to be a crime. Or steal a car, or kneecap a debtor...

But the "victim" gets to decide whether an "advance" (could be most anything, really) was or was not "welcome" -- after the fact! Even days or weeks later, when a consenting act is followed by a failure to call often enough, or on the other hand, calling too often.

So, yeah, bitch could be sitting in the restroom, or most anywhere, and someone does something that annoys her... bingo! I've been harassed!

I think that's true of any harassment.... a perpertrator of Verbal Harassment doesn't necessarily realise the victim will take offence (think about Racial slurs - there have been sportsmen who claim that being called a 'monkey' is racist - because they interpret the term to be used because of their race, whereas the person using the term may be using for a whole host of other reasons (eg they look like a monkey))

even someone accused of Physical Harassment may think they are playing a harmless prank, but the victim doesn't see it so harmlessly ("pinch and a punch on the first day of the month" or "Punch buggy", or something..."

2012-01-04 Reply Admin

Boog:
Not Boog:
_:
Not Zunesis (really):
I see our little sociopath is back to annoy us.
FTFY
Sockpuppets are fun!
It really wasn't Zunesis. I know because I posted it and I am both Not Boog and not Zunesis.
Strange how people will toss around the accusation of sockpuppetry or deny it so readily. What does it matter? Does it make you feel less trolled or relieve the annoyance?

But my son is a sockpuppet and can be really annoying ...

SQLDave · 2012-01-04 Reply Admin

Cratig:
For the sake of the server, I hope that `rest` room is for staff only. I can imagine some 13 year old walking in and thinking it may be fun to drip water on the cabinet!
</oh_the_days>

"...thinking it may be fun to take a piss in the cabinet!"

FTFY

SQLDave · 2012-01-04 Reply Admin

A software guy named "Chip". I get it.

DaveK · 2012-01-04 Reply Admin

Anthony:
Maybe he can't find the right port for the user because that 6506 is UPSIDE DOWN!

Maybe it's actually a 9029? yeah i know it doesn't quite work. relax!

Alesix · 2012-01-04 Reply Admin

Confucius says: The server administrator who works in a restroom must have a shitty job.

2012-01-05 Reply Admin

In many cases marketing also defines the products, or at least decides which ones a company invests in. So without marketing, there wouldn't be products for people to find on their own.

2012-01-05 Reply Admin

With regards to the server cabinet in the rest room. It seems like a logical place for me considering what the specifications were.

"We want to make sure that our data is kept as clean as possible".

2012-01-05 Reply Admin

The third picture was pretty much what greeted me on my first day at my previous job... except there was another rack on the other side of the room with trailing cables across to it too. and piles of bit of scrap servers, and boxes of random cables and junk that people had abandoned in it. without cooling, the window had to be opened, so there was cardboard propped up in case it rained to stop water coming in; when the cardboard blew away I used the top cover of an old scrap HP server instead as that was heavy enough to resist stronger winds.

2012-01-05 Reply Admin

Ralph:
Stop a moment and take a good long look at that first picture. In fact, make it your wallpaper. That's because you need to understand that at least 99 out of 100 people would find nothing wrong with that.
That's how much the average luser knows and cares about our precious IT systems. They expect it to be always on "like the electricity in the outlets" and to "just work" yet with no planning, care, design, maintenance, or cost.

Yes, I hate it, and I'm sure you do to -- but I'm right and you know it.

What's the solution? Educate the lusers? Isn't that our solution for every chair-keyboard-interface problem? And how has that been working out for you so far?

Someone sold the world on the idea that information systems are easy and brainless, and now here we are.

Idiots are discouraged from doing their own plumbing, because they flood their houses. Idiots are discouraged from doing their own wiring because they electrocute people. Between building codes, insurance requirements and other legal hoop-jumping there's an expectation that such things will need to be paid for.

Idiots are not discouraged from doing their own networking because there's no obvious risk. There's no particular financial or legal incentive from getting a grown-up to do the dirty work.

The issue is not about educating the lusers... they don't care about networking any more than they care about the details of where crap goes when they flush the office toilets. The issue is about educating the people who set installation budgets; making sure they understand that their shortsightedness is going to cost everyone far more time and money down the way, and ensuring that they are established on record as being responsible for the disasters they are planning.

(incidentally, the same applies to software development, or any other project involving technology developed since 1950)

If you can't manage elementary office politics, you're welcome to spend the rest of your days crawling around in damp, dusty server pits. I for one will not be joining you.

Matt Westwood · 2012-01-05 Reply Admin

Springer:
Jerry:
smxlong:
What do human excretory functions have to do with SEXUAL harassment?
Because "sexual harassment" is the only "crime" where the victim gets to decide whether the act was criminal or innocent.
Think about it: you walk into a bank intent on robbing it, you know it is going to be a crime. Or steal a car, or kneecap a debtor...

But the "victim" gets to decide whether an "advance" (could be most anything, really) was or was not "welcome" -- after the fact! Even days or weeks later, when a consenting act is followed by a failure to call often enough, or on the other hand, calling too often.

So, yeah, bitch could be sitting in the restroom, or most anywhere, and someone does something that annoys her... bingo! I've been harassed!
I think that's true of any harassment.... a perpertrator of Verbal Harassment doesn't necessarily realise the victim will take offence (think about Racial slurs - there have been sportsmen who claim that being called a 'monkey' is racist - because they interpret the term to be used because of their race, whereas the person using the term may be using for a whole host of other reasons (eg they look like a monkey))

even someone accused of Physical Harassment may think they are playing a harmless prank, but the victim doesn't see it so harmlessly ("pinch and a punch on the first day of the month" or "Punch buggy", or something..."

All sportsmen are a bunch of fucking monkeys.

2012-01-05 Reply Admin

Alesix:
Confucius say: The server administrator who works in a restroom must have a shitty job.

FTFY. If you must do that, do it right.

2012-01-05 Reply Admin

Paul M:
The third picture was pretty much what greeted me on my first day at my previous job... except there was another rack on the other side of the room with trailing cables across to it too. and piles of bit of scrap servers, and boxes of random cables and junk that people had abandoned in it. without cooling, the window had to be opened, so there was cardboard propped up in case it rained to stop water coming in; when the cardboard blew away I used the top cover of an old scrap HP server instead as that was heavy enough to resist stronger winds.

I like how you insert line breaks that are unnecessary. I noticed the lines fit the comment box. Was it some buggy software or did you feel the urge to press "enter" when the cursor reached the right side?

2012-01-05 Reply Admin

Tud:
like how you insert line breaks that are unnecessary. I noticed the lines fit the comment box. Was it some buggy software or did you feel the urge to press "enter" when the cursor reached the right side?

Fuck yeah e e cummings.

2012-01-05 Reply Admin

Jerry:
smxlong:
What do human excretory functions have to do with SEXUAL harassment?
Because "sexual harassment" is the only "crime" where the victim gets to decide whether the act was criminal or innocent.
Think about it: you walk into a bank intent on robbing it, you know it is going to be a crime. Or steal a car, or kneecap a debtor...

But the "victim" gets to decide whether an "advance" (could be most anything, really) was or was not "welcome" -- after the fact! Even days or weeks later, when a consenting act is followed by a failure to call often enough, or on the other hand, calling too often.

So, yeah, bitch could be sitting in the restroom, or most anywhere, and someone does something that annoys her... bingo! I've been harassed!

Right on, brother! Maybe I was just being friendly and helping you check for cancer! Breast, cervix, prostate, throat... it can pop up anywhere!

Kuba · 2012-01-05 Reply Admin

Marke:
could this be for lightning protection?

Um, NO. Not without a physical barrier between the circuits. The converters are powered from the same power strip and sit on the same painted-metal surface, for crying out loud.

Kuba · 2012-01-05 Reply Admin

Mark:
I've done the copper <-> fiber <-> copper one for lightning protection. Unfortunately, whoever did the one in the picture still fails as they almost certainly don't have enough separation for their power supplies.

It won't work for lightning protection unless the fiber is outside of the building, or in some such area when it'd be exposed to lightning were it conductive. If it's inside of the building, using fiber and converters is completely pointless, because lightning will happily go across the power supplies that are likely to be on the same power strip... There are lightning protectors for cat5, you know, and they cost way less than this stupid double-converter setup.

2012-01-05 Reply Admin

DaveK:
Anthony:
Maybe he can't find the right port for the user because that 6506 is UPSIDE DOWN!
Maybe it's actually a 9059?

FTFY

2012-01-05 Reply Admin

[image]

I've done this before, the local education department said that the administration and curriculum network switches could not be directly patch to each other, their idea was you buy some overpriced cisco router that most schools couldn't afford nor really need.

When the local education department IT guy saw these he nearly flipped, we explained it wasn't directly connected as it went via the converters and he was happy with that.

This was because they insisted on physical separation, aparrently VLANs weren't secure enough.

2012-01-05 Reply Admin

A double converter setup with cheap converters only runs around $110 and provides much better protection than a $50 or so lightning protection product [at least ones we have tried].

Even when plugged into the same power strip this can work. Had a direct lightning strike (radio tower w/ polyphaser protection) that caused the AC adapter to explode, but all of the equipment behind the media converter was protected, including the 2nd media converter (it and the other equipment were all plugged into the same power strip).

2012-01-05 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
Springer:
Jerry:
smxlong:
What do human excretory functions have to do with SEXUAL harassment?
Because "sexual harassment" is the only "crime" where the victim gets to decide whether the act was criminal or innocent.
Think about it: you walk into a bank intent on robbing it, you know it is going to be a crime. Or steal a car, or kneecap a debtor...

But the "victim" gets to decide whether an "advance" (could be most anything, really) was or was not "welcome" -- after the fact! Even days or weeks later, when a consenting act is followed by a failure to call often enough, or on the other hand, calling too often.

So, yeah, bitch could be sitting in the restroom, or most anywhere, and someone does something that annoys her... bingo! I've been harassed!
I think that's true of any harassment.... a perpertrator of Verbal Harassment doesn't necessarily realise the victim will take offence (think about Racial slurs - there have been sportsmen who claim that being called a 'monkey' is racist - because they interpret the term to be used because of their race, whereas the person using the term may be using for a whole host of other reasons (eg they look like a monkey))

even someone accused of Physical Harassment may think they are playing a harmless prank, but the victim doesn't see it so harmlessly ("pinch and a punch on the first day of the month" or "Punch buggy", or something..."

All sportsmen are a bunch of fucking monkeys.

Blimey Matt - you of all people should have recognised the cricket reference (although I have to agree cricketers are barely sportsmen)

Nagesh · 2012-01-05 Reply Admin

Harbhajan Singh and "maa key".

For all you phoren people, "maa key" != "monkey"

2012-01-05 Reply Admin

I have a different take on this. I suggest this may be the work of a clueless Salesperson or Sales Engineer. Threw the bridge in the quote 'just in case' and it made it to installation. The installer or admin didn't know what to do with it so it got installed regardless. I've seen this kind of thing so many times.

The grounding idea is completely plausible though, except for the part that generally most people don't understand the electrical properties of networks.

daily · 2012-01-05 Reply Admin

Nagesh:
This is normel setuation in Hyderabad. [image]

The tree is dangerously close to the power lines.

2012-01-05 Reply Admin

Reminds me of a server room I saw at a client's building. The client was a grain storage facility, and their machine was flaking out - powering up, powering down at random intervals. When they called the hardware engineers in, they immediately diagnosed power supply issues. What they didn't expect was the 26 dead mice in the back of the power supply. They'd obviously gone it to keep warm, and then started nibbling on the tasty cabling...

2012-01-06 Reply Admin

ContraCorners:
The Great Lobachevsky:
It isn't right next to the sink, but we have the restroom/server room going on in my office. It is in the ladies' room, so it is funny seeing guys in there on the occasion they had to access the rack (almost worth the inconvience of walking to another restroom)
Who's rack did they access in the Ladies room? Was she stacked?

If any of you are wondering why there are not more women in the IT industry, this (and some of the other comments here) may give you some idea.

2012-01-06 Reply Admin

I do believe I have to go to Sydney now, to meet that SA.

2012-01-06 Reply Admin

'"This is not what I meant when I told my client to get network attached storage," writes Tyler.'

Ah, but you see - that is a 1TB drive. It has more storage for less money than if you purchase a "proper" setup. TRWTF is spending oodles of money on "legitimate" server hardware.

2012-01-06 Reply Admin

I worked @ a large construction company for a while. We had to wire up those temp buildings for the project. We ALWAYS put the server equipment in the women's bathroom. Why? There were rarely women on the job-sites; and if there were, they NEVER messed with the equipment.

2012-01-06 Reply Admin

Mmmmmm...Tasty Cabling

2012-01-07 Reply Admin

Locating a port by user IP (or MAC) ought to be a simple job for competent network admin. Here the network guru was probably busy reading manga and could not be bothered.

2012-01-16 Reply Admin

We once had a customer who had installed 60-70 servers in a re-purposed tea room. They had the highest rate of drive replacements of anywhere in Australia, and couldn't understand why--they'd just keep ordering more and replacing them. When I walked into this room for the first time, ambient was 38C.

We had another who connected their main server to the same phase as an electric blast furnace. They'd have random outages so severe as to create no diagnostics. Eventually we happened to be there when the furnace got turned on, saw the lights dim and the server crash. "What was that??..."

Yet another customer was experiencing outages every summer, but we never knew at exactly what time of day. We figured it was heat related, but every time we measured it the room and server were cool.

What they hadn't told us was that the AC was turned off on the weekends to save money, and in high summer the sun came through the window and cooked the server.

2012-01-18 Reply Admin

OK wow that makes a lot of sense dude.

Total-Security.tk

2012-02-15 Reply Admin

Yazeran:
A setup like that, however would be highly dangerous to work with (high voltages on metal parts which should be grounded and most people do not suspect that the chassis of a computer is connected to the live wire on the power... )

Chassis is ground. I don't know about Macs though, I think they might run on unicorn pee.

You can test this yourself: touch a known ground with one hand and the chassis of your computer with the other. You will not get a shock unless there is something wrong with your PC. I don't know what would happen with a Mac though, you'd probably have to spend hours washing the unicorn pee off.

aside: Have you ever wondered why Apple never came out with the Cortland, or the Granny Smith or the Red Delicious? Why only MacIntosh?

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