A random thread for small computing things that don't really warrant a thread of their own

[Kim]

The Thunderbollocks developers historically had a religious objection to implementing the IMAP IDLE command (which, to save you looking it up, says to the server "give me a push notification if something changes in this folder").  It seems to have reluctantly creeped in there at some point since I last paid the matter any attention, but has presumably contributed to the dog's breakfast of polling options.  The general principle of more cached connections more better (until the server gets uppity and starts closing them) still seems to apply.

And obviously anyone with that many exclamation marks can't be trusted to run an IMAP server properly.

[Mr Larrington]

I'm! not! sure! I! trust! the! Mega! Global! Punctuation! Abuse! Corporation! Of! Sunnyvale! USAnia! to! run! anything! Properly!

[ian]

What's that you say computer, this disk cannot be repaired.

This is the third replacement back-up drive that has gone in the last couple of years (whereas the other drive is the HDD pulled out of a 2006 Macbook and still merrily spinning). It's not like they see heavy use with hourly snapshots.

[Mr Larrington]

Hurrah!  My new PC is being built!
Bah! 1-1.5 working weeks my arse!  Ordered it on April 21st

[ian]

I'm impressed that Amazon offer 'professional installation' for portable hard drive (yours for £59.29). I would like to be paid this much for plugging in a USB cable (ignore any claims from my boss that this might be true, I do far more than just this).

I'm almost tempted to order the service and see what happens. That said, from reading the reviews, it seems there's a fair number of people who don't know how to format a drive and generally panic if they have to do more than plug it in. And yes, 4TB isn't 4 actual TB. The world established this in 1998.

[Mr Larrington]

Don’t they mostly come pre-formatted these days?  External ones, obv.  Infernal ones are a different kettle of wossnames.

[ian]

For Windows, I imagine they do, hence all the whinging in the reviews about how they were swizzed out of the promised 4TB when they plugged in. For some you can pay extra for a 'Mac version' because we're worth it. Or just fire up Disk Utility and hit the format button.

Still narked that I'm either a statistical outlier or quality is crap these days, or big storage is fragile storage unless you spend for enterprise models.

[Mr Larrington]

I've got at least four dead SSDs floating around the place, plus another that was DOA.  Sizes from 110 GB to 2 TB.

[Kim]

I've never had an SSD die.  Though I do have one somewhere that's so offensively slow that it was withdrawn from use.

[mrcharly-YHT]

I've got at least four dead SSDs floating around the place, plus another that was DOA.  Sizes from 110 GB to 2 TB.

MrLarrington is a hitherto unknown particle that attracts cosmic rays.

[Mr Larrington]

After being told yesterday that my new PC was undergoing “stress testing” and not to “be alarmed if this takes several days” a veritable flurry of e-mails tells me it’s been dispatched 

Natch not a peep out of whichever shite couriers they've selected to try to break it.  Also it means I have to clear some space on the kitchen table for adding disks and other hardware out of the old one chiz.

[ian]

I've got at least four dead SSDs floating around the place, plus another that was DOA.  Sizes from 110 GB to 2 TB.

These are spinny disks as they're just for backup and I'm notoriously cheap (I'm not sure I even have 4TB of data*). None of the internal SSDs have ever failed, fortunately.

*it now won't report what's on it, though it seems accessible, just won't accept writes. Basically, it's turned into my brain.

[lissotriton]

Is the Railcard website broken? Just gives an error 500 when I try to login. Have tried it on a variety of different computers and browsers.
Not much use if want to use Tesco Clubcard vouchers for buying a Railcard.

[Mr Larrington]

Last night:  ur PC will be delivered on the 16th, sa DPD
This morning: ur PC will be delivered, like, NOW, sa DPD
Just now: A smiley DPD man places a huge cardboard box on the doorstep

Unfortunately, I ent finished clearing the space required for un-boxing and up-setting, and the box is blocking the foot of the stairs.  Bah!

[Mr Larrington]

No, Audacity, when I split that single audio file into 17 handy four-ounce servings and then tell you to export each chunk as a separate file I do not want you to include in each file anything up to 73 minutes of bugger-all before the audio starts in earnest 

[Sergeant Pluck]

Default password for something in work is "changeit".

Can't be changed.

[Beardy]

Styles and formatting in M$ word. Why does it have to be so convoluted and why is the one thing I want nor available.

Grrr.

[TheLurker]

Didn't you know that Microsoft is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation?

[mrcharly-YHT]

Styles and formatting in M$ word. Why does it have to be so convoluted and why is the one thing I want nor available.

Grrr.

I blame it on the effing ribbon.

Everything used to be organised under (fairly sensible) menus. Most people could navigate their way around the menus, since the names were logical.

Now it is a bloody mess, with options appearing and disappearing at (microsoft's) will.

[Mr Larrington]

I needed to map some network drives on my new PC.  Needed a FWSE* to tell me how.  But I couldn’t find the drives, because Network Discovery is turned off by default.  And I couldn’t find the Control Panel to turn it on, because Microsith have hidden it.  I could have found it easily enough if I'd managed to install Classic Shell, but the Setup wossname for it is on one of the network drives I was trying to map…

* not Google, coz we ent got that far yet

[Pingu]

What you want is God Mode.

[Mr Larrington]

What you want is God Mode.

And so I shall, but I ent set that up yet either.

[Ham]

I am a Very Bad Man.

On a work project, someone has suggested the use of software called Citopus. I have referred to it in a mail, and added an "L" in the name. And asked if anyone can find it.

ETA. the relevant paragraph

Who is best placed to discuss the exact requirements for the delivery team, please? I have heard mention of a software requirement for something called Clitopus, but I’m not sure I can find it anywhere? Can someone tell me what is needed?

[Mr Larrington]

Faffed with the UEFI wossname on the Great Hall PC.

Hurrah: PC Health Check says it can run Win 11
Bah: Windows Update says it can’t
Hurrah: Seems Windows Update doesn’t update itself immediately because, well, Microsith

[jsabine]

I am a Very Bad Man.

On a work project, someone has suggested the use of software called Citopus. I have referred to it in a mail, and added an "L" in the name. And asked if anyone can find it.

ETA. the relevant paragraph

Who is best placed to discuss the exact requirements for the delivery team, please? I have heard mention of a software requirement for something called Clitopus, but I’m not sure I can find it anywhere? Can someone tell me what is needed?

Gee, I'm sure someone will spot that