The computing stuff rant thread

[L CC]

I'd be a searcher but then I'd need a consistent naming protocol.
I hate it when other people are inconsistent. This is a constant struggle.

[fimm]

(This should possibly go in the I'm such an idiot thread...)
Me: dear colleague, please would assist me in finding out why this thing Does Not Work?
Him: have you tried running it as administrator?
Me: I'm going to look a proper idiot if that works...
Yes, that was the problem...

[tiermat]

Why are _all_ WiFi TRVs actually Zigbee thus need a bridge? I want to replace units in my house, not add more tat!

Bah!

[TheLurker]

(This should possibly go in the I'm such an idiot thread...)
Me: dear colleague, please would assist me in finding out why this thing Does Not Work?
Him: have you tried running it as administrator?
Me: I'm going to look a proper idiot if that works...
Yes, that was the problem...

My turn..
Yesterday.

Me: Dear colleague, please would assist me in finding out why this process is unusably slow?
Him: Did you create additional indexes for the tables after you changed the definitions of the PKs?
Me: I'm going to look a proper idiot if that works...

Yes, that was the problem...

[fuaran]

Why are _all_ WiFi TRVs actually Zigbee thus need a bridge? I want to replace units in my house, not add more tat!

Bah!

Zigbee is much lower power consumption than wifi, so should be better battery life.

[pcolbeck]

Why are _all_ WiFi TRVs actually Zigbee thus need a bridge? I want to replace units in my house, not add more tat!

Bah!

Zigbee is much lower power consumption than wifi, so should be better battery life.

Also Zigbee devices form their own mesh network so the connection between them is more reliable than what could be spotty WiFi coverage.

[tiermat]

Why are _all_ WiFi TRVs actually Zigbee thus need a bridge? I want to replace units in my house, not add more tat!

Bah!

Zigbee is much lower power consumption than wifi, so should be better battery life.

Also Zigbee devices form their own mesh network so the connection between them is more reliable than what could be spotty WiFi coverage.

Oh I know _why_ but power consumption is not my concern, just don't want yet another box cluttering up the house.

[Mr Larrington]

Microsith, you terrible warty cockshafts, if you provide the menu options

Code: [Select]

Shut Down
and

Code: [Select]

Update and Shut Down
then selecting the former should SHUT THE FUCKING MACHINE DOWN WITHOUT APPLYING THE FUCKING UPDATE

And the reason I want to do this is because YOUR update has b0rked MY Babbage-Engine, so I want to try various options to sort it out without wasting ten minutes on restart when YOUR update fails again and has to do a system fucking restore.  You hopeless skunk-buggering peckerwoods.

[TheLurker]

And this ^ is why I've swapped to Linux.  It has all sorts of issues* of its own, but at least I know it won't apply updates behind my back.

*Nothing show-stopping,  but it'll do until Haiku is ready. 

[DaveReading]

Microsith, you terrible warty cockshafts, if you provide the menu options

Code: [Select]

Shut Down
and

Code: [Select]

Update and Shut Down
then selecting the former should SHUT THE FUCKING MACHINE DOWN WITHOUT APPLYING THE FUCKING UPDATE

And the reason I want to do this is because YOUR update has b0rked MY Babbage-Engine, so I want to try various options to sort it out without wasting ten minutes on restart when YOUR update fails again and has to do a system fucking restore.  You hopeless skunk-buggering peckerwoods.

Shutdown /s

[ScumOfTheRoad]

And this ^ is why I've swapped to Linux.  It has all sorts of issues* of its own, but at least I know it won't apply updates behind my back.

Actually, I will correct you there. I upgraded my laptop to Fedora 33. If I shut the lid and then reopen it a few hours later many times it has a status bar warning me not to shut down as an update is being applied. This is new behaviour to me!
I guess there is a file I can edit to alter this behaviour.

[TheLurker]

This is one of the issues, you have to qualify everything you say or write about Linux with distro/version/selected UI/phase of the moon.

On Mint 20 I get a nice little popup telling me updates are available which fades away if ignore it.

[nicknack]

This is one of the issues, you have to qualify everything you say or write about Linux with distro/version/selected UI/phase of the moon.

On Mint 20 I get a nice little popup telling me updates are available which fades away if ignore it.

Updates aren't an issue on Ubuntu 20 or Manjaro 20 either. Just popups asking if you want them now or later. They rarely take more than a few seconds anyway.

[Mr Larrington]

Microsith, you terrible warty cockshafts, if you provide the menu options

Code: [Select]

Shut Down
and

Code: [Select]

Update and Shut Down
then selecting the former should SHUT THE FUCKING MACHINE DOWN WITHOUT APPLYING THE FUCKING UPDATE

And the reason I want to do this is because YOUR update has b0rked MY Babbage-Engine, so I want to try various options to sort it out without wasting ten minutes on restart when YOUR update fails again and has to do a system fucking restore.  You hopeless skunk-buggering peckerwoods.

Shutdown /s

Ta!  Didn’t know you could do that; I'll give it a go next time.

[Mr Larrington]

Arrggh!  Bastarding thing still won’t install the sodding update.  The pointy finger of suspicion now, er, points at a driver update for the sound card which probably means all sorts of tedious mucking about in hyperspace uninstalling stuff and trying the wretched update again and watching it fall over for the twentieth cocking time and I hate everybody.  Especially Creative Labs, if it does turn out to be their fault.

[barakta]

Outlook! Keeps opening a dialogue box for custom upload of stuff to our CRM OFF my fucking screen, and cos it's a dialogue box and NOT a window I can't use the usual tricks to move it. I have to have Outlook/email open on the screen I don't want it on.

Subrant. Dear IT, Just Tell Me The Fucking Monitor Model Number For The Matte Screens and I will tell you if it flickers or not. You have had this fucking request since early November and I am still using an ergonomically AWFUL setup. It took 8 fucking weeks to get a dock and I only managed at all cos I happened to have another laptop dock which happened to work... Fuck knows what would have happened if I'd not had my own ergo desk and chair!!!

I now have it documented that the ergo is awful... I have advised line manager that I am going to start having to get NARKY in the Equality Act and Reasonable Adjustments cluehammer sense. I checked and my disclosure is absolutely by the fucking book. "IT is busy" "cos pandemic" is no excuse for taking 10 weeks and counting to provide appropriate tech OR a model number so I can RTFM and or order my won... I'm suggesting if IT can't even talk to me (they'll only talk to Boss2 or higher) then I should be permitted to buy my own fucking monitors and they can reimburse me. Two monitors at the same resolution should resolve the windows opening off screen and the inconsistent brightness problem which is giving me headaches.

[Diver300]

Windows Fax and Scan on Windows 10, and an EPSON ET-2720 printer and scanner, why won't you tossers talk to each other so that I can scan?

You managed it a week ago, and for months before. The printer will print from the computer, it'll even run the scanner to pretend that it's a photocopier.

Having turned them all off and back on again, along with the router and the wireless access point, and uninstalled and reinstalled the printer a couple of times, an all I get is "No scanners were detected" while an image on screen is taunting me, as it's a scan of the bit of paper that's been sat in the scanner since I used it last week.

Then I've been told by family that my workaround of using a DSLR camera is wrong. I should have downloaded and used a phone app, because that's "easier". Obviously the fact that I know how to use a DSLR already, means that nothing, but nothing could possibly go wrong with installing an app, finding how to use an app, getting the data to my computer from the app. Or that wrangling all of that could possibly be slower than using the camera that just works as if I haven't wasted enough time on the scanner already.

And it's bloody well doing it again, a week after the last time I used it and it just worked.

How much more mainstream can you get than a Windows PC and an Epson scanner?

[Ben T]

If I had the 20,000-odd files in my current project in a single folder

• I'd never be able to find anything, and
• I'd need ridiculously long file names to ensure uniqueness, and
• It wouldn’t work

Then either your project is too big, or you've got at least one badly named file.
I bet you're the sort that has classes simply called "Data". And boolean variables called "yes".

[Mr Larrington]

If I had the 20,000-odd files in my current project in a single folder

• I'd never be able to find anything, and
• I'd need ridiculously long file names to ensure uniqueness, and
• It wouldn’t work

Then either your project is too big, or you've got at least one badly named file.
I bet you're the sort that has classes simply called "Data". And boolean variables called "yes".

Stop being wrong.

[Kim]

This seems like a good thread for this: https://twitter.com/shituserstories

[Mr Larrington]

As a follower of links to local news webshites I want to be bombarded with so much shitvertising that the page reloads three times and then crashes the browser.  Onna FruitCo fondleslab, where ad-blockers are a Non-Thing, obv.

[ian]

This seems like a good thread for this: https://twitter.com/shituserstories

Hey, someone has been downloading all my Jira stories.

[Mr Larrington]

Microsith, you terrible warty cockshafts, if you provide the menu options

Code: [Select]

Shut Down
and

Code: [Select]

Update and Shut Down
then selecting the former should SHUT THE FUCKING MACHINE DOWN WITHOUT APPLYING THE FUCKING UPDATE

And the reason I want to do this is because YOUR update has b0rked MY Babbage-Engine, so I want to try various options to sort it out without wasting ten minutes on restart when YOUR update fails again and has to do a system fucking restore.  You hopeless skunk-buggering peckerwoods.

Shutdown /s

Ta!  Didn’t know you could do that; I'll give it a go next time.

Update: it appears that if Windows is in a state of restart requiredness then even shutdown from the command line doesn’t stop it from trying to install the wretched thing, so I have now learned to take my Kindle with me when starting the thing back up as it takes quite a while to undo the failed update.  Nuking from orbit is looking increasingly like the only solution unless I can persuade the bloody thing to boot in Safe+Network mode, which at the moment I can’t because it doesn’t recognise the keyboard at that point in the startup process.  Undignified sub-desk grovelling may be needed to plug cheap and nasty USB keyboard into a port that’s actually on the mofoboard.

[TheLurker]

Proffers large pack of choc. digestives and a cup of tea.  Good luck Carruthers.

[DaveReading]

Microsith, you terrible warty cockshafts, if you provide the menu options

Code: [Select]

Shut Down
and

Code: [Select]

Update and Shut Down
then selecting the former should SHUT THE FUCKING MACHINE DOWN WITHOUT APPLYING THE FUCKING UPDATE

And the reason I want to do this is because YOUR update has b0rked MY Babbage-Engine, so I want to try various options to sort it out without wasting ten minutes on restart when YOUR update fails again and has to do a system fucking restore.  You hopeless skunk-buggering peckerwoods.

Shutdown /s

Ta!  Didn’t know you could do that; I'll give it a go next time.

Update: it appears that if Windows is in a state of restart requiredness then even shutdown from the command line doesn’t stop it from trying to install the wretched thing, so I have now learned to take my Kindle with me when starting the thing back up as it takes quite a while to undo the failed update.  Nuking from orbit is looking increasingly like the only solution unless I can persuade the bloody thing to boot in Safe+Network mode, which at the moment I can’t because it doesn’t recognise the keyboard at that point in the startup process.  Undignified sub-desk grovelling may be needed to plug cheap and nasty USB keyboard into a port that’s actually on the mofoboard.

Well yes, what I should have said is that the command shuts down without Windows starting to load pending updates, whereas shutting down from the Start menu will insist on applying them.

If you are in the middle of an update at the "reboot needed" stage then you really don't want Windows to skip the next step(s).