The computing stuff rant thread

[Feanor]

I carry a fairly long HDMI cable with me for these reasons.

I quite often need to use a perfectly good projector, but where the only cable available is a cheap shonky 30 foot long VGA cable which induces ghosting artefacts, and the projector will only do 640x480 over VGA and similar nonsense.

[ian]

Our mothership meeting rooms are filled with cables that don't work – I can only assume previous meeting attendees have tried to relieve their boredom by gnawing on them or something.

I still remember the time the projector bulb blew during a presentation at our Broadway, NYC office. I had to follow the correct IT procedure to have it replaced, which involved the usual submitting of a ticket, its roundtrip to the subcontinent, 56 random emails from each and every one of the many teams involved in requisitioning said bulb, and 12 how-did-we-do? surveys.

Two weeks later, a replacement bulb arrived. In London.

[Kim]

Indeed, the number of presentations (and the obligatory fifteen-minute how-do-I-make-this-work intros) I've sat through where I've wanted to stomp to the front and just bloody sort it out properly.

Never do this, especially not with "I work in IT" confidence.  The presence of an audience guarantees that the problem will be unresolvable with the tools at hand, likely in a way that isn't obvious.

[ian]

Temptation remains a temptation, so I stay out of it. Someone will probably tweet that I'm manfixing or something, if I did. It's not worth it.

It's been a while since I used Windows anyway, so I know less what I'm doing. Macs make you lazy.

[TheLurker]

IME it usually involves sitting there watching a distractingly squished, cropped or aliased presentation *wishing* that someone would randomly poke around in the display settings and stumble on the correct aspect ratio.

I don't get that far.  I just sit there wishing they'd pull their bloody fingers out and get on with the sodding presentation, complete with its meaningless, pointless and utterly inappropriate effing PPT slides, so I can get on with some real work. 

Having some moron waste 10 or more minutes of what's left of my life trying to sort that stuff out when the material isn't fit to be shown in the first place really, really pisses me off.  In summary; the slides are shit and we don't care so  just get on with it.

[SoreTween]

"This computer is not running Genuine Windows"

Funny, it was 2 days ago and several years prior to that.  I can even see the genuine install media on the shelf just over there ->.

I can absofuckinglutely guarantee it will not be running Windows, genuine or otherwise, if this turns out to be one of those issues only a format c: can fix.

[Mr Larrington]

Dual monitors is one of those things where the Linux world had an early lead and squandered it by arsing about in a dozen different directions.  The pain level seems to have dropped off considerably since we stopped having to use proprietary nvidia drivers, which is good as it means you don't have to google for things with a "-ubuntu" flag as much.  I think the last problem I encountered was trying to rotate one monitor 90 degrees turnwise, when the stupid GUI tool only wanted to do it widdershins, easily fixed with the correct command-line invocation.

As ever with *nix, it's a case of once you do finally persuade it to work, it tends to stay that way.

My early experiment with dual monitors on Windows 98 was a right laugh, though:  I had a spare old graphics card, and had borrowed a monitor for a weekend, and found that - while primitive - the extra space was a wonderful thing.  So wonderful, in fact, that after removing the second graphics card, many windows forever^[1] insisted on opening in the non-existent space somewhere off to the right of the desktop.   

I think that got sorted in the Windows 2000 era.  These days it's just random icon-shuffling, and occasional weird hot-plugging glitches that get solved by a reboot.

Never seen dual monitors do anything other than Just Work on a OSX Mac, though I'm sure there are projectors that can manage to fuck it up.  Projectors are like printers from a higher, less important circle of hell, and connecting anything to an Apple laptop runs the risk of the electrons getting stuck in the compulsory adaptor dongle.


_{[1] Well, until the next fdisk and OS reinstall, which is the Windows version of forever.}

I don't want to use the Nvidia "turn it all into one giant display" thing because it makes the desktop look shit.  There is a Thing called SoftTH, which is a .dll you bung in the same directory as the executable you want to use with dual monitors (usually a game) which can take into account the width of the screens' bezels, if you can understand the maths involved in setting it up.  And then you need to muck about with the game's special multi-monitor config file to tell it where to put the main options screen and other things and it gave me a headache.  So I'm back on one for now, but even though the second one is switched off Windows will happily let the mouse pointer wander off into hyperspace because it's stupid.

[Kim]

Wikipedia needs a way to stop you landing on the mobile site when someone on a mobile device shares a link to a page without editing it.

[Gattopardo]

Purchase a new battery for the macbook and decided to go for adecent owc battery and guess what....failed on delivery.

Fuckity bollocks

[ian]

Password manager gubbins. It's great that my computer can create a password and share it between devices.

Except when it doesn't do this because (a) weirdly designed web-forms and (b) anything that isn't a webform, like say the password box for email accounts, icloud, and the myriad other places infected with a need for savant-like input of passwords. You'd think Apple at least would have figured this out. Why I'm even typing passwords like it's still 1975 I don't know. I have fucking phone that does facial recognition. Once, of course, you've periodically input your password to confirm it.

Oh, and rejected passwords because, well, they're not telling you. You have to guess the combination of letters, capital and lower case, numbers, and random non-alphanumeric characters that might meet their security requirements.

[SoreTween]

Today's entry in the most bloody useless error message of all time comes courtesy of the Linux Mint installer:

The volume group name used to automatically partition using LVM is already in use.  Lowering the priority for the configuration questions will allow you to specify an alternative name.

It almost makes sense but for 2 small points.
1) I had selected the 'wipe the disk and start from scratch' option.  It really shouldn't matter a fig what is currently on the disk if you're just going to nuke it.
2) On clicking OK to continue no relevant options at all are presented for me to furtle with.  I can either:
   i) go into the full geek mode and manually partition the drive.  That option does not include LVM which I want in order to be able to use snapshots so that I don't get nagged to set up bloody snapshots every time there's an update to be done.
  or
  ii) Select an LVM install which leads straight back to the lovely error above.

Sub rant
It'd be quite nice if the registration autobot on the Linux Mint forums actually worked.  I've tried twice & the confirmation email never turns up.

Conclusion:  Next year still hasn't arrived.

[Mr Larrington]

In the middle of rejibbling a Several of thousands of strings spread over a couple of tens of thousands of text files.  This takes hours, because Inefficiency on the part of the command-line operated find'n'replace tool (and yes, RZ, to invoke it the command is indeed "FART").  So I do not appreciate the machine rebooting itself while I have left it running in order to go beddy-byes.  When it's only halfway through.  If this was your doing, Gates, I know where you live.

Bah.

[DaveJ]

Why are Royal Mail sending me emails telling me that my stuff is going to be delivered, and click on this ryml.me link to to see the latest status?  What made them think that encouraging people to click on strange links is a good idea?

[DuncanM]

My early experiment with dual monitors on Windows 98 was a right laugh, though:  I had a spare old graphics card, and had borrowed a monitor for a weekend, and found that - while primitive - the extra space was a wonderful thing.  So wonderful, in fact, that after removing the second graphics card, many windows forever^[1] insisted on opening in the non-existent space somewhere off to the right of the desktop.   

_{[1] Well, until the next fdisk and OS reinstall, which is the Windows version of forever.}

My work laptop gets very confused by being plugged into a dock which has 2 extra monitors attached.  Every so often, when running without them attached it will decide to open an application on one of the non-existent screens. You can see it minimise and maximise off to the screen that doesn't exist! The only solution I have found to this is to reboot the machine. Windows 10. A half decent operating system, with flaws copied from 20 years ago!

[Feanor]

My work laptop gets very confused by being plugged into a dock which has 2 extra monitors attached.  Every so often, when running without them attached it will decide to open an application on one of the non-existent screens. You can see it minimise and maximise off to the screen that doesn't exist! The only solution I have found to this is to reboot the machine. Windows 10. A half decent operating system, with flaws copied from 20 years ago!

Alt-Tab till the off-screen window is the active one and has (invisible) focus;
Alt-Spacebar to bring up the secret old windows 3.x 'minus' menu which is still hiding at the top left of every window;
M to select the 'Move' menu item;
Hit any one of the Up/Down/Left/Right arrow keys once ( this attaches the window to the mouse pointer );
Now wiggle the mouse to bring the window on-screen.

[ian]

Dear HSBC – I admire the sheer number of validation steps required to set my phone up as a digital secure key. Truly are my fingers working like a methed-up accountant to keep me secure.

A couple of things would make this process easier. Like, for instance, not sending a nine-digit activation code when your app asks for eight. Or timing me out in the time it takes for the first activation code to arrive (nine digit, not eight for the one that arrives by email). This means logging in again with a 12ish character user ID, remembering the answer to secret questions, and the second, sixth and final letter of a password that I've not had cause to use since I penned the best bits of the Bible (you'll need the uncensored version to read those, of course). Then you time me out as I rerequest the second activation code (eight digits, not nine, delivered by text). It's like a diabolical modern update of snakes and ladders.

I'm sure I've ranted about this before, but if so I evidently I failed and gave up last time and logged in the old fashioned way.

That said, I think I've been trying to summon up the will (and a spare evening or two) to figure out how to get into one of my Santander accounts for about three years now.

[Mr Larrington]

Last time I used my Santander account it was fairly straightforward, but that was about five years ago and it's only got about thirty quid in it now.  Smile, OTOH.

I do have an account.  Possibly more than one.  I know this because they send me e-mails about it/them.  But accessing them fails at the first hurdle.  "Enter username".  I don't have one.  You changed the login system and didn't send me one.  "Forgotten ur username?  Clicky this link and we'll e-mail it to you!"

This. Is. A. Lie.

It. Does. Nothing.

Sooner or later I shall have to bite the bullet and phone the buggers, because I need the money to spend on important things like this month's credit card bill.

[Maverick]

  You changed the login system and didn't send me one.  "Forgotten ur username?  Clicky this link and we'll e-mail it to you!"

This. Is. A. Lie.

It. Does. Nothing.

Sooner or later I shall have to bite the bullet and phone the buggers, because I need the money to spend on important things like this month's credit card bill.

If you never had a username, you have to re-register via the "I don't have any login details" button. BTDT

[ian]

In the same session of financial matters, Barclays announced they'd changed their login experience to make my life easier, presumably by ensuring my password manager didn't work.

It's another one of those MLIR moments, when did it become even vaguely reasonable to end up having to deal with several financial institutions.

[Mr Larrington]

  You changed the login system and didn't send me one.  "Forgotten ur username?  Clicky this link and we'll e-mail it to you!"

This. Is. A. Lie.

It. Does. Nothing.

Sooner or later I shall have to bite the bullet and phone the buggers, because I need the money to spend on important things like this month's credit card bill.

If you never had a username, you have to re-register via the "I don't have any login details" button. BTDT

Yes, that's what I've been doing, to zero effect.

[Tim Hall]

Finally managed to submit a form on my lease holder/landlord's website.  The first x attempts failed, followed by Bad Swears.

It shows as an almost white page with white boxes. I, with my getting on for normal vision had trouble seeing the boxes, so couldn't work out where to click for text input. How someone visually impaired will cope I don't know. "Not well" is my guess.

Some boxes are shown with an asterisk, which I assume means mandatory. I fill these in and hit submit. Nothing happens. Rinse and repeat.

I finally notice that some boxes have been highlighted in red. Boxes not shown as mandatory. Home phone, work phone. As I work from home via a mobile, I don't have these. I type in xxxx.  The other highlighted box is County. County FFS. Why. They have my street, town and post code. They down need the County. I fill it in. Success.

I think, once my transaction has been completed, that I will grink them.

[barakta]

Please do, that sounds utterly infuriating and yes impossible for those with poorer sight.

[Feanor]

Excel and dates. Again.  But a new wrinkle.
Who knew excel has 2 different time/date systems 'bases'?

I've just inherited the club Vets spreadsheets, and have added some lookup tables for DoB etc.

Now here's a thing...
If you subtract one time from another ( eg a Race Time from a Vets Standard Time ), it doesn't work if the result is negative!
All you get is "######".
This is not just a display formatting issue; you just can't do it!

To fix it, there's an advanced option called 'Use 1904 date system'.
Then, it calculates negative times OK.

BUT....
It it changes the 'base' date of how it stores dates as underlying numbers, and so all the DoB lookups from a spreadsheet which is *not* 1904-based break!
They offset by several years.

So you need to convert the DoB lookup sheet to 1904-based too, so they are both using the same base date.
But you can't just tick that option.
Oh, no.
If you do that, the stored numbers remain unchanged, and the displayed dates change to the wrong ones.
I need the correct displayed text to remain unchanged, but the underlying numbers to be re-calculated.

You need to save out the correct *displayed text* from the DoB column into Notepad. ( Not simply copy the column, because that copies the underlying number which will be wrong under the new system ).
Then change the Date System.
Then copy the text back in from Notepad, to have excel re-generate the underlying numbers in the new system.

And finally it's all working.

[Jaded]

*Puts hand up*

Yes, I knew about the two systems. I think it used to be Mac vs PC so I was always careful when using cross platform files. Haven’t had to be careful for years now.

[Feanor]

Yes, original reason was a Mac - PC issue.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/214330/differences-between-the-1900-and-the-1904-date-system-in-excel

It's not clear to me why changing the base date by 1462 days should make a difference to the ability to calculate negative times, but it does.