by ·0 Comments

As some may know, I love to fish.  Absolutely love it.  I’m not amazing at it, but I’m not horrible at it either.  Last year, every time I went out I caught SOMETHING.  Maybe not a keeper, but definitely brought a fish up, took a picture, measured it, and put it back in the water.

All that being said, other than my two trips to the Manasquan Inlet this year, I’ve had pretty crummy luck.  I didn’t catch many fish at all this year.  All my usual fishing spots were taken.  Even when I went to Michigan I didn’t get so much as a bite.  It was a very frustrating year.  I honestly began to question any ability at fishing I thought I had.  It all started when I broke my main fishing rod.  Everything went downhill from there (between using a hand me down,

Until yesterday.

Yesterday was perfect.  Joe and I got to spot near Kingston and did some fishing in the Millstone River around 6:30am.  Joe and his dad had fished that spot a lot, a long time ago.  He said there were carp, catfish, even some bass.  We’d been to this spot twice before today this year, and caught barely anything.  Last year we had better luck at that spot, but this year it felt dried up and empty.  Yesterday turned it around.

Following some advice from r/fishing I went out equipped and intending on catching panfish (sunnies, crappies, rock bass, etc) on a light cast line, while setting up my (new!) main rod for it’s maiden fishing trip for catfish.

Success!

After casting my main rod out (with hot dogs) I turned my attention to second light rod.  I put some Gulp Hawg on a small hook with a bobber waited.  Within a minute, I saw the bobber dip. And dip again.  And then took off.  I yanked in hard, and felt resistance.  Fishie!   I reeled it in, and was thrilled to see an 8″ crappie on the end of the line.   It wasn’t the one in this picture (which is maybe 6″) but nevertheless, here’s an example.  We initially thought it was a rock bass, but it was a white crappie in hindsight.

2016-09-04 07.16.30

Mission accomplished.  I was happy.  I caught a fish.  I put it back in the water and could have walked away happy at that point.

The Millstone had other plans.

Ring, ring, ring.  The bell on my main line began to jingle.  I ran over, yanked (not hard enough) and felt resistance.  I began to reel in.  The resistance disappeared.  Fish gone. Bait gone.  Sad.

I put more hot dog on the hook, cast off, and went back to the other line.

I cast, and within a minute: a sunnie.

2016-09-04 08.25.41

It was an even better day.  This continued for about two hours, before even the crappies and sunnies stopped biting.  Oh well.  I decided to give the main line some attention.  As much as I enjoyed hearing the bell ring and find no fish on the end of it, I was getting tired of it.

I cast with fresh hot dogs, and waited.  I was standing around talking with Joe when I felt a tug.  It went away immediately.  A minute later, another tug.  I yanked hard on the rod, and felt a twang.  The line stayed taught.  The line started to move.  I had a fish.  I started reeling in.  It took about 2 minutes to pull it in.  I got tangled in Joe’s line.  He grabbed the net.

2016-09-04 09.37.37

Catfish!

3lb, 18″ catfish.  That’s going in the keeper bucket.

It’s now in the fridge.  Well, it’s filets are in the fridge anyway.

Things picked up right after then.  Joe switched to the Gulp Hawg and caught some crappie and some sunnie too.

When all was said and done we had caught:

  • 4 Crappie (3 for me!)
  • 15 Sunnie (7 for me!)
  • 1 Catfish (that one was mine!)
  • 2 Hooks (all Joe)
  • 1 Branch (that one was mine haha)
  • 1 Clamshell (all Joe)

What a great day, a great way to end the summer, and a great way to spend the Labor Day weekend.

-M, out

by ·0 Comments

The past week has been a frustrating series of events from vendors and end users.

Here’s a collection of some of them, and my responses (that may or may not have been said to the perpetrators).

Ticket:

The desktop in <Room> and the <Other Rooms> need the <Program 1> and <Program 2> installed – these were on my profile last year.

Additionally, my students access <Program 1> from the desktops <Room> and laptops <Cart>, and will need access during the first week of school.

If you have any questions, please ask <Old Tech>. She assisted me in ensuring both programs have worked properly.
Thanks so much.

Response:

<Program 1> is already installed in <Room> and <Cart>.  Our notes show that it was not installed in <Other Rooms> last year.  We have completed the install in <Other Rooms>.  <Program 2> is a website interface and does not need installation, it runs in the browser.

Thoughts:

Don’t ask for software to be installed if you haven’t checked if it’s been installed yet.  Certainly don’t lie to us about where it was installed last year.  We keep notes.  We have job history for all the computers.  We know what was where and who put it there.  CERTAINLY don’t ask for a website to be installed, because we will laugh about it to your face.  Give us the whole story, let me know what you are attempting to accomplish, what you feel the steps to get there are, and let us come up with a workable solution.

Situation:

We ordered brand new virtualization infrastructure hardware this summer.  Yay! Shiny toys! 😀

We ordered brand new hardware that comes default with 1400W 240V power supplies.  We run 120V power.  This is America.  D:

We ordered replacement power supplies for said hardware (4 hosts, 2 power supplies each: 8 total power supplies).  They arrived today.

4 of the 8 are the 1200W 120V power supplies we expected.  The remaining 4 of the 8 are 1400W 240V power supplies inside 1200W 120V boxes.

We attempt to return the erroneous devices.  Vendor hassles.  They are not the same hardware for the box, so they won’t accept them.  They are what you shipped us!

Thoughts:

We’re already 2 weeks behind here.  Stop yanking our chains.  Seriously.  We just want the hardware we need to get this stuff up and running.  Don’t lie about the hardware requirements, and don’t send us the wrong boxes of equipment.  It’s 3 days from go time and we don’t have anything working because you keep yanking us around. Most certainly don’t make it seem like we’re trying to scam you: you sent us the wrong stuff.

Situation:

New ticketing system setup requires all people to select their location in their profile settings otherwise you won’t see the queues to enter a ticket into.  User emails saying they do not see the queues and cannot create a ticket.  I reply notifying them that if they cannot see the queues then they should read the messages that pop up every time they login to the ticketing system.  User replies that they did read them and do them.  I check: no, you did not.  You either didn’t set it, or you didn’t log out and log back in.  I can tell.  There’s the log.  You haven’t even been to the profile page.

Thoughts:

Don’t like to us.  Specifically, don’t lie to people at all.  You make it impossible to properly troubleshoot the issue.  If you tell me you did something, and the system disagrees with you, I’m going to believe the system. The system is incapable of lying to me.  Funny, once you make the change the system says you make the change and the queues show up.  Funny, could have sworn you said you did that already.

Situation:

New printers arrive.  Yay!  More shiny new toys.  They are brand new.  Like, the manufacturer does not even list them on their website kind of new.  Cool beans.  We dig through their website and install their latest version of the drivers for them.  Cool, everything looks swell.  “Trainer” arrives the following day to show the staff how to work the printers.  Trainer has problems demonstrating the setup.  Claims we do not have the driver installed.

Thoughts:

The driver is very much installed.  We installed both versions, the CD-ROM you provided and the latest we could find on the website.  It’s there.  It works.  We tested it.  You’re having trouble with it.  Somehow it is our fault.  Yes, this makes a lot of sense.  Just admit you weren’t aware of the changes with the driver and the new model of printer.  No one will fault you for it.  Don’t try and make your problem into my problem: I will call you out on it EVERY time.

Situation:

Email we received:

Hey guys,

<Script Tool> at <Building> does not appear to be running correctly at <Building>.  This is likely because the permissions are not set correctly on the <Script Tool> log folder and files.  On every desktop I’ve checked, the <Log 1> file and the <Log 2> file are blank.
The <Previous Year> Software Installs on the <Building> image server has a job that will create and set proper permissions for these files, and it contains logic to set the necessary permissions if the folders already exist.  I would like to run this job on all desktops in that building, but I want to check with you guys first since you’ve been handling imaging and package deployment in that building.  Is there anything I should be aware of?
FWIW, this does not appear to be an issue with the desktops at <Other Building>.
Thoughts:
So, the VERY first thing you jump to is to assume that our imaging and images are the problem here?  Did you do ANY troubleshooting?  No, clearly you didn’t.  Clearly you were out to make a message, since you CC’d our boss about it without doing any research.  As my coworker pointed out: No, the reason why the script is not running is because your scripts are improperly formatted.  There is an extra “if” clause.  It causes the whole thing to bork.
You just assumed that our work was shit, and you called it out in front of our mutual boss.  Thanks.  Thanks for that.  That’s real cool dude.  Good job.

Their Follow-Up Reply:

Did you guys reimage the administrator desktops at <Building> today by chance?  If so, that would be one heck of a coincidence and account for my confusion.  I was thrown off by the entirely blank files on the three workstations that I checked (which all happened to be admin machines since they were already powered on).
Thoughts, Expanded:
I don’t know.  Why don’t you check the image server for that information?  Or the spreadsheets that show exactly when we did what work.  It would have taken you 2 seconds to explore and find that yes, we in fact did image those machines just today.  And that is why the logs are blank on those specific machines.
Good job.

This has been a rant-tastic week.

That being said: EVE is going Free To Play, so if you’d like to fleet up some time let me know. 🙂 Deus Ex Mankind Divided is still as fun as ever.  I’ve also been enjoying Rainbow Six: Siege a lot too.
-M, Out.

by ·0 Comments

Disclaimer: PC Master Race. I own a PS4, an Xbox One, an Xbox 360, and custom-built desktop PC. Of the 4, I prefer gaming on the PC. I always will.  That being said, there’s a frustrating trend in gaming that I’m seeing and I’d like to talk about it a bit, especially since I’m STILL waiting for a game to be launched.

Continue reading

by ·0 Comments

Disclaimer: I hate ads. You won’t ever see ads on my website. I run uBlock Origin (and you should too).  The other day Facebook fired the first in what I can expect to be a long line of shots: they attempted to circumvent the ad-blocking system that users have installed on their computers.  Facebook made the claim that this was because “ads support our mission of giving people the power to share and making the world more open and connected.”

AdBlock plus makes a different claim, calling it “a dark path against user choice.”

Continue reading

by ·0 Comments

Today we had an HVAC group come in to take a look at, inspect, and do maintenance on our air conditioning system because it was constantly running. When I mean constantly, I mean CONSTANTLY. Nearly 24/7 unless we turned it off. We weren’t pushing it either. We weren’t trying to push 60 degree air on 100+ degree days. We were trying to hit 70-80 degree air on 90 degree days.  We finally got fed up with it after 2 months of ~$400 power bills.  We contacted the property management company and told them that they needed to send out a group to inspect it and the property.

Boy, am I glad we did.

Continue reading

by ·0 Comments

Fire Alarm and Security Alarm panels are great devices.  Their central brain system allows a bunch of independent systems (smoke detectors, CO2 detectors, heat detectors, gas detectors, door open detectors, etc) to all report back to a central location and then have the central location call out to the Police or Fire Department and relay exactly what is wrong at exactly what part of the building.

In theory this is great.

The only problem is: how do these devices communicate with the outside world (the inside world being your building, the outside world being everyone else).  The answer for us is: a phone line.

Continue reading

by ·0 Comments

It works! It really works!  I’ve finally implemented something that works!

A few weeks ago I wrote up a post about my experiments with Domains and homelab and WDS.  I’m pleased to report today that it worked!  It worked perfectly.

My poor desktop chokes when running the three VMs (DC, WDSS, and Deployed Desktop) but it works (though this may be changing since Nick and I decided to invest in a Homelab setup for the apartment; a Dell R710 with 2 Xeon E5645 Processors, 72GB RAM, and 4TB storage).  The Deployed Desktop boots off PXE from WDSS via DHCP from the DC, and boom.  Boots into WDS and receives and image.  No interaction required (unless I require it).  A lot of this is going to be a link repository for my own use.

It was super thrilling to get the thing working.  There are a bunch of caveats and I’m going to try and outline them here.

Continue reading

by ·1 Comment

We just received our first Dell Optiplex 5040 Desktop for the summer refresh at the Middle School.  Boy this thing has fought us from the beginning.  It’s been very frustrating.

We encountered a bunch of problems (and solved them all, thankfully):

  1. Windows 7 would not install from USB media.
  2. Windows 7 would not detect any USB drive, but would power and respond to mouse/keyboard on the same ports.
  3. Windows 7 keyboard driver strangeness including not responding to Num/Caps/Scroll Lock keys.
  4. Windows 7 keyboard driver strangeness including keys responding to input but not working properly (typing in a password and finding that you could not login despite KNOWING that the pressed the right keys).
  5. Altiris Deployment Services not collecting the image (Failed claiming “RDeploy: The EFI variable could not be read”).

Our solution to these issues is presented below.

Continue reading