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Comments:
<0> "Gee, uh, I dunno it's a good idea to have no access lists at all between VLAN1 and VLAN2. It seems, like, erm, a security risk and all."
<0> DaveHowe: I bite back
<0> DaveHowe: Hard. And they know it.
<1> PolarWolf: sure, but best not to give them free ammo
<0> DaveHowe: True, that, so I'll be sure to clean that hole up afterwards
<0> DaveHowe: That's the nice thing about virtual machines and virtual networks...it leaves no traces, and they're entirely under my own control :)
<0> And man, it feels so good to poke around in the service console every once in a while...it's linux based so it helps me to keep my sanity in a Windows world
<1> PolarWolf: or better yet, slap an extra NIC into the vmware box and map it to the virtual (internal) network, then stick a crossover to the target box
<0> DaveHowe: Yeah, but then I need the same network droids again
<1> PolarWolf: boxen not in the same server room then?
<0> DaveHowe: Yeah, but I don't have any control over the network infrastructure in it
<0> DaveHowe: So I can't provision any ports
<1> PolarWolf: and a crossover cable isn't just draped from cab to cab for a few hours ?
<0> DaveHowe: Well, that would work, kinda, but that also means I need to get out of my chair and cross the street
<0> There are limits to what I'll be willing to go through, yaknow :)
<1> PolarWolf: true, but slapping in another nic is hard to do via ssh ;)
<0> DaveHowe: Hah, true
<0> Oh well, I'll probably get what I want after I don't need it anymore
<1> PolarWolf: in that case, I would probably have draped the cable... BUT would also have let them do the vlan on friday, logged the extra three days delay or so, and kept it on hand as "slack" so if your project slips a couple of days, you can justify a few days for free....
<0> I don't wanna boast, but I'm probably the only one in the office who still has a pretty complete overview of the entire environment, including what is able to talk to what
<0> And I don't need to look it up either
<1> PolarWolf: better than me then. I have root to everything, but still have to go look on spreadsheets to find out what IP a given box has today
<0> DaveHowe: I know the important ones from memory :)
<1> PolarWolf: and the only reason I know where **** is in the cabinets is because I spent over a day of my own time mapping them
<1> PolarWolf: oh, so do I - but you can guarantee those won't be the ones giving me ****.
<0> DaveHowe: Yeah, it takes time to get the big picture. It's a blessing and a curse
<0> The curse is that everyone comes and asks stuff
<1> PolarWolf: been there near on a year now. still, I rarely have time to handle internal stuff, we are an external support outfit
<0> DaveHowe: Ah yeah, making money comes first
<0> DaveHowe: The annoying part of my job is that there's never a moment of rest to just sit down and look at what I've built
<0> Just to see whether it actually does as it was intented
<0> err, intended
<0> Always in a hurry, always a next change to implement, always a new project which needs input
<1> yeah.
<0> DaveHowe: Do you go out to clients?
<1> or more accurately, a new piece of insanity you have to try and fit into the existing patchwork without ruffling any feathers
<1> PolarWolf: sometimes. mostly we do telephone or remote-admin support though
<0> DaveHowe: I'm lucky, it seems that every once in a while we get a chance to start over from scratch instead of building on legacy
<1> PolarWolf: we have people who do mostly onsites, but they are project staff rather than support
<0> DaveHowe: It seems like most IT jobs are like that these days. 40 hours work, 20 hours of unpaid driving a week
<1> PolarWolf: and some of those need their hands holding by telephone while onsite
<0> DaveHowe: I find it quite hard to provide vocal support if I can't see WTF they're doing and what they have on screen
<1> well, its rare I do more than two onsites per month. I mostly do cisco or linux though, which cuts down the need for physical presence a lot
<0> I **** at memorizing how things look
<0> I'm an iterative user, so to speak, I make it up as I go along
<1> yeah. I invariably have to pull up an instance of whatever so I can "see" at least an analogue of what they do
<0> DaveHowe: The main reason why I stick to backend work, really
<1> which means the CORRECT version of any software package is "same as I have" :)
<2> i prefer backend as well
<0> I hate calling people, asking them to do something, being *wrong* about it (for whatever reason), and then try again
<1> yeah.
<0> It ****s, it looks like I don't know what I'm doing (which most of the time...I don't), and it requires me to be nice about it too
<1> remote comes in handy, but when it isn't possible, it ****s to play "guess the screen display"
<1> then you come to "end users lie"
<1> if you are lucky, you get ones that don't know they are lying
<2> not knowing that you're lying means you're telling the truth.
<0> or at least your version of it
<2> lying infers knowing.. it can't be both ways
<0> And what I really hate is people who think that because I know how a computer works, I automatically also know how application Flubbergopastro works
<1> if you aren't (and I am frequently unlucky) you get the ones who ignore steps, rewrite steps because they know better, or use an old copy of software from the cupboards rather than the version you told them to download, because that would "take ages" and they want it done *now*
<0> And they get mad if I don
<0> t
<1> *now* is of course, relative. they may have waited two months before reporting it, but it needs to be fixed today because they need it tomorrow...
<0> DaveHowe: Gosh, that sounds familier
<0> We had a manager recently who went to the US for a visit to Oracle
<0> He *had* to have a laptop, with wireless
<1> or my current bugbear - customers who won't pay for out-of-hours support, but want to "upgrade" on saturdays
<0> This same manager denied our request for a wifi access point to actually test that crap
<1> so spend all saturday failing to upgrade, all sunday making things significantly worse.. then drop a broken unreachable system on us at 9am monday
<0> So, I deploy said laptop, and I see the blinky light which tells me the wifi card got recognised
<0> So, no other way to test things, I give him the laptop
<1> often departing at 9:05am for a well earned rest leaving us with a tape monkey and someone for whom english is a third language to do the fix with
<0> The next ****ing week I get to explain why his ****ing wifi didn't work
<0> "Well...I haven't been able to test it"
<0> "Why not"
<0> "You denied our request for an access point"
<0> "..."
<1> PolarWolf: you can't see at least three unprotected wifi networks from any random point in your town/city?
<0> DaveHowe: Nope, we're in a dead area so it seems
<0> I took the damn thing home after $manager came back to verify whether it really didn't work
<0> Well, at least he was right about that part
<0> Probably a broken PCMCIA slot or something
<0> Though we did kinda give him some piece of **** old thing because he wanted it the next day
<0> Even the backspace key fell off :)
<1> possibly, although usually the drivers are quite good at spotting nonfunctional cards for any other reason than broken arials
<0> Anyway, the good thing that came out of it is that we now get to order an access point
<0> The bad thing was that it cost me a ****en day
<1> but saying that - the usual reason for replacement of wifi pcmcia cards at my last place was borken arials
<0> Hmm, this starts to look like #a.s.r.
<1> since they have to, by design, protrude noticably from the slot, and tend to have the structural strength of damp tissue paper
<1> as opposed to the d-link pcmsia ethernet cards - which had a big solid block of plastic on the outside you could probably hammer nails in with
<1> nah, we aren't anywhere near cynical or depressed enough for this to be asr :)
<0> DaveHowe: I could tell you stories about our policy on wifi...
<0> DaveHowe: The main reason why we have PCMCIA cards was that we weren't allowed to order laptops with builtin wifi at the time
<0> DaveHowe: Government crap, don't ask
<1> PolarWolf: worked at a place where turning on wifi (or having an external wifi device plugged in) was a sacking offence, by order of japanese head office.... where wifi was standard issue
<0> So anyway, someone decided that wasn't very handy, so after a ****load of "risk exception forms" and all that we were in the end allowed to use wifi, but had to order seperately
<0> DaveHowe: Cool :)
<1> Gaijin obviously can't be trusted with Superior Japanese Technology :)
<0> DaveHowe: Hehehehe
<0> Needless to say now it's all of a suddent perfectly valid to order laptops with builtin wifi, and we're stuck with 10 pieces with an external card
<0> We always have to invent the wheel for the rest, and we get stuck with the crap from it
<1> PolarWolf: I can better that one. $ORK(-2) had a policy of no frills laptops - which meant no ethernet, maybe a modem, no sound card etc
<0> DaveHowe: You can get those?
<1> PolarWolf: not any more, this is near a decade ago now
<0> Ah
<1> PolarWolf: but of course this eventually meant this lot had to have pcmcia cards for, well, everything
<0> That...****s
<1> once the stock was all (by lack of alternative) supplied with onboard sound and ethernet, said firm was left with a LARGE packing box of pcmcia cards, most of which cost a fortune
<0> I bet you had those ****y 3Com "ethernet-modem combo" cards, eh?
<1> nope, those were far far too advanced. we had some cheap knockoffs of them from some firm I had never heard of
<0> Hehe, painful
<0> I hate PCMCIA cards
<1> same ultratiny, extremely fragile edge connector dongles though
<0> The idea was, okay'ish, but damn, what a pain
<1> but with one catch
<1> it was modem *or* ethernet
<1> two dongles, change the dongle to change function
<1> and not all cards had both dongles
<0> Yeah, back to the stoneages
<1> as they had to be ordered separately
<0> You know, they still sell software with dongles
<1> yeah, I know. increasingly usb now though, as legacy-free (well, printer port free) machines become the norm
<0> We have a PBX which costs as much as a nice house, and some backend software which costs a nice car
<0> AND IT COMES WITH A ****EN DONGLE!
<1> had some fun hunting down a 3+gb machine a while back that still had a parallel port
<1> because a designer "needed" an upgrade, and half her software had PP dongles
<0> I mean...who the **** wants to pirate software for which you need a PBX which costs $200k?
<0> Hell, the software should be *free*
<1> PolarWolf: and you didn't just swap it out for an asterisk box running on $500 hardware from walmart? :)
<0> DaveHowe: No, the wimps at work want "name" and "support"
<0> And the software *****s*
<0> Oh man, its rare to see software that ****s as much as this does...and that's a feat
<1> asterisk is supported. and Digium is a decent company
<0> DaveHowe: If it isn't mentioned in "Management weekly", it doesn't count
<1> nah, asterisk is cool. a bit crude and unfinished in places, but you can usually modify scripts to work around that
<3> which wifi brands are supported by linux?
<0> So basically we're stuck with Oracle, Microsoft and Motorola
<1> nise20m: google says http://users.linpro.no/janl/hardware/wifi.html
<0> DaveHowe: We had an upgrade of that PBX software last week. They manage to lock the license code (yes, it has a license code *too*) to that ****ing dongle
<4> heh, I spent three weeks fighting with our mitel PBX a few months ago.
<0> DaveHowe: And of course at that particular time the code didn't match the dongle
<4> of course.
<0> DaveHowe: And the company we got that junk from doesn't issue new licenses in the weekend.
<0> DaveHowe: And the software doesn't roll back properly
<1> PolarWolf: that's normal enough. on hpux, the bloody key would be locked to the cpu - try and upgrade, or even replace a blown chip, and the software would drop dead
<0> So we had to disaster recover the entire server back to a known state
<0> *ARGH!*
<0> Really...sometimes it's so hard to keep your cool when dealing with external suppliers
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