I have just been tagged by Two Doctors in my previous post, with a "Hi Steve. You're next."
I was almost concerned too given my last sentence was "Tell me again, why we're not hanging these cunts from lampposts with piano wire?" but I think they'd struggle to find a lamppost high enough or strong enough for me.
Anyway, here we go, another meme...
Princess Diana's death - 31 August 1997
Sat in the Committee Room, at Teviot Row House (Edinburgh University Union). For at that stage, I was student filth, committing academic suicide by volunteering on the best union committee. Oh yes. I remember the girls on the committee wanting to watch the news. I think I had another pint or three.
Margaret Thatcher's resignation - 22 November 1990
I was probably at school (Allan's Primary School, in Stirling). I would have been 11, and not cared. I remember it being fun to tease a classmate, Laura Connarty, about her dad being one of those Labour guys... Ah, happy days.
Attack on the twin towers - 11 September 2001
Driving from my apartment to my work, on US183, in Austin, Texas. A colleague phoned me as I was driving. I answered, naturally, given you can do that sort of thing in the USofA. He told me to bring a cable for the TV in the office... Friends of my friends were killed that day. For all America is a huge place, it was a wee village on that day. There were lots of Texans out buying guns that day.
England's World Cup Semi Final v Germany in - 4 July 1990
I have no idea. I despise most forms of sport, but in particular, football. I expect I'd have been on my summer holidays anyway.
President Kennedy's Assassination - 22 November 1963
My mum was only wee then. What hope did I have?
Apparently I have to tag other folk.
Doctorvee
J Arthur MacNumpty
Kezia Dugdale (Entirely to see her reaction to the Thatcher part...)
Auld Reekie Rants
Tartan Hero
Monday, August 25, 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Foxtrot Oscar (EU Petition response)
Just got this from our glorious leader in response to e-signing a petition on the No 10 webshite....
That's all very well and good - but we the people don't necessarily believe this is so.
Where's the referendum we were promised?
Tell me again, why we're not hanging these cunts from lampposts with piano wire?
"The Government believes that EU Membership is firmly in Britain’s national interest, and remains committed to ensuring that the EU is focussed on adding value for its citizens."
That's all very well and good - but we the people don't necessarily believe this is so.
Where's the referendum we were promised?
Tell me again, why we're not hanging these cunts from lampposts with piano wire?
Monday, August 18, 2008
Arse Technica on IP address space
Some guy, with a name I can't pronounce on Arse Technica is rambling on about the end of the world. Well, the end of IPv4 anyway...
This continual whining about how the end of the world is nigh really would make baby Jesus cry.
Well, whoop dee fucking doo.
Ach, away and stop havering a load of pish. If people better used what they had, we wouldn't need to be looking at a very fucking expensive upgrade to a hell of a lot of the internet. (New routers, larger routing tables, reconfigure stuff, pray it works. Swear when it doesn't...)
Now, bawjaws briefly talks about RFC 3330 address, a subset of which are RFC 1918 addresses - more on this later...
What he doesn't tell us is who "owns" a metric fuckload of IP addresses.
Now. Let's ask ourselves if these companies (and government agencies) actually need all those addresses which can be routed on the public internet or, if perhaps they could use a combination of CIDR blocks, class Cs and the RFC 1918 address space, mentioned earlier.
If this is the case, then perhaps the Class A networks, /8s, (that's 16,777,214 addresses) could be thrown back in to the pool, and re-allocated to more deserving causes...
Allow me to pick one company at random... Hewlett-Packard. (OK, I was always going to pick them - but does that make me a bad person?) HP has 15/8, 16/8. HP also has a number of Class B networks, sadly not listed in an obvious manner, but trust me, they have them...
Do they need 33 million IP addresses which are routable? Do they fuck. Machines on desks are given IP addresses which are theoretically able to be routed on the public internets. This never happens, because it would be utterly insane to do so, so this is a bloody nonsense, and should be sorted out.
Most large companies barely need a class C per site (office, factory, whatever) - 254 addresses. Remember, we're talking public facing systems here, not internal intranet stuff. You could chop up 10/8 across the international organisation of how many hundred sites? Say a thousand anyway, and you'd still be on waaaaaay fewer IPs than if you'd hogged a class A - or two.
So anyway, the purpose of this rant is to say that guy is havering a load of pish. The end of the world is not nigh. If people did the decent thing, and sorted out their own houses, internet addresses wouldn't run out for ages and ages, and everything would be fab, and my blood pressure would be lower, and I'd drink less.
OK, the last bit was a lie.
This continual whining about how the end of the world is nigh really would make baby Jesus cry.
"A week ago, we reached the magic number of 2.7 billion IPv4 addresses used. With 3.7 billion possible addresses,¹ this means we now have less than a billion unused IPv4 addresses left."
Well, whoop dee fucking doo.
"However, we're now so close to running out that the exact figures don't really matter anymore."
Ach, away and stop havering a load of pish. If people better used what they had, we wouldn't need to be looking at a very fucking expensive upgrade to a hell of a lot of the internet. (New routers, larger routing tables, reconfigure stuff, pray it works. Swear when it doesn't...)
Now, bawjaws briefly talks about RFC 3330 address, a subset of which are RFC 1918 addresses - more on this later...
What he doesn't tell us is who "owns" a metric fuckload of IP addresses.
Now. Let's ask ourselves if these companies (and government agencies) actually need all those addresses which can be routed on the public internet or, if perhaps they could use a combination of CIDR blocks, class Cs and the RFC 1918 address space, mentioned earlier.
If this is the case, then perhaps the Class A networks, /8s, (that's 16,777,214 addresses) could be thrown back in to the pool, and re-allocated to more deserving causes...
Allow me to pick one company at random... Hewlett-Packard. (OK, I was always going to pick them - but does that make me a bad person?) HP has 15/8, 16/8. HP also has a number of Class B networks, sadly not listed in an obvious manner, but trust me, they have them...
Do they need 33 million IP addresses which are routable? Do they fuck. Machines on desks are given IP addresses which are theoretically able to be routed on the public internets. This never happens, because it would be utterly insane to do so, so this is a bloody nonsense, and should be sorted out.
Most large companies barely need a class C per site (office, factory, whatever) - 254 addresses. Remember, we're talking public facing systems here, not internal intranet stuff. You could chop up 10/8 across the international organisation of how many hundred sites? Say a thousand anyway, and you'd still be on waaaaaay fewer IPs than if you'd hogged a class A - or two.
So anyway, the purpose of this rant is to say that guy is havering a load of pish. The end of the world is not nigh. If people did the decent thing, and sorted out their own houses, internet addresses wouldn't run out for ages and ages, and everything would be fab, and my blood pressure would be lower, and I'd drink less.
OK, the last bit was a lie.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
With every surgical strike...
... there is collateral damage.
So, I was out for a few small beers with Duncan and some other blogger types as arranged by Jeff. It was a pretty good evening, meeting folk, and chatting about stuff.
So anyway, we're chatting away. Someone was saying something interesting, and some jakey bastard flyering person wandered over. They tried to break into the conversation, and failed several times. The chap speaking was talking sense, and we other bloggers were all interested to hear the full story...
Eventually, the guy managed to find a pause long enough to break in to our drinking and chatting, to pimp some crap fringe show or other. I suggested we would be drinking, and chatting, and not interested.
He persisted.
I insisted.
He left the flyer on the table.
I told him to take it with him and fuck off.
He fucked off. But left the flyer.
I screwed up the flyer and threw it at him, and hit him...
... and it ricocheted off him and hit a lady at another table who was enjoying a drink, and otherwise minding her own business.
Of course, I apologised to the lady, and said in my defence that I had hit the flyering bastard with it first. She and her friends resumed their drinks.
Ah well. You win some and you lose some.
So, I was out for a few small beers with Duncan and some other blogger types as arranged by Jeff. It was a pretty good evening, meeting folk, and chatting about stuff.
So anyway, we're chatting away. Someone was saying something interesting, and some jakey bastard flyering person wandered over. They tried to break into the conversation, and failed several times. The chap speaking was talking sense, and we other bloggers were all interested to hear the full story...
Eventually, the guy managed to find a pause long enough to break in to our drinking and chatting, to pimp some crap fringe show or other. I suggested we would be drinking, and chatting, and not interested.
He persisted.
I insisted.
He left the flyer on the table.
I told him to take it with him and fuck off.
He fucked off. But left the flyer.
I screwed up the flyer and threw it at him, and hit him...
... and it ricocheted off him and hit a lady at another table who was enjoying a drink, and otherwise minding her own business.
Of course, I apologised to the lady, and said in my defence that I had hit the flyering bastard with it first. She and her friends resumed their drinks.
Ah well. You win some and you lose some.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
It taks a lang spoon tae sup wi a Fifer!
As the old adage says, it taks a lang spoon tae sup wi a Fifer...
The BBC reports that last year 7 out of 72 samples taken by weights and measures in Fife pubs were accurate... And that they are giving notice that another survey will be happening pretty soon... Nothing like giving the mean bastards a heads up so they know you're coming and can clean up your acts for a month or two before going back to their old ways then, eh?
Shame!
The BBC reports that last year 7 out of 72 samples taken by weights and measures in Fife pubs were accurate... And that they are giving notice that another survey will be happening pretty soon... Nothing like giving the mean bastards a heads up so they know you're coming and can clean up your acts for a month or two before going back to their old ways then, eh?
Shame!
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Don't get your sporran in a niggle
The Hootsman reports that the fluffy animal loving people in the EU want to ban the import of sealskin...
At the risk of being a bastard, surely all killing is cruel... And why should it be limited to seals? In which case, why are we not all tofu-munching insufferable bores? Perhaps the glorious EU will rule that we should all stop eating meat, whilst paying farmers to not grow beef or lamb or pig...
I think you all know where I stand on the issue:
Probably since most folk don't really know what a sporran is made from. And I would expect a number of people simply do not care.
Seals are culled for various reasons, and I think it is only right that rather than a slaughter (remember you can't spell slaughter without laughter) where carcasses are burned or buried, we should make use of as many of the carcasses as possible in as many ways as possible.
People seem to get a bee in their bonnets about seals, because they look fluffy and cuddly-wuddly, but forget the seal population has nearly tripled since the 70's!
As for the EU, this is just a typical show of control-freakery on their part. It all starts with one hippy bastard sponging politician going on a boat trip... Can't they just fuck off?
For the record, as if you care, I have just recently bought a sealskin sporran. It looks fabulous. And as is only correct, since the sealskin sporran is for dress wear, I also have a leather sporran for day wear... Quite the man about town, me.
P.S.
What's a seal's favourite drink?
... Canadian Club. On the rocks.
Stavros Dimas, the European environment commissioner, yesterday announced plans to bring in a total import ban on products derived from seals that have been killed in a cruel way.
At the risk of being a bastard, surely all killing is cruel... And why should it be limited to seals? In which case, why are we not all tofu-munching insufferable bores? Perhaps the glorious EU will rule that we should all stop eating meat, whilst paying farmers to not grow beef or lamb or pig...
I think you all know where I stand on the issue:
"The wearing of fur generally in Scotland is seen as unacceptable by the majority of the public," he said. "Sporrans are one of the few things where it's still seen as publicly acceptable to wear fur.
Probably since most folk don't really know what a sporran is made from. And I would expect a number of people simply do not care.
Seals are culled for various reasons, and I think it is only right that rather than a slaughter (remember you can't spell slaughter without laughter) where carcasses are burned or buried, we should make use of as many of the carcasses as possible in as many ways as possible.
People seem to get a bee in their bonnets about seals, because they look fluffy and cuddly-wuddly, but forget the seal population has nearly tripled since the 70's!
As for the EU, this is just a typical show of control-freakery on their part. It all starts with one hippy bastard sponging politician going on a boat trip... Can't they just fuck off?
For the record, as if you care, I have just recently bought a sealskin sporran. It looks fabulous. And as is only correct, since the sealskin sporran is for dress wear, I also have a leather sporran for day wear... Quite the man about town, me.
P.S.
What's a seal's favourite drink?
... Canadian Club. On the rocks.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Monkeys on mailing lists
I am on several mailing lists. One in particular, sunmanagers, is for people who work with Sun hardware and software. People who are on these lists are systems administrators, IT managers and so on...
The IT world is fairly small - I know this from working in Edinburgh, and when I worked in the USofA it was just as small a world over there too.
You would think then, that people would exercise common courtesy when posting to a list that contains people who you might be asking for a job in the future? Apparently not. People regularly ignore the FAQ, jump in with a question which has been asked and answered countless times (RED State Exception) or do not extend the courtesy of not bombarding the entire list with "I am out of the office" messages. I don't care that you're in the south of France banging your secretary. Really.
Another thing is people asking questions that Google will tell you the answer to, or things that if you just tried the command, or the man (that's the manual) page would tell you what you needed to know.
Here are a few examples I have saved for a rainy day...
Please go and fuck yourself. Would you like me to do your homework for you too? How about telling me (roughly) what vintage of hardware you have, at least, before asking us to re-write various online resources regarding Fibre Channel storage...
Errr, maybe psrinfo would work. I don't know, I just typed the fucking command, and, like, there it was. (And yes, for utilisation, you'd want something like top, or prstat).
Another personal favourite of mine - every email from the list comes from mailman, which has mailing list info IN THE EMAIL which tells you how to unsubscribe. How fucking stupid do you have to be? (Freecycle is bad for this too, but it's populated by techno-weenies, not people who are supposedly paid to be technologically literate, and run systems costing tens to hundreds of thousands!)
How about... uhhhh, man tar? Here's an excerpt from the man page:
And the classic:
Nope, your dumb questions should stay there for all to see... There are several archives of the mailing list, so your stupidity will haunt you for a long time.
Bill tells me this is a fairly frequent occurrence too - with not just individuals, but companies and government departments requesting dumb questions being taken off the list archives - do these people not know how the internet works?
That all said, I am still subscribed to the list, and it is still a fantastic resource for people in my line of work. I've had a few fairly obscure questions answered on there, and apparently have helped some other poor sysadmins too. As much as I may have ranted a bit, sunmanagers actually has one of the best signal to noise ratios of any list I have ever seen! My thanks go to John DiMarco and Bill Bradford for running it.
The IT world is fairly small - I know this from working in Edinburgh, and when I worked in the USofA it was just as small a world over there too.
You would think then, that people would exercise common courtesy when posting to a list that contains people who you might be asking for a job in the future? Apparently not. People regularly ignore the FAQ, jump in with a question which has been asked and answered countless times (RED State Exception) or do not extend the courtesy of not bombarding the entire list with "I am out of the office" messages. I don't care that you're in the south of France banging your secretary. Really.
Another thing is people asking questions that Google will tell you the answer to, or things that if you just tried the command, or the man (that's the manual) page would tell you what you needed to know.
Here are a few examples I have saved for a rainy day...
Subject: FC help
Dear managers,
Please put down some resources which can be used/referred for FC storage administration/Troubleshooting on Solaris.
TIA
Please go and fuck yourself. Would you like me to do your homework for you too? How about telling me (roughly) what vintage of hardware you have, at least, before asking us to re-write various online resources regarding Fibre Channel storage...
Subject: Linux has psrinfo command- Any equivalent for Solaris.
1. Folks, Linux has psrinfo command- any equivalent for Solaris.
I am trying to know the # of CPUs, and their utilization at any given point in time.
Errr, maybe psrinfo would work. I don't know, I just typed the fucking command, and, like, there it was. (And yes, for utilisation, you'd want something like top, or prstat).
Subject: please remove me from this list. Thanks!
unsubscribe
Another personal favourite of mine - every email from the list comes from mailman, which has mailing list info IN THE EMAIL which tells you how to unsubscribe. How fucking stupid do you have to be? (Freecycle is bad for this too, but it's populated by techno-weenies, not people who are supposedly paid to be technologically literate, and run systems costing tens to hundreds of thousands!)
Subject: Questions
Question 1: I backup several files using tar. How can I restore an specific file from that tar backup?
How about... uhhhh, man tar? Here's an excerpt from the man page:
x Extract or restore. The named files are extracted
from the tarfile and written to the directory
specified in the tarfile, relative to the current
directory. Use the relative path names of files and
directories to be extracted.
And the classic:
I have posted some Sun questions since a couple of years in sun managers and I want to delete those messages , please can you point me to the right steps to do it ?
This is all the links that I have found on sunmaagers portal :
Nope, your dumb questions should stay there for all to see... There are several archives of the mailing list, so your stupidity will haunt you for a long time.
Bill tells me this is a fairly frequent occurrence too - with not just individuals, but companies and government departments requesting dumb questions being taken off the list archives - do these people not know how the internet works?
That all said, I am still subscribed to the list, and it is still a fantastic resource for people in my line of work. I've had a few fairly obscure questions answered on there, and apparently have helped some other poor sysadmins too. As much as I may have ranted a bit, sunmanagers actually has one of the best signal to noise ratios of any list I have ever seen! My thanks go to John DiMarco and Bill Bradford for running it.
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