petergwilson · Monitoring Specialist · ✭✭✭✭✭

Makes me really happy that I have never used twitter. To be fair I barely use SMS.

I'm quite happy for a robot to be picking and packing my order. There's significantly less risk of it being wrong or damaging my order. A person towards the end of a long shift will be prone to making mistakes. It's also not a great job. Surely it would be better if they were upskilled and given more meaningful, better…

Yes. I think they don't really understand the risks and associated costs (cost of compliance and fines). They also don't want to listen to the IT guys because we always just seem to be a drain on the company's money. They seem to ignore how much more it would cost to do business without IT. We really need IT representation…

SysAdmins will still be SysAdmins. We have always been evolving to meet the changing IT environment and needs of the user. System monitoring will become ever more important as systems move to the cloud (well you do have to blame someone when things go wrong and blaming Microsoft / Google / Amazon, and being able to prove…

You beat me to it. A drawbridge and portcullis are useful. i.e physical security. Keep the doors locked. Restrict access. Test your fire supression system. Don't keep your backup tapes next to the servers. Really really important. Don't keep the door keycard control system behind a door managed by the door keycard system.…

Pork belly looks good but you really need an Ulster Fry for breakfast.

I'm not letting microsoft anywhere near my machines (personal or work). I wouldn't trust them not to muck up my GPO settings, drive mappings, customised software configs etc. We have a very complex set up due to the nature of our business. There's no way they would take the time and effort to get it right.

Microsoft have been gathering data about us for many years. They don't care about fines as they make more money in a few seconds than any fine would be. I had to go for an eye test recently. I had a voucher from my employer so didn't have to pay. I had my staff photo ID card so could prove that I was the person on the…

I do own my own books and music because I download them and keep offline copies. Maybe working in IT has some benefits.

That's really serious withdrawal symptoms. I suggest beer (and bacon of course). 

I think you have missed the point too. The question setter is making assumptions about people's mindset. For some that is ingrained by workplace policies. For others that is just how they think. For example, the person I sit next to would automatically ignore what anyone said to him in the kitchen as he only works on…

Good article. Reminds me of when I joined where I now work (Dec 2018). AD wasn't replicating correctly for several sites worldwide. I had no monitoring solution. Everyone said it was an AD issue. I used many different tools to narrow it down to misconfigured deep packet inspection on firewalls which was blocking RPC on…

Snoopware. It is everywhere and almost impossible to completely avoid. It is as a direct result of companies failing to properly write and test software. Most software is rushed out before it is ready in order to make money. Everything is about making money NOW.

Now we just need the backpack back in stock (fingers crossed).

Well, I thought I knew the answer but decided to wait to see if I was on the correct track. Now I'm confused. I agree that Red = BAD / DOWN. Yellow should be degraded. It is entirely possible this was supposed to be a really easy question but past tricks have really caused confusion. If this is supposed to be a "Get to…

Her. Keep up

The biggest problem is the users. They just want to get on with whatever they do and see IT as stopping them doing that. They can't grasp that we are only protecting them and the company. Of course, when a user lets data into the wild it is the IT department that gets blamed for not stopping them. 

@"captain_hook" Wrong. Take another look. Hope you are better at system monitoring.

This is what I've been saying since I got here 6 months ago but they have moved 50,000 student accounts to Office365 and are about to move 5,000 staff. The student accounts don't really matter as no one listens to them anyway but the staff raise merry hell if anything happens to e-mail. There is a culture of people going…

Don't be too harsh on legacy IT pros. I spent 20 years as a contractor looking after legacy systems. There was a great demand because most of the client's staff wanted to work on the newer stuff and that left no one to manage the stuff the business actually depended on. Each time I moved clients I gained a bit of knowledge…

Good response. Of course France should be happy. They are now officially the best National football side in the world (not just the USA and maybe Canada). The USA didn't qualify because they weren't good enough. At least 31 other countries were better than the USA (Russia don't count as they automatically qualified as…

I know my systems. I have to as no one else cares. I was contracting for 20 years and would move jobs about once a year. Every time I moved I would have to get to know the new setup and the best way to do that was to map it out. It's now second nature and has frequently really helped. I've lost count of the number of times…

I guess we could cut them some slack. They have been quite busy with something slightly more important. Congrats for getting a fix out so quickly.

LHC. Got to admire their vision. We don't know what we are looking for, don't know how to do it and probably won't recognise what we find but we will keep doing it and get paid quite well as we are 'experts'. Pity IT doesn't work that way. If it all goes wrong we could all disappear in a flash. Of course there would be no…

You may be right but I'm not willing to bet my job on that. If something were to go wrong the management are all standing around you asking "is it fixed yet" every few seconds. After that the blame culture kicks in. We also have a really slow Change process. Even emergency changes have to be fully approved. I don't do them…

How much ? I thought £40 for Nightwish supported by Beast In Black at Wembley Arena was a bit steep.

HR departments are ONLY there for the company's benefit. They are not there to help you. This case shows a company that doesn't care about its employees / contractors and should be avoided at all costs. Fortunately where I now work the HR department gave me the wrong contract. It all seemed OK to me so I signed 'in good…

This is just taking the mickey. How much revenue does the city of Barcelona take in from tourists visiting the site. Think of all the food, drink etc. tourists are buying. Think of all the hotel rooms being booked. Some people need to get a sense of perspective. Treat it as an asset and stop trying to bleed it dry for a…

Yep. The cloud looks great until you start to look under the hood. It's just servers but they are in someone else's data centre and you have no control of them.

Unfortunately it is too late. Think millenials. We have an entire generation who think they are entitled to everything and will do whatever they like to get it.