petergwilson · Monitoring Specialist · ✭✭✭✭✭

Allegedly between 256 and 321 Dodge Chargers were created and mostly destroyed in the making of The Dukes of Hazard. OK at flying, not so great at landing. The Dukes of Hazzard (TV Series 1979–1985) - Trivia - IMDb

Multi-tasking. Doing many things badly all at the same time.

Police do that anyway. As soon as they suspect someone they spend ages trying to find anything that will make their case whilst ignoring anything that proves the persons innocence. There have been a great many instances of that here in the UK. Remember, you don't have to be smart to be in the police, you just have to have…

Not long ago I marvelled at a colleague taking nearly a week to automate a simple task that we probably only did once a month and it only took a few seconds. The system would have been dead and buried long before we got any return on that investment. Automation has its place but some thought needs to be taken first to see…

New technologies only take off if someone finds a way to make money out of them. Blockchain is still waiting and it may never take off. Something better may come along or a big player may back something else. Remember Betamax was superior to VHS and Blue Ray was superior to DVD. Both lost.

The Forbin Project. 1970 but it covers a subject we are now facing. The rise and uncontrolability of AI.

@"jnewell" Really. Where are you now ?

Office Depot should be fully investigated and those responsible jailed. This is FRAUD. Pity some scapegoat will be blamed whilst the management who dreamt this one up will get off scot free.

A few years ago I briefly joined a major financial org as an IT contractor. Their DR plan was excellent (as you would expect). They even had arrangements to hire PCs at a moments notice so staff could still work. Unfortunately they had forgotten that these PCs and staff had to sit somewhere. The didn't have any alternative…

Agree with that. I've had to tell several public sector organisations that I had already been interviewed, accepted and started another job while they were dithering. It's no wonder most public sector organisations are so bad at what they do. They must miss out on most of the talent. Yes, I know there are exceptions…

Yep. I'm constantly shooting people down who throw problems at me and back it up with some benchmarking results. In most cases their basic premise is wrong, in some they haven't understood the problem and therefore their benchmarks are useless and in some the benchmarks have been deliberately fudged to 'prove' their point.

Citrix hacked. It could have been anyone but, because it is an IT company, it seems worse. It's not as if it is an inherent flaw in their product. Just the same hack that happens everywhere else. Now, if it WAS an issue with their software, that would be a worthwhile story.

Yes, SAM really helped me very recently when we had a major incident. I was able to find a process on one of the 1000+ servers that had gone mad and sent memory utilisation to 100%. That caused logon delays of up to 10 minutes for about 5000 staff. Add the historic data we collect and we were able to determine how much…

Raw water. Fortunately I live in the UK where our tap water is totally safe to drink (unless the water companies have screwed up yet again). I don't buy bottled water as it is very expensive and leaves a lot of waste. One of my work coleagues goes through 6 small bottles of water every day. I fill a sports bottle from the…

Good article. Here we have people who think they are leaders but are just leading us down blind alleys and up the garden path. They won't listen when we tell them that they are wrong and then blame everyone else when it all goes pear shaped. I have worked for some really good thought leaders but they are sadly few and far…

I'm surprised there wasn't the fabled werewabbott. I suppose it wouldn't have been a fair contest. Everyone would have voted for the warewabbott. It's also a SHE.

In my experience "One size fits all" just doesn't fit me (or any of the 22 different organisations I have worked for).

If stuff doesn't come back up properly here we soon know about it. The 'helldesk' phones start ringing off the hook. If my SAM RAG screen is all green then I can feel fairly confident that my servers are up (and services and other monitored stuff). Then it is over to the application support peeps to check their bits. We…

Maybe there was only one correct answer.

Internet Explorer security flaw allows hackers to steal files You could leave out the words "security flaw" and the sentence would still have the same meaning.

I think you need to have another look at this. The link does point to marketing information, not a specifically created document generated for a quiz. I know that, when I am looking for a product to provide a solution to a problem we have, I look at the marketing information and product specs. I look for products that…

I must be special. I've never watched "Orange is the new Black". Then again, I've never watched Netflix.

I once had a data centre UPS which kept failing. Turned out that the monitoring solution was set to poll the UPS management card every minute. That was causing the card to eventually panic and crash. That then gave the "failed" alert. Set the monitoring to every 15 minutes and all was well.

Comcast. So it really is all about the money and not the users. Who would have thought that.

The UK military satellite system is called SkyNet. Maybe we started it.

Currently have Ethernet from client to server. Servers are blades, run VMWare and connect to SANs via FC. SANs have internal FC. Moving to HCI on VxRail so should be interesting. SAN monitoring software alerts on bottlenecks as does VMWare. We are only moving because of the age of the current hardware and the ever…

Data Scientist not a real job. When I was at University we used to laugh at those people doing the 'mickey mouse' degrees like Environmental Science. D'Oh.

We use multiple layers of security AND have regular pen tests. It helps us to sleep at night if some external company confirms that what we have done actually works. 

Not surprised Dropbox saved money. Why pay extra to have your data on someone else's servers when you can have full control on your own. The only real benefit of having it elsewhere is that you can scale without having to buy, install and configure yourself. Once you know what you really need it makes more sense to have…

Unfortunately we also have to live with management wanting to do more with fewer people and less money. They can't seem to understand that turning down well justified pay rises and then asking people to do the company a favour are incompatible things. It also doesn't help that we have to deal with a snowflake colleague who…