petergwilson · Monitoring Specialist · ✭✭✭✭✭

I think I could manage that chunk of beef by myself. It looks really good and now I'm hungry.

My final year dissertation for my degree was in Critical Path Analysis. That brings back memories. It does fit here. You need to identify all the items / services on the critical path and make sure these happen on time and in sequence. Quick hint, Work backwards from the end to the start when identifying the critical path. 

I really don't understand trolls. Maybe we can find the troll gene and sort the problem out at birth (OK, I got THAT from a movie).

This isn't about points. It's about telling people about your product. I think you are missing the point. The documentation is wrong. Busy people will look at the summary, see your product doesn't provide something they need (because it isn't mentioned in the summary) and decide NOT to look at your product. No one will…

You had to go there didn't you Buggers keep doing it at work

We use LastPass in the IT department as somewhere that isn't an Excel spreadsheet to store the multitude of passwords for the thousands of systems and devices we look after. It's OK for that and is accessible externally with 2FA authentication which is useful if we are off site and need to retrieve a password. It also…

I did one UX session not long after last year's London SWUG. Pity it was for the new customer portal that I can't access as we use Orion through a third party as SaaS which means that I'm not actually a Solarwinds customer and don't have access to the customer portal.

Couldn't select all that apply. Most of the options for us.

The best way to stop Alexa or Siri from doing something stupid is to not have them in the first place. 

Some confusion I think. I was agreeing that none of the answers are correct (even when you expand the list). 3 could be correct if you assume a one character typo but that is a standard Solarwinds gotcha for these questions so I stopped and waited for confirmation from da management.

Arrrrrghhh. Smart plugs. Yet another invention looking for a problem. And because they are a relatively cheap product there isn't enough spent in R & D to secure them.

I look forward to the demonstrations of how to do stuff. It always gives me great ideas of how to improve what I do. Free knowledge is always gratefully received and this stuff comes from the world experts themselves. Of course there are the Thwack points too.

Food does look good. Pity we don't have taste 'o' vision.

I've been pining for the Fjords

Unfortunately management here just want to point the finger and blame someone as long as it isn't them. They fail to see that they are actually the problem. Not enough staff, too much work and unreasonable deadlines all lead to fatigue and mistakes caused by too many interruptions to critical tasks. Root Cause documents…

Thanks for the link. I was having a Monday morning and read the check boxes as radio buttons. This threw me for a bit. The link gave me what I needed and is a nice feature of the software.

I joined a large organisation in London about 2 years ago. They had already activated their DR plan and everything was running on the backup site. This wasn't because of a disaster. They wanted to refurb the primary data centre. That took a while and during this they were creating new systems. When they finished the refurb…

Yep, I've signed up for this presentation.

Using anything on the internet is a risk. It is how we evaluate that risk, and decide how much to risk, that is important. With Facebook I couldn't see how it could make money just through advertising so I assumed they would be doing something with our data. That outweighed any possible benefit I could see for me so I gave…

White elephant. What were you expecting to find. I'm happy to see any elephant.

I'd be happy surviving long enough to retire. It would be nice if people remembered me fondly but it doesn't really matter. I probably won't see any of them again (except the ones that have become friends). Systems that I have put in or managed will all be replaced after a few years or become so unrecognisable that it…

Oh god. I remember this. Have done a few mainframe moves in my time. Once we had sold a new mainframe to a client and had taken the old one in part exchange. We had then sold the old one on to another client. I was away so someone else supervised the move. Unfortunately they had only been told to remove the mainframe so…

Spot on. We have about 400 business critical applications and it is fun to watch external consultants heads explode when we tell them. We are a large modern University and every application either is used to run the business or to run the courses. Finance, payroll etc. are critical for obvious reasons but so are the…

In my last place I inherited a Solarwinds solution that no one had looked at for at least 6 months and no one had documented. It took me a while but I got there thanks to loads of people on here.

Novell did this years and years ago. Microsoft started from a basis of trust everyone. Now we are paying the price. The network guys here tried to implement some east - west restrictions. Unfortunately they blocked port 135 between all the firewalls because they didn't know what it was. It was AD replication (RPC). Took me…

Having done both I'd say they are the same except for the slower pace and extra paperwork in the government side.

Pizza. I guess you could pre-load the car with partially cooked pizzas and they finish them off whilst on the way to the delivery. It would take a load of those idiot pizza bikes off the road. You know the ones where the rider only has L plates and ignores all the traffic laws.

It's just an unknown file format. Open in Word.

I agree. Monday's question got me because I was busy and didn't read the question properly. However, even though it was my error, I now have a bad feeling about the product and don't feel inclined to even try it. I know that isn't a reasonable or sensible position but it is something that is influencing me. I'll probably…

Agree. Would be very useful to have on the big screen on the wall showing major services status.