Jun 16 2008

Access Denied

Talk about a leave of absence! Have not been near this site since early February bar the occasional upgrade to WordPress itself.

So its re-cap time, Apologies to anyone who landed on the site when they googled the 554 error.  I encountered it during December a few days before I created the rant post so that is why its there, I can presume it only occurs when your bandwidth is being sucked away by some random web-surfer!

We replaced all the computers in our Headquarters no problem, then have spent the last few months troubleshooting problems with them! Bit of simple advice if you have Dell Optiplex 755’s where the Network card drops constantly (a Yo-Yo effect)…
It does not matter if you have A09 Bios installed, or disabled the Management Engine, or upgraded the drivers, the cards effectively b0rked and you have to call Dell Business Support to get the board replaced!
I don’t know if the new 755’s have the same problem but I feel we may discover this once we buy more of them for some of our other offices!

We also have more upcoming projects, including an upgrade of our Oracle system which is occurring shortly… something I am not looking forward to as we are upgrading from a really old Oracle 8i Database to last years Oracle 10g version (and to add insult to injury, since the project started in December last year, Oracle 11g has now been released for Microsoft Windows!)
A lot of the work will be done by Consultants who have more of a clue when it comes to Oracle, but since it involves "breaking" a cluster there is a bit of a risk involved.. that and our recovery server is tied up with initial testing means our safety net is really really small!

On an aside regarding my rant in December, It seems that some people do not have any common sense when it comes to using the Internet at work. When you get a webpage saying Access Denied: This page has been blocked by Surfcontrol they might stop and think for a second that they really shouldn’t be looking at those types of sites.

I need to sit down and do the "About Me" page on this site šŸ™
Oh, and if this looks a bit screwy, I decided to give Windows Live Writer another try with this blog, who knows how bad this will look!

Feb 07 2008

Disinfectant plzthx

Two months without updates? thats about the norm now šŸ˜

So, Christmas 2007 is over (and I still have not gotten round to buying my new walking boots from the xmas money) and its now ’08.
And for the 3rd year in a trot, my NYE has been cut short because I fell ill with something. This time I have had the displeasure of suffering from a chest infection / sinus problem since just after xmas through the whole of January. The worst is that I still have not shifted it after 2x courses of antibiotics and a course of steroids!

Of course Work rears its ugly head once more, effectively 2 months worth of Overtime to replace every computer in our Headquarters, that totals around 80 computers. Of course we have to sacrifice our weekends to do them all and they have the cheek to complain that we are doing 3x weekends in a row… how the heck do you think we feel about it!
After this is done, I think we would be able to audition for the next zombie movie no problem!

Senior management are idiots as well, how many companies do you know would willingly investigate moving their IT Department outside of the main office to an off-site location around 23 miles away, while leaving the server room and network infrastructure intact in the main office…
Well that’s what our senior management are thinking of doing… and its looking like they have already decided to do it as well.

Ack well, back to work and lets rebuild this oracle server for the ninnies who broke it!

Dec 03 2007

SMTP Error 554: Transaction failed

How stupid can some people be?

Particularly when it comes to work email accounts? šŸ™„

Here at work, we utilise Surfcontrol for filtering web and email for certain items. Its biggest benefit is that it blocks loads of spam, as well as the occasional false-positive (because of certain keywords being caught) as well as Adult Material.

Of course, recently the spammers got intelligent and started sending .MP3 files in with advertisements. Queue the File Formats folder getting inundated with messages and promptly deleted.
(Where am I going with this? just hold on one more second šŸ™‚ )

So, sitting here clearing down the spam list today so any false-positives caught gets passed on and the spam nuked from orbit. I get down to the File Formats folder and find 1 message in the queue.

Someone had decided to forward on a message with a video attached, a nice little video with a comment in the email. So in the course of doing our work we “verify” the video is work related and/or suitable for viewing within work.

Okay, so the first minute was effectively Page 3* material.. , but it went rapidly downhill from there to effective pornographic material. Needless to say the email was deleted immediately from the system, I should of sent a “this message has been blocked due to inappropriate content” to both sender and receiver but I was amazed at the stupidity of the sender in the first place!

The point of this? someone at another company had received this into their work email account, then decided to forward porn onto someone else’s works account! šŸ˜Æ

It seems to be a point where people forget that sending material like that in most places of work is deemed a serious breach of employee guidelines and worst case scenario you get immediately dismissed from your job with no warning.

*for anybody not from England reading this, Page 3 is from the common “red-top” newspapers like News of the World or The Sun published in England. Where a nicely endowed 18+ female shows off her body wearing very little except for a pair of shorts or bikini bottoms.

Nov 16 2007

Fresh lick of paint…

Another painless upgrade to WordPress, and a new theme to give a bit more “space” to the page.

There seems to be a growing style of “squashed”Ā  themes where its all clumped down the middle of the page with huge white bars either side of it, so I went for one which fills most of the page.Ā  All I need to do now is to do some quick modification and it’ll be sorted.

Also went to stick WordPress Gallery Embedded (WPG2) onto this blog again, only to discover its a bit of a disgruntled employee… doesn’t want to work and if it can get away with it, wont šŸ™Ā  So it’s been stripped off for the time being until I can figure out how to get it working.

Im also back to my old K750i which I had to fix, the SPV M3100 just has been bugging me with in-car bluetooth issues lately in the Qashqai.Ā  Good news is the K750i does work, but I dont know for how long!

Oct 25 2007

Connection Interrupted

Ever had one of those days where everything seems to be off by 1 ā“

Everything seems to be out of whack?Ā  your typing a key off so what comes out as ejsy instead, and anything you do seems to not workĀ out right?

I hate days like that šŸ™ Its not worth the effort doing anything as you know the next day your having to do remedial work to fix everything which is wonky.

still to get used to this new laptop keyboard as well, fingers are all over the place as well so have to keep re-typing stuff

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.

Close