[Rant] Minor Rant III: For a Few Hollers More

Oh god. Never get a Texan talking about Whataburger. You'd think it was like In N Out they way go on about it.
Before In N Out spread across the country, I went to California on business. My boss insisted I go to In N Out because it was so awsome.

After eating, my exact words to him were "It's all right. But it's no Whataburger"
 
I've run out of my pain patches :( I was just up on a chair in the kitchen looking ofr them and I am out for sure.

I can try to be seen tomorrow and get some more but if its much longer than that, I'm worried that I will told to start over at the lowest dose and build up again...over three weeks...FML
 

fade

Staff member
I'll still take Freebirds over Chipotle anyday. I like my burrito to contain something other than 90% rice, thanks.
 
I'll still take Freebirds over Chipotle anyday. I like my burrito to contain something other than 90% rice, thanks.
I can still think both are mediocre, though, right?

I'm spoiled with good, authentic little burrito shops around here. I'd rather patronize one of those.
 
I've been wanting to get a UPS big enough to hold up the entire living room full of computers in case of power outages, but that would require one capable of about 800W and pure sine wave UPSs of that capability are usually just under $300. Then for Black Friday weekend, this one went on sale for about half off, so I jumped at the deal and bought one. It didn't have enough outlets (obviously) so when it got here I also ordered a couple of the generic version of these* to source each table since it's apparently extremely difficult to find power strips that don't have integrated surge protection that aren't also $60 or more.

Sooo...first week of Dec., UPS arrives Tue. Power strips were scheduled to arrive Fri. Power went out Thu. :mad:

--Patrick
*They're available from multiple vendors with different brand names stamped on them, but they all look suspiciously similar.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Today our newest salesweasel, the biggest troublemaker (seems like the newest always is) turned in a script to be produced by tomorrow that is basically unproduceable and unlistenable. It's supposed to be 30 seconds, but is actually over 60 seconds of nonstop interest rates, annual percentage yields, and minimum balances. It is, hands down, the worst, least thought-out script I have ever been handed that obviously took a lot of time and trouble to write. I think this woman is on coke.
 
If she were on coke, it'd probably be more entertaining. Or incoherent, which would be entertaining if you recorded said incoherency verbatim.

"Yeah, I have no idea what 'minimum-duck, sandwich, sandwich, sandwhich...' means either, but that's what she wrote and the customer is always right!"
 

GasBandit

Staff member
If she were on coke, it'd probably be more entertaining. Or incoherent, which would be entertaining if you recorded said incoherency verbatim.

"Yeah, I have no idea what 'minimum-duck, sandwich, sandwich, sandwhich...' means either, but that's what she wrote and the customer is always right!"
Eh, you're probably right... it's probably just crystal meth.
 
Today our newest salesweasel, the biggest troublemaker (seems like the newest always is) turned in a script to be produced by tomorrow that is basically unproduceable and unlistenable. It's supposed to be 30 seconds, but is actually over 60 seconds of nonstop interest rates, annual percentage yields, and minimum balances. It is, hands down, the worst, least thought-out script I have ever been handed that obviously took a lot of time and trouble to write. I think this woman is on coke.
Ahhhhh, you and I would get along spectacularly in a professional context.
 
Today our newest salesweasel, the biggest troublemaker (seems like the newest always is) turned in a script to be produced by tomorrow that is basically unproduceable and unlistenable. It's supposed to be 30 seconds, but is actually over 60 seconds of nonstop interest rates, annual percentage yields, and minimum balances. It is, hands down, the worst, least thought-out script I have ever been handed that obviously took a lot of time and trouble to write. I think this woman is on coke.
It's not like y'all even bother airing the commercials anyway.

Or:

At double-length, it'll fit right in when you're airing nothing but commercials to make up for Dr Fever playing Thick as a Brick.
 
I'm a week post immune system killing infusion and I just cleaned up a shit-plosion. Off my bathroom and my kid. Who was resisting, fighting me, shrieking and screaming that he wanted to die.
 
Just to be clear, was it your shit-splosion or his? 'Cause if it was yours, I can kind of understand his reluctance for your...."help" afterwards.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
7:30 PM. Just about to leave. Checked one last thing. Oh the internal webserver is offline again?

40 minutes later: Fuck. It's totally dead. Well, shit. There goes my month. You know, we've got two other servers just as old as this one (weren't even top of the line 14 years ago when I started this job)... we'd be really fucked if they up and died suddenly, too. I wonder if there's any blood to be squeezed from management's budgetary stone if I tell them we're literally a daily coinflip away from going out of business. Our accounting software is on a windows 2000 server for chissakes.
 
7:30 PM. Just about to leave. Checked one last thing. Oh the internal webserver is offline again?

40 minutes later: Fuck. It's totally dead. Well, shit. There goes my month. You know, we've got two other servers just as old as this one (weren't even top of the line 14 years ago when I started this job)... we'd be really fucked if they up and died suddenly, too. I wonder if there's any blood to be squeezed from management's budgetary stone if I tell them we're literally a daily coinflip away from going out of business.
Once you've squeezed the hardware cost out of him, good luck getting him to cough up the money for new licenses, too.

--Patrick
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Once you've squeezed the hardware cost out of him, good luck getting him to cough up the money for new licenses, too.

--Patrick
The owner was supposed to be in town this week, too. He hasn't been thus far, maybe tomorrow will be the big day. I'll have to stomp into that office and basically say "hey, I need at least $4,000 and about a billion manhours from both myself and the accountant to address our impending disaster that has gone untouched for 14 years because nothing gets paid for that isn't on fire."
 
The owner was supposed to be in town this week, too. He hasn't been thus far, maybe tomorrow will be the big day. I'll have to stomp into that office and basically say "hey, I need at least $4,000 and about a billion manhours from both myself and the accountant to address our impending disaster that has gone untouched for 14 years because nothing gets paid for that isn't on fire."
At least it's on fire this time!
 

GasBandit

Staff member
That's easy: "To replace the computer will cost X dollars." Don't break it out for them. Just give the FINAL price.
That's the thing! I don't know the final price, at least not for the most worrying one. Because a new server will mean a new software package, too... see...

(deep breath)...

The accounting software we currently use to write checks and pay our bills and balance our books is super old. It's on an old compaq proliant 500-something, running pentium 3 xeons and has maybe 1 gig of ram. That's PC-100 ECC SDRAM. The software itself is a dos program written into a wrapper that makes it work on old windows systems - XP at best, but I think the server is running 2000.

I say "I think" because I can't actually log into the system. All the info and most of the login credentials sailed off into the sunset about 8 years ago with the guy who initially set it up when he got west nile virus and was hospitalized for a year then had to retire because he was too weak to come back to work. Yes, really. He's super old. Maybe, MAYBE I can track him down but god knows if he'll be any help at this point.

Anyway, even the client for this software doesn't like any windows newer than XP. I tried for weeks to get it to work on 7 but it was a no-go, and the tech support from the company (Marketron) that bought the company (Wicks Broadcast Solutions)that bought the company (CBSI) that produced this software is unsurprisingly unhelpful, being as this software was pretty much finally, completely discontinued around 10 years or so ago, just before the most recent acquisition. My workaround thus far has been to nurse along an old XP machine left over from a salesperson who outgrew it that I completely wiped and is running nothing but XP, remote desktop, and the accounting software client. The accountants each have to RDP into THAT machine to start the client that connects to the server which keeps our books and lets us print checks (on a LaserJet 4 more yellowed than my grandma's teeth).

And if that whole setup already wasn't kludgy as hell, the server (The P3 xeon compaq I told you about) has slowly been losing parts over the last 10 years. Sure, it started with just a case fan here and there, the occasional hard drive in its RAID... I've managed to keep it running by scrounging replacement parts off ebay and other distribution sources of antiquated tech, and it's a testament to the quality of the damn thing that it's been kicking for easily 20 years (it's my understanding it was already used when they got it!), but it's reaching the point where we can't replace the parts any more. Half the case fans are dying or dead and they're built into these wierd metal modules to direct the airflow that I've had little to no luck in taking apart (previously have replaced the entire module, fan and all), and even the hard drives are starting to go - one went a few years ago, and another is starting to show trouble (in what I guess is a 4-disk RAID-1). It's making distressing noises. The thing is on its last legs.

Buuuuut...

1) I don't know if I can actually successfully log into it, I have user credentials that let me get the client into the shares it needs on the server but I don't know if it's an admin login for the machine in general
2) Even if I can log into it, I don't know how to export our accounting data out of it at all, which may even be moot because
3) I have no idea what software package we would be "moving" to, nor even the slightest inkling of where to start looking or what is important to have in it or how much it would even cost.

So, even a ballpark figure at this point is problematic.
 
Holy crap, that write-up stressed me, and I'm not even tangentially responsible for this Gehenna of a tech stack.

Have you considered running far away and getting a therapist to help unpack this horror?
 
1) I don't know if I can actually successfully log into it, I have user credentials that let me get the client into the shares it needs on the server but I don't know if it's an admin login for the machine in general
2) Even if I can log into it, I don't know how to export our accounting data out of it at all, which may even be moot because
3) I have no idea what software package we would be "moving" to, nor even the slightest inkling of where to start looking or what is important to have in it or how much it would even cost.

So, even a ballpark figure at this point is problematic.
There's also the possibility that if you CAN export your accounting data, it might be a format that isn't easily accessed. We have this problem where I volunteer, as the videos we export from our training equipment are a proprietary format that none of us know how to convert into something easier to share.
 
B

BErt

Yoshi gets pet, and loved, and walked. and spoiled, and played with, and babied. He's on a normal ass dog schedule...

...so why in the bloody hell has he insisted on eating at 4am every day for the last month??
 
-35f this morning before any windchill. Trying to brake when your brake fluid is the consistency of molasses can keep you on your toes.
 
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