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

GasBandit

Staff member
We switched out from a traditional system to a VoIP system. Went from $3000/month to $100/month and it's managed by the provider. Have to pay per call now, but that's been about a dollar a day. Total.
We were considering that, and decided against it due to our internet connections (yes, we have two ISPs) both being really unreliable (because we get them on trade, so no money changes hands)...

This is almost enough to make me say "fuck it, let's do voip."
 
Just want to get this out of my system: BUNCH OF FUCKING DUTCH MORONS.

We work on a local system. We're supposed to switch over to a slightly-more-modern system soon-ish, and that'll work off of a server in the Netherlands, for....reasons. Anyway. I'm busy transferring data from the old system to the new - mostly by hand, because, again, reasons. *sigh*
Today I couldn't log on to the server. After some mails to-and-fro, it turns out they had a bit of a hiccup. Oh, but everything's been restored! No worries! We transferred everything over fro ma back-up from yesterday 12AM!
I SPENT 4 HOURS MANUALLY ENTERING DATA YESTERDAY YOU JACKASS. I don't really mind busywork but I do when it's then COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY ERASED. FOR FUCKING FUCKS SAKE. I HOPE YOUR GENITALS START ITCHING HORRIBLY AT AN INOPPORTUNE MOMENT.
 
@GasBandit Hyperterminal sucks and is less than useless for real rs-232 communications - if anything, it actively interferes in ways that make it impossible to use properly. I use Putty (it has a terminal mode - select "Serial port" when it's asking for IP address) or Teraterm.

If you must use a usb serial port converter, use one with an FTDI chip. Almost all the serial port cables you get now are cheap clones of that one or a worse chip (prolific, for instance. Burn it!), and aren't worth fiddling with when you're dealing with older rs-232 equipment. Half the issues people run into are due to the fact that the chipset manufacturer doesn't actually implement the full RS-232 interface standard. The FTDI driver actually correctly implements the windows/DOS rs-232 chipset (16550 chip FTW) so even the most arcane software will often work with it.

If you get a reputable RS-232 card you should be ok as well, but beware that many cheap ones aren't any better than the bad USB rs-232 interfaces (and may simply be exactly that with an express PCI usb chip). Be aware that while onboard rs-232 ports used to be reliable, on newer PCs they can't be trusted either, even when the correct drivers are installed. Find a very old PC or laptop and you might be able to use the onboard rs-232 port.

I haven't used this one, but you may find the LED indicators particularly useful if the terminal implements full RS-232 with handshaking.

Amazon product

There are others (amazon "ftdi usb rs-232").

The nice thing is you can go into the Windows HArdware Device list and assign the com port, so you can put it on com1-4, where older software expects to find serial ports.

You'll want to try to find the pinout of the RS-232 port for the equipment you're trying to communicate with. It should work with either a straight through or a cross over cable, but some cables implement handshaking in weird ways, some adapters do strange things, some equipment uses an odd pinout, etc. It's, unfortunately, not as straightforward as it should be.

I've had to use an RS-232 breakout box more than once to communicate with stupidly designed equipment.
 
You'll want to try to find the pinout of the RS-232 port for the equipment you're trying to communicate with. It should work with either a straight through or a cross over cable, but some cables implement handshaking in weird ways, some adapters do strange things, some equipment uses an odd pinout, etc. It's, unfortunately, not as straightforward as it should be.

I've had to use an RS-232 breakout box more than once to communicate with stupidly designed equipment.
Also nothing quite like finding out someone used RS-422 but didn't label the port as such, too. DB9 = DB9, right?

--Patrick
 
I started my new treatment today which is a low dose of a chemotherapy drug. I wont't be on a high enough dose for it to be considered chemo but it's still freaking me out and there are a lot of gross/scary side effects.

I needed to have injection training before I was allowed to do it at home by myself. I've done auto-injector pens, put these injections are fully manual. The nurses at my specialist's office were meant to train me but called and that they couldn't possibly do that for a month and left me on my own to set up training. Yay?

I was shocked that I was able to get that set up for today. I called the pharmacy and placed an order for all my supplies. I got all ready to go to my appointment and got in the car with my daughter. I was pretty nervous about all this. We had snow all week and our plow guy never came. At all this week. I got out of the garage ok but the driveway was very slippery and I ended up slipping and sliding all over my driveway and one of my back tires fell off our driveway into the ditch. I was done!

I contacted friends and family until I got ahold of someone who could pick us up and take us to my appointment. They offered to wait but @HCGLNS was returning from his out of town work trip soon, so he was going to pick us up.

In the middle of me giving myself my first injection as part of my training with the doctor helping, my daughter's cell phone goes off. No hobo pick up. He's stuck behind a huge accident on the highway and still a long way out of town. And because of all our drama, we were over an hour late to my appointment and my son needs to be picked up at day care in less than half an hour.

I want to cry. Instead, I make some more calls and reach my uncle who lives nearby and he picks us up, we all go get my son and he drops us off on the road at the top of our driveway and my daughter takes my arm and helps me down. Once I'm finally inside, I'm almost in tears and jumping every time I hear a weird sound outside thinking that it's my car falling over into the ditch.

We hear a knock at the door and it was a friend and her husband coming to help. She had been filling in for my son's regular babysitter and knew I couldn't do anything about the car myself. I have no idea how but they used their vehicle to pull mine out to the street! I thanked her profusely and gave her booze.

I'm sitting here not able to sleep because I'm really super barfy from today's treatment and feeling a bit sorry for myself that my AS has gotten so advanced that it's even needed. I'm also pretty sore from climbing out of my car to get out of it after I got part of it stuck in the ditch and all the other cross country walking and climbing today.

I really am very lucky though to have so many awesome people willing to help out and some without being asked. Today could have been a total disaster without them. I wanted to give up a few times, but I need to start this treatment and I need to get better so I promised myself I could freak later if I came up with options then. So, I think I'll allow myself my freak out now :)
 
At this point it doesn't matter how nice the doctors and nurses are. You need to be accompanied by a posse of us carrying baseball bats. Every time they say "we can't get you in until X," we get a swing. Repeat until they book it for NOW.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Even the FTDI USB-RS232 converter has failed me >_<

Well, I also got a PCI serial card, and that was how we got into it before. I really was hoping this wouldn't be necessary as it is tighter than a comptroller's asshole on budget day in that room, and it's got shitty ventilation so it's always in the 90s in there, and so digging around inside a PC in there is gonna be less than ideal. And with my luck it still won't work.

The engineer says he knows some guys working for a local telecom that keep an old ass laptop with a built in DB9 around for this exact reason. I might have such a thing at home, but chances are it'll either have a dead power supply, a dead monitor, or some other problem that rendered it inoperable, and I wouldn't discover that until I'd dug it out from under 15 years of junk, dust, and sadness.

Sometimes I wonder why I'm fretting and putting so much effort into this. Everybody hates voicemail anyway, it never does anything but bring you more work.
 
The engineer says he knows some guys working for a local telecom that keep an old ass laptop with a built in DB9 around for this exact reason.
I keep my W98/SS7 K6-III+ machine around with its 5-1/4" drive and thick Ethernet (and DB9/DB25) for stupid reasons like this, too.

--Patrick
 
See, that's why I get rid of old equipment, or at least don't tell people I have it. Do I really want to even attempt dealing with some of these systems?

Time to live with it as-is, throw it away altogether, or replace it.

That said, yeah, I still have several working laptops with native serial ports. One running windows 3.1, another with windows 98, and one with windows xp.

Tell your boss there's a guy in Michigan that's willing to part with one for a little over the cost of a new voicemail system, and then advise him to simply upgrade. ;)

Or you could learn asterisk, because I'm sure you're not already busy enough as it is.
 
The best thing about the previous hotel was everything was web based, so as long as there was a working internet connection, I could do my work. From anywhere. Even if that anywhere was at home or another town.

Now I'm running off of a server running Windows Server 2003 connected to workstations running Windows 7. The spreadsheet computer is still running XP with Excel 2003. That's why I have a current laptop with me with Office 365. If that XP box shits the bed, I can still get the spreadsheet done and sent off to the people who need it.
 
I helped @HCGLNS clean up downstairs and got water on my hands and now this started and is now halfway up my arm. Bad water! Bad arm!

I've used topical Benadryl and real Benadryl and it's driving me crazy!!!

IMG_9860.JPG
 
I'm doing another wide awake all night thing. The good news is that I'm not in as much pain as usual when I do this. So, I have no idea why I'm up but at least I'm comfortable enough to play FF 15. My daughter asked to share my game and got quite a bit ahead of me and is bad with spoilers so I need to catch up. I do every single quest and she does none.
 
Install a fucking CO detector! http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...death-in-b-c-interior-daughter-says-1.4042759

If you burn ANYTHING to heat your house or your water, or just like having a nice fireplace to look at, BUY A DETECTOR. There was a house about 3 blocks from where I grew up that everybody in the community called the "Death House" because a whole family was killed via Carbon Monoxide due to a faulty pool heater. Also, people never really lived in that house longer than a year or two, as it was always up for sale! They probably moved in, heard the story, got uncomfortable over time, and moved out. Or it was haunted. Whatever.

Either way, get a detector, and/or check yours!


And yes @Dirona I have checked, and our detectors are combination smoke/CO, and I tested them since we moved in.
 
I realize that I may be somewhat of a hypocrite here as just a few posts up I did share a picture of hives. I feel that hives are far less vile than some the oozing things that people feel the need to take pictures of and share in chronic illness support groups on Facebook. If that's really your thing, make a post and hide that nasty shit in the comments. I have a bad stomach and am on a new medication that makes me ill. These random blasts of gross could cause me to kill my iPad with barf! Or barf on Pud.
 
It took me a while to actually see the hives in that picture. Well, to realize what I saw in that picture was hives. I just thought Pudding had scratched you, or something like that.
'
 
My hives from water are tiny little sneaky bastards and ten times as itchy as my normal hives. They burn!!

I sound like a drunken maniac I'm sure. You should have heard the message I left my allergist yesterday. I was shocked they actually called me back.
 
My hives from water are tiny little sneaky bastards and ten times as itchy as my normal hives. They burn!!

I sound like a drunken maniac I'm sure. You should have heard the message I left my allergist yesterday. I was shocked they actually called me back.
Probably an off the wall question, but in connection with my own (very mild) allergies and asthma I've wondered about the anecdotal evidence surrounding roundworm and hookworm infestations correcting some of the symptoms of severe allergies. It must be over a decade ago when I first heard about it from a story of someone who went to the trouble of traveling to a distant country just to infect themselves, then developing a process where they could reinfect themselves.

Looks like it's getting some serious study as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy - I'm sure this isn't the first time you've run across this, so I'm curious - what are your thoughts?

Looks like it's really gained steam since I last delved into it. I'm somewhat surprised, actually.
 
I'm out running errands so I will wait until I'm home to click your link. I have a compromised immune system that is further suppressed by monthly infusion treatments and even further by weekly injections of a low dose of a chemo med. I would hesitate to use a treatment that involved infecting myself with something. I can not receive live vaccines and I think that this treatment might be similar enough to not be safe for me given my immune system.

I'll read it when I get home though. Because even though it sounds totally gross, I want to be able to shower without my skin burning and itching and spend the hour afterwards trying not to claw my legs bloody.
 
Helminthic therapy seems to be most effective for disorders where the body's immune system attacks itself (e.g. asthma, lupus, arthritis). If your issues are NOT autoimmune in nature, it may do more harm than good.

--Patrick
 
On the phone with my mom:

Mom: Your grandfather got a new computer
Me: Oh god please n-
Mom: I told him you'd set it up for him
Me: NOOOOOOOOOO!
 
More question than comment, but could you make it so they could not interfere with the c: drive in any way and have all other actions routed to an external hard drive?
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Just had a client reject a commercial spot we produced because the voice talent, who they requested by name, and whose entire schtick is "low and sultry female voice," wasn't "upbeat and energetic" enough for them. That's like hiring James Earl Jones and saying he doesn't sound enough like Pee Wee Herman.

Also they didn't like the music I put behind the voice? Why? Because they want the Fighting Texas mother fucking Aggie Band in their spot. Because what the fuck is a copyright, am I right?

Gagh.
 
Does that mean "terse" or perhaps "tourist?"
I meant turd but I don't type well when I'm stressed out.

My stomach has decided to remind me that it's a hot mess today. I see the surgeon Monday. I have no idea when it will be fixed, but I'm well aware, it can simmer down. Please.
 
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