Wednesday January 8th Café.

Upt' North

Upt' North

Joined
Feb 25, 2016
Messages
4,644
Location
Northumberland UK
Bike
VStrom 650
The Italian Dark Roast is ready, help ya'selves.
The weather, it's OK, a bit chilly but quite splendiferous for the time of year.

BBC_Weather_forecast.png

A lot of the UK isn't quite so fortunate but this is the normal NE England weather pattern for this time of year. Long may it last.
It seems that the US of A is experiencing lots of horribleness of various kinds, although the BBC seemed more interested in reporting that some cake and arse party had been cancelled in Hollywood.
Well they would, wouldn't they. It's taxpayers money you know. I seriously thought of not paying my TV Licence fee in November but I'm too old to do jail time.
Pffffffftttttt.
Er'Indoors is away to get er barnet done, it's a right mess, I'll be doing some'ats or t'others. I don't know where they've all come from but they have regardless.
I may get reacquainted with a paint brush but first a visit to offload stuff at the charity shop.
Av a gud un and remember, it's just stuff.
Upt.
 
G'Day...

well, it got warmer... +2C night/morning, will see +8C today... sunny, only partially cloudy...
And since we're past the winter solstice, I actually saw a sunrise again on the way to work... yay...
Just finished my (2nd) instant office sludge (the proper Nespresso at home serves as "jump starter" :cool: )...
Spent the morning preparing the 12 worksheet Excel for my 2025 working time records... dull... lots of cut/copy'n'paste maneuvers... researching and entering national & bank holidays...
Over the decades each MS Office release had some changes to keep you on your toes...
At home I'm running Win10pro_64 & Office 2019 (the last one you could actually buy and own on a physical data carrier), here we've Win11pro_64, hence a bloody Office 365...

Besides this, low business, still not much to do, seems that most client's employees are still out on vacation...

And since I cleaned up the local hard-drive as well as the server folders thoroughly already when starting that job a year ago, and kept them clean throughout the year, not much else to do...

[edit]
aaaaand... jinxed it... just received 2 large projects I've to make offers for...

have a good day...
 
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good morning all. and thank you Ray for the Italian dark roast. 47F on the dog walk with wind gusts up to 33mph and not much else to see has I had my jacket hood pulled up. weather guessers say it should feel like 32F and for once in a long time I believe them. our high should be 55F.
I have gym class this morning and I'm thinking of taking the truck so I get some run time on her and next up to run will be the ST. enjoy your day

stay safe
 
Morning all, and thanks Ray for the coffee.

As the 3 wise guys said after giving gifts of gold and frankincense, "wait, there's myrrh."

-7C, dark and cloudy; headed to -6C and snow showers - whatever those are.

Back to fighting with the central IT dept today as we're into day 3 of no logical network connection between network switch stacks. I blame the photonic pixies that fly in the glass wires, but what do I know, other than it's not working.

Hope everyone has a great day and if you have to work, hopefully it's lite.

Obo.
 
Obo said:
Morning all, and thanks Ray for the coffee.

As the 3 wise guys said after giving gifts of gold and frankincense, "wait, there's myrrh."

-7C, dark and cloudy; headed to -6C and snow showers - whatever those are.

Back to fighting with the central IT dept today as we're into day 3 of no logical network connection between network switch stacks. I blame the photonic pixies that fly in the glass wires, but what do I know, other than it's not working.

Hope everyone has a great day and if you have to work, hopefully it's lite.

Obo.
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I'm not laughing at ya, more laughing with ya.
I can just here that techie somewhere saying, "turn it off.....wait.....wait....turn it back on.....bugger".
I don't have a techie to call these days but I do say bugger a lot.
 
Upt' North said:
I'm not laughing at ya, more laughing with ya.
I can just here that techie somewhere saying, "turn it off.....wait.....wait....turn it back on.....bugger".
I don't have a techie to call these days but I do say bugger a lot.
Click to expand...

Yup. yesterday was the "we can see it's not connected to the main switch, so can you go up and power cycle the 5 switches?"
Basically it's unplug them and then plug them back in, as they don't have an external power switch. You can reboot them from within the software, but that's akin to asking someone to just use the keyfob to unlock the car doors to get the keys that are locked in the car. In a perfect world, you'd connected said devices to a remote controlled power supply - that was on a different network.
 
Morning all! Dark here and early....too early....6C and overcast. We'll get 7C and maybe some sun later.

I was dragooned by my assistant into joining the OHS committee at work a month or so ago with the assurance that it just meant showing up for monthly meeting. What was omitted, and what I learned yesterday at said monthly meeting, was that I have to do two whole days of OHS committee training :eek-2x:.

I have now come to accept that I must have been horrible in a past life. And it's not online training. Nope. In person. In a classroom. With instructors. I can only assume that I must have been rebooting when I agreed to this fiasco because I've been around enough to know better.

I'm going to head back to bed to try and catch a few winks but I just know it's going to be filled with nightmares of bureaucracy......

Hope everyone has a great day and just don't put your hand up, there's always a catch!
 
catcher said:
Get some advice from someone who likes a challenge, fix it, claim the smarts as your own, collect pay raise!
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I can almost certainly fix it, but according to the SLA (service level agreement) if I touch it I get admonished.

Almost as bad as Ted's HSA issue above, I got admonished for using the wrong ladder at work. We have 2 almost identical ladders. The ONLY difference is the Sharpie lettering on them saying one belongs to work, and the other to the building owner. I was told, I cannot use the ladder with the building owner's name on it, as it I have an accident while on it, I'm not covered by work's insurance. I've instructed my co-worker if I have an accident while on the wrong ladder, please swap out the ladder before calling 911.
 
Good morning all! Thanks for the dark roast Ray! Sun is just showing itself here in central Florida. another day of 30s and 50s. Can't complain about the weather. It is interesting due to the combination of being so far south and so flat there is no partial light of dawn and dusk. It's like someone throws a switch. It's dark and 5 minutes later it's bright or visa versa at night. Takes some getting used to, or not getting used to?

Met an old school Ducati mechanic, guy about my age (68) yesterday. Really nice guy has a shop dog and that's qualification enough for me. His shop is backed up over a month with work and in spite of that he said if I brought the Norge by today he'd take a quick look and listen to the low speed lean running that the bike occasionally does. It's got me baffled because it runs like a bear once you get some rpm on it. He said it was a common issue for both air cooled Ducatis and Moto Guzzis of that era. I'm excited because most of Florida is just big chain bike shops and you wouldn't want them working on anything. Other than that working on my escape plan from Florida today. Need to sell whatever idea it is to my wife so she's ok with me bailing on her.

Have a great day everyone. Remember be safe out there.
 
Good morning everyone

Thanks for the Italian dark roast Ray. It's tasty and welcome.

There are supposedly 23 Fahrenheits out there somewhere but some of them are hiding in the 10 mph WNW wind, so only 4 of them were actually able to be counted. Partly sunny skies will lift the temperature to perhaps a lofty 29 later, as the wind builds to about 15 mph, making it another excellent day to remain indoors as much as possible.

The only reason I have to venture beyond the front door threshold today is to get Mulan to the vet, making up for the appointment on Monday that was canceled due to the weather.

ST1100Y said:
At home I'm running Win10pro_64 & Office 2019 (the last one you could actually buy and own on a physical data carrier), here we've Win11pro_64, hence a bloody Office 365...
Click to expand...

At our last home computer refresh, my ancient copy of Office 10 said it had been installed too many times and all the licenses were used up. It was old enough that MickeySoft no only no longer supported that version, they'd also taken down the installation / license manager so I couldn't even update the records to indicate that it had been removed from numerous devices. At that point I switched to Google Docs, which costs me nothing to use (but yes, makes everything I create available to Almighty Google to analyze in whatever way they choose; humph and pfffffft...) I considered downloading and installing OpenOffice but my last experience (admittedly close to two decades ago) was less than entirely satisfactory.

Although I don't object to online distribution of installation and update files I can save, I'm deeply opposed to the subscription-based software license model (SaaS, or software-as-a-service in techie lingo) which had begun even before I left the world of work. It the same reason I don't "buy" music or movies online: if (WHEN) the vendor decides they've milked those items for all they're worth or simply decides it's time to move on, whatever it is that I've "bought" vanishes summarily and forever with no means of getting it back. I'm happy to look at the collection of CDs, DVDs, BluRay discs, and vinyl albums I've accumulated over the millennia decades and know that, as long as I have a functioning playback device, they're all still available to me whenever I choose. No internet access or subscription fees required.

Obo said:
Back to fighting with the central IT dept today as we're into day 3 of no logical network connection between network switch stacks. I blame the photonic pixies that fly in the glass wires, but what do I know, other than it's not working.
Click to expand...

True story: a friend of mine used to work in a place where the office space was divided between two buildings, located on opposite sides of a small side street. The buildings were each 15 or 20 stories tall. The network connection between them relied on a pair of lasers on the roof of each building, beaming data across the gap to be received on the opposite side and distributed through fiber optic cables. The organization found that there would be intermittent losses of connectivity between the buildings. Investigation eventually revealed a correlation between the outages and large, rapid temperature swings in the outdoor temperature, especially around sunup.

They came to realize that the culprit was a slightly mis-aimed laser; when the temperature changed so did the geometry of the laser setup (and possibly the buildings on which the setups were mounted) such that the laser spot would wander off-target and fail to be received on the opposite side. Dialing in and correcting the aim solved the problem. I've always thought it'd be mildly interesting to shoot a long-term time-lapse video showing the "Dance of the Spot".

Stay safe and well everyone and tell your dear ones you love them.
 
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Weaselinsuit said:
Morning all! Dark here and early....too early....6C and overcast. We'll get 7C and maybe some sun later.

I was dragooned by my assistant into joining the OHS committee at work a month or so ago with the assurance that it just meant showing up for monthly meeting. What was omitted, and what I learned yesterday at said monthly meeting, was that I have to do two whole days of OHS committee training :eek-2x:.

I have now come to accept that I must have been horrible in a past life. And it's not online training. Nope. In person. In a classroom. With instructors. I can only assume that I must have been rebooting when I agreed to this fiasco because I've been around enough to know better.

I'm going to head back to bed to try and catch a few winks but I just know it's going to be filled with nightmares of bureaucracy......

Hope everyone has a great day and just don't put your hand up, there's always a catch!
Click to expand...
It's one of those days.
:crackup:.
"All it is, can you just, it'll just be every now and again, if you don't mind".
Never, ever volunteer, if you do it never changes, shite flows downhill.
You should have known better, oh yeah....
 
Good morning, all, and thanks for the wakey-juice, Ray! Any stewed-fruity crêpy things to go with that?

It's still snowing and it will snow all day and all night. There must be a stiff breeze blowing as well, as there seems to be a windchill of -25°C/-13°F, despite the fact that the actual temperature is -14°C/7°F. I'll take their word for it; I'm not going out there to find out for myself.

Lots to prepare for today, so I'd best shake a leg. Everyone have a great day, stay safe and go safely.

Patty
 
Good morning all!
Thanks for the start Ray.

Keith, I did a stint in an oil refinery years back; spring and fall was spent re-aligning pump & motors due to drastic temperature swings.

46/64F there’s a cruel NNW blow that will frost up your spectacles.
I’m holding tight until temps rise to a decent temp.
Ta, I’ll have another mug!
WB
 
Morning, everyone. Thanks, Ray. Our weather is very similar to yours today. 25/32 and cloudy. Fridays guess is 5-7” of white.

Busy day today. First, is to stop by my GP and have blood drawn, prior to tomorrows visit. After the blood draw, it’s off to a 2 hour class on how to act after hip replacement, then a trip to the hospital for a MRI of my hip, that they use to program the robotic surgery assistant. Gonna be about a 6 hr day.

Obo said:
I was told, I cannot use the ladder with the building owner's name on it
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Obo, simply write the building owner’s name on the other ladder, then you can’t use either one. :biggrin:

John
 
Weaselinsuit said:
I have now come to accept that I must have been horrible in a past life. And it's not online training. Nope. In person. In a classroom. With instructors.
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I can recommend wearing this:

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(my personal favorite for all types of "gatherings"... except ST1100 related ones...)

ibike2havefun said:
I considered downloading and installing OpenOffice but my last experience (admittedly close to two decades ago) was less than entirely satisfactory.
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I can recommend LibreOffice

Download LibreOffice | LibreOffice - Free and private office suite - Based on OpenOffice - Compatible with Microsoft

Download free office suite for Windows, macOS and Linux. Microsoft compatible, based on OpenOffice, and updated regularly.
www.libreoffice.org www.libreoffice.org
Running on my workshop laptop as well as my GF`s one now, flawless...
ibike2havefun said:
I'm happy to look at the collection of CDs, DVDs, BluRay discs, and vinyl albums I've accumulated over the millennia decades and know that, as long as I have a functioning playback device, they're all still available to me whenever I choose. No internet access or subscription fees required.
Click to expand...
Ditto, and it fills me with sad grim that Sony discontinued the DVD & BD production...
 
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