Well, people forget to log in, they end up busy with other things - yes, the volume is a trickle here - but it is a quality trickle, compared to the flood of shit that is on Hatebook. 

And... I don't mind it being a little slow. I remember when Citadels got super popular and you had to call every day to keep up, otherwise you just got so far behind you had to .Goto each room until you got to the lobby, .TQ, and try again in a few hours. Like missing a chance to merge and having to wait until the next break in traffic. 

Tue Apr 06 2021 20:56:07 MST from "Jerry Moore" <jerry_moore@secure.wallofhate.com>

Yeah, I had forgotten just how slow a Citadel board can be for intelligent conversations. Facebook's advantage is the huge number of users in any group. This means that you almost always have multiple responses to deal with, and the discussion seems to have more body. Citadelphia was great, when it was new, and we didn't have to compete with the internet. Now, it just seems slow. I'll keep trying to bring new users in, and if we can get up to critical mass, maybe it'll seem faster.

A flood of shit indeed. I get cranky just logging into Facebook to check my business page now. "Not this again." Sure enough my sister has a helpful explanation post on why everyone making more than her should pay more taxes. Nope, not gonna reply. Just get me out of here so I can talk to some adults. 

I just realized it has probably been since Monday that I logged onto Facebook. I just forget now, if I don't have some sort of self-promotion to do. It is a liberating experience. 

Wed Apr 07 2021 19:09:41 MST from "Wangiss" <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

A flood of shit indeed. I get cranky just logging into Facebook to check my business page now. "Not this again." Sure enough my sister has a helpful explanation post on why everyone making more than her should pay more taxes. Nope, not gonna reply. Just get me out of here so I can talk to some adults. 

I'M BUILDING MY FIRST PC! 

I've altered PCs many times before, but this is my first from-scratch build. I'll be building it into my desk. My approach is to buy cheap but highly forward-compatible hardware so I can swap the pieces out when I get the money. I just got so tired of the power issues I've had with my ASUS ROG G750. So I'm building a desktop that is literally a desk top. But I'll be able to move it around. It will have to be plugged in to work until I get a big UPS. Then it'll be a beefy and hilarious, heavy, upgradable laptop of sorts. 

So far I got a 680W power supply from the computer repair guy down the street and 8GB of DDR4 RAM just so I can get started. I'll buy a couple of big RAM sticks when I get the chance. The motherboard and CPU are coming in the mail.

I'm so stoked. 

AMD or Intel? What CPU core? Is it going to be exposed, like a workbench, or hidden in the desk somehow? 

Sounds like an interesting project. 

Sat Apr 10 2021 08:07:37 MST from "Wangiss" <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

I'M BUILDING MY FIRST PC! 

I've altered PCs many times before, but this is my first from-scratch build. I'll be building it into my desk. My approach is to buy cheap but highly forward-compatible hardware so I can swap the pieces out when I get the money. I just got so tired of the power issues I've had with my ASUS ROG G750. So I'm building a desktop that is literally a desk top. But I'll be able to move it around. It will have to be plugged in to work until I get a big UPS. Then it'll be a beefy and hilarious, heavy, upgradable laptop of sorts. 

So far I got a 680W power supply from the computer repair guy down the street and 8GB of DDR4 RAM just so I can get started. I'll buy a couple of big RAM sticks when I get the chance. The motherboard and CPU are coming in the mail.

I'm so stoked. 

That is awesome. I want MORE Citadels. Mine is dead, and Ig's is... East Coast and... well, heavy toward the developer side of technical discussions. It is the deep end of the Nerd pool for me, and most times I'm just barely treading water while they swim circles around me. :) 

The more variety the better. 

I'm actually nearly in a place where I could host a couple Citadels without a problem. I thought of putting up an ACTUAL The Sanitarium with the domain name registered and turning this one into Wall Of Hate. 

But, I could also host for someone else, possibly. 

Anyhow... looking forward to having another one go live. By the way... who are ya? Unless you prefer to be anonymous. 

Thu Apr 22 2021 21:35:18 MST from ASCII Express

I plan to put up my Citadel shortly. I will let you know. I expect a similar intelligent trickle. I will also do my part to spread the BBS scene. I had a blast running one through the 90s, and things have a way of coming full circle. I hate social media, and only use it for self promotion. Then I run back to my ham radio, or perhaps a BBS.

Well, welcome aboard. I hope you visit frequently. We need some more locals to liven this place up a bit. And politically incorrect locals are our favorite. 

Thu Apr 22 2021 22:57:22 MST from ASCII Express

Austin from Philadelphia.
https://austinseraphin.net
I wrote a politically incorrect door game in the 90s called Barneysplat!

Pretty bad Dell exploit in the wild right now. 

https://threatpost.com/dell-kernel-privilege-bugs/165843/

And a year later they are still having issues, this time with BIOS updates sent through the Dell CMD bricking computers. They put out a fix for it which you can get...from dell CMD. And how can I tell if I'm getting a BIOS update that isn't going to brick my computers..., "Well, we're working on that."

Crap like that and GoldMax and the new Sunburst variants keep my dreams fitful. 

I'm just glad I'm still working in a field I truly enjoy these days. PD is right that being over 50 in the IT field is tough for a lot of reasons. But I still get to be "The Wizard" on an occasional basis. Trying to teach those I work with the older toolsets for troubleshooting and problem resolution and pick up on the newer ones. I work with a ton of offshore IT, many of my co-workers are in South Africa as is the project manager I report to. I know that one of the reasons they keep me around is they need the local hands with experience to do certain things. I think I have another 5 years at this pay rate before things change again. That might be optimistic. 

The good thing about this job is it has given me some time to get my act together. I feel like my head has finally cleared after an impossibly difficult 2018-2021, which was hard for both personal and professional reasons. But I leveled up in understanding myself a bit and can look back at a lot of foolish things I was doing and saying during that time and see where I went sideways and the times I was off the rails. I'm moving forward and learning a lot of new skills.  

I'm doing lots of Exchange and Sharepoint migrations. Work with Intune and Mosyle. Still a ton of firewall work. Host and server upgrades.  I have fun with industries that tend to sit on expensive but now outdated technology like fabrication and medical, so I get to figure out how to keep outdated and poorly documented tech (like me!) working as we upgrade things around it.

Dude, I did a consulting gig doing crisis mitigation in Northern California. Internal IT staffs are so cut to the bone if something major goes wrong - they don't have people with the breadth of experience to do everything from Enterprise to desktop anymore, and the work ethic on long days in the office is a thing of the past for a generation that grew up on remote solutions... 

Monday until Saturday, 8 hours minimum charge per day, regardless of actual hours worked (but I ended up working a lot more than that most days) - plus travel, and top shelf expenses... I pulled in $15k and netted about $11k after expenses... and I short changed myself... I should have charged another bill per hour. 

This is what we should be doing at our age. Basically we're the WOLF. When things are fubar and there is no way you can recover - call us... we'll come in and deliver a quality fix for your FUBAR... but you're going to pay us in a week what you pay your other guys in a quarter to do it... 

Or you know, you can just see if THEY can fix what they broke. :) 

If I could get the network in to do this say, 12 weeks out of the year... the other 40 would be free - and I'd make as much in those 12 weeks as a yearly salary at a Fortune 500 IT department. 

Just 12 clients a year. 

Sat Jan 29 2022 12:58:34 MST from thanatos

And a year later they are still having issues, this time with BIOS updates sent through the Dell CMD bricking computers. They put out a fix for it which you can get...from dell CMD. And how can I tell if I'm getting a BIOS update that isn't going to brick my computers..., "Well, we're working on that."

 

Crap like that and GoldMax and the new Sunburst variants keep my dreams fitful. 

 

I'm just glad I'm still working in a field I truly enjoy these days. PD is right that being over 50 in the IT field is tough for a lot of reasons. But I still get to be "The Wizard" on an occasional basis. Trying to teach those I work with the older toolsets for troubleshooting and problem resolution and pick up on the newer ones. I work with a ton of offshore IT, many of my co-workers are in South Africa as is the project manager I report to. I know that one of the reasons they keep me around is they need the local hands with experience to do certain things. I think I have another 5 years at this pay rate before things change again. That might be optimistic. 

 

The good thing about this job is it has given me some time to get my act together. I feel like my head has finally cleared after an impossibly difficult 2018-2021, which was hard for both personal and professional reasons. But I leveled up in understanding myself a bit and can look back at a lot of foolish things I was doing and saying during that time and see where I went sideways and the times I was off the rails. I'm moving forward and learning a lot of new skills.  

 

I'm doing lots of Exchange and Sharepoint migrations. Work with Intune and Mosyle. Still a ton of firewall work. Host and server upgrades.  I have fun with industries that tend to sit on expensive but now outdated technology like fabrication and medical, so I get to figure out how to keep outdated and poorly documented tech (like me!) working as we upgrade things around it.

 

 

Most of my day today:  Before

And after:

Whoever was responsible for the original cable management should be horsewhipped with a Cat-O-Nine-Tails made of the fire retardent kind of Cat 5. I forget the name right now. I've been drinking. 

Today I was sitting down to learn Blender - and my friend who owns a business called "My laptop said it was checking the disk for errors, and now it won't start..." 

Let it run. 

"But I need to work..." 

Let it run. 

About 45 minutes later, I was on my way in... imagining it would be a 15 minute job. 

About 45 minutes ago, I finally got Windows reinstalled. Couldn't recover the original install... the keyboard is warped under the swollen battery inside. No charge, because I'm a good guy. 

It was a total nightmare of a day. I'm too drunk to go into details... but imagine how... you know, the backup machine that hasn't been turned on for months and has an expired antivirus... you uninstall the expired McAfee and install AVG and when it reboots it applies a Windows update - and IT doesn't come back up... shit like that, all day long... 

I told him, "you need a regular IT guy..." He said, "how about you?" 

When he got pissed when I "broke his backup machine," I said... This is why "not me..." 

Fri Feb 04 2022 20:25:31 MST from thanatos

Most of my day today:  Before