Archives: December 2009

The Universe Hates me

Dec30
by CodeNinja
Published on: December 30, 2009
Categories: Customers, Holiday
Tags: , , ,
Comments: No Comments
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I am on holiday this week.  A full week away from the Insane Asylum, work, customers or as I like to call them “The Bane of My Life“.  So far I’m still full of the festive cheer, festive beer, and festive treats.  I have been working my way through the DVD’s I got for Xmas, There is a nice layer of snow over everything making the world look a peaceful place.  There is only one thorn in my festive happiness…… CUSTOMERS!

Monday the Governor of the Asylum threw a support ticket at my email marked urgent. It was from a customers developer. They had asked for a new hosting area with Joomla installed on it, and it was done on the last working day of the year (last job before we finished for the day)

Monday:

HI. You set up a Joomla hosting for us, and you set it up wrong. I can not get it to upload modules, I’ve checked the permissions via FTP and they are wrong. I need this installed correctly, fix the permissions and test it!

Hello? We installed it wrong? Have you ever installed Joomla? You ftp the files to your hosting, go to a webpage, answer a few basic questions and its installed! Idiot!. Ok, so he has a permission problem, so he’s decided to use the web server to upload the files instead of putting his FTP details into Joomla’s config to let Joomla handle it. OK. Now. the guy knows enough to check permissions with FTP.  So why does he not change them with FTP to fix his problem? Its a rush job, we’re on holiday, be quicker to do it himself.  Anyway, permissions changed, idiot informed it quicker to change them himself.

Tuesday:

Hi. Our developer is being a hero and working over his holiday to get our new website developed, He has a problem with you installing Joomla wrong, can you fix this urgently!

OK. Now I am mad. Firstly: -Your developer may be working over his holidays, That does not mean everyone else should be working over theirs. Secondly:- The Install was not done incorrectly, Your developer does not seem to have a clue. Thirdly:- I spoke to your developer yesterday, If he’s not informed you thats his problem not mine!

Do you get the feeling I’m not a people person?

Wednesday:

Hi. I changed the permissions on the folder and it still will not let me upload files. Can we restart and install Joomla correctly!

OK, maybe he has a point. Lets look. ok, he lists the directory he having trouble uploading into, he says he set permissions to 777. Oh, thats odd, permissions have not been changed. oh look, theres a directory of the same name one branch down, and that has 777 permissions, The idiots only changed the wrong directory.  I would not mind but he sent me the path to the correct one, why couldn’t he have followed his own instructions.

If I get another set of emails from him, I may just stop being polite.

CN


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Why’s the Rum Gone?

Dec23
by CodeNinja
Published on: December 23, 2009
Categories: Holiday, Office
Tags: , ,
Comments: No Comments
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So its Christmas, Well OK it’s not actually Christmas Day or anything, It is however the last working day at the Asylum.

FREEEEEDOM!!!!

Now in the current financial climate, with customers going Bust, People spending less, the ready cash flow for the asylum is a bit on the bare side, so there is no bonus’s or such this year. Now one of the company directors has  bought every member of the Asylums staff a “Bottle of Wine” for Christmas, Which is a nice gesture, and as a director it represents the company.

The only problem is, He decided to get every member of the Asylum a gift, with the exception of the Two members of the SysAdmin department.

This man really needs to read the BOFH. He would then know how BAD an idea it is to annoy the Admin.

Next Year should be interesting.

CN

BTW: Merry Christmas One and All.


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Walking in a Winter Solstice…

Dec21
by GothNinja
Published on: December 21, 2009
Categories: Holiday, Spiritual
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ok people. It’s the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice…

So can i ask everyone to throw a huge party and celebrate. For we need to make a big noise so that Amaterasu comes out of her cave and brings the sun back to the people, so the days can start getting longer, and I can start getting warm.


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Dont tell the Insane Asylum

Dec18
by GothNinja
Published on: December 18, 2009
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: No Tags
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Well last night the SysAdmins of the Insane Asylum had the closest thing to an Office Party/Do/Event for the celebration of the Winter shutdown that the Insane Asylum will be having this year.

The DemonPenguin and Myself went from the office to see Avater 3D.  Well what do you expect SysAdmin to do to celebrate? other than go, drink beer, and watch a new release scifi movie in glorious 3D.

So we shot from the Asylum (located in the welsh wilderness) to the cinema (located in England).  There was a slight Miss-hap as my mind went to sleep and the autopilot drive ended up taking me to an x-colleagues house, luckily I woke up in time to get to the cinema with only the slightest detour.

First up was food, Steak & Chips washed down with chilled beer. And by great timing we got to leave not long after the place was invaded by a swarm of small people (Children not Midgets).   Then on to the movie.

NOTE: Just thought I’d share this as its confusing me. According to the inbuilt spell check on this blog the word movie is being shown as spelt wrong.

On to the movie. I have to say Avatar is amazing, it is a movie all should watch, and if you are going to watch it you need to do it in 3d.  I wont review the film, since I do not want to ruin it for anyone. All I will say is two things, 1) you really really need to go see this film.  2)Why don’t people learn the lessons from Jedi? No matter how heavily armed you are with advanced technology, a bunch of ewoks armed with sticks can defeat you!

This is a lesson anyone who wants to destroy america should pay attention to. Ignore bombs, soldiers, just ship in crates of monkeys armed with sticks and watch America drop to its knees.


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Weird Emails – Name a Fish after Me?

Dec16
by GothNinja
Published on: December 16, 2009
Categories: Fame
Tags:
Comments: No Comments
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Greetings dear reader.

If you’ve been reading my ramblings since the beginning (i.e. LiveJournal) Or you need severe Medical Mental Attention (Or are a stalker) and have spent time reading This blog since the beginning.  You will know that from time to time I will post one of the weird and wonderful emails I get from people sitting “The Insanity Test!”

One day I intend to collect the weirdest, the funniest, and the ones from military people at the front lines (doing the test while under fire) or the people from the whitehouse/congress/parliament, and put them all into a book format and try and get it published.  (Or blackmail said people in the whitehouse/congress/parliament)

Anyway.. Here’s one from today.

Subject: Merry time of year when christians say christmas

Indeed this is a joyous time of year when often people will dress in red fluffy suits
and give out things of a free nature!!!

Indeed these are Auspicious days

I plan to secure an aquarium and capture a crayfish of the genus Astacopisis to live in it
probably Astacopisis franklinii but if I discover a new species that’s good too!!!

that is part of the reason why I am writing to you now my love if I do discover a new species
I want you to help me come up with it’s common name!!!

what an Honor for you!!!

*hug*

awaiting your reply with held breath

BLANKED (I cant hold my breath for I am a computer)
BLANKED (hurry for soon I run out of puff)

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The persons name, and that of their computer were BLANKED for legal reasons.


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Push the button….

Dec14
by GothNinja
Published on: December 14, 2009
Categories: Films
Tags: ,
Comments: 2 Comments
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My finger is on the button
My finger is on the button
My finger is on the button
Push the button
The time has come to…    Galvanize
Galvanize By The Chemical Brothers…

Sunday night I went to the cinema with friends to watch “The Box“. I wanted to see Avatar 3D, unfortunately you have to wait for films to be released before you can watch them. Who knew!….   In case you are not familiar with the film “The Box” here’s the plot summery from IMDB :-

Norma and Arthur Lewis, a suburban couple with a young child, receive a simple wooden box as a gift, which bears fatal and irrevocable consequences. A mysterious stranger, delivers the message that the box promises to bestow upon its owner $1 million with the press of a button. But, pressing this button will simultaneously cause the death of another human being somewhere in the world; someone they don’t know. With just 24 hours to have the box in their possession, Norma and Arthur find themselves in the cross-hairs of a startling moral dilemma and must face the true nature of their humanity.

So. Someone gives you a box with a button. If you press the button you will get $1million (say £500,000) But someone somewhere will die. Would you press the button?

“Well would you?”

Turns out, everyone in the group I was with would not press the button, Neither would the selection of people I have asked over IM, or IRL.  In fact so far I am the only person who has admitted to the fact that I would press the button with no second thoughts.

I am now worrying I may have slight sociopathic tendencies.


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Off the Rails

Dec09
by CodeNinja
Published on: December 9, 2009
Categories: Customers, Programing
Tags: , ,
Comments: No Comments
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When learning a new programming language, The Internet convention is to make a “Hello World” program.  For those of you none-coders out there, that is as simple as it sounds. A simple program to output the words “Hello World” onto your screen, or a page on a web browser. The idea is to use something very simple, so you can speedily see the output of your code before you start on anything more complex.  In theory there is nothing simpler in code than the Hello world program.

For example:

  • PHP: <?php echo “Hello, world!”; ?>
  • ASP: <% Response.Write(“Hello, world!”) %>
  • ASP.NET: <asp:Label ID=“Label1″ runat=“server” Text=“Hello World”></asp:Label>
  • BASH: echo ‘Hello, world!’

You noticing a trend here? Very simple, and not much code involved. Hell if we look at assembly language itself, which is considered a complex and long language.

bdos    equ    0005H
start:  mvi    c,9
        lxi    d,msg$
        call   bdos
        ret             

msg$:   db    'Hello, world!$'
end     start

Now. this week I have had to look at the insanity that is called “Ruby on Rails“. One of our customers is demanding we host/support it as he now has a new “Developer” (And I use that title in the loosest way) And the new guy only does Ruby On Rails (Or RoR from now on).  Now we have the facility to host it pre-setup on our servers.  So all we had to do was throw up a quick test page to double check it was all running OK. What was needed was a RoR “Hello World” test.

So following the examples in a book I set about writing a simple application to display “Hello World” onto the web-page. It took several hours of work, required over 200 different files, and a virtual-Host setup different to normal hosting before the words “Hello World” were there on the screen.

How shit a language (If i can call it a language) is RoR? Instead of the normal ONE line of code it took 207 individual files to do the same thing. Has there ever been a shittier application language invented?  If there is then I have never heard of it.

And to top it all off. the Developer in question seems clueless about the language. For example he did not have a public folder (required by Apache). he removed the default index page (which is correct) only he never re mapped root in the config/routes file. And has been bombarding our support ticketing system with very basic questions.

On a side note. While learning RoR, I got bored so played on the Interwebz. I found this developers, Twitter, Blog, Facebook, Company website. Yes it turns out he is a freelance web applications developer.  And yet his website is the worst I have seen in a long time.

Takes all sorts I suppose.

CN


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The Downtime Dance

Dec07
by CodeNinja
Published on: December 7, 2009
Categories: Blog, VPS
Tags: ,
Comments: 2 Comments
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Just a quick message to apologise for the series of short down-times this site has recently been experiencing.  I don’t think the small VPS its being run from can handle the number of visitors daily (On top of the other services)  So We are upgrading the package to a bigger, fast, more powerful one.

So hopefully as soon as we schedule a switchover time things will improve.

CN


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NaNoWriMo – Pens Down

Dec01
by GothNinja
Published on: December 1, 2009
Categories: NaNoWriMO
Tags:
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This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series NaNoWriMo 2009

So Its December the 1st. The month of November has been and gone. You should all have put your pens/pencils down, Stepped away from the typewriter/keyboard, and relaxed.

How did you all do? Wow, Really? That’s Impressive! Me? Well, Not so good!

You see, I planned to spend this month working on it. Only life got in the way. The month started on my birthday, so That killed a day as I celebrated and got drunk. Then I had a big event on the 5th November I had to help organise and do work for. More time lost.

Then I got a very bad case of ManFlu, with hallucinations and everything. More Time lost.

Then a load of other stuff came up, like. the launch of “Dragon Age: Origins“, “Borderlands” and “Call of duty: Modern Warfare 2” Both which took up valuable time.

So I must admit, i failed in completing this years NaNoWriMo.  I did however do better than any other year. This year I did sign up for it, and I did manage to get 5,000 words written.

So I am calling it Training. and next year I will settle for no less than a full completion of the 50,000 words!


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