Grumbledook Blogs

The site maintenance team have been a man down all summer this year due to one of them suffering an unfortunate and painful medical complication a few weeks before term ended. This means that aside from the 15 minutes helping me unload the Dell delivery (15 minutes I was very grateful for), they’ve not been able to spare much time, given that schools do the vast majority of their building works during the summer (as well as the vast majority of their IT upgrades).

So, as the only member of the IT team, if computers need moving, it’s me that moves them. And a lot of computers need moving.

I multiplied up the weight of the kit I was moving around today, and realised that in the space of an afternoon, I have carried more than a metric tonne of computer equipment across the site. No wonder I’m sodding knackered.

Yesterday I was ranting on Twitter when I found that the 20 new OptiPlex 780 USFF machines I’d purchased to refit one of our ICT suites appeared to be missing their Windows COA stickers. Normally I detest stickers as an affront to product design, but given that these are legally required as eligibility for our site-wide Windows 7 upgrade licence under the Microsoft Schools Agreement, I was… unimpressed.

However, thanks to a tip-off from @manwithnoname, I have found that they are there after all – on a concealed product information tab that pulls out at the back:

And there I was thinking that was some kind of fastening hook for cable ties…

I’ve seen these on Dell servers before, but not on workstations. That’s what I get for unpacking boxes at 6pm when I should be at home eating a Kit Kat. Still, this should at least help with the kids trying to pick off the stickers when the teacher isn’t looking… at least until they find it too.

IT IS A FACT that the likelihood of someone screwing up at any given moment is inversely proportional to the amount of spare time you have at that moment to deal with OTHER PEOPLE’S SCREWUPS.

This relationship continues right up to the point where you literally have a zero amount of time to deal with screwups, at which point a screwup is infinitely probable.

My Dell Streak came with a free copy of Quickoffice, which is a handy little program, and especially useful on the large screen of the Streak. When I registered, it signed me up to an occasional mailing list, which I tolerated on the grounds of getting a useful app that I might otherwise have had to pay for.

Until now.

Last week, I got a mailshot from them. The top story:

Well, as an Android user, that’s completely irrelevant to me. Next story?

OK, again, I have an Android phone, not a Nokia Symbian phone. Next?

Great, now a contest just for iOS users. How useful. Anything else?

OK, screw you guys: now you’re just taking the mick. Why the hell am I on this mailing list again?

Ah yes, because I signed up to receive ANDROID NEWS.

Oh look, an Unsubscribe button.

I woke up this morning to find my PC in the lounge powered on. This is rarely a good sign, since it routinely goes into hibernation after its nightly backup at around 1am, so if it’s powered on unbidden when I get up, it means something didn’t go right.

It became immediately obvious that the machine was running outrageously slow, taking a good minute just to unlock the screen. An attempt at opening Task Manager hadn’t completed two minutes later. If I’d been in a hurry, I’d have simply rebooted, but since it was Saturday, I fired up my laptop and settled down to breakfast.

When I came back, this is what I found:

One process, ADEProxy.exe, had spawned over 10,000 instances of itself, causing such massive process contention that a single taskmgr.exe process was utterly starved of resources. Yes, TEN THOUSAND instances. I’m pretty sure that’s a new record for number of processes open on my machine at once. I should point out that this machine is a has a quad-core Q6600 processor and 4GB of RAM, so it’s not exactly easy to slow it down (and bizarrely, those 10,000 processes weren’t even using that much CPU time). Sadly I wasn’t able to get a screenshot of the number of open handles.

Luckily once the Task Manager had focus, I could at least right-click one of the instances and find out what the sodding thing was:

A quick search online confirmed that it’s part of the Android phone PC USB interface, which is integrated into the PC Suite for my Android-based Dell Streak. Quite why it decided to go Agent Smith on my computer is so far unknown, other than the fact it is clearly coded by imbeciles. Overcome with morbid curiosity at just how bad the problem was, I resisted a reboot once more, instead opting to run pskill at see how long it took to nuke 10,000 processes. After 25 minutes I went and took a shower, and it was just finishing up when I got back. In all it took over an hour.

Here I was thinking that Nokia’s PC Suite was a bloated piece of junk. I’d say we have a new winner in that category.

It’s been pretty quiet around here this week, mainly because I’ve been busy. Even more so than usual, which given how busy the summer normally is, is saying a lot.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been bringing new servers online, moving files, redeploying applications, and generally shifting stuff around as part of a smooth transition to our new network management system. Today, I hit a milestone.

Today, I decommissioned the last remaining RM Community Connect 3 server on our network.

For every person who has to still put up with this antiquated, cobbled-together piece of junk; for every sysadmin who longs to see the back of it; this is for you.

This story popped up on my news feed this evening, and its contents were sobering, and yet not at all surprising. If anything, I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often.

A simple plan to ruin your boss: plant child porn on his PC

A disgruntled maintenance worker at a UK secondary school has been accused of planting child pornography on his boss’ computer in order to have his boss fired and to ruin the man’s life.

The perpetrator allegedly mailed a CD containing child pornography to the police, claiming that it came from his boss’ computer. He also planted child porn on his boss’ laptop and then phoned in an anonymous tip to the police, who seized the laptop and arrested the victim.

(More)

Let me make a few things clear:

1. THIS IS WHY YOU HAVE A PASSWORD.
2. This is why you don’t tell ANYONE your password. NOT EVEN ME.
3. This is why you don’t walk away from your workstation without locking it or logging off.
4. Lastly, this is why you are in a union.

For school workers in particular, a false accusation like this can easily destroy your career and your life. Don’t make it easy for someone by being an idiot.

In Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, trolls count in a base 4-like system whose main cardinals are One, Two, Three, and Many (there is also Lots, which is equal to 16 in decimal).

It is a little known fact that Windows Server Update Services counts in a similar fashion, only it uses a much simpler system with only two numbers: Some and Many.

Observe this amazing numerical system in action:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Windows Server Update Services
Date:          05/08/2010 12:50:30
Event ID:      13021
Task Category: 6
Level:         Warning
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      updates.angrytech.internal
Description:
Some client computers are not reporting their inventory. 1 have been detected so far.

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Windows Server Update Services
Date:          05/08/2010 14:30:36
Event ID:      13022
Task Category: 6
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      updates.angrytech.internal
Description:
Many client computers are not reporting their inventory. 2 have been detected so far.

This is why whenever I look at the Role Health Summary page, I get a dirty great red × next to WSUS; apparently just two computers not checking in counts as ‘many’.

So, if someone would someone please teach the WSUS developers how to count higher than 2, I would be very grateful.

In general, I try to do what I’m told. I follow the directions. I obey the posted limit. I RTFM.

So when I get a big sodding yellow reprimand on PayPal despite checking the instructions to see exactly what they wanted me to do…

…THIS HACKS ME OFF.

What’s worse is that this always happens with Amex. For those who don’t have one, Amex cards have a 4-digit code on the front in addition to the ‘normal’ 3-digit one on the back. There isn’t a merchant in the world that ever tells me which CSC they want (hell, they can’t even settle on what to call it). Sometimes they want the one on the front. Sometimes the one on the back. They NEVER ASK FOR THE RIGHT ONE.

I’ve known for a long time that Adobe Reader doesn’t play nicely with redirected AppData folders, but I really thought VLC was better than this.

Annoyingly, since version 1.1.0, VLC Media Player doesn’t like the user’s AppData directory being on a UNC path (i.e. starting with a \). It wants a drive letter. If you do redirect AppData to a UNC path, you may well end up seeing this sodding annoying screen every time you play a video:

If you’re lucky, it will take “less than a few minutes” and the video will start playing immediately afterwards. If your experience is similar to mine, it will take longer than a Windows Service Pack install, and be followed with another inexplicable delay before the video eventually plays (assuming you haven’t gotten bored and given up by then).

The VLC team have been made aware of this, but it’s not yet fixed. For now, if you redirect user AppData to a UNC path, stick to version 1.0.5. This does make the procedure for using SAP announcements with IPTV (scroll to about 2/3 of the way down) a bit more tedious, but it’s that or nothing right now.