The taking/giving/reaching out term differences between Indian dialect and American English caused me some confusion on one of my calls. They kept saying they were trying to “take RDP from” server A to server B. I interpreted that as connecting from A to B, since they used the word “from.”

It took a bit, but I eventually realized that there seemed to be to be a fundamental difference in the way these things are thought about.

Americans, we always are reaching toward, pointing to, connecting to, or connecting something from HERE to THERE, like we’re shooting a gun or drawing a line. That is not how these Indian guys were looking at it.

If you are “taking RDP from” server A to server B, then that means you are on server B trying to connect to server A. It’s more like if you were to imagine reaching out with your hand and grabbing something toward you.

It’s gotten worse, however, I think the perception is compounded by how expensive it is now and also just eating better as I get older. Now that I know how to cook real, delicious food, fast food just seems so much grosser than it used to. It’s a little worse compared to 10 years ago, but much worse compared to the 80’s and early 90’s, depending on the chain. For example, Taco Bell was a LOT better back in the 80’s. You were more likely spend a bunch of time on the toilet later, but hey, give a little take a little.

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

-Bill Gates

Yeah, it all still depends on how close you are to the fiber, whether pushed over twisted-pair or coax. In some areas, for digital over twisted-pair, it may even still depend on how close you are to a central office. It varies wildly across the country.

I support people who work from home all over the country. People in the boonies are using mobile data and satellite. Those who aren’t suffer terrible DSL connections.

I have coax, and 2 gigabit is an option for me because the fiber Xfinity uses runs right along my neighborhood.

I was a teenager in high school. Late 90’s. I had never really been on a date of any sort before, so this is a first first date story.

I met this girl online on AOL instant messenger. We chatted very frequently for a couple of weeks, then started talking over the phone almost every day. We were really hitting it off, so we started trying to figure out how to hangout together in person. Eventually, she invited me to come over to her house. I was stoked. She said she lived in a nearby suburb, and relayed some directions to me, which I wrote down on a piece of paper. It didn’t seem too far. She said her parents would be home, so my parents said it was ok for me to go over there. I mean, they were probably stoked I wanted to go see a girl too, as I’m pretty sure they were starting to think I was gay by then. I wasn’t, but that’s a separate messed-up story.

An issue came up, though. Her parents said she couldn’t hang out unless she cleaned her room, as it was really messy. I said “No problem! I’ll help you clean it and we can hang out after!” Genius, right?

Anyway, hormones firing on all 8 cylinders, I hop in the car and begin my journey. Turns out she didn’t really live in the city she said she did. That was just the nearest city to where she lived. I’m driving, driving, driving, further away from town thinking I’m lost, but I’m not. I remember turning around and doubling back a few times assuming I MUST have missed a turn. I did not yet own a cell phone to call and verify with her. Folks, the struggle was real back then, LOL. I just eventually followed the instructions as best I could, and eventually found my way. They were not good instructions. It was a miracle, really.

I go up, knock on the door. She and her parents answer the door and let me in. These parents were weird. They were basically gushing to meet me and let me in, but were strangely stoic at the same time, if that makes any sense whatsoever. Whatever. But then, all of a sudden , these parents that were going to be there while we hung out suddenly grabbed all of their things and bounced. Drove off. Huh, weird. They just left this strange boy they’ve never met and their daughter alone in their house. Good thing I’m not a creep, I guess?

This girl is grinning happy, but then gives a warning. She says her room is really messy. I say “It’s ok! My room gets messy sometimes, too! Let’s just attack it real quick and then we can hang out.”

Narrator: No, the boy did not actually know what a real messy room was.

We go in her room and I am shocked. I try not to show it, but it’s bad. Really bad. Every surface in the room is covered with stuff. No part of her floor is visible. Just clothes, toys, books, all sorts of stuff covering the floor, the bed, the shelves, the dressers. I take a moment to look around and take it all in. I’m already here. I’ve already agreed to help her with this, and I really want to get to the hanging out part. I clap my hands and say “Welp! Let’s grab some trash bags!”

So I spend the next couple of hours at least helping straighten out this disaster zone. Now, you really get to know a person when you dig through all of their stuff. There were a couple of things of note. First, it became apparent that this had never been done. Ever. As we pulled up the strata of clothing and toys on the floor, it was like an archaeological dig. The further we got down, the smaller the clothing became. The toys looked like those of a child younger and younger. By the time we got to the bottom, there was toddler clothing. Once able to get under the bed, there were baby toys under there.

At one point, I found a bible, and asked where she wanted to put it. Her eyes widened and she got very serious and placed it up on one of her shelves with the cover facing outward, on display. The manner in which she did this was a little creepy. Now, I was religious and had recently finished up Catechism at that point, so being happy to find your bible didn’t seem weird to me, but I found her a bit dramatic. Whatever. I keep going, and then I find a witchcraft book. SAME reaction. Eyes wide, she places it up next to the Bible. She then turns to me and says, “You know, sometimes, I feel like I’m a bit closer to the devil.”

Like an oblivious character in a horror movie, I don’t get too freaked out. I’m like, dang, this girl is weird and has some issues or something. She starts talking about sex. Saying something along the lines of how she’s had it before, and wondering if I have or not. A lot of things were said by her that, out of context, may have been just a bit quirky. All together like that in that setting, though, I really wondered what was going on with this girl.

Eventually, we finished the cleaning. Many bags of trash and old clothes and toys all bagged up. Vacuumed, dusted, bed made. It felt so good and clean and open. A sense of self satisfaction. She sits down on the bed with a weird look on her face. Looking down at the floor. I say, “Alright! Now we get to actually hang out! What would you like to do?”

Her parents walk in the front door. She slaps her knees and says “Welp! It was nice hanging out! My parents said I could hang out until [this time], so you’ll have to go home now. Maybe we can hang out again soon!”

Narrator: They would not.

On my way out, I look around at the house once more. It seems normal. Clean. Very clean, even.

We didn’t really chat anymore after that. I actually tried to, mainly out of curiosity and concern. I had questions at this point, as you would imagine. She no longer had interest in responding. I just hope she appreciated having her room be comfortable.

Noticing the little two eyes over the voice one, I think that would be a fun way to indicate if you were you were to run a POTS line over Ethernet, too. Not only would it look like a little guy with his mouth open, but it would also be a reminder that only two pins in that port are connected. (You can actually connect a phone line to a jack like that and just plug an old phone cable into the middle of the port and it will work)

That’s exactly what he means by “ending the war” and it “never happening in the first place”

This is the correct answer because that’s getting into borderline corporate responsibility territory. The offering of gifts and fraternizing parts of it.

I used to put them in a plastic baggie, push all the air out, then stick it in the freezer. It seemed to halt the process long enough to give it to a friend and allow them watch it after the 48 hour period.

Seeing as how the sun has flares that are wider across than the earth is, I don’t think it would do a whole lot. I’m on the fence, though. The surface of a star is the way it is and where it is because of two things: the immense pressure of the nuclear furnace and the immense gravity holding it together. Those two things basically fight against each other and determine how far out the surface of the star is.

I have to wonder if disturbing that equilibrium just for a second might cause a little “burp” or something.

My first thought was also that it’s a Pi bottleneck. I have a 4b, and I don’t think I would really trust it to handle some of the higher-quality streaming. Maybe just barely.

lol you are correct. I meant to reply to the other guy. Low on sleep like many of us here

This happened because a file that CrowdStrike pushed out, which by their own processes is not one that is signed, was immediately pushed out with one of their updates. This update was pushed directly through CrowdStrike’s own method, not via Windows Update. CrowdStrike maintains this capability in order to quickly respond to and prevent security threats. The fact that they have .sys files that aren’t signed is crazy on its own, and a huge screwup by CrowdStrike. So many companies relied upon and trusted this company because up until now, everybody considered it a great product, so it was extremely popular and prevalent. It’s been a huge wake up call for everybody in I.T.

deleted by creator

Maybe a rogue entity trying to anonymously use it to train an AI or LLM. Either for its data or to learn how to more effectively attack.

I work in I.T. for a healthcare company. Ascension is a pretty large one. The bigger a company gets and the faster it grows, the more it takes on a diversity of varying technologies that all need to be managed, migrated, killed off, merged, hardened, etc. It’s a difficult job especially for healthcare. I know that the company I work for is working very hard to keep up with things, but it’s a logistical nightmare. You MUST have very smart people in charge that have the right priorities. You have to have information channels open to make sure administration knows what the potential issues are. Compartmentalization of information and access. There are so many potential points of failure it’s insane. And then there’s the most important thing of all: making sure all employees are educated enough that they don’t let their credentials get compromised.

Things are getting worse in general because of how hard it is to stay on top of everything nowadays. I just recently got a couple of letters in the mail about my info being leaked by some companies that had my info. I just have to do my part to stay on top of my own responsibilities, watch my own identity and finances, and make sure those around me are being secure, as well. Everybody needs to know how important this is, and many do, but I don’t think enough people really understand or make it a priority.

HHS is instituting new rules for healthcare (and other industries) to help track and respond to these things. The government is getting very involved with this now. I hope it helps.

Is this blog yours?

I’ve never understood that one. I understand even less now that I’ve written a Powershell script for remote troubleshooting at work. It started simple, but now it gathers tons of information, a lot of which is from the logs. On some machines it takes literal seconds to search and pull all of the log information. I could run this script probably 15 times in the time it takes to even launch Event Viewer.

There are a lot of things that improved over the course of the 20th century that could be correlated here. Improved nutrition, reduction of poisons, handling of diseases that would affect children during key developmental periods, even having a higher daily experience of intellectually-stimulating activities could be looked in to. Also, is that about when we started using hormones/steroids in meat-producing animals?

We use Dell WD-19 docks. Not sure if you use similar. Updated dock firmware and laptop drivers made a difference for us with connection issues. Sometimes you gotta perform a reset on them to make them behave (disconnect dock power and USB-C and hold power button for just over 15 sec). Sometimes the laptop NVRAM needs to be reset instead (for Dell, disconnect all devices and power while off and hold button for just over 30 sec). Overall, though, no huge issues with DP specifically if the dock and laptop firmwares are up to date. Third-party docks/replicators definitely have way more issues, though.