@ricedg
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When I get some time I’m going to spin up a new VM and have a look. I’m still extremely meh about the whole thing though.
Its just a matter of several legs to get around the problem. I do have access to the ex Control Tower but it’s the shortest Control Tower known to man! The problem isn’t airside but the link required there is 1km+. That just needs the right antenna and careful alignment.
The dog legging starts after that because behind are hangars, warehouses, 3 and 4 storey dorm blocks (as high as the CT) and gazillions of huge trees taller again. One of the locals offered to “make some disappear in the next storm” (it’s Steve’s old mob) but they protected and regularly inspected.
Even a balloon / mast would have an issue as the target buildings are of course the shortest with the most trees around them! I’ll be threading the eye of a needle with a bloody camel if I’m not careful, which is what pisses me off so much about my solution being given away to the competition. On the plus side is if Plan A doesn’t work I have a Plan B that isn’t documented as its a nightmare and involves the expensive hire of cherry pickers (and one of us getting certificated in a hurry).
I doubt if much of the competition are aware of Fresnel Zones either. Another thing that isn’t too much of a worry over short distances. They could also fall into the 60GHz trap in pursuit of bandwidth if they just pick out of catalogues (1 GBps no problem – until it rains).
All totally unethical and nothing I can do about it. GRRRRR!
The stuff I’ve been drinking lately is NEIPA and it’s supposed to look like this:
I’ve been in touch with my Financial Adviser (sounds posh, get one through the Union as a retired member perk) and worked out a way. BTW I don’t go up ladders any more! I will fill you in on my medical woes later but it’s a form of arthritis that’s fusing my spine and causing trouble elsewhere, even my eyes.
It gets worse, “they” want to use my proposals as a basis for others to tender. At least the PM isn’t happy about it and has asked me for a quote for the work done in preparing them. I have rewritten them to take out a lot of detail, it’s one thing outlining a solution to a problem quite another giving the competition the basis for a shopping list.
It’s like people who get architects to do the drawings then pass them to a builder and say here you go, I’m damned if they’ll get half the quantity surveying too.
Quite honestly I probably don’t have too much to fear from the tender process, what worries me is somebody doing it with no knowledge of the networking. This often happens and they’ll buy off the shelf building-to-building links with no idea of their suitability. The dealers they buy from have no clue either, even those who are amongst the big CCTV suppliers. Also some of the dealers solutions are horrendously expensive.
Where distances are short they can get away with it. One site is 2km across and full of tress and buildings right where you don’t want them. I have worked out how to do it and it seems that is now to be shared with others.
Still they could have gone behind my back, and still could. The problem isn’t the PM or the security / design auditors, it’s the faceless procurement people as Ed says. They don’t have a scoobie what they’re looking at and some of the work I’ve had to clear up behind is downright shoddy.
The bigger the business taking on the job the worse it usually is, as the guy doing the job will be 5 or 6 sub contractors deep with no idea of what standards they should be working to. Often they they are just crap. On our last big Navy job I saw BT hauled back to re-cable an entire project as their contractors thought they could choose the cable for the job and were totally unaware of the standards required. They of course fought like hell but didn’t have a leg to stand on. I suspect it’s the contractor(s) that caught the financial flak though.
Thanks Guys. I’ve just been told we have to go through a third party again. They will add an “admin fee” for which they do sod all. The payment terms are usually the last Thursday 3 months after the month of invoice. They do everything to make that 4 months by not processing the invoice in time. We put in an invoice last week of January and got paid in June.
If that is the case I don’t think we can afford to take on the business. It’s a large contract which involves finding 5 figure sums for buying kit, paying for accommodation etc. Doable on 30 days but tying up that much money for potentially the rest of the year? Not only do we all have to eat but that’s money unavailable for other projects.
This is where it really, really stinks. The big boys hold all the cards and they know it and take advantage of it with no moral scruples whatsoever.
They do reach the right people Les. I have been keeping Dianne up to date.
“Good morning. Thank you for the messages, it helps. Bob would be grateful for any donations to NSPCC or St Barnabus Hospice. I will be closing this phone number down in a few days. But if anyone would like my landline 01507 602914 then pass it on. Thank you.”
TPM – if you have a recent Intel or AMD they have “TPM” built in as a service (so no need for a chip) but it needs to be turned on in the UEFI. Intel call it TPP and AMD call it fTPM.
Just upgraded the workshop PC to an R5 3600, turned fTPM on in the UEFI and no issues with BitLocker, but the MS W11 Checker wouldn’t tell me if this was OK as my PC “is managed by your business so ask your administrator”. This is Azure Active Directory that I get for free with 365 Business and makes Teams and things work better across my machines. Unfortunately this Administrator has no fecking clue, that’s why he was running the tool!
All the business machines I’ve built have a TPM chip and laptops have the capability one way or another (so they can run BitLocker). But at the moment the favourite AMD 2200G isn’t on the list even though it has more than enough horsepower for W11.
Just before the announcement I bought a Xenta R3 3400GE from EBuyer (entry CPUs are like dragon poo) on an MSI A520M-A PRO for a customer. Very much the new entry level, but it’s sh1t off a shovel with an NVMe drive, and both are on the compatibility list. The MB has no socket for a TMP so fTPM must be OK.
As for W11? It’s a MEH from me at the moment. I have migrated a couple of business to Google Workspace and TBH I’m more interested in Chromebooks / boxes than PCs as even line of business is moving into the browser. My old T4200 is now Linux only and I did a full 10 user Workspace migration using it, including backing up the old MS Office centric data / emails / contacts etc.
Teams / 365 is becoming the olde stylee Microsoft nightmare and I’m seriously thinking of ditching it, especially with a new business venture looking likely to happen (more on that later).
I actually have some work on this week, all on site, but if you get stuck I’ll gladly do the admin.
I’ll need to know what to look for though.
Can’t say I’m looking forward to them! But if they can stop the inflammation it’ll be worth it.
I think we need a badge we can stick to the tinfoil hats we’re wearing to stop the 5G signals. Or an app. Like Gaydar but for vaccinated people.
Had my first meeting with the Rheumatology nursing team today. I thought it was to start the medication but it was just paperwork. Apparently I should have had two assessments before we got here. Anyway it is as I thought, the medication will supress my immune system to such an extent I’ll be carrying hand wash even when covid is over. Any sign of any infection, no matter how small, I’ll have to consult the team and probably stop the meds.
I have the choice of starting the medication soon or waiting until after my second Pfizer jab and giving that time to do it’s job. Wait a second, I’m under a hospital team why is this an issue? Just give me the jab surely? If it’s AZ no can do, full stop. As it’s Pfizer it may be possible but the consultant will have to sign it off. FFS.
So I said no way am I missing my second jab. I have lived with pain for many years and it isn’t going to kill me, covid with a suppressed immune system on the other hand. Also the way things are going if you haven’t had your jabs a lot of doors are going to be closed. She looked at me like I was mad.
So, when we get around to it it’ll be a weekly self administered jab for 5 weeks then monthly, assessment at 4 months. Chances of it working 30% but there is a Plan B.
I’ve given up listening to all the crap about vaccines, it was all so predictable – apart from the success of our roll out which was a pleasant surprise. The poorer countries with no vaccine and no hope of any without help must be hanging their heads. You watch Russia and China fill that gap, I know the Chinese were supplying African countries months ago.
When the Chinese first started vaccinating people (and we were weeks away) the chat of FB from my “Farage following” friends was one of disbelief it was any good. Then it was why aren’t they sharing it? (I pointed out they were), but did they think Boris would want us to be included? You can imagine their thoughts on the current EU situation.
Unlike a lot of comedy most of what he did is still relevant. I guess because the behaviour of his targets hasn’t changed, like Yes Minister they’re still up to the same things.
Having a full house at the moment it took a while but wasn’t that bad. I know what you mean about scrolling, the next laptop is going to have to be Full HD.
I’ve had a couple of PCs in from that time when we were changing over and compatibility mode was what it was all about. All your bootable software tools still relied on MBR, apps like Rufus didn’t exist yet etc.
One of them had a Gigabyte motherboard with a dodgy ram slot, but an i5-2400 and HD5570. The other had a Biostar board and a Celeron, a real “value” build but had lasted nearly 8 years doing all it’s owner needed before running out of grunt and viable sectors on the HDD.
I had a 120GB SSD knocking about, could get ram up to 6GB and one of the 500GB spinners passed all it’s diagnostics so I had enough hardware to do something worthwhile, especially when a check on benchmarks showed the i5 comparable to a Ryzen 3 3200G.
Nightmare trying work out what the hell I did to make things boot back in the day. In the end I converted all drives to GPT, turned off any CSM and turned on Secure Boot. Sanity restored and W10 installed in what seemed like an age. Of course it wasn’t really that slow but I’ve got used used to NVMe drives and USB3 sticks. W10 didn’t barf at the age of anything and it’s still a very usable “office” machine. The PSU is a Coolermaster 500 watt which must have been bundled with the case as it’s well OTT, so I’m hoping for many more years out of it.
I have an appointment with the Rheumatology nurses on the 24th and on going with the heart team. They are of the opinion that any possible side effects of the medications are outweighed by the benefits. The tweak to my heart medications has had the desired effect on my heart rate without affecting my blood pressure so I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt at the moment.
I can’t say I’m looking forward to the anti-TNF injections but they have consulted with the heart team when choosing what to use. I just hope it can stop things flaring up as it has been pretty bad lately but thankfully has been leaving my eyes alone. The Eye Hospital signed me off last week and the heart team hope to by the end of March, so cross fingers!
The other thing this time is that most of the Government debt is owned by the Bank of England. What happens if they just write that off? Monetary policy just makes your head explode.
Well he’s now lost his platform for all those things by refusing to budge over one issue. Look at why he’s left all his previous jobs, much the same thing. At some stage people tire of him and his ways.
Get yourself a $5 a month Linux server from Digital Ocean. You can base it in 8 locations world wide, mine’s in London.
DIY is pretty easy with these instructions for Ubuntu 18.04 and this script for OpenVPN, but DO have a ready rolled commercial OpenVN solution that’s free for 2 users.
Perhaps they need to bring back the warning stickers from the 60’s when disk brakes became popular.
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