How was your day?

[Bamagirl]

Recently got back from a trip to the gulf coast of Alabama with my teenage stepdaughter. Now I’m contending with catching up on mail and appointments and other chores that piled up while we were gone.

[Marshal Davout]

I was in Web Support for Websites for a facility. The other guy wanted to leave early; so we said nothing is going on, so go ahead and take off. However; if something is going to go wrong it will go wrong at 4:30 PM on a Friday ! So I get a call and email from Systems Security asking "Is this a Valid email" One girl was changing her password in a system; but she never got the answering email; so she kept changing it. another girl was getting her password changed emails; so she complained to systems "I am Not changing my password ! " Hence the Dilemma. Turns out that the girls have almost similar names; so that when systems install set up her email they pointed her emails at the other girl ! I had to tell systems security "I cannot validate a systems email without studying it; and running an analyzer on it. This will take a while" But in checking the girls email addresses; I found that the one girl would never get emails and the other girl would get all of them ! so I had to contact Systems Install to straighten out their email addresses; as that part I cannot do ! Then explain to everyone what was going on !

[Scruffydog777]

Originally Posted by Marshal Davout

I was in Web Support for Websites for a facility. The other guy wanted to leave early; so we said nothing is going on, so go ahead and take off. However; if something is going to go wrong it will go wrong at 4:30 PM on a Friday ! So I get a call and email from Systems Security asking "Is this a Valid email" One girl was changing her password in a system; but she never got the answering email; so she kept changing it. another girl was getting her password changed emails; so she complained to systems "I am Not changing my password ! " Hence the Dilemma. Turns out that the girls have almost similar names; so that when systems install set up her email they pointed her emails at the other girl ! I had to tell systems security "I cannot validate a systems email without studying it; and running an analyzer on it. This will take a while" But in checking the girls email addresses; I found that the one girl would never get emails and the other girl would get all of them ! so I had to contact Systems Install to straighten out their email addresses; as that part I cannot do ! Then explain to everyone what was going on !

That is an interesting story. Kind of reminds me of some of the spam I get on almost a daily basis. Amazon is one name they often use saying there's a problem with you account, click here to sign in. I made the mistake of clicking on that but luckily nothing happened at that point but they want you to sign in with your username and password and I see right away the return address has nothing to do with Amazon and that's as far as that went.

I got one the other day from what was supposed to be my insurance company with who I have an auto and home policies. It said your house policy payment is late and in danger of cancellation. I thought, yeah right! I'm not falling for that because I know I paid my bills at the beginning of the month. Still I went to their website and sure enough my house policy was in arrears! What happened was I mixed up my payments and sent the lower car payment towards my house policy and it wasn't enough to cover it. So it's a good thing I didn't blow it off as being another scam.

[Marshal Davout]

Originally Posted by Scruffydog777

That is an interesting story. Kind of reminds me of some of the spam I get on almost a daily basis. Amazon is one name they often use saying there's a problem with you account, click here to sign in. I made the mistake of clicking on that but luckily nothing happened at that point but they want you to sign in with your username and password and I see right away the return address has nothing to do with Amazon and that's as far as that went.

I got one the other day from what was supposed to be my insurance company with who I have an auto and home policies. It said your house policy payment is late and in danger of cancellation. I thought, yeah right! I'm not falling for that because I know I paid my bills at the beginning of the month. Still I went to their website and sure enough my house policy was in arrears! What happened was I mixed up my payments and sent the lower car payment towards my house policy and it wasn't enough to cover it. So it's a good thing I didn't blow it off as being another scam.

Yes It is always a good policy to check the Originator of an email by placing your mouse pointer over the purported originator "From" section of an incoming email. That should give you an indication of who sent it and if it is a valid email ! If the originator of the email appears to be spurious, then it is better to delete the email without opening it ! As you say scruffy; It is better to go to the actual web address of the concerned company and check if what they say is true !

[Marshal Davout]

Being semi-retired; I don't drive as much in the winter;
so I put my car battery on a Charger to keep it fresh !
Unfortunately the electric power failed for some reason ( somebody hit a pole ? ) so when it came back on; it surged my Charger !
This didn't affect the Battery; however it blew the Fuse in the car, astoundingly. So that even though I got a jump, the car was still dead !
So I had to get it towed to have it checked out. That was when they told me the fuse was dead; so I had to get that replaced for about $11 !
After that the car was OK.
So I guess the moral of the story is; to have your Charger connected through a surge protector, in order to protect the Fuses in your car ! Or ; if the power goes off, then you should disconnect your Charger until it has been back on for an hour ( sometimes it would go off more than once and then they would surge it twice ! ) The Electric company doesn't care if they surge the line; when they turn the power back on !

[Marshal Davout]

Having been a Programmer; Systems Programmer, Systems Analyst, Web Developer, Web Support kind of guy in my profession; I know a little bit about this world !
So apparently an application of Microsoft was updated and then failed which caused a lot of world wide systems to go down !
Now most systems and applications of a company have actually two systems; a Test System and a Real System ! And you only make changes in the Test system ! You only "promote" the change to the Real system after you know it works OK ! And sometimes they even make the Programmer go through a Peer Review of other uninvolved Programmers who check out the work of the original Programmer !
This apparently was not done and somebody promoted a bad change to the online application ! Consequently they seem to have brought down a good part of the world !
So this is a prime example of Bad Programing Practices ! If I did this my Boss would be severely chewing me out ! In some cases this could even get you Fired !
And Elon Musk had Fun with this as he put a laughing meme on X; which made Fun of Bill Gates and Microsoft ! He said MS is down but X is still up ! Ha !
Anymore ; not to get political I kinda distrust Bill Gates as he wants me to go to the "Cloud" with windows 11, and put everything on the Cloud; but I do not like to do this; so I will stay with Windows 10 as long as I can !

[Marshal Davout]

I was working for a Contractor company and we coordinated our information with another country's Navy. However the foreign power used a different kind of computer and so they were not compatible with our IBM ! So we had to send a 9-track tape to them; but they couldn't read ours ! ( This is now ancient technology as the information would now be transmitted by satellites ! ) So we wrote up a Technical Memo to ask the foreign programmer's how their tape labels were set up; so we could write a program to code our tape right on the IBM and we would generate their tape labels on our tape on the IBM system ! So we sent a Memo downtown to be transmitted through our naval bureaucracy.
However the Cute Secretary down town thought that our technical memo didn't make sense; so she re-wrote it and then transmitted it !
So the other programmer's didn't know what we were talking about; so they sent us back a nonsensical reply ! Ha !
So then we had one of our Navy Captains take one of theirs out to lunch and beg him for their programmer's phone number ! So we got that and finally were able to talk to them and get the Tape information we needed ! This worked well for a month; however our navy found out we were talking to the foreign programmer's directly and so they told us to cut it out and only go through the chain of command downtown; so we were cut off !
But the lesson here is that if a technical memo is being sent; it should never be re-written by the Secretary ! Ha !

[Chicago Express Service]

I find myself on the blessed tail-end of a 32 hour day. I woke up yesterday (Sunday) at 8AM Chicago time, and that evening, flew to London (10PM departure, noon London time arrival).

Thanks to my perennial inability to sleep on planes, I caught /maybe/ a full hour of shut-eye, before beginning the second day in London. It's now 8PM here, so in an hour or so I can finally go to sleep - the benefit is, I generally front-load the jet lag on the first day and I'll be back in action tomorrow.

Pissing around the south of England, meeting a few friends, then it's off to Strasbourg Friday for the I Gotta Feeling show. I know very little about the rest of the performers, but hey, Alizée's going to be there, good enough for me.

[Marshal Davout]

I was in a nice little company on a government base. We were a right good company with excellent people in all positions; so we had a "Like" rating of about 98.5% ! The best thing about the company was not only did it have a 401K; but it also had Profit sharing ! Which is smart for a company ; because the employees always try to keep the Users Happy ! Anyway I was about to go out to do some installs of an application. Then I got an email from a user, "When I access the app it says .EXE is missing ?" Maybe it's just temporary for an update; let me check it out ! Sure enough it is missing. So I email my Boss; but tell him I have to go out to do installs; so I don't know what is the matter with it ! I am installing one of our own apps; so systems install doesn't do it ! I have to install an update on 30 to 40 user's computers ! Because of the number I don't make appointments as that is a waste of time and energy. Since I know their buildings and rooms; I just show up in their offices and slam in the update and leave a note for them and leave ! I am authorized by security and my company position to do this ! So I do as many of the installs that I can for today and head back to my desk. The Boss had sent me an email to see him when I got back; so I do ( unfortunately he has a temper like the atomic bomb; so I hope I am not involved in the fiasco about the missing .EXE ! )
He says No Problem ! I will just reestablish the application from my backup Folder ! Then he finds that the backup Folder is missing ? ! This looks like we are under attack; I tell him as somebody has got into the server and seems to be deleting folders for the fun of it ! ? So he has to go back to an original CD Copy and reestablish the EXE from there ! This is a really suspicious problem as none of the programmers would have accidentally deleted an EXE ! So he asks Systems to check who has been accessing the servers. and I had to go do another install of the same app; so he tells me to check if that user had moved the folders to his own PC somehow and broken everybody else. But I find that that was not done ! Systems tells us that they have lost the particular log; so they can't tell who did it ? So it ends up a Mystery !

[Chicago Express Service]

Sunday 29 September, 1700 in Chicago:

I’ve had better days. This last week was the second week of my European trip (including a few days in Strasbourg, to see the I Gotta Feeling show). I was considering going back to Lille for the Thursday show, but decided against it as I came down with a cold around Monday - there was a man coughing quite violently on the Lufthansa bus, who I assume gave it to me.

My condition continued to worsen as the week went on, and I flew home Friday. I consulted with my doctor on my arrival, and X-rays went on to show that what I thought was a cold was actually pneumonia. I was given a battery of high-power antibiotics and other tinctures, and I am currently on day 3 of 7 of taking them. They are working, but they suck the energy out of me. It took me a good 10 minutes to write this post, with how my mind is wandering.

I hope you all have been well.