Pro Tip #12

NOwinRAROpen letter to all European IT people respectfully sent from every IT person in the United States:

STOP EMAILING FILES COMPRESSED WITH WINRAR!

win95So 20 years ago, every Windows 95 PC in the US probably had a trial installation of WinRAR that complained about being 120 days past the 30 day trial. Americans could readily extract files compressed in the RAR format.

We also used programs like RealPlayer, WinAmp, Napster, and we used Netscape to load web pages like Web Crawler to search for crappy, static HTML 1 web pages written by college students and early digital porn pioneers.

However here in the 21st century, times have changed, software has improved, and no one in the United States uses WinRAR anymore! Every Windows PC on every desk in every business everywhere can open a standard ZIP file without the use of external software. Please take advantage of that when compressing and sending files to the United States. I would very much like to stop receiving phone calls like this:

Dave, the guys in Russia emailed me this file and I don’t know how to open it. If I email it to you, can you extract the documents and email it back to me?

My next Pro Tip will probably admonish users for emailing multiple copies of files between multiple parties, causing an avalanche of wasted data storage in mailbox databases… but not today.

Pro Tip #11

Superfluous LintA Wet/Dry shop vac makes an excellent tool to use when removing the gratuitous amounts of lint from the inner workings of your clothes dryer.

The powerful motor makes quick work of removing the ridiculous amounts of tiny, dust-like particles that used to be part of your favorite boxer shorts, shirts, towels, brassiere, loin cloth, etc…

However, it is recommended that one checks to make sure there is a filter installed in said Wet/Dry shop vac before you begin.

You’ll have to trust me on this one.

Lint Explosion

Pro Tip #10

So I’ve been having this mystery problem with Server 2012 R2 for a while now. I have a 2TB external drive that I am using for backup storage. I was running out of space on the drive, and I couldn’t figure out why. When I added up the files on the drive, they didn’t come anywhere near 2TB. In fact, I moved everything off of the drive entirely and I still had only 32 GB free! Something was definitely awry, and I had to figure out what.

2012R2 System Volume Gone Wrong

My first thought was to just re-initialize the drive and go on with my life, but then I would always be left wondering what caused it. So instead I investigated until I found the problem, and hopefully this article will help someone else resolve the issue without having to shuffle tons of data around to re-initialize a drive.
Continue reading

Pro Tip #9

No matter how tempting it may be, do not drive underneath a moving Suburban. Not only will it cause undue stress and monetary obligations for the driver of the Suburban, but you may become seriously if not fatally injured yourself. You have been warned.

So… as much as this pro tip sounds like common sense, it was a bit of advice that a young girl could have used prior to attempting to drive under my truck last night. Another bit of common sense would be not to run red lights. Either one would have saved us both a lot of trouble and money.

I was travelling east on RT 30 and the dim-witted antagonist was driving west on RT 30, attempting to turn south onto RT 41. The red light shining down on her car must have gone unnoticed, because before I knew what the hell was going on, this car flew up under my left front tire! It takes an awful lot of force to launch the front end of a 6 thousand pound truck into the air. As for the other car, lets just say it’s hood looked like a 6 thousand pound truck drove over it.

Dec 2013 Suburban DamageThere were no injuries, fortunately. As my friend Steve once said, “stupid should hurt more.” but in this case it didn’t. No, the only casualties were 2 vehicles and the other driver’s underwear.

Come Monday morning, I need to have a sitdown with my insurance agent and figure out how to proceed from here, and to find out how much this dipshit’s negligence is going to raise my insurance rates.

Pro Tip #8

Things and their proper uses:

  • Rear View Mirror: as the name implies, it is for viewing things behind you.
  • Peripheral Vision: to alert you to things moving outside of your field of vision just in case they may be of interest.
  • White and Yellow Lines on the Road: to guide you on your way without endangering those traveling around you.
  • Rumble Strips: to aid you in finding the edge of the road during inclement weather when conditions make it difficult to determine said information visually.

see where I’m going with this?

What these things are not supposed to be used for:

  • Rumble Strips: these are not meant to be a signal to violently jerk the wheel to the left so that you can continue down the road without looking where you’re going.
  • White and Yellow Lines on the Road: these are not polite suggestions, they are necessary to prevent travelling by automobile from becoming this:Traffic in India
  • Peripheral Vision: is not useful for watching where you are going. In fact, it’s not useful for watching anything. You can’t watch things that are in your periphery. In this region, you have vague light and motion sensing capabilities at best.
  • Rear View Mirror: is not meant to be used while in motion to put on your goddamned makeup!

Open letter to all dipshit women who put on their makeup while driving:

Just recently, I happened upon a car swerving wildly across a few lanes of traffic while on my way to work. As I got closer, I saw that the rear view mirror of the car was cranked around completely facing the driver, and the driver was staring directly into it while applying her makeup. I’m not even sure that she was aware that she was driving very slowly and yet effectively occupying all lanes of traffic making it near impossible to pass her. In fact, I’m reasonably certain that awareness is not one of her strong points.

So to all you dipshit women who do this: I really don’t care that you’re going to look like Heath Ledger’s Joker portrayal in your casket. Seriously BitchIn fact, had I been driving my old ’86 Suburban instead of my ’10 Suburban, I might have been inclined to expedite the inevitable conclusion of your negligence before you had the opportunity to cause harm to someone else. What I cannot abide is the danger to others that your actions result in.

Bottom Line: Put your damned makeup on before you leave, after you arrive, or not at all.

Pro Tip #7

100 MPHScenario: You’re in a hurry to get to work. You’ve decided to throw caution and fuel economy to the wind in an effort to reduce the impact of your tardiness. You are cruising past cars on the expressway like they are standing still. Suddenly, that gleeful feeling of acceleration dissipates and you suddenly feel as though there is something wrong with your truck.

There is nothing wrong malfunctioning on your vehicle. It is operating as General Motors intended. They have decided for you, that you don’t need to drive faster than 100 MPH.

… I disagree.

I’ve already priced out a programmer to remove that restriction. Oh yes… it will be mine.

Pro Tip #6

When VMware says it will support a maximum partition size of 2TB – 512B, they’re not kidding. And when you somehow create a NetApp LUN of exactly 2TB, and somehow get VMware to create a datastore on it, and somehow manage to operate production servers on it for a couple years without a problem, you will likely review the configuration at some point and realize that you’re sitting on a ticking time bomb.

Now, if at this point you cautiously move all your virtual machines off to another datastore, then you will probably suffer no ill consequences. If, however, one were to misguidedly resize the NetApp LUN to 1.99TB while VMware still thinks it’s a 2.00TB LUN, expect to stay up late trying desperately to salvage your servers from the deathly grips of I/O errors.

Luckily in the situation that inspired this post, only two virtual machines were storing data on the far edge of the datastore that was affected by the sudden change in LUN size. Neither of these servers were home to critical applications or data, and all services and data necessary to production were moved to a stable datastore without issue. After struggling with the data recovery attempts from the corrupt datastore for a day, I decided to cut my losses and restore them from backup.

All was well this time, but things could have been much worse. The moral of the story is, never ever reduce the size of your storage LUN while you have data on it that you want to keep.

… and no, I was not the one who resized the LUN. I did, however, get to clean up the resulting mess!

Pro Tip #4

Scenario: You pull up to a strange gas station in the middle of a corn field somewhere in Ohio. You grab one of the nozzles from the pump, and remark under your breath how these hicks still use these ancient, huge pump nozzles that were likely used for leaded fuels. Then you swipe your credit card, hoping that this isolated hick-town gas station has seen a credit card before. Then you select the 93 Octane button and squeeze the pump handle, because your Harley touring bike deserves nothing but the best.

Tip: When the pump fails to start pumping and still tells you that you need to select a fuel grade, don’t start cursing the pump with the most foul language ever uttered in a corn field for the supposed malfunction. Instead take a step back, take the time to read words, and realize that this “malfunction” just prevented you from filling the tank of your Harley Davidson with diesel fuel.

Pro Tip #3

Windows Phone 7, Exchange ActiveSync and error 85010014:

If you recently set a user’s password to expire so that they have to change it upon their next login, and you’re setting up their email account on a new Windows phone at the same time, you might get ActiveSync error 85010014.

Hint: It’s because you set their password to expire, dipshit!

I spent far too long reading troubleshooting guides before I figured that one out.
Hopefully this post will spare someone the same fate.

Pro Tip #2

When HBO On Demand says that their recorded content expires on 07/31, and you’re watching it as it transitions from 07/31 to 08/01, they’re not kidding. It expires. It stops playing at the stroke of midnight. Oh, but they put it back up with an expiration of 01/01. So now you have to re-download the whole fucking hour long show to watch the last 3 minutes of it.

Serious case of fucktarditis. Who in the hell thought that one up? Probably some assmunch lawyer.