Very few things in life require a reboot except for compiling and installing
a new kernel...

Unless you're running wYNd0z3!!!

So it seems every time there's a windows update on my lappy I go into a panic attack - who knows what to expect? and why does Microsoft think that the machine should decide how I am to work instead of the other way around?

I set my connections to metered, which is the only way to avoid gobbling up bandwidth with continual updates of things for which it is my place to decide when and where I will permit it to occur - if ever!

Well, recently, a serious vul required me (all of us) to do an update, so I opened up the floodgates and away I went......

A few hours later after a few reboots and a couple of gigs I had my box back. But just like everytime I go through this I have to remind my box that it is mine, and not the other way around.

First, the touch screen has a flaw which makes it almost impossible for any pointer device to function - the pointer just goes up the upper right and starts launching stuff.

I fight with that and get to my settings and disable the touchscreen (This is about the fifth time following an update that I've had to do this).

Problem solved, right? No, Now I have to train Windows 10 to let me run application software that I want to, without trying to disable it because it didn't come from their freakin' store or whatev is their issue with me having
a choice in the matter.

Fixed all of that. Everything is kewl, right?

Well, I drove down the mountain earlier today for provisions and a homemade double #cheezburgerz that my friend wanted to make for me. She makes the bestest double #cheezburgerz!

Since I am miles from the nearest pavement, and that pavement is a two lane highway that is closed except for an hour a day on weekdays, this is always
an adventure when I head down the mountain to civilization, and yes, I had to stop twice along the way to fly my chainsaw, as a couple of trees had fallen over the trail leading to the highway. You don't travel around this mountain without a chainsaw and other tools with you at all times.

But I digress.

So I'm one of those people that believes a hard drive should continue to
spin whenever possible - a side effect of the old Seagate ST-225 days. Those 20MByte HDDs suffered from stiction, as we called it, meaning, it will run
fine until you shut it down and then the server dies because it won't spin
back up when you turn the power back on. That, and I'm a UNIX guy from the
time I was a child. Who in their right mind produces a server operating
system that should be cycled once a month, or weekly? That's just dumb.

Anyway, I come back, and power up my laptop to come here and tell everyone
how excited I am about being able to use Fiat currency to purchase Stellar Lumens directly with a Visa or Mastercard, but that will have to wait, coz
I'm on a fricken' rant.

So mind you, I did this update a week or two ago, and have downed my lappy since then with no issues, but this evening when I get back things are
getting all weird when I ssh into V'Ger and I'm like, huh?

Well, my touchpad is set to be disabled whenever I plug a mouse in. I don't like touchpads anyway and always carry a couple of rodents with me, one bluetooth and one with a tail.

So my touchpad and mouse are both working, and being a lazy typist I rest my palm on the pad which of course messes everything up in quite unpredictable ways when trying to type.

Okay so I'll just set it be disabled again whenever I plug a mouse in (which
is ALWAYS!). Huh? That setting is gone! Okay method two, set the Synaptics
HID as a precision pointer first, that should do it? What? No Synaptics
device anymore? Grrrr (Now you can't do this in the BIOS, I know what you're thinking, and I don't know why that's not there on this Dell Lappy).

Alright, regedit time - Huh? they key isn't there = neither method I know is there any longer - the one under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE or USER!

Fuckit. I'll just totally disable it in device manager and be done with it.

Um.... the device already IS disabled.

Okay, I need to make a pot of coffee and chill for a bit. Hm.. what if I.....

Yup! Success! My touchpad no longer works after enabling it in Device
Manager. God bless Billgatus of Borg! We have been assimilated.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Vger.Cloud - NOMAD Internetwork (21:2/104)

Okay, I need to make a pot of coffee and chill for a bit. Hm.. what if I.....

hummmm.... after that long heartfelt and obviously frustrating post, you have won this battle for today. Are you feeling any better? Or, would you feel better if your plastered a Microsoft Logo on a target and begin to blast it with your favorite projectile ? <grin>

---

Rocket Town BBS - Telnet: rtbbs.ddns.net
fsxNET: 21:1/203 FidoNET:1:135/383 - Titusville, FL. NASA SPACE Coast

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Rocket Town BBS (21:1/203)

Yup! Success! My touchpad no longer works after enabling it in Device Manager. God bless Billgatus of Borg! We have been assimilated.

All's well that ends well.. :)

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-4
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:3/107)

On 25 Sep 2019, Argos said the following...

hummmm.... after that long heartfelt and obviously frustrating post, you have won this battle for today. Are you feeling any better? Or, would
you feel better if your plastered a Microsoft Logo on a target and begin to blast it with your favorite projectile ? <grin>

I've finally calmed down lolz. Who'lda thunk? Enabling a device disables it?

More coffee. Paul might still be up and I posted that I would be standing by
in case he wanted to tackle his install issues with someone and share the pain.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Vger.Cloud - NOMAD Internetwork (21:2/104)

On 25 Sep 2019, Al said the following...

Yup! Success! My touchpad no longer works after enabling it in Device Manager. God bless Billgatus of Borg! We have been assimilated.

All's well that ends well.. :)

Yes indeed!

hey it wasn't nearly as grueling as trying to squeeze an extra 3K of RAM out
of QEMM386 after constant tweaking of CONFIG.SYS and SMARTDRV and such ;)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Vger.Cloud - NOMAD Internetwork (21:2/104)

Re: OMF Friken' G!!! I hate wYNd0z3!!!!
By: tallship to All on Wed Sep 25 2019 02:30 am

Very few things in life require a reboot except for compiling and installing a new kernel...

Unless you're running wYNd0z3!!!
So it seems every time there's a windows update on my lappy I go into a

panic

attack -
who knows what to expect? and why does Microsoft think that the machine

should

decide
how I am to work instead of the other way around?

You know, on OpenBSD you used to be expected to compile most of the security updates not so long ago. It was common for me to have a compiler machine just for compiling and deploying the updates.

That was still better than the Windows update hell, in which the update manager
will decide how, when and why to update, and how many times to reboot, unless you hold it with chains and wipe his ass. And even then it sucks.
--- SBBSecho 3.10-Linux
* Origin: Vertrauen - [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net (21:1/183)

Re: OMF Friken' G!!! I hate wYNd0z3!!!!
By: tallship to All on Wed Sep 25 2019 02:30 am

So I'm one of those people that believes a hard drive should continue to spin whenever possible - a side effect of the old Seagate ST-225 days. Those 20MByte HDDs suffered from stiction, as we called it, meaning, it will run fine until you shut it down and then the server dies because it won't spin back up when you turn the power back on.

That's nothing a rubber mallet won't take care of... I used to run an office full of Mac IIcis with 80 mb Quantum Fireball hard drives. Who'd name a hard drive FIREBALL?

They'd get the "Sad Mac" with an ominous set of tones, I'd take out the hard drive, give it a couple of taps, put it back in, boot it up and call Apple. As soon as you said "Fireball" they'd expedite a replacement.

Apparently they tried some kind of vegetable-based lubricant on the spindles in
an attempt to be earth-friendly, and zorched a ton of drives in the process.

That, and I'm a UNIX
guy from the time I was a child. Who in their right mind produces a server operating system that should be cycled once a month, or weekly? That's just dumb.

I came from Netware and PBXes. My phone systems would run for years without powering down - even to the point of being able to upgrade the OS while taking calls!
--- SBBSecho 3.09-Win32
* Origin: http://realitycheckbbs.org (21:4/122)

On 25 Sep 2019, Arelor said the following...

You know, on OpenBSD you used to be expected to compile most of the security updates not so long ago. It was common for me to have a
compiler machine just for compiling and deploying the updates.

Yes I think that was because Theo wanted to ensure that people understood what,was being done, and why. I respect that, but it was an incvonenience if you pretty much implicity trust your mmainainers, like DeRaadt and Volkerding as I do.

That was still better than the Windows update hell, in which the update
manager will decide how, when and why to update, and how many times to reboot, unless you hold it with chains and wipe his ass. And even then
it sucks.

You feel free to preach to the choir anytime you feel the urge to do so :)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Vger.Cloud - NOMAD Internetwork (21:2/104)

That's nothing a rubber mallet won't take care of... I used to run an office full of Mac IIcis with 80 mb Quantum Fireball hard drives. Who'd name a hard drive FIREBALL?

They'd get the "Sad Mac" with an ominous set of tones, I'd take out the hard drive, give it a couple of taps, put it back in, boot it up and
call Apple. As soon as you said "Fireball" they'd expedite a replacement.

You know what's funny - I actually remember hearing about the Quantum
Fireball somewhere. I expected it to be a hot seller back in the day, but
given they screwed up on being 'green', they got a lot of RMAs - because
yeah, let's be green when we're making more defective drives to offset how 'green' we are. *rolls eyes*

Anywho. My gripe with windows is the fact none of my modern equipment that I use (being a gamer who does dabble in modern and retro tech - I did have a Bondi Blue iMac at one point)is all windows or bust. It agitates me. "Oh, you want to use a VR Device? Cough up money for a Vive, because that's the only VR Headset that can run on linux. And you better hope WINE works well with your games library!"

I was planning on Moving from Windows 7 to Linux Mint with Windows 10 on a 'isolated' drive, but after hardware issues with Windows 7, I switched to 10, but as soon as I get a new job, I'm going to get a High capacity SSD and move my current Linux Mint install (I'm dualbooting Win10 and Linux) to it.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

On 25 Sep 2019, poindexter FORTRAN said the following...

That's nothing a rubber mallet won't take care of... I used to run an office full of Mac IIcis with 80 mb Quantum Fireball hard drives. Who'd name a hard drive FIREBALL?

They'd get the "Sad Mac" with an ominous set of tones, I'd take out the hard drive, give it a couple of taps, put it back in, boot it up and
call Apple. As soon as you said "Fireball" they'd expedite a replacement.

Apparently they tried some kind of vegetable-based lubricant on the spindles in an attempt to be earth-friendly, and zorched a ton of drives in the process.

I can't stop laughing :) You did take those drives into a back room first so they didn't think you were crazy, right?

I came from Netware and PBXes. My phone systems would run for years without powering down - even to the point of being able to upgrade the
OS while taking calls!

Years ago, back in the NT 3.51 days, I was a contract engineer at ARCO World Headquarters (They have a bunch of world headuarters, btw) in Downtown Los Angeles.

The MIS director came up to me and asked if I would move this really old Netware box into the highly secure datacenter from the lab. Apparently, it
had some really mission critical stuff on it.

I told him that I really didn't know that much about Netware, and he said to just try and see what I can do. No pressure, right? That's the kind of thing the Romans say right before they hand you a sword to fall on.

So I walked into the lab, and there it was sitting on a crash cart. I walked around behind it and said, "Oh kewl! it's got two power suppliies!" I sent someone down to the hardware store to pick up a couple of hundred foot extension cords and then proceeded to roll it from office to office, daisy chaining the power cords from outlet to outlet as I went, and up the ramp into the big DC where the g-narly Tandem mainframes were, found a nice little
place for it and parked it. Someone else came in later that evening and wired up some UTP and plugged it in and voila! No downtime.

But...

About two weeks later, and to this day I have no idea what possessed this guy to do it, a desktop tech with a paper CNA (not even a CNE) took some kind of customer support call and decided he needed to do something on the very same machine. The guy was a total hack and already I forbade him from touching
any of my machinery.

Well, he downed the Netware server, I dunno, maybe after installing a module
or something, like I said, I don't know much about Netware - but he couldn't get it back up.

Again, the MIS director comes up to me and I can see he's really nervous (mission critical shit). He asks me if I can help.

I tell him that I really don't know that much about Netware, and he says, "that's okay, just take a look at it and see if you can do anything, there's
a lot of heat on me right now".

I agree, and the three of us (the director and the hack) walk into the DC and
I go up to the cart and look at the monitor with a cursor blinking. Now, like
I said, I don't know much about Netware, but I do know a few things lolz...

I type, "server" and hit return.

Bitch fires right up, the director turns to the paper CNA hack and fires him
on the spot.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Vger.Cloud - NOMAD Internetwork (21:2/104)

hey it wasn't nearly as grueling as trying to squeeze an extra 3K of RAM out of QEMM386 after constant tweaking of CONFIG.SYS and SMARTDRV and

Well, one person's "grueling" is another's "weekend well spent". My father
and I used to compete. I'd usually manage 633K, then'd he'd eek out 634. The time I upgraded my CPU and got 635K was one of the highlights of my life :-)

The hours I spent tweaking CONFIG.SYS, playing around with load orders,
EMM386 exclusions and inclusions looking for hidden pockets of usable upper memory, and scouring the boards for drivers that would load high and play
nice still evoke fond memories.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Raspberry Pi/32)
* Origin: *HUMONGOUS* BBS (jenandcal.familyds.org:2323) (21:4/123)

That's nothing a rubber mallet won't take care of... I used to run an office full of Mac IIcis with 80 mb Quantum Fireball hard drives.
Who'd name a hard drive FIREBALL?

I had a couple of those drives attached to my IIgs at one stage. One worked, one didn't, but the one that didn't spin up supplied terminator power. Normally
if they won't spin up and you can't coerce it, heating it helps. Anyway this pair I had together for I don't know how long.... I got mightily confused one day when an extra HD of the same capacity turned up on my desktop. The super stuck one decided to go for a spin... and I'm talking at least months to a year
before it came round....

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/105)

You know what's funny - I actually remember hearing about the Quantum Fireball somewhere. I expected it to be a hot seller back in the day, but given they screwed up on being 'green', they got a lot of RMAs - because yeah, let's be green when we're making more defective drives to offset how 'green' we are. *rolls eyes*

I recall the stories of Fireballs being prone to going up in smoke... either literally or metaphorically. To my memory the stiction problematic drives are actually much earlier Quantum ProDrives, which someone put extra lube in rather
than an experimental batch. But its all hearsay... I've never seen anything official about either case.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/105)

On 25 Sep 2019 at 04:56a, tallship pondered and said...

More coffee. Paul might still be up and I posted that I would be
standing by in case he wanted to tackle his install issues with someone and share the pain.

You're very kind to offer (as is everyone else - thanks guys :)) I'm just playing at the moment trying a few dummy runs on the x 2 systems. Tonight I have burnt an image onto DVD for the other machine and am trying to install Debian on that one. This image has the 'extras' or firmware stuff so I am hopeful it may work better on the other box, which has a DVD player in it.

If it works I might take that HDD out drop it into the first box and see if
it boots up. Dunno... I'm in play/learn by doing mode :)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

On 25 Sep 2019, poindexter FORTRAN said the following...

That's nothing a rubber mallet won't take care of... I used to run an
office full of Mac IIcis with 80 mb Quantum Fireball hard drives. Who'd
name a hard drive FIREBALL?

They'd get the "Sad Mac" with an ominous set of tones, I'd take out the
hard drive, give it a couple of taps, put it back in, boot it up and
call Apple. As soon as you said "Fireball" they'd expedite a replacement.

Apparently they tried some kind of vegetable-based lubricant on the
spindles in an attempt to be earth-friendly, and zorched a ton of drives
in the process.

I can't stop laughing :) You did take those drives into a back room
first so
they didn't think you were crazy, right?

I came from Netware and PBXes. My phone systems would run for years
without powering down - even to the point of being able to upgrade the
OS while taking calls!

Years ago, back in the NT 3.51 days, I was a contract engineer at ARCO World
Headquarters (They have a bunch of world headuarters, btw) in Downtown
Los
Angeles.

The MIS director came up to me and asked if I would move this really
old
Netware box into the highly secure datacenter from the lab.
Apparently, it
had some really mission critical stuff on it.

I told him that I really didn't know that much about Netware, and he
said to
just try and see what I can do. No pressure, right? That's the kind of thing
the Romans say right before they hand you a sword to fall on.

So I walked into the lab, and there it was sitting on a crash cart. I walked
around behind it and said, "Oh kewl! it's got two power suppliies!" I
sent
someone down to the hardware store to pick up a couple of hundred foot extension cords and then proceeded to roll it from office to office,
daisy
chaining the power cords from outlet to outlet as I went, and up the
ramp into
the big DC where the g-narly Tandem mainframes were, found a nice
little
place for it and parked it. Someone else came in later that evening
and wired
up some UTP and plugged it in and voila! No downtime.

But...

About two weeks later, and to this day I have no idea what possessed
this guy
to do it, a desktop tech with a paper CNA (not even a CNE) took some
kind of
customer support call and decided he needed to do something on the
very same
machine. The guy was a total hack and already I forbade him from
touching
any of my machinery.

Well, he downed the Netware server, I dunno, maybe after installing a module
or something, like I said, I don't know much about Netware - but he couldn't
get it back up.

Again, the MIS director comes up to me and I can see he's really
nervous
(mission critical shit). He asks me if I can help.

I tell him that I really don't know that much about Netware, and he
says,
"that's okay, just take a look at it and see if you can do anything, there's
a lot of heat on me right now".

I agree, and the three of us (the director and the hack) walk into the
DC and
I go up to the cart and look at the monitor with a cursor blinking.
Now, like
I said, I don't know much about Netware, but I do know a few things
lolz...

I type, "server" and hit return.

Bitch fires right up, the director turns to the paper CNA hack and
fires him
on the spot.

Epic.

Also, damn I miss Netware 3.12. Solid stuff.


--- NiKom v2.5.0
* Origin: Delta City (deltacity.se, Vallentuna, Sweden) (21:2/130.0)

Re: Re: OMF FrikG!!!G!!! I hate wYNd0z3!!!!
By: Joacim Melin to tallship on Sat Sep 28 2019 07:15 pm

Also, damn I miss Netware 3.12. Solid stuff.

I liked Netware too - it was pretty cool. I recently found some version of Netware (6.5) and isntalled it - think I reactivated some old brain cells. Was
running my DOS bbs on it, but Argus didnt like the
outbound dir on it - complained about all the files it was creating (BSY) were
not found... :(

Maybe I should find 3.12.
...ëîåã

... Ahh! Come on Erick, just this one last little feature!
--- SBBSecho 3.10-Linux
* Origin: Alterant | An SBBS in Docker on Pi! (21:2/116)

Re: Re: OMF FrikG!!!G!!! I hate wYNd0z3!!!!
By: Joacim Melin to tallship on Sat Sep 28 2019 07:15 pm

Also, damn I miss Netware 3.12. Solid stuff.

I liked Netware too - it was pretty cool. I recently found some
version of
Netware (6.5) and isntalled it - think I reactivated some old brain
cells. Was
running my DOS bbs on it, but Argus didnt like the
outbound dir on it - complained about all the files it was creating
(BSY) were
not found... :(

Maybe I should find 3.12.
...????

IMHO Netware kind of went to shit with Netware 4. I really liked the simplicity
with 3.12 and it was ROCK SOLID.


--- NiKom v2.5.0
* Origin: Delta City (deltacity.se, Vallentuna, Sweden) (21:2/130.0)

Re: Re: OMF FrikG!!!G!!! I hate wYNd0z3!!!!
By: Joacim Melin to Alterego on Sun Sep 29 2019 10:28 am

IMHO Netware kind of went to shit with Netware 4. I really liked the

simplicity

with 3.12 and it was ROCK SOLID.

I was actually thinking of going back to a 3.12 to see if my problem still existed - maybe I will now.
...ëîåã

... Answers: $1, Short: $5, Correct: $25, dumb looks are still free.
--- SBBSecho 3.10-Linux
* Origin: Alterant | An SBBS in Docker on Pi! (21:2/116)