IT BS thread

No more Liberal Arts degrees. Get a skill.

And I would think that cutting a CAT-6 cable would have been on training day 2.

 

We got downrange on a quick-reaction deployment in '97 only to find that all of our pre-made cables were too short. 3 of us ended up doing 18 boxes of CAT-5 in about 7 hours. Our hands were shredded when we were done.

 

Strangely enough I never learned how to put ends on a network cable in school. It wasn't until I got to my internship that I had to do that. I still don't do it very often at my current job. Took me more tries than I like to admit to get one on the other day.

 

When I was in high school, I learned how to make straight through and crossover cables. I can't remember the last time I actually ever needed a crossover cable.

 

Are patch panels even a thing anymore?

I've been in management too long...

 

I worked as an independent software developer for a while and took on an odd job of hard-wiring a network for a local small business (the father of a daughter's classmate). Just three offices in an old historic house, plus some printers. I printed off a diagram from the web and bought the tools and materials at Fry's. You'd just think that a guy setting up internet service and driving a truck with the cable and tools would know how to do it.

We did an upgrade on some wafer fab equipment to switch them from a proprietary camera interface (with a giant card that goes in the PC) to a self-contained camera with Ethernet. We didn't want to put a hub in the equipment, so we just directly connected it with a crossover cable. I made a few of those for that job. Plus, wafer fabs got pretty nervous if you tried to take an Ethernet hub into the clean room. I miss working with robots and cameras and stuff, but I don't miss those long days in a bunny suit. That particular job was a fun hack job -- it was a competitor's equipment that used the same camera stuff as we did, so I knew how it interfaced. I just created a simple app that spoofed the original software but interfaced with the new camera. Renamed the original app and replaced it with mine, their software never knew the difference. The OEM wanted $30K per machine to do the upgrade, we charged $12K. Biggest expense was the new camera. Oh, and my travel and expense bill to do the work. Boise, ID had a good local brewery.

 

They sure are at my gig. But, I'm not a fan of hand made patch cables. Paying a guy $30+/hr plus benefits to make a $2 cable is stupid. The tech's time is much better spent doing something a machine in china can't do, like making sure the network is running its best.

 

So, my son is a level 2 tech here (while I'm upstairs in management offices). He's my carpool buddy. We often chat about work issues at our various levels on the way in and home.

This morning on our way in, he starts laughing at me when I inform him that my day will be in "CBT Hell."

When queried, he informs me that the "downstairs people" refer to CBTs as "cock and ball torture."







So now I'll never get THAT out of my head.

 

If making patch cables is the most important task they have to do, I've done something wrong.

True story - When I was a young network engineer, my boss purposely ordered patch cables that we 2X longer than we needed. He then spent untold hours cutting them in half and putting ends on. For some reason we often had random network problems that always tracked back to one of the "cost saving" cables. Figuring in his salary to make them, my salary to track down why something wasn't working, and the hit in lost productivity, those cables cost the company thousands if not more.

I DID NOT need to read that. I must somehow purge that from my brain. You cannot imagine how important CBT's are to my organization. (and how close they are to the "downstairs people' definition). If I ever let that one slip . . .

 

Oh did I miss that one, big time.

I agree, china is almost certainly in our network. As much as I'd like to be as locked down as CaptAmerica, that's not going to happen here.

 

Still a thing in anything resembling a data center. When I ran Cat 6 in my house, I installed one in the little rack my switches sit in.

There are some really pretty ones here. Not only patch panels, but industrial control systems, electrical conduit and panels, etc.

 

I guess the Internet has ruined me, because if you said CBT to me, I wouldn't have guessed anything IT related...

 

TIL the correct domain name to use on home networks (for most ppl)

Residential networking
The domain name home.arpa was reserved by the Internet Engineering task force in May 2018 as a special-use domain name for non-unique DNS services in residential networking, to avoid the use of the top-level domain home., which would require DNSSEC signatures.[3] In addition, the use of home. led to domain name leakage to the Internet root name servers. The authoritativename servers for home.arpa intercept locally unresolved queries for the domain and return addresses for certain blackhole servers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.arpa

 

Repost! Cause it’s one of them days!

 

They still shoving shitty power supplies down your throat in order to get it?