• 0 Posts
  • 38 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 12th, 2023

help-circle





  • Canopyflyer@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldWell, shit.
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    2 months ago

    Reminds me of a major incident I got involved in. I was the Problem Manager and not MIM (Major Incident Management), but I’ve had years of MIM experience so was asked to help out on this one. The customer manufactured blood plasma and each of the lots on the production floor was worth a cool $1 million. The application that was down and had brought production down was not the app that actually handled production, but an application (service) that supplied data to it.

    Of course the customer thought that app was not Mission Critical so it didn’t have redundancy. I joined the call and first thing I asked was when did the last change go through on this app… Spoiler: I had the change in front of me and it went in the previous night. The admin of the app speaks up that he did a change the previous night… And NO the MIM team had NOT looked at that change yet… Did I mention this was FOUR FUCKING HOURS into the outage? That is MIM 101. Something goes down, look to see who last fucked with it.

    This is why you need experienced MIM people in enterprise environments.

    So I took control of the MIM, instructed the App Admin to share his screen and walk us through the change he did the previous night… Two screens in and OH… Look at that… There’s a check box that put the app into read only (or something like that, this happened back in 2009 and I don’t remember all the details). I’d never seen the application before in my life, but knew that check box being checked, just based on the verbiage, could not be right… So I asked… The Admin, sounding embarrassed, said yeah he forgot to uncheck that box last night…

    Fuck me.

    He unchecked the box, bounced the app and what do you know… It started to work.

    A single damn check box brought down the production line of a multi-billion dollar company.

    My investigation for that Problem was a bit scathing to multiple levels of the customer. If a service supports a Tier 1 production app and that Tier 1 app would stop working if that service goes down… GUESS WHAT! That service is MISSION FUCKING CRITICAL and it should be supported as such. My employer was not on the hook for this one, as both applications involved were customer supported.

    I would love to say that the above is an uncommon occurrence, but honestly it is the main reason for outages in my experience. Something small and stupid that is easily missed.


  • Because it is a LOT more complicated than that.

    Not all rheumatological diseases are due to the immune system’s memory. As a case in point, Ankylosing Spondylitis is theorized as being caused by a mis-folded HLA-B27 protein response. The mis-folded protein response is caused by cellular stress, at least that is the theory. The lead singer of Imagine Dragon Dan Reynolds suffers from this disease. So there are people out there suffering from it, it’s not just some disease out in left field no one has heard of before.

    Are there diseases that could be treated by clearing the immune system’s memory? Possibly, but there would also be consequences for that as well. Mainly, because the actual method by which the memory works is not completely understood.

    Disclaimer: My wife is a Rheumatologist that does both basic research and clinical work. What I wrote above is based on what I have gleaned from her over the years. Any mistakes or misconceptions are strictly mine. I’m just an old IT guy and have never studied medicine.


  • Yes.

    Let me tell you when, why, and how I learned that you need to pay attention to taxes.

    I was in third grade and my class had a field trip. This was 47 years ago, so the exact details of the trip are lost to time and rusty memory. The lesson remained.

    There was something that the class could purchase at the end of the day on the trip and the place only took cash and the school was not doing anything to help, except tell the kids about it and the price. Which was something like $5. I told my Mom and she handed me a $5 bill, plus a quarter, which confused my 3rd grade brain. She said to due to some strange words "sales tax, which was 5% in my state at the time. Got to school that morning and all my classmates were proud that they had their $5 bill, but none seemed to have a quarter. So I kept the presence of my quarter a secret and was a little embarrassed about it. Yes, I was young and stupid. Now I am old and stupid.

    When it came time to purchase the whatsit at the end of the day, me and one other of my classmates produced a quarter to buy it. The teachers and chaperones had to cover the sales tax for the other 20 kids and they were pissed.

    I went to school and learned a lesson that has stuck with me for nearly 50 years.




  • I’m a cook as a hobby, so typically the cost of making vs buying does not figure into my decision, except when things at the store get absurdly expensive.

    A case in point: Toasted Sliced Salted Salad Almonds from Fresh Gourmet

    My wife and I love these on our dinner salads so we go through a lot of them. The cost of a package of these salad almonds has risen to $7 for a 3.5oz (99g)package.

    I can buy a 16oz (454g) package of raw almonds for almost the same amount of money, as the 3.5oz (99g) Fresh Gourmet package. I have an electric oven that consumes around 5kwh that runs for roughly 30 minutes during preparation and my daytime electric rate is around $0.13/kwh (I think).

    Out of that I get a full pound (16oz, 454g) of salted almonds for ~$7.07 and 30 minutes of my time. I also use about $0.02 worth of salt, bringing the total cost to ~$7.09 for 4.5 times more almonds.

    I also can adjust the amount of salt on them as well, as typically my wife and I like less salt that most people.

    It’s also fun to do.




  • Canopyflyer@lemmy.worldtomemes@lemmy.worldGetting old sucks.
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    6 months ago

    The full story there is that we were at an Orthopedic urgent care. My wife has danced Ballet since she was 4. A bad jump resulted in a 5th metatarsal fracture, commonly referred to as a “dancer’s break” and a severely sprained ankle. She was in a boot and crutches for 5 weeks. Her ankle literally had all the colors of a sunset. The Orthopedist took her shoe an sock off and actually gasped.



  • Harold “Wisconsin” Johnson is the answer to your question.

    Actually got to meet him this past Sunday in Lake Geneva, WI at the “Dreams and Nightmares” Convention put on by the Wisconsin Historical society. Also got to meet Tom Wham, who is the original artist for many creatures in the original Monster Manual including the Beholder.

    Wisconsin Johnson was hired to to be an editor of the original first edition books. His degree from Northwestern University is listed as a BS in Biology. What that doesn’t tell you is he minored in European and Eastern history. He has extensive knowledge of European, Middle Eastern, Sumerian and Asian mythologies. He used that knowledge to add to the AD&D compendium. He drove a lot of design and content in the 1e days at TSR as he was promoted very quickly after he was hired.

    Also, there is a AD&D Monster Manual II that is even larger than the original.

    As to why he is called “Wisconsin Johnson”. He loves to wear hats, especially at conventions so that people could find him. He settled on wearing a Fedora exactly like Indiana Jones wore. Someone even called him “Indiana Johnson”, but Harold stated emphatically that he was from Wisconsin. So the moniker Wisconsin Johnson was born. Yes, he was wearing his Fedora this past Sunday at the convention I attended.



  • I’m a Gen X’er… Not sure if the Lemmy’s word limit on posts would allow me to list it all.

    So here are a few:

    Drank from the garden hose? Check

    Rode in a car without seat belts? As a toddler? As a baby? Check

    Rode my bike all over town with no helmet? Had an accident that put me in a coma for 48hrs because of not wearing a helmet? Check

    Harvested tobacco on my grandparents farm? Check (Anyone who has done this by hand, working with those stakes knows the risks.)

    I started skydiving in the early 90’s. My mother was absolutely appalled and constantly berated me about how “dangerous” it is to jump out of an airplane.

    The truth of the matter was I was far safer in free fall than I was during most of my adolescence.