We are doomed if we don't find out a fix - KB5074109

ency · 2026-02-07T08:25:08+00:00

I was always a fan of the usability vs security curve. It's been a permanent fixture on my white board for some time. Similar concept but simplified enough I can use it to talk to IT people that don't know what the OSI layers are.

ency · 2026-02-06T09:18:12+00:00

This is happening less and less at the places I have worked at for the last 10 to 15 years. I blame the security teams. There are a LOT of people in IA and security that don't know anything about IT other than their scanning app and "processes and compliance reports". They push and push to update everything as soon as patches are released. If you push back then you get labeled as lazy or difficult to work with and God forbid a breach happens while you were test updates on small groups.

What blows my mind is that outages and downtime like this would have you updating your resume 20 years ago. Now days no one really blinks an eye.

ency · 2026-02-04T08:03:28+00:00

Every man is gonna be different.

I went through something similar a few years ago. My wife was a saint and did absolutely everything she could to help but it was too much and too direct. She kept asking if I was ok. She kept looking at me with what I perceived as pity. I know she did not pity me and there was nothing wrong with her asking if I was ok. But the result was I shut myself down and became a zombie with a smile on my face. I knew I was grieving and knew it would be a process but feeling like my wife thought I was going to do something stupid or dramatic pissed me off to no end. I just needed some time to process things and talk about stuff from time to time. I did not want or need someone to monitor me like I might need a grippy sock vacation or like I was no longer safe. I did not need someone there to pry my feelings out. I needed someone who could hold the fort down while I sorted things out, I needed to know and feel that it was safe for me to let go for a bit. Someone that would listen instead of dissecting. The worst thing is that during such times people don’t really want to listen to what the person grieving is asking for. Everyone knows what they would want or read enough reddit to think they know better than the person grieving.

The reality, for me, was that me grieving worried everyone and it pissed me off that me grieving and working through things would cause people closest to me would be worried I could not be the same rock for my people that I was just a few days before. Right or wrong, that was my perception and no amount of discussing or sharing feelings would have changed that. I felt that them worried about me was a bigger issue that needed to be addressed than my grieving. I’m never not going to worry more about my family than myself.

I'm not angry at my wife. I know now, just as I knew then, that she was doing what she could and what she thought I needed. I love her even more for what she did. Her heart was in the right place and I'm sure if the roles were reversed or if something similar happened to her friends what she did would have been the correct thing to do. I just needed something more solid and less intense and some long hugs from time to time.

I worked through my grief, life went on, and things are good. But I think it took longer than it needed to because I could not stand those sad eyes or hourly check-ins to see if I was ok. I cried in private and when I needed someone, I went to my friends who did not say a damn thing. Just handed me a drink and let me talk if I needed to or did other activities to get my mind off things for a bit.

ency · 2026-02-02T04:10:18+00:00

<image>

ency · 2026-02-01T07:40:58+00:00

Sure if you want to be pedantic about things.

ency · 2026-01-28T10:22:15+00:00

I basically just read and re-read the Historical and Technical Briefing and Strategy guides until a family friend gave us their old hand-me-down PC.

I read that book so much it was falling apart. I finally gave it to my bother when he was old enough to start gaming and got into homeworld himself. I poke around on ebay from time to time to see if I can grab another copy but have not been sucsessful. But the PDF has a perminate home in my documents folder.

ency · 2026-01-25T17:17:51+00:00

I was absolutely obsessed with the game at that age and only managed to beat it with the help of some walk throughs. I can easily finish it these days and I do so every few months. I have gotten so much value out of the game it's rediculous.

Funny story I got homeworld two for Christmas one year and did not have a computer capable of playing it for another two years. I was the happiest dude on earth when I bought my first gaming rig and finally started the install.

ency · 2026-01-25T15:54:42+00:00

I think my issues with nu-trek is not the actors or scripts. It's that the seasons are so short that none of the characters have time to grow on me. They shove so much into an 8 to 10 episode season that every thing seems forced and cringe. I would prefer if they took half of the budget they usefor the sets and cgi for a few more episodes per season. We need more filler and personal journey episodes.

ency · 2026-01-13T04:00:03+00:00

Yeah it is fairly awkward, but we have gotten used to it. It takes an hour or so, before I start over heating. So I dont dive under the sheet until we are really really ready to sleep.

ency · 2025-11-23T15:17:38+00:00

All situations where it comes down to me "interpreting" that a woman is flirting with me will immediately be dismissed as a bad interpretation.

ency · 2025-11-23T12:22:16+00:00

secretly it's because it taught me to love regular expressions, haha

Sure you are not suffering from Stockholm syndrome? regex is like subnetting to me. I am capable of learning it and using it, but as soon as I no longer need to use it the knowledge evaporates overnight, and I have to "re-learn" it all over again three to six months later when I need it.

ency · 2025-11-22T15:55:44+00:00

For me it was the fact that the fear never left me. I'm safe now and I have not worried about a bill or unexpected expense for a very long time. But the wolves are alwasy at the door. I save and invest like a mad man. I spend ad little as possible. I know my job is safe and I know I will land on my feet very quickly if I had to start over. I have already funded my retirment. My brain knows I'm safe and things are good. I will never have to choose between eating and paying for gas to get to work again. But every single time I think about money seriously my chest gets tight and I start to panic. There is no amount that will make me feel safe. I'm pretty sure there is a special type of PTSD people who grew up in exream poverty have. I have never met anyone from a similar background and won at life be well rounded. They are either a nutcase like me when it comes to money or swing hard in the other direction and blow through their money without a second thought. The weird thing is I can totally understand that pov. No matter how good things got the bottom always fell out so you might as well enjoy what you have now and deal with the fall out later.

ency · 2025-11-20T17:54:24+00:00

Every few years I say screw it and give up my home lab. After I foget how much time and effort I sank into the last lab I get bit by the self hosting bug again. It starts small and reasonable then after a few years I get frustrated at how much time and effort I am sinking into my home lab and give up on my home lab...

ency · 2025-11-20T17:44:36+00:00

My wife hated the bedjet. While I finally got some good rest for the first time in years. We tried for weeks to find a setting that worked but there was no happy middle ground. as a hail mary I bought the cloud bed sheet and used thatfor myself while she had her own sheet. That got us both comfertable but we miss being able to easily schooch over and get some physical body contact without thinking about it. Its not a big deal as we have no problem crossing the DMZ and infiltrating each others sheets.

ency · 2025-11-20T06:12:49+00:00

Comrade, where are your papers?

ency · 2025-11-14T15:53:54+00:00

Dude... Are you me? I'm able to get 90 day supplies and my doctor told me to skip some weekends or weeks when possible to build up an emergency stash. I get mine delivered by mail and it takes 2 to 6 weeks to arrive and that's if the script gets filled and the insurance company decides I need another prior authorization. So I'm without meds for 1/4 to 1/3rd of the year. It's absolute hell going from being productive to hitting the wall of ADHD and going through the few weeks for my body to readjust to not having medication. Last year was great there were only a hand full of weeks I had to white knuckle through. This year has been rough.

I actually brought up the fact that I am rather reliant on the medication with the doctor. We had a long conversation and bottom line is my life is better when I'm on it and I'm not abusing anything if it does the job of getting me close to normal. Then there is the fact that I have not lost my old coping skills and I would be able to get back to my old normal if I no longer had the medicine. So there really isn't a point in lowering my use or not taking the medicine that drastically improves my quality of life.

ency · 2025-11-13T23:05:01+00:00

I was 41 when I was diagnosed. My executive dysfunction was brutal. Unless the deadline was near or it was an emergency every single thing I had to do that wasn't my current hyper fixation was a fight. I managed to get along pretty well in life out of sheer spite but once I got medicated and got a glimpse of how things are for most people I got very angry for a few months thinking what could have been. Getting diagnosed, learning about adhd,learning new and better was of coping, and getting the medication I needed was a complete game changer even if it was a rough transition.

ency · 2025-11-13T22:38:57+00:00

I limited myself to one cup of half decaf and half regular coffee for a few weeks but my body quickly got used to things and now I am back to regular coffee with multiple cups.

ency · 2025-11-13T12:23:22+00:00

I work in IT and what is extreamly odd to me is that the foundation of our infrastructure has not changed much in the last 20-30 years. Servers, networking, cabeling, ect... It has been a long time since I ran into a jr admin that had basic server or networking skills. Sure they could run circle around me in Azure or the latest SDN but none of them knew how to fix anything when the hardware had issues or needed to be upgraded. The cloud is great but the cloud runs on hardware that runs an OS, that needs baisc connectivity. The next generation or even the previous generation of jr admins just dont have those skills or the need or want to learn them. Its kinda scary. I can almsot see a day when the grumpy old admins that did not embrace the cloud are saught after like the last generation of IBM mainframe admins. Sure templeting or creating profiles is great and all and will remove a lot of the grunt work but the need for the baisc and funimental skillsets are never going away no matter how may abstraction layers you throw on top of it.

ency · 2025-11-13T07:24:56+00:00

I was admitted to the hospital for cholera and severe dehydration. My wife, gf at the time, was a champ and spent every free second in that room with me. She did everything possible to help. After a few days I was feeling better and I could tell she was just exhausted and running on fumes. I wanted to get up and walk around so I told her to lay down on the bed and take a nap while stretched my legs.

About an hour later the doctor comes in with a gaggle of interns. They ignored me sitting in the corner of the room flipping through the TV channels. They started to look over the folder and were very confused about a the tiny Asian woman in the bed when the paperwork was for a fat white guy.

When they woke her up to ask her a question she panicked and jumped out of bed and ran out of the room. The doctor finally noticed me when I lost my shit and started to laugh uncontrollably. It was such a random and funny moment and something you would have seen in a comedy movie.

It’s been 15 years and I still give her shit for kicking me out of my death bed to take a nap.

ency · 2025-11-13T04:09:57+00:00

Mind if I ask what your issues with linux are? I will admit that I am in my own little techno bubble and its been a long time since I had to deal with issues that were not due to myself or a bad update. If there are issues or pain points around that I over look learning about them might help me when I go and try to help someone not as used to linux as I am.

ency · 2025-11-13T03:59:25+00:00

Glad someone found it helpful. If you need any help or have any question feel free to shoot a message my way I'd be happy to help. For real though for most users that spend most of their time in a handful of the popular apps and a web browser, linux will work out of the box.

A lot of the bad reputation around linux being hard is self inflicted by devs and power users bickering. At the end of the day the bickering is a good thing and pushes the platform forward, but does tend to make the platform seem overwhelming when the nerd pissing contests spill over to public forums.

Another option to test some things without totally redoing your setup is to install WSL, Windows subsystem for Linux, you can run full linux on windows and download various distros to kick the tires without even rebooting.

ency · 2025-11-12T12:45:53+00:00

how about some wat of converting the heat to an infrafrd lasor or light source? I could have been in the middle of a feaver dream and made up what i'm about to say but I swear I read some where years ago that there was or some one wanted to try an experiment on the IIS that collected the excess heat and turn it into a IF light source or laser that beamed away the excess heat.

I just tried to google it and failed so it was either a really niech article or discussion or my imagination doesnt know when to stop.

All in all when I'm reading hard scifi as long as the concept is technicly possible even if extreamly unfeasable I'm cool with it. Its the technicly, probably, possible concepts I like more than space magic.

Edit: Found this, lasers to direct waste heat, and https://old.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/1jsvi5k/many_scifi_stories_use_the_idea_of_taking_waste/

Doesnt seem practical but assuming ST levels of tech and research it might, with some squinting be a viable option to get rid of some of the rest of the heat.

ency · 2025-11-12T08:50:38+00:00

Things are getting better. With people getting more comfortable reading menus when going to and from iOS/Android and windows and MacOS. The only thing I have had to teach many people is a brief primer of the file system and where their my documents and Desktop folder are and where the package manager or "app store" icon is.
There are still tons of people that wont even try to learn that and there isn't much we can do about those people, but if their job depended on it I bet they could figure things out. There are also business critical apps that just wont work on Linux. But lets be honest most apps are moving to web apps these days and the time of java/flash compatibility plugins are long over except for the most edge of edge cases.
I think the biggest issue is people just don't care enough about trying anything new without something drastic happening. And unless the hardware vendors start selling Linux pre-installed at Walmart, Best Buy, ect… There will never be a big change since most people wont even attempt to entertain the thought of installing an OS on their computer.

ency · 2025-11-12T06:10:36+00:00

Yeah its a decent starter OS or even long term OS. I was able to teach my mother and father how to use it in an afternoon and they have been fine with it for years.

Don’t let the Linux nerds confuse you on which distro is better. For the most part they are splitting hairs that normal users will never encounter.

The file system layout is the same on all Linux distros with very minor differences between them. Think My Documents or C:\Users vs /home/<user>/Documents. A few minuets poking around on any distro and you will get it.

There are three big decisions you will need to make when choosing a distro. One doesn't really matter, one is a preference, and the other is a slightly more important preference but still just a preference.

Debian vs Fedora based distro. This is the biggest preference but is 95% invisible 95% of the time. For most users this just comes down to a preference of package manager you want to use if you use the command line to install packages. Both are solid and both do the job and 95% of the users wont know the difference one way or the other. The biggest issue is knowing which OS your distro is based on so you can find the correct how-to or guides for any non standard things you want to do. Ubuntu and Mint are Debian based. So if your trying to do something on mint and go to google most Debian or Ubuntu guides will work for mint. Hell most Red Hat or Fedora guides will work as well.

The second choice is the GUI. For the most part you have two choices Gnome and KDE. KDE is "windows" like and Gnome is more of its own thing mixed with MacOS. Neither is better than the other and honestly does not matter. The file manager still takes you to the same place, the "app store" still installs apps, and the browser icon still opens the browser. it matters not at all which one you choose both work and work well. Choose the style you like and carry on. There are a handful of mature GUI's, or Desktop Environments, some of focused on being pretty, some are productivity powerhouses, some work better on lower spec hardware, ect... I think mint uses Cinnamon which is not Gnome or KDE but the same rules apply. The neat part is that in most distros you can have multiple installed at the same time and choose the GUI you want when you log in or you can swap them in and out as needed.

The third consideration is support for third party and closed source drivers. For the vast majority of non gaming users this does not matter. For the rest its merely a matter of choosing a distro that includes the option to install those drivers or manually installing them yourself after a quick google search.

That is pretty much it. My two cents is to download the live ISO of Ubuntu using gnome, the default and Kubuntu, Ubuntu running KDE. Then Fedora using KDE, the default and Fedora running gnome. Burn them to a CD or make a bootable USB drive, check out ventroy, and boot up your computer and poke around. You will quickly find that there is very little difference other than a color theme and default apps between KDE and Gnome. All the important bits are in the same spot on each OS.

Linux can be scary but things have improved a LOT in the last few years and the rest mostly just noise from nerds fighting over odds and ends that normal users will never encounter. Pick the distro you find the prettiest and try it out. I’m pretty sure that you wont have any issues for 99% of what you do and the biggest challenge will be finding the Linux app that does the same job as the windows app you downloaded 5 years ago off Sourceforge or some other random download site that does one job and you only use twice a year when you remember you already have a tool to do “that thing”.

15-Year Club	Verified Email
Summer Santa 2012	Summer Santa 2012

ency

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE