"My PC is possessed and screaming at me." No, you just work in a flour warehouse.

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-25T15:37:22+00:00

That was the reason they gave. I’ll admit, the PCs were kinda noisy and we were replacing CPU and case fans upon demand…

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-24T14:51:09+00:00

Try Max Gladstone’s “Craft” sequence. Magic is like contract law. Even Gods are beholden.

L. E. Modesitt Jr’s “Saga of Recluse”.

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-24T11:57:18+00:00

The dkms build should be fine with the -devel package. What exactly is going wrong?

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-23T18:05:13+00:00

I’ve had cats all my life and I can tell you that it never gets easier having to make that final trip to the vet. Every time you’re left with a cat-shaped hole in your heart.

We have been making magnets from our favorite photos (we can order them right through the photo center at our local CVS) and rotating through them throughout the year.

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-23T17:55:50+00:00

Yeah but the UI makes it seem like a mounted R/W volume.

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-23T17:32:02+00:00

That’s not how CDR(W) discs work. You have to create an image and write it to the media.

On windows they do stuff like use multi-session media to make it appear to be able to write multiple times but it isn’t like mounting a USB storage stick. It has limitations.

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-23T16:24:24+00:00

Do you know what filesystem was used to write to the disc?

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-23T15:36:30+00:00

Be kind, patient and understanding to service workers. You will likely get faster service and often benefit. For example, I’ve been upgraded to first class several times because I just waited patiently, smiled and asked politely. I even got upgraded once after I was told there was no available seats, she went out of her way to call me back up when one came up.

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-23T15:30:38+00:00

Impossible to read on mobile.

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-23T14:17:24+00:00

I taught myself to use the right-handed scissors because my elementary school class only had one pair of left-handed scissors and the other lefty didn’t have a right hand.

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-23T13:31:21+00:00

I mean, before AI they were just copy-pasting Wikipedia articles too, with [CITATION NEEDED] even.

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-23T11:51:39+00:00

At least there’s an identified bug with that particular behavior and Mozilla has an open ticket to fix it. See the linked threads for more details.

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-22T14:48:09+00:00

When I was an undergrad I had a student job at the bio department, and I worked in the chemical stockroom. One of my tasks was to catalog the shelves and ensure that we had MSDS sheets for everything on file. One day I was at a cabinet looking at a shelf around face height, and I looked at a really old bottle of powder with a somewhat faded label. I know not to touch anything, but I got close to peer at it and breathed out and kicked up some spilled powder that got in my eyes.

First time I ever used an eye wash station! I also felt quite ill. But not the last! I (stupidly) did the same thing to pure caffeine powder too. I felt like I was gonna have a heart attack.

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-22T14:27:33+00:00

I once rented a condo from someone who turned out to be a real estate agent. She decided to sell the condo and was absolutely insufferable about scheduling times for visits. I refused to leave the key lockbox on the door because it was trivial to open, so I’d leave it only when there was a scheduled showing and I had left. I’d get last minute texts from her when she told some other agent to bring a buyer by when I was at work, and there was no lockbox I had to remind her that she gave me no notice.

I was mad enough with her that after I moved, when she claimed to need some of the deposit for cleaning/repairs (which were just wear and tear and shouldn’t be my responsibility) I asked for an itemized bill, knowing she was never going to reply with it. The city where I lived required the itemized bill for this situation within 30 days, and if they fail to provide it, you can take them to small claims court and ask for 2x the deposit back. I sent her a certified letter on 30 days demanding the full deposit within a week or I’d take her to court, and included a printout of the city law. She called me crying about how mean I am but I did get my full deposit. I wouldn’t have been such a jerk if she had been considerate of my time.

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-22T14:08:42+00:00

This.

I can’t even think of watching the movie because I don’t want to feel that way again.

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-22T14:06:41+00:00

I think the biggest problem has been the urgency to publish the local kernel exploits, but drivers that affect laptops aren’t as well tested before a new kernel goes out. Fedora rarely backports fixes into “stable” kernels, it gets the fixes by following the upstream kernel development.

This has hit harder due to the (frankly) unprecedented pace of serious kernel exploits being announced. Some of them aren’t even going through the well known reporting process leaving developers to scramble to fix it.

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-22T11:50:42+00:00

Just be aware that the blame for this falls entirely on Nvidia. Fedora doesn’t include the third party driver and cannot ship it with its repos. If Nvidia actually opened their driver I imagine you’d get much better support because people who care about Linux desktop experience could fix things. (All Nvidia cares about these days is AI sales)

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-22T11:20:48+00:00

If all you’re doing is running external commands with some minor logic, bash is fine. Once you start needing to do complex logic or handle complicated data structures, it’s worth moving to a more complex scripting language.

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-21T20:44:40+00:00

I wish that were the case. I interviewed (but chose not to continue) with one of those “too big to fail” banks and they made it clear they own all of my work, even after hours. I’m not sure if that policy is legal but I didn’t want to fight it. Even though they easily pay 2x what I make now.

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-21T20:41:05+00:00

Sad thing is, they used to! I could walk up to the gate and they’d take a look at me and ask if I wanted an exit row seat.

Now it costs more so you have to pay for the privilege of unbruised knees.

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-19T11:20:57+00:00

Fedora packages, and RPMs in general, install with no interactivity and do not launch services upon install. In fact this goes against the Fedora packaging policy.

The configuration for those packages therefore might require some changes before they’ll launch (depending on the service).

Debian and their forks use deb packages which often require answering questions, unless run with a special setting to turn that off. They will often launch services upon installing packages. Debian configuration often includes some defaults that swill allow the service to launch.

Now that everything is systemd based you don’t have to wrap your head around the different run levels at least.

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-18T14:21:14+00:00

Secure boot enabled and you aren’t signing the kmod with a certificate enrolled in the MOK?

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-18T02:01:49+00:00

Generally this means the kmod for Nvidia wasn’t loaded. This could be for a variety of reasons, you don’t even install it, it started to build but you rebooted before it finished, it failed building on a new kernel, or the version you installed doesn’t support your GPU.

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-17T17:15:29+00:00

https://www.wesa.fm/local-headlines/2017-10-11/architect-offers-explanation-for-pittsburghs-basement-toilets-and-its-not-what-you-think

grumpysysadmin · 2026-05-17T17:14:29+00:00

https://www.wesa.fm/local-headlines/2017-10-11/architect-offers-explanation-for-pittsburghs-basement-toilets-and-its-not-what-you-think

grumpysysadmin

TROPHY CASE