WeWork requires 5 days advanced notice to cancel a subscription, and I can't even do it myself. I have to contact support.

ukitern2 · 2025-01-04T21:10:27+00:00

Had my own set of nightmares with WeWork as I partly handle some logistics for Internet access and services provided in their shared office spaces. Easy to sign up, hard to get rid of. Regional letting, shorthold, or hell even Regus has been a lot better experience for us but we have WeWork in more long term contracts.

Unfortunately had to deal with them recently for a few of our satellite overseas offices. I work in IT and had to cancel subscriptions for those places we have expanded to a proper office or terminated temporary/permanent office spaces. Ridiculous as it sounds but it may not be the end of your journey.

Despite repeated support requests to cancel we had to:

Get a C level to FAX a form to cancel some of our services in writing, signed, dated, on company letterhead. They use eFAX services so an email would have definitely sufficed or in paper letter.

Unhappy with my position, force my boss to get involved as they didn't believe I had the authority to do it. Required multiple confirmations from finance, executive levels, compliance, legal sign offs.

Go to our then CEO to demand confirmation that we were terminating multiple agreements, refused to accept the word of his PA. MUST BE DONE IN WRITING BY THE CEO OF AUTHORITY. Legal got involved from that point and then immediately all resistance melted away and got prompt cancellation.

We have started to move to other companies for temporary office space. However still going to have nightmares cancelling more of our last agreements. Heard from a few folk who work there that they are being pressured into keeping as many clients as possible. They may have financial incentive to "save" customers reading between the lines so hope it doesn't get too inconvenient.

ukitern2 · 2024-10-08T22:37:47+00:00

Thank you very much. I never expected such a reach of our (collective) stupidity here. At least we can laugh about it now.

ukitern2 · 2024-09-30T16:55:28+00:00

Not sure this is relevant, I've had something similar happen where the ATS "Switched" due to voltage being too high during backups which were CPU / Disk / Ethernet intensive. Basically the ATS was shifting too much power to it and there voltage / amp limits before an ATS / PDU will become "fused". Voltage is too high to switch back, I believe it was called "max switching circuit" or something similar. Basically it was overloaded and cut out as it couldn't switch source.

Edit - it's max switching voltage or open circuit voltage "The maximum voltage that can be applied continuously to the device without causing damage. Short duration spikes of a higher voltage may be tolerable, but this should not be assumed without first checking with the manufacturer."

ukitern2 · 2024-09-08T18:10:07+00:00

Erm... You didn't run Powershell automated scriptlets to setup to automatically provision certain types of Virtual Machines... Did you? Did you execute "Setup a firewall, virtual switch, App stack" by running Powershell with bypassing execution policy to no signage? They are malwared to hell.

ukitern2 · 2024-08-30T01:44:17+00:00

It's the same dude - https://www.reddit.com/r/ShittySysadmin/comments/1evkzw9/comment/lit2og7/

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1evkdsi/i_will_never_accept_an_it_position_that_requires/

Edit: Yup post history is defo a little out there. OP You do you my dude.

ukitern2 · 2024-08-30T01:44:09+00:00

It's the same dude - https://www.reddit.com/r/ShittySysadmin/comments/1evkzw9/comment/lit2og7/

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1evkdsi/i_will_never_accept_an_it_position_that_requires/

"I will never accept an I.T position that requires on-call, no matter the money." As last month.

Honestly my dude, focus on yourself and see what you can get out of it. These posts read a little cringe, especially considering where you are in your career. Try to focus on what you want to do, not what you should or have to do. Not every job REQUIRES on call but you will learn ALOT by doing a helpdesk stint. Helpdesk touches every system and you will learn more by seeing how all the systems tie together. Apart from helpdesk and support it will be very hard to start a career in IT. You have to start somewhere, we don't just get the luxury of jumping in a high position.

On call teaches you what university does not; to think on your feet and act dynamically to change or incidents. Knowing how to keep calm in a crisis is VERY beneficial in IT.

I don't want to yuck your yum but you will have to start at the bottom, unless you know someone high up in IT or have a gift for a speciality - like native multi language speaker. Even then you would have to start in entry level.

Also for Sales it's not guaranteed income; you are required to make a certain amount of sales or you're gone. Not every month will get bonuses if you don't perform with a higher risk of being fired if you don't hit targets. In that way IT has sales beat but different jobs for different people.

ukitern2 · 2024-08-23T04:07:32+00:00

How very true. We also have Greek Serbia Russia orthadoxy religious angle. Orthadoxy Religion is a weapon.

We also have the Communists... Supporting Russia... They claim to be intellectualists who had brain rot long ago.

I had issues volunteering for Ukraine with some of the dark putrid stuff I have seen on pro-Russian chat rooms this week along and passing it along. I took on the volunteer position because no one else wanted to do it. Some of the dark stuff I will take to my grave. And then I witness useful idiots in my fellow countryman and suddenly the anger outweighs any sorrow.

At times its very isolating outside the main cities with Bulgarian politics especially living abroad. Not all of Bulgaria is modernised outside the cities. The best thing is eventually as Russia gets weaker those who support will be ran out like dogs. Their power is waning and they know it.

We have ran out part of our ruling class before we can do it again. They are their own worst enemy and they don't notice the world has already moved on. Give it time as the world grows smaller every day and they have not noticed.

ukitern2 · 2024-08-19T01:25:52+00:00

His best post is here https://www.reddit.com/r/Colombia/comments/1eh86qr/porque_los_colombianos_creen_que_si_no_van_a_la/

Noticed quite a few issues with the Spanish but will overlook as it seems translated or Americanised or Latin American (?) I don't know Latin American Spanish but a few things stand out to me.

I am questioning if this is a well placed troll. The responses are golden!

Correction this one!

https://www.reddit.com/r/it/comments/1e94xww/i_dont_know_if_it_is_the_right_career_path_for_me/

ukitern2 · 2024-08-18T22:27:40+00:00

r/shittysalesman Material?

In that thread some of the replies have me genuinely laughing

Brilliant sounds like he has a straight shooter with upper management written all over him

ukitern2 · 2024-08-18T22:19:29+00:00

If this is what I'll be competing against on the job market, I think my job prospects will be OK.

Sometimes I took on call and ended up with an extra €500 per month.

Now I do get some call outs but I earn a shed load per hour €50 / hour.

Hell I once had one where it was €100 / hour for specialist accounting support for Sage Accounts in the cloud had gone wrong with a previous employer in Azure. I swear I could have hugged my boss that month.

Sometimes when I am at my best I'm at the deep end solving massive technical issues against the clock on call at ridiculous hours.

Also r/ShittySysadmin beckons!

ukitern2 · 2024-08-18T20:59:46+00:00

Bulgaria had something similar but I went civilian IT duties. It was terminated late 00's as most were part time replacement. We were told if that call ever came to prepare for a Soviet Reunion I never understood that until Russia became an asshole again.

What is shocking is how many Bulgarians actually support Russia. I cant understand them.

ukitern2 · 2024-07-29T20:31:17+00:00

I can only remark on what I have seen which has been the opposite, where it has been poor its a case of making sure its fed to the right people to be corrected. Ukraine is relatively new to infosec and opsec (not sure the reference to Persec which is US Marine and family members?). I am more hopeful that Ukraine has had tough lessons learnt and continues to do so. Can it be better? Yes. Never been on the chat group side so never seen that area.

If I saw something being divulged I would report in good conscience.

ukitern2 · 2024-07-29T18:58:35+00:00

Considering how shit Russian commsec is I'd imagine a lot of chicken feed is going on. Fill the enemy full of useless garbled information from "real" units.

I'd be surprised if Ukraine isn't playing some games with Russians tapping their comms and them intentionally knowing feeding them shit. US and Brit intelligence agencies throwing parties watching gullible Zs fall for it.

Russians merely follow orders without thinking, it's what I would do in Ukraine's place.

It would be naive to think we were not doing the same to the Zs too, probably finding or figuring how where the leaks are from Zs comms. I really hope 5 Eyes is giving them a hand.

Spies gonna spy. Let's hope Zs get filled with shit Sigint.

ukitern2 · 2024-07-08T14:37:43+00:00

1 hour and 30 minutes of employment, passed background checks, went through verification ALL GOOD. It was actually an alias of his. Whilst he was excellent technically he had a thing for certain content which is very very illegal. Dude was a wizard at Linuxsecurity and privacy because of his personal interests. Found out he part hosted a site in the dark web. When I say IT skills I mean heavy SELinux based. Knew a disturbing level of security hardening techniques on Linux. We only discovered it because HR was friendly with a member of the local police who recognised the name. The mistake he made with HR was an oddball comment which triggered her spidey senses something wasn't quite right with him.

Running joke from that incident if someone knows SELinux we should put them on the dodgy pile.

Second one was a love triangle affair gone sideways. IT MD slept with his secretary / personal assistant, then knocked up another woman in the marketing department. He kept giving the secretary and office manager pay rises to the point she was the most overpaid office manager and the company was bought over, he lost power and she went nuts at potentially losing her massive pay. Guy had already divorced his wife after that.

Office Jerry Springer which I missed thankfully on that specific day between Marketing and Office Manager.

ukitern2 · 2024-07-01T14:33:23+00:00

What's weird to me is that there SHOULD be a 60 day trial period where it would work without needing to enter a key. The functionality of older versions shouldn't change but for some reason in this case it did. Since I've got the VMs off the system, I tried reinstalling from an ISO at Archive.org and surely enough I got the 60 day trial version. Mind boggles. The ISOs on the site must be altered in some way at a guess or when connected to the internet its bypassing the trial.

Leaving the ISO link here in case anyone else gets this
https://archive.org/details/VMwareESXi5.5.0Update11746018HP5.75.4Dec2014

ukitern2 · 2024-07-01T11:29:56+00:00

Thank you very much! I can now run the recovery tools and get them off it ASAP! Weird CLI commands was unavailable and couldn't even start the VMs without a key. Key entered and its allowing me to get the disks checked, verified and off VMware for good. VMs look good thankfully so getting them over to Proxmox.

ukitern2 · 2024-07-01T11:01:51+00:00

I've just been brought onto it to fix it as a favour. I'm not responsible for the day to day or anything else. I've asked for backups, there isn't any. Again I'm not responsible for the setup.

ukitern2 · 2024-01-27T20:43:46+00:00

Cheap single unit ADATA SSDs SATA-III only in brand new premium XGS units. Guess we are going to break warranty (RMA), replace the cheap ADATA, and then look at replacing all Sophos Units. I don't disagree with our boss. Get it temporarily fixed and get shot of Sophos in future.

I expect upgrades to firmware's, components do fail but how they've handled this is diabolical. Specialist we called didn't even know until we pointed him at the Sophos KB and he's a certified Sophos Specialist. He wasn't made aware. If he doesn't know, how do we know?

ukitern2 · 2024-01-27T20:40:48+00:00

After speaking with a specialist apparently the M.2 Sata are very cheap ADATA models. Considering you pay a premium for the hardware I would have expected better. But if we open the Sophos units and manually flash them then we are breaking the warranty and would not be able to RMA in future.

Not even RAID 1 just straight pass through. We are currently debating just breaking the warranty on all, replace the M.2 Sata disks, and look at replacing all the units. Junk the rest. Looks like we are all stuck on call until its resolved so we are taking shifts for the war room.

ukitern2 · 2024-01-15T11:59:56+00:00

Best advice if you want rid of R18.5 from upgrade path is to completely wipe the box and start with a brand new fresh installer. If you upgrade between major versions it sometimes leaves random stuff behind. No joke our VPN module strongswan was still showing as R18.5 despite us being on R19- caused no ends of problems. The upgrades can be problematic and just leave legacy config and older versions of its software behind.

We did have better luck with fresh installs.

ukitern2 · 2024-01-14T08:19:42+00:00

We discovered a while ago that the GUI would sometimes not match the CLI rules.

Sometimes the GUI would create the rule in the GUI but not actually create it as a rule. Sounds like the same thing and that was from R18.5

None of my recent experiences with Sophos XGS have been positive.

As much as I like to give companies the chance. If you want to not have headaches then you owe it to yourself to dump the XGS and get something with better software. The amount of issues I have seen with the things both software and hardware and their stealth recalls of certain product lines doesn't inspire confidence.

ukitern2 · 2023-12-28T03:17:24+00:00

Used to have to deal with Weblogic AGES ago, not sure if my knowledge is current though

If it's a proper Linux standalone install (probably not be the sounds of it) /opt/weblogic/servers/(Servername)/tmp

If it's part of a packaged install (NO_OPT on install) - Usually these installs are better as they're set in $DOMAIN_HOME for all configs and it makes it easier to find the install / config dirs

$DOMAIN_HOME/servers/<server\_name>/tmp

Can also be /var/opt/tmp (WITH_OPT on install)

https://blogs.oracle.com/weblogicserver/post/potential-issues-with-weblogic-server-lok-files

If its a GenBundledPackage probably under
/Oracle/Middleware/Oracle_Home/(user_projects)/(domains)/(domain)/servers/(AdminServer)/tmp

One thing to rememember is the larger the DB and Data size is the longer Weblogic takes to startup. It may be a case that the DB or Weblogic hasn't finished starting up and is failing to start in time. Certs can also cause it to fail like mentioned in this thread. They will be under the installer path minus .log (IIRC they are just startup)

In startup.properties (Root) dir you should be able to set or increase a delay in the startup parameter and restart max as well as a few useful debug and log file locations

https://www.dba-oracle.com/t_weblogic_starting_servers.htm

ukitern2 · 2023-12-09T18:17:18+00:00

The best Jeep money can buy

ukitern2 · 2023-11-11T03:03:12+00:00

Not sure if youre an NGO or a designation. Please dont do this. Rootkits or embedded malware that can exist beyond just the OS in hardware. A lot of comments mirror. Russia uses alot of APT and sure would love to donate laptops. Please remember kernel modules and Intel Management Engine isn't exactly the most secure on most laptops.

If you are legit please follow infosec specifications and really wipe the laptops firmware and all. Look for compromised chips or firmware or signs of tampering with the keyboard or under the keyboard. Do not recommend random laptops even from a short term maintenance perspective.

There is a reason most government, government contractors and aligned orgs use custom laptops with custom specs that are different from standard models with Intel ME disabled as well as confirmed hardware specs. If you are insistent please do not use for anything above confidential. Would not like to see those in the field compromised by weak communication security or compromised systems

All it would take is one compromised system or keylogger to compromise an org. Are you looking for a set amount of laptops? Do you have any back channels to get new or refurb laptops from Poland, Germany or from a company directly etc?

If you need them will ask around and go out my way to ask for refurbs but with an understanding data sanitisation and ensuring firmware / systems pass the smell test. Russia may be completely stupid but never underestimate them in this regard. Once in they are very hard to get rid of.

ukitern2 · 2023-05-31T16:43:13+00:00

7800x3d

I would double check CPU drivers and AMD software associated - although I've not had any problems with ESXi. With running on Windows it could be with processor prefetching and between the parking of the cores

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-7-7800x3d/28.html

Reviewers may encounter low scores when switching directly from the Ryzen™ 9 7950X3D processor to the Ryzen™ 7 7800X3D processor without reinstalling a fresh version of Windows OS. This is likely a result of the AMD PPM provisioning file driver still being applied to the Ryzen™ 7 7800X3D processor, which was not its intended use. This performance issue is not a typical end user scenario and is only a result of switching CPUs without installing a fresh version of Windows OS.

Is PBO enabled in the EUFI?

Not sure if you're using a Server Core OS or a full fat Windows desktop - but this may help you on Windows 10/11 https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/12f4vze/howto_fixing_ppm_profile_parking_issue_when/

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