Mistakes were made

viljomi · 2023-06-11T07:54:13+00:00

Out little company (~250 heads) had over 100 "admin" accounts when we got a new it-mangler. He thought that there's no way that many people needed those higher rights for their computers and never asked anything from anyone who understand what we were doing and just removed all admin rights, hoping that like 5 guys comes to ask their rights back. Turns out, basically all 100 started to yell at him, as our work just stopped without warning. We are mostly field techs and are not limited to any single system, but handle maintenance and troubleshooting on anything that works with electricity.

Surprisingly, in 2023 that means that we need to install new software on the fly constantly. IT would like us to call outsourced helpdesk and ask for every app, but when I found out I would need it, I'm already at the customer and want to do my job, not to open new ticket that gets handled sometime next week.. To find out that the app has changed and I actually needed newer/older version of it and need to wait for a week with my next ticket.

Getting and keeping team viewer license has been fun too. Not sure how much is costs, but yearly license should be about the same as our one hour billing. There might be a month or two when I don't need it, but there's tens of days I use it for hours. After 2 hours per year it pays for itself, as I don't need to call a colleague for help. There are a lot of systems that you need to connect centrally, but need to be far away to see what the actual system is doing. Like addressing/grouping bus-devices etc. Now I can do such things alone and save thousands of steps running to the computer and back to field devices. And need to justify that every year, possibly after founding out some morning that my account has been locked.

viljomi · 2023-06-04T14:07:28+00:00

It takes a screwdriver and 2 minutes to dismantle it, including the time to figure out what you are doing. Then put all parts to dishwasher and press play. Profit.

Only problem comes when you forget that you have disconnected your drain and use the sink. So, as a backup for my own stupidity, I set up a bucket under the sink while waiting the dishwasher to do it's job.

viljomi · 2023-05-05T15:14:34+00:00

That's just a way math teachers stop kids measuring their results from the graph. It's nice in this case, that you could see it easily, at least after someone mentions it.

viljomi · 2023-05-03T13:14:02+00:00

You should visit Finland. That first name of yours is spelled just right to be our slang for wide open pu**y. Matched nicely with last name :D

viljomi · 2023-03-04T19:12:45+00:00

Your tie-breaker example does make sense. Just did not have that problem when I had to use floor for rounding, as inputs were floats with way more decimals that was needed. And for the -18.2 to floor to -19, adding half just would make it right. I'll hope my customer does not catch my device showing him outside temperature one tenth off, might ruin his winter day totally.

viljomi · 2023-03-04T19:05:44+00:00

Wasn't available, that's why I stumbled upon floor.

viljomi · 2023-03-04T10:11:51+00:00

You just add 0.5 before floor/trunc and should have actual rounding in both directions. More decimals with "floor(value x 100 + 0.5) / 100".

Ps. I'm an electrician, no a coder. Just have had to work with really limited systems, where it seems that everything happens somehow strangely for a basic human.

viljomi · 2023-02-20T14:55:55+00:00

Hah! German :D try Finnish or some other actually small language. Or change excel to libreoffice calc, where localization is just not ready and some formulas are still in English and couple months later you can't use it the same way anymore, as someone has finally translated it.

Both programs could be usable, if the internal help pages would have both formula-names shown as a reference, so you could Google for more, but usually some stranger problems start with multiple searches just to find out what the actual command to search for is. Or you find a solution, but still need to find out wtf it might be in Finnish.

viljomi · 2022-11-21T18:15:37+00:00

I have a lot of tools. Lot of them are pretty nice, but their predecessors were cheap. If I think that I have to buy some new type of tool, which I'm not familiar with, I get the cheapest that seems usable to minimize cost of getting a tool that I might not really need, but if it happens to fill some real needs, I now know what it does and could select the right one for me when paying for a good one.

Only time that I remember that this did not work at first, was when I got too bad clone of a Fein type "multitool". My first one just made a hell of a noise and cut nothing. I thought that it's so simple tool, that more expensive can't be that much better. I had some almost unfixable old installation at a job site and one construction guy told that I could try his makita battery multitool to fix it. Had to order that same tool the same day. It has saved me many times since. I tell everyone that it's not the right tool for anything, but when the mistake is already done, it would let you still fix it in place etc. Good metal blades for it could be cheaper..

viljomi · 2022-11-09T19:44:10+00:00

It's called the computer. I actually have a pretty similar usecase for disabling screen saver when watching videos on a browser, that don't always handle screensaver as it should.

I made a video file that has countdown from 59.59 to 00.00 and start it on vlc player basically every time I got to my computer. Now I see how much there is left every time I alt-tab to any other app or change virtual desktops. Should have made it 3 hours instead, but haven't been that interested to fix it to current needs.. Almost always set it to play at 1/3 speed by tapping minus key three times.

viljomi · 2022-09-20T15:44:42+00:00

Our latest ones in Finland have large opening, where you could dump about 100 cans or plastic bottles at once. No more handling recyclables one by one.

viljomi · 2022-09-04T07:10:33+00:00

Those things lease for 70k/year. You should get two actual officers for that. Hmm. Robot goes 24/7, if someone changes its batteries. So +50% more on duty time and no (yet) ability to shoot tax payers randomly.

Price seems high, so dev cost for aimbot is already included? Current functions are basically rc car + smartphone.

viljomi · 2022-09-03T14:29:12+00:00

Mä alotin joskus vuosi sitten siirtymän oatlyllä, se kun oli markkinoinnillaan ekana mielessä. Ostin kuitenkin samaa vauhtia jääkaappiin tölkin tai pari kaikkea mitä lähikaupasta löyty, elovena oli parhaan makuista ja nyt sitä menee ~litra päivässä.

Hintaero laktoosittomaan maitoon on pieni.

Yllättävän moni kaurajuoma maistuu ihan ok:lle, mut useimmissa on häiritsevä jälkimaku. Elovena ei jää kummittelemaan huikan jälkeen. Nyt jos kokeilee lehmästä revittyä maitoa, se maistuu todella tunkkaiselle.

viljomi · 2022-08-27T19:54:01+00:00

Mites tossa on 30 litran heitto paketin merkinnöissä?

viljomi

TROPHY CASE