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Asmodai_00 posted:Printers. Beat me to it. Can't wait to not work on printers anymore.
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Sep 19, 2015 17:33
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Boogalo posted:A friend of mine had an old P2 300mhz POS. It did a weird thing where if you started it up normally, it would freeze loading windows 98. If you started it with a blank floppy in the drive, let it fail to boot from the floppy, ejected it and had it resume boot, windows would load just fine. Nobody's ever had a good explanation for it. I'd guess the hard drive had issues starting up.
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Sep 19, 2015 17:37
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Thanks Ants posted:"$15k for backups! We don't need that sort of thing!" Buffalos are really cheap. Cheap means good, right?
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Sep 19, 2015 17:43
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ilkhan posted:Now build a $15k redundant offline backup system. If there's anything positive that came from this situation, it's that upper management seems to understand now that having an IT department of 2 isn't a good thing. I've been told they've blank-checked a new backup solution. That and my boss was able to personally tell the CEO, COO, and EVP that I am overworked and underpaid. 
Sirotan fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Sep 19, 2015 |
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Sep 19, 2015 17:52
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Sirotan posted:If there's anything positive that came from this situation, it's that upper management seems to understand now that having an IT department of 2 isn't a good thing. I've been told they've blank-checked a new backup solution. They probably high fived each other once your boss left, since they found the sweet spot of just enough overwork.
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Sep 19, 2015 19:17
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Volmarias posted:They probably high fived each other once your boss left, since they found the sweet spot of just enough overwork. "We'll take that into consideration, but the budget is stretched thin as it is. Also, I'll be out the next three months as I tour the world in the company's new private jet." this is literally a thing that happened to me
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Sep 19, 2015 19:29
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larchesdanrew posted:"We'll take that into consideration, but the budget is stretched thin as it is. Also, I'll be out the next three months as I tour the world in the company's new private jet." The worst thing isn't when managers say these things, it's that they insult your intelligence by expecting you to believe them.
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Sep 19, 2015 20:08
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Volmarias posted:Also, I'd love to know what the next guy who discovers those pentium 2s thinks. Haunted desktops!
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Sep 19, 2015 20:14
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Boogalo posted:A friend of mine had an old P2 300mhz POS. It did a weird thing where if you started it up normally, it would freeze loading windows 98. If you started it with a blank floppy in the drive, let it fail to boot from the floppy, ejected it and had it resume boot, windows would load just fine. Nobody's ever had a good explanation for it. I had a similar situation around 2008. A Dell laptop, around three years old at that point, just... stopped booting into Windows XP. I could start from the XP CD, see the hard drive fine, but it never booted properly from the hard drive. Even after fixing the boot sector, nothin'. The hard drive tested fine, but it would never boot, so obviously something was wrong, right? Replaced the hard drive, reinstalled Windows XP, updated it, took it back out to the client. It worked fine for a week, after which the exact same symptoms came up. Took it with me again, and I finally figured it out. It would boot perfectly fine if the XP CD was in the drive, but would never boot from the hard drive itself. I'd left the customer's restore disc in the drive, and the symptoms didn't come back up until the customer needed to use the CD drive for something else. Updated/reflashed the BIOS, and everything worked perfectly. The ghost wasn't in the drive, but in the machine itself.
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Sep 19, 2015 20:43
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I'd guess a bad cable or ide/sata controller.
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Sep 19, 2015 20:53
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Truga posted:I work at a PR/design/web agency. Every now and then I wear a boring grey t-shirt that has nothing on it except the word "Helvetica". In comic sans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqfSqUuo7Ms They need to make a shirt out of that. Sirotan posted:$15,000 later we got all our data back. I've worked almost 60 hours this week and my boss pulled two 40-hour days. I somehow managed to draw two short straws, oncall, AND build support. Build usually runs from 11:59pm till whenever. today "whenever" was 3:30pm the next day. I was lucky, one of my coworkers filled in for me from about 6a-11a today so I could sleep a bit.
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Sep 19, 2015 21:50
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larchesdanrew posted:"We'll take that into consideration, but the budget is stretched thin as it is. Also, I'll be out the next three months as I tour the world in the company's new private jet." Friend of mine worked as a bookkeeper for a company that provided onsite technicians for specialty oil field-related electronics on a moments notice. To this end the company had two jets, both Cessna Citation something anothers. In 3 three years of working there those two planes never once let the ground for business purposes; they only toted around the two owners' families. Every single call out was done by commercial airlines and a rental car, or occasionally a chartered flight. I say three years of working there because she was let go at the end of last year along with a bunch of other people because the downturn in oil prices meant the owners were not going to be able to pay themselves the bonuses they were quite expecting. I guess what I'm saying is I hope people like that lawn dart into the ground.
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Sep 19, 2015 21:54
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go3 posted:Friend of mine worked as a bookkeeper for a company that provided onsite technicians for specialty oil field-related electronics on a moments notice. To this end the company had two jets, both Cessna Citation something anothers. In 3 three years of working there those two planes never once let the ground for business purposes; they only toted around the two owners' families. Every single call out was done by commercial airlines and a rental car, or occasionally a chartered flight. I say three years of working there because she was let go at the end of last year along with a bunch of other people because the downturn in oil prices meant the owners were not going to be able to pay themselves the bonuses they were quite expecting. Our rival station just laid off their entire production team in favor of automatic rundowns and robotic cameras. They had to lay them off to afford the equipment that was replacing them. I can't get approval for a new office chair. I also can't afford to send my children to daycare. The CEO had my supervisor researching a $200,000 remote control system for the "company" jet. Eat the rich 
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Sep 19, 2015 22:20
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larchesdanrew posted:Our rival station just laid off their entire production team in favor of automatic rundowns and robotic cameras. They had to lay them off to afford the equipment that was replacing them. sounds like the production team there got buffaloed
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Sep 19, 2015 22:27
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A client's office manager called in this morning to my personal line saying that a sister company had been broken into and their computers were stolen, and if I could recommend new ones. Turns out that in 18 years of business, this multi-million dollar company never once did backups on any of their computers. Luckily the office manager has been a great client of mine for almost a decade (hence having my personal line) and told the other boss "we're buying what my IT guy recommends, including backups, and you aren't going to second-guess a thing." Sometimes it pays to answer the phone I suppose.
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Sep 20, 2015 00:43
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Thanks Ants posted:Does it even need a firewall if it's a private link between your office and the datacenter? Most place implicitly deny traffic between VLANs and only open up necessary communications via ACLs or firewall rules.
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Sep 20, 2015 01:43
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Segmentation Fault posted:sounds like the production team there got buffaloed I want you to know this hit me just in the right loving way (i.e. opened up the thread to view unread posts and this was the first one I saw, plus the "drive-by" aspect of not finishing the phrase with a period) that I busted out laughing hysterically. Bravo.
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Sep 20, 2015 02:31
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So I'm sitting at home today getting ready to relax and watch Notre Dame play against Georgia Tech when I get a call from work. I'm needed to come in and check out vCenter because it's apparently offline and there are tons of servers down with no way to access them. I grumpily make my way in and go see the team lead, who bitched about vCenter not letting him log in, only to watch vCenter start up and log in and report back a normal status. I go over to my desk and fire up vCenter and check out the environment to find all VMs are working and no issues exist that I need to fix. Turns out someone on the HBSS team decided to do something that set the servers to start rejecting all traffic. Told the team lead that I was heading home to catch the second half of the game, and when he protested I told him to call me if they still needed me and I'd come back in. No call, and Notre Dame won, so it was a good afternoon.
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Sep 20, 2015 02:33
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My wife went out shopping today and left me with a toddler and an infant. 6 hours later I get them to finally take a nap. Finally some me time, when the my phone goes off. A ticket came in. For some reason, reporters can't save graphics to the database. Great. I remote in and connect to the server and am greeted by the "why did you restart" dialogue. There's your problem. Got all the services running properly and asked the ticket submitter to try again. Still not working.  Can you open TeamViewer and let me know the ID and password for the computer you're using? What's a TeamViewer? it's a program on the computer. Should be in the start menu. I know what a program is! Don't treat me like I'm stupid! I'm very sorry if it seemed like that. I just need the ID and password the program lists so I can remote in and see what the problem is. [id and password]I remote in and she's working away on something. Whatever, disable remote input powers activate. what did you do!? My computer won't work now and it's doing stuff. that's me. well stop. I have work to do. Fine by me. Forwarded the conversation to her manager to explain why they can't build graphics until Monday. Getting sick of diva drama bullshit.
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Sep 20, 2015 03:06
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We had a backup 1G link to our DR datacenter go down almost 20 hours ago, and I can't even get mad because the service provider has been keeping us updated with a comedy of errors: 8am: Tech en route to replace card 9am: Tech changed out the card, but it wouldn't boot. Tech en route to retrieve additional spare. 10am: Tech changed out the card again, still won't boot. Opened support ticket with vendor. 11am: Vendor suggests replacing card at the next site up. Tech is en route. 2pm: Vendor suggests the shelf controller will need to be replaced. Tech is en route to pick up a spare. 6:30pm: Tech is en route to pick up a cable because the controller card failed to autoload its configuration from adjacent nodes, and needs to be provisioned manually. 8:30pm: Tech has the cable and has begun work. 9:45pm: Had problems with the first card, provisioning a second card is in progress. 11pm: Second card is accessible, but has a "bad software load". Vendor is arranging to get a fresh software load. 12:15am: Vendor is still configuring the tech's laptop to perform the software load. 2am: Tech and vendor are having problems getting the second card to allow for programming. 3am: Second tech is en route with a third card.
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Sep 20, 2015 11:24
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That poor tech holy poo poo.
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Sep 20, 2015 17:07
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5am: Tech no longer responding, second tech en route 5:45am: Tech found hanging from cable, tech en route to retrieve second cable
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Sep 20, 2015 17:28
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6:30am: Active shooter on site. Please follow downtime procedures and remember that death is only the beginning. 7am: Dusty road. I'm going to drive until burns my bones.
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Sep 20, 2015 19:56
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9am: we are fighting over guzzoline.
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Sep 20, 2015 20:34
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9:45am: Tech defeats CTO in single combat, made chieftain of the business park. 10:00am: Tech issues declaration of jihad on all telco. 10:05am: Primary 10g link down. Paged Tech.
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Sep 20, 2015 20:54
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18 Character Limit posted:9:45am: Tech defeats CTO in single combat, made chieftain of the business park. http://obscuritory.com/rpg/mission-mainframe/
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Sep 20, 2015 21:30
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At my new job, every classroom is wired for sound (Lightspeed IR sound systems with ceiling speakers) and video. There are two panels in every classroom on adjacent walls with VGA, 2x RCA, and 2x S-Video, that go up to a pole-mounted projector. I've had to repair/reterminate two VGA terminals so far, and I've discovered I really don't like them. The in-wall VGA cabling is 5 wire, and the terminal blocks have screw-down terminals for each wire and their individual shields. They're crammed into the small wall boxes with 6+ inches of extra cable, plus the extra cable from the RCA and S-Video cables, and the faceplates are modular plastic. Nearly every one has broken clips, so a lot of the VGA connectors are loose and get moved around, which leads to broken VGA wires. Whatever contractor originally installed these didn't try to fit the wire lengths to the connector, so they're bent every which way to fit. And there's a lot of ghosting on the projectors. The wires are solid core, thin as hell, and covered in thick insulation, and of course the stranded shielding doesn't like being inserted into the terminals. Takes ages to re-do a terminal block. I desperately want to replace them all, but it doesn't look like anyone's innovated on these terminals, ever, and can't find a more compact, wire-friendly terminal design. Just replacing the faceplates with sturdy metal VGA-only looks like it'll cost about $30 per plate. If I had the budget, I'd like to replace everything with in-wall HDMI.
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Sep 20, 2015 21:46
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Have a look at C2Gs RapidRun stuff: http://www.cablestogo.com/category/rapidrun I used to burn through all the plastic wall plates as well, started speccing Kramer and just swallowed the cost because it was so much better.
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Sep 20, 2015 22:05
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Thanks Ants posted:Have a look at C2Gs RapidRun stuff: http://www.cablestogo.com/category/rapidrun RapidRun looks perfect, but that price hurts. Minimum of 2 plates per room, ~35 foot runs...it'd be over $7k for my building. Or a lot more if plenum cabling was required. Plus someone to install the cabling or my time to try and do it myself (ha!). Plus there was talk about going to different projectors, possibly short- or ultra-short-throw, as these LED ones die off, meaning needs could be changing sooner than thousands of dollars of new hardware could justify. Of course, I'm probably going to be spending a thousand bucks on ink & toner next week, so... Unlike my previous school district, they haven't tried to curtail teacher printing at all. Four Officejet Pros whose cartridges are $400 a set, and a wax block color printer with mercifully low costs, but useless if they want to laminate the output. More printers in my one school than I used to deal with at all four of my schools before.
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Sep 21, 2015 00:43
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Can't we just unilaterally decide to stop using loving VGA? It's literally the worst connector possible for something that gets plugged and unplugged a lot, and still everyone insists on using it in conference rooms. It's 2015. If your laptop doesn't have HDMI or DP you're way overdue for an upgrade.
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Sep 21, 2015 10:32
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Collateral Damage posted:Can't we just unilaterally decide to stop using loving VGA? It's literally the worst connector possible for something that gets plugged and unplugged a lot, and still everyone insists on using it in conference rooms. On the plus side, when it's connected, it stays connected. None of that coming unconnected when someone sneezes - you can lift a CRT monitor by the cable and swing it around your head and it will stay connected.
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Sep 21, 2015 10:53
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Collateral Damage posted:Can't we just unilaterally decide to stop using loving VGA? It's literally the worst connector possible for something that gets plugged and unplugged a lot, and still everyone insists on using it in conference rooms. In June we scrapped the last VGA-only laptops, and are now 100% DP/HDMI. We've swapped all the VGA-only projectors too and give no fucks at all when people come crying over how their private ShitTop 2000 don't work with the new equipment. Feels good, man.
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Sep 21, 2015 12:49
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So I'm spending the day researching printers today. Why am I doing this? Because I'm 99% sure the print vendor is trying to upsell a massive Canon PrintCenter with a Fiery Controller to our witless Processing Group. The machine needs to have two functions: 1) The ability to superimpose a watermark on the document being printed. 2) The ability to release documents from a queue via the machine itself. Considering the above and the fact that we aren't a high-end print shop a Fiery controller sounds wildly out of scope for this and indicative of your typical vendor cash grab. Attempting to convince my boss of this just gets me pushback, including the old gem of "Stop being so negative and paranoid all the time." gently caress printers. And while we're on the topic, gently caress HP for their Universal Print Driver abomination. Collateral Damage posted:Can't we just unilaterally decide to stop using loving VGA? It's literally the worst connector possible for something that gets plugged and unplugged a lot, and still everyone insists on using it in conference rooms. About once a week I go into convulsions as I walk past the cubicle farm and see the chains of DisplayPort adapted to DVI adapted to VGA when the monitors actually have DisplayPorts. Wrath of the Bitch King fucked around with this message at 12:57 on Sep 21, 2015 |
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Sep 21, 2015 12:54
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Wrath of the Bitch King posted:About once a week I go into convulsions as I walk past the cubicle farm and see the chains of DisplayPort adapted to DVI adapted to VGA when the monitors actually have DisplayPorts. His reaction was a surprised "You can do that?"  edit: Wrath of the Bitch King posted:The machine needs to have two functions: The badge reader for queue release is a small extra, but the function is otherwise built into the machine. Collateral Damage fucked around with this message at 13:14 on Sep 21, 2015 |
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Sep 21, 2015 13:05
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Collateral Damage posted:I had to stop my support monkey from hooking up a dozen new desktops using DP->VGA converters when both computers and displays had DP, and there was a DP cable included with the display. Our Desktop Support guys are really struggling with UEFI. Like really, really struggling. I've shown them the imaging process with regards to UEFI countless times and provided documentation, but I'll still get calls and e-mails telling me that the "image doesn't work" or "something is broken with the image." No, Desktop Support Guy, I told you you needed to build out the USB Thumb Drive with Rufus using the UEFI/NTFS feature, and that if you do that Secure Boot has to be temporarily disabled via the UEFI for the image to work. This is the same guy that insists on using a thumb drive for imaging when I setup PXE installs on the subnet to avoid the hassle of having to do that. I'm not even going to go into CSM or Legacy Mode here. It just does not compute with these guys.
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Sep 21, 2015 13:10
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Wrath of the Bitch King posted:So I'm spending the day researching printers today. Why am I doing this? Because I'm 99% sure the print vendor is trying to upsell a massive Canon PrintCenter with a Fiery Controller to our witless Processing Group. That sounds like something my company's salespeople do. You REALLY don't need a Fiery. Or what sounds like a giant press
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Sep 21, 2015 13:28
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Any alternatives? My understanding is that this thing will need a RIP, but are there "lesser" types that will do the job but aren't an incredibly expensive Fiery? I'm trying to research this but I feel like they intentionally make the material obtuse to railroad you into getting the most expensive option. Also the people I would normally go to with this are the ones trying to make a profit.
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Sep 21, 2015 14:10
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Llab posted:That sounds like something my company's salespeople do. You REALLY don't need a Fiery. Or what sounds like a giant press Ask the question 'why do we need a RIP for document printing?'
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Sep 21, 2015 14:11
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Wrath of the Bitch King posted:Any alternatives? My understanding is that this thing will need a RIP, but are there "lesser" types that will do the job but aren't an incredibly expensive Fiery? I'm trying to research this but I feel like they intentionally make the material obtuse to railroad you into getting the most expensive option. I told a senior tech about your situation and he agrees both of your needs could probably be handled by any decent MFP. I didn't get much of a chance to ask him for more, but he says you definitely need a second opinion there.
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Sep 21, 2015 14:53
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spog posted:On the plus side, when it's connected, it stays connected. Did that years ago cleaning out trash prior to moving locations. Smashing that poo poo into a trash can is cathartic
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Sep 21, 2015 15:21
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