Thanks Ants posted:

A story where memories of the spec bucket incident somehow cleanses the mind.

BaseballPCHiker posted:

What was the name of that recording that was an old british senile guy that people would play back to phone scammers and what not? He'd be perfect to put on a conference call.

ZetsurinPower posted:

I never understood the appeal of IT people keeping energy drink cans on their desk like some kind of trophy kill. Are they just trying to be as repulsive as possible?

GnarlyCharlie4u posted:

yes.

Methanar posted:

I just setup and shipped out a windows XP machine

Sickening posted:

There was once a guy at my work who would eat vienna sausages for lunch every day and then drink the water from the can. He would then place the can in his desk and nobody noticed until their was ants and every drawer was filled to the brim with the empty cans.

MC Fruit Stripe posted:

I wish my wife would let me buy a boat so I could motor away from this story.

Sickening posted:

I also see that person stores hardware in a sensible, reliable fashion.

Oh thats you, you are a loving slob.

GnarlyCharlie4u posted:

heh... those are actually fried video cards. More trophies.

Someone managed to actually pop the heatpipe on those.


The heatsink is supposed to be flat. not curved like that.

GnarlyCharlie4u posted:

heh... those are actually fried video cards. More trophies.

Someone managed to actually pop the heatpipe on those.


The heatsink is supposed to be flat. not curved like that.

Vulture Culture posted:

Maybe the ones you've shown her are just too expensive. What's your price for flight?

psydude posted:

Just last week I had to advise a customer on how to virtualize their XP and Server 2003 environment.

Sickening posted:

There was once a guy at my work who would eat vienna sausages for lunch every day and then drink the water from the can. He would then place the can in his desk and nobody noticed until their was ants and every drawer was filled to the brim with the empty cans.

Arsten posted:

So.... Thanks Ants!

Thanks Ants posted:

Arsten posted:

I once encountered this. A guy was lactose intolerant and his wife would put cheese slices in his lunch. Well, they would just fit in this little slot right above the optical drive and he just kept cramming them in there for over a year. There was always a funk in his office that you couldn't quite place, but it's hard in the business world to be all like "Hey, man. Do you wash?" if you aren't their boss.

Then one week, he went on vacation. By Friday, someone needed something from his desk and went in and came out screaming. Apparently, there was a giant WWI-style troop column of black ants under his desk. The janitor came over and vacuum them up and said "It looks like they are coming from the computer!" and I was called.

At the time, I was an idiot help desk guy so I walked it back to my workbench instead of doing the proper thing and rigging it with explosives. Upon arriving, I found I had a small swarm of ants all over my stomach where the box was resting. I immediately stripped that shirt off and threw it away (always keep a spare, guys! ) and then dropped the tower into a box to contain a few ants. After a few minutes of the heebie jeebies with my brain telling my body that there had to be at least 50 million more ants on it everywhere, I was starting to get a headache from the smell, so I dabbed a bit of Vaporub on my nose and proceeded to open it.

The proper word is "exploded" when I popped the side off. The ants came rolling down the sides marched out on the top of the size plate, and flooding the box and going crazy. I was worried they would just keep spreading out from the box when a co-worker showed me the neatest trick I had learned to that date: Cinnamon powder is like a cross between smelling salts and nerve gas to most ants. If you put it down, they will avoid it and if you dump it on them, they will act like you just melted their minds for a few moments before dying.

So, after he created a powder ring against evil spirits on the bottom of the box, I pulled the side off with some pliers and beheld the terror. There was crusty cheese, melty cheese, and oil everywhere. The ants had actually done an ant-farm-tunnel thing to the cheese while harvesting it and the smell was so powerful, the vaporub did nothing to save me. I dumped every bit of cinnamon powder in the jar over as much of that thing as possible. When that obviously wasn't enough to kill everything in there, I basically wrote it off. No one disagreed with me as no one wanted to touch it.

Come Monday morning, the guy was all like "I don't know how that happened! I must have been setup! The smell over the last months wasn't actually there!" and other such niceties. Then he claimed that the owner set him up to avoid paying him the bonus by ruining his current contract work, which the owner was butthurt about and fired him for saying so. Then they came back to me and demanded I recover everything on that computer.

I was fired for refusing to work on that hell tower to recover the 'extremely important' work documents as it was right after the owner's rampage against ant man and he wasn't taking prisoners. He was apparently sorry for firing me after they showed him the computer, but not sorry enough to offer my job back.

So.... Thanks Ants!

Arsten posted:

I once encountered this. A guy was lactose intolerant and his wife would put cheese slices in his lunch. Well, they would just fit in this little slot right above the optical drive and he just kept cramming them in there for over a year. There was always a funk in his office that you couldn't quite place, but it's hard in the business world to be all like "Hey, man. Do you wash?" if you aren't their boss.

Then one week, he went on vacation. By Friday, someone needed something from his desk and went in and came out screaming. Apparently, there was a giant WWI-style troop column of black ants under his desk. The janitor came over and vacuum them up and said "It looks like they are coming from the computer!" and I was called.

At the time, I was an idiot help desk guy so I walked it back to my workbench instead of doing the proper thing and rigging it with explosives. Upon arriving, I found I had a small swarm of ants all over my stomach where the box was resting. I immediately stripped that shirt off and threw it away (always keep a spare, guys! ) and then dropped the tower into a box to contain a few ants. After a few minutes of the heebie jeebies with my brain telling my body that there had to be at least 50 million more ants on it everywhere, I was starting to get a headache from the smell, so I dabbed a bit of Vaporub on my nose and proceeded to open it.

The proper word is "exploded" when I popped the side off. The ants came rolling down the sides marched out on the top of the size plate, and flooding the box and going crazy. I was worried they would just keep spreading out from the box when a co-worker showed me the neatest trick I had learned to that date: Cinnamon powder is like a cross between smelling salts and nerve gas to most ants. If you put it down, they will avoid it and if you dump it on them, they will act like you just melted their minds for a few moments before dying.

So, after he created a powder ring against evil spirits on the bottom of the box, I pulled the side off with some pliers and beheld the terror. There was crusty cheese, melty cheese, and oil everywhere. The ants had actually done an ant-farm-tunnel thing to the cheese while harvesting it and the smell was so powerful, the vaporub did nothing to save me. I dumped every bit of cinnamon powder in the jar over as much of that thing as possible. When that obviously wasn't enough to kill everything in there, I basically wrote it off. No one disagreed with me as no one wanted to touch it.

Come Monday morning, the guy was all like "I don't know how that happened! I must have been setup! The smell over the last months wasn't actually there!" and other such niceties. Then he claimed that the owner set him up to avoid paying him the bonus by ruining his current contract work, which the owner was butthurt about and fired him for saying so. Then they came back to me and demanded I recover everything on that computer.

I was fired for refusing to work on that hell tower to recover the 'extremely important' work documents as it was right after the owner's rampage against ant man and he wasn't taking prisoners. He was apparently sorry for firing me after they showed him the computer, but not sorry enough to offer my job back.

So.... Thanks Ants!

a cop posted:

Why didn't you just say yeah sure and then state it was impossible? What year was this?

jaegerx posted:

Got a couple of conference trips I need to burn by end of the year. Any recommendations? US only unfortunately.

ratbert90 posted:

Defcon and black hat.

jaegerx posted:

Prefer ones that won't get my credit card stolen from. Hashicon is my first choice that I've seen so far

ratbert90 posted:

Defcon is cash only at the door.

jaegerx posted:

I don't have a rfid protected wallet. I'd have to wrap my holy body in foil and wipe my laptop hourly.

ratbert90 posted:

Nah, Defcon has been cool for several years now.

Vulture Culture posted:

Mostly because the whole place is carpeted in feds.

A lot of the interesting stuff has passed this year already, but Hashiconf is good, Strange Loop has some really fun topics, Velocity NYC is in September.

e: there's PuppetConf in October also

psydude posted:

I'm on the plane to Cisco Live right now. IT Goons, please remember to practice good hygiene when you're traveling. If not for yourself, then for the sake of everyone else around you.

CLAM DOWN posted:

Long haul airplane bathrooms are the stuff of nightmares by the end.

CLAM DOWN posted:

Long haul airplane bathrooms are the stuff of nightmares by the end.