Programmer Between Jobs...

Announcement time, I'm unemployed... Yes, as of the 28th December 2018 I have not been gainfully employed.  But fear not, I am starting my new job on Wednesday 2nd January.

I've covered this in a nattering brief on my YouTube, which I now link, but stick with this post for more information.

I've never really spoken directly about the job I've had and how its evolved over the years I've been with it, so I was at that role for 14 years.  That's a very long time, especially in today's markets, but as you all know I keep myself busy and informed on these very pages.

I did work in what's euphemistically called "the pay to play industry", this is the gambling industry to the rest of the world, but saying that I didn't write the actual games.  I was a systems engineer, so I wrote software which drove the money accepting and paying hardware, and especially software which worked to store the current state of a machine, avoid frauds, count, collate and communicate metrics to central servers or offline (USB) uploads.

And I did all this according to a set of quite strict legal guidelines and requirements, so we're not talking about the much media covered "crack cocaine of gambling the FOBT", we're talking at most about £1 stake machines, family game machines, questions and answer style stuff.  The more cuddly end of the market if you're asking me.

I am leaving that industry, all that knowledge of BACTA standards and other stuff has been slowly ebbing out of my pores and leaving me, as I actually resigned in early October and in late October (when it became public knowledge in the office I was leaving) they placed me on gardening leave.  We'll gloss over that as some folks got their righteous fury out and pointed it in my direction; needless to say, being on gardening leave this long has let the move happen seamlessly, but it will be a shock to return to early morning rising to get into Nottingham City Center... Plus, no more day time tele... Oh thank god, no more daytime TV!

So, where am I going?  Well, I'm going to a company called The Multiplayer Guys, this is an actual game company, a computer game, console game crew with close ties to an actual game house Super Punk Games.

Now I can't share anything about what I'm going to be working on, but I'm carrying my C++, Windows and Linux experience high on my shoulders.  I'm eager to learn more about the Client Side structure of modern game engines and leverage my server-side and networking experience with the high-speed low latency efficient demands of a modern game.

So, yes, I know what game I'm going to be working on, that's the bit I can't share with you, maybe over time, but right now, nada, nothing, no comment... Move along, move along.

P.S.  I got an e-mail at 16:42 that my Laptop shipped, from China (despite being told the Lenovo reseller was in the Republic of Ireland) by UPS Global... I'm wondering if it'll be here within the week now, I really am.

Story Time : Fantastic Rack Mount Mistakes #4

The final story in my little series, really revolves around the dread of all server room administrators... More nerve shredding than fire!  More nerve tingling than granting terminal access!.... We are of course talking about moving server room....

The plan was eeked out of management in literally, fifteen minutes of a meeting... We had three 6' racks all the wiring, all 2U servers in one rack with a 32 port switch at the top, nicely wired by good self (wishes I had a picture, but we were still using film for photo's back then, and it was too much effort).

The middle rack was a bit more the experimental kit, there was a 4U server in there, a couple of desktop cased machines stood directly on top of that unit - with plastic cutouts to stop hot air from the back feeding back to the front of the rack - yes, even with ghetto server layouts forced upon me, I did try to make the best of things and keep good order...

The third rack was telecomms units, it contained a bank of modems (yes, 64K modems!) another ethernet switch, an unmanaged switch too, and our SAN.

The SAN was a Dell EquiLogic; from memory I remember having 16 drives in it of 120Gb each, and two were hot spares...

The plan, from management, "unplug it all, load it into the two Nissan Primera Estate company cars, and move it from Derbyshire to Leicestershire"... 

That was it, "unplug and move"!

We had two days, over a weekend, to do this... It was Thursday afternoon... The clock was on.

Before you ask, I can't tell you much about why we had to move, nor whom I was working for, but let us just say, a week after the move the company changed name, and I changed employment soon after.

So, Thursday afternoon, I sent out e-mail to everyone, all staff, literally everyone, and said "The Servers are ALL going off, the Network is coming down, ALL IT services will be suspended at 3pm the following day".

Of course the whole place started to moan, so I promptly sent another mail.. "No seriously, ALL Services will be offline at 3pm, I'm serious!"  And I left the building to go see this new site... Two hours driving later, it's nearing 5pm Thursday and I arrive at a tin-shack looking warehouse like building, am let in by a man with a carrier bag and a cough.  I get the keys off of him to, and go check out the "IT Room" as he calls it.

It's a desk, with a single 15amp 240v rail supply and a bunch of cut off ethernet cables spilling out the wall in one corner.

There is no aircon, there is no patch panel, there is no racking... And it's on the first floor... (If you're from the US and reading this, here in the UK the floor against the ground is called "the ground floor", and the "first floor" is above that, it is up at least one flight of stairs... Yep, stairs... No lift (elevator).

Company credit card out, I head back to the office, and I order on next day (before 11am) delivery two RJ45 crimpers, two spools of ethernet cable, a pair of wall mountable 8U cabinets and a laptop (you know, because I thought I might need one) and a pair of walkie-talkies.

I then survey the kit I have to move, now, I can ignore the modems in the large, they unplug and lift out, but there's no telecomms due at the other end for a fortnight, so they'll go dark, they can be the last thing we move.  The switches in that right hand rack though therefore become free, and I can take them our now and start to set up the ethernet at the other end.

I have been assigned a minion from the shop floor to help, Friday morning comes and I await until 1pm that afternoon for my "before 11am delivery"... things are going so swimmingly already.  But I have had time to take the two desktop form factor servers offline, the 4U unit off line, the front blanking all out and disassemble the middle rack.  I've also got the switches from the right hand telecoms cabinet...

In our first transfer load we therefore have the rack, cables, UPS's, a 1U fold out terminal and crimpers in one car.  The two desktop servers and the 4U unit in the other.  We drive to the new site, unload the servers onto a trolley and lift them up stairs, placing them in a corner on the floor.

We then pull up the rack, assemble it, and fit a switch to the top of the cabinet and I send my helper off to survey the site, looking for any and all RJ45 sockets, and noting where they are, room by room and any notes on them.  I meanwhile start to splice new RJ45 connectors onto every one of the fifty or so ethernet cables laying on the floor, and I plug them into the switch.  I braid them all and cap them and wrap them nicely into the rack cable managements either side.

The switch has a useful line-test function, and my minion has the laptop!... So he can just plug a cable in at the other end and I see a light come on...  Over the radio I ask him to pick a socket, tell me if it's marked and to plug in... We do this room by room, and I move patches around to group rooms together, and I tell him a number to mark on the socket with a sharpie.

We've been at this mind numbing task for a couple of hours when I decide we need a break, and I go down to meet him... I'm a little aghast to see he's not written on the little window areas for the socket numbers, he's written them in letters as tall as the socket itself... *slaps forehead*.... It looks a mess, but it works, I'll have to come around in a weeks time with some acetone to clean it up, but it'll do... It'll do.

Fifty odd sockets later, we've got the whole building ethernet hooked into this switch.  The rack is powered and the UPS's are stable, reporting good, and the 4U server is up and fine from the laptop over a few of the sockets I've checked.

The two desktop servers survive the move too, and they're placed in the footing of the rack, rather then perched ontop.

Everything looks fab, and we've got this all done before 7pm on the Friday!  Things are looking GOOOODD!

I buy the chap helping me a pub meal, and he takes the company car home, I expect to see him Saturday morning.

Saturday morning, before switching down everything in the office, I check everyone is offline, and start to kill the servers down.  The SAN down, and pulling everything out of the rack, I'm stacking all the patch cables I'm taking all the units out and the car is pretty full.  Where is the other car?... 9am... 10am... No sign, I've got to call him.

He's at home, in bed... His wife describes him as, "Drunk as a lord"... He apparently didn't realise I needed him the next day, and had a skin full after he'd gone home.  He can't drive.

So, I'm flying solo... 

I drive the first load down to the new site, and basically throw it all out the back into the loading dock, and set off for the next load, I get the UPS's for this rack in the car and two of the 2U servers... and it's pretty much at load... Four more trips and I have all the servers at the new site, in the loading bay, and I'm taking the left hand rack down at the old place.

It won't come apart, and it's really a two man job... So, I give up, and I load all the bits I can up, and go to the new site, and decide to just stack the machines up off the floor but in a pile, rather then rack mounted, for a while.

So, machine by machine, I lug them up the stairs... It's heavy, it's hard, and I'm on the penultimate machine... When half way up the first flight of stairs I feel I'm about to loose my grip.

I try to catch a better hold, but it all happens at once, the machine is free, I'm toppling to my side as the weight takes me, and I'm going down the stairs on my side with my left finger in the thumb hook on the front of the server.

Lets just say, it was my left finger... And the server fell to my right.... Yeah, snappy snappy.

So, I have definitely broken my finger.  And I've definitely broken the server, as it bounced down about eight hard steps, the real flanges on the rack rails are all bent, the handles on the PSU units are smashed and the drives have shook loose...

Swearing and hobbling I crawl over to the machine, pop the lid and it's all fucked, just properly fucked.  The motherboard has popped up, everything is a mess.... That's an expensive mistake, but not-one I've ever admitted to, until now.

My finger however, needs attention, so I lock up and take a trip to A&E... After three hours they basically say it's a bad break, and put my hand in a mini-cast across the back of my hand and down my finger itself its all fixed.  I can use my wrist.

I return to the site, and luckily for me, there are no more servers to be lifted upstairs... Because someone has hiked open the loading dock roller door and pinched the one remaining server which was sat there.... They've also taken the laptop from upstairs, the two desktop profile servers and a bunch of other stuff...

When I go talk to the "security" guy, the old geeza with the bag from the previous day, he's still carrying his bag... I ask if he saw anything, "yeah saw one of your lads moving your computer things"... I explain he wasn't one of our lads... "I thought that funny, he didn't lift the roller, but crawled under it"... Total retard.

A 999 call later, and checking the grey CCTV, the policeman says he reckons he knows where our stuff is, and they set off to a well known local toe-rags house, where they find the shit with several 2U servers, a spool of ethernet cable and they're busy trying to log into my locked laptop, which was running OpenSuse and totally baffled them.

The police seize everything, I can't get the job done, I call the boss and tell him, and basically tell the security guy to not let a soul past him until they show the ID's for the company. 

Monday morning and I'm at the old site, showing people how to unplug their machines for transit to the new site, there's a fleet of vans to help now... You know, gotta move the leather chairs of the directors and the coffee machine properly, but the servers... ner just chuck them in the back of the car!

Needless to say, the ethernet all worked for everyone, replacement servers were easy enough to sort, and restore from the SAN, which was all fine and in place.  The smashed server was harder to explain, and I chose not to, and let everyone assume the thieves had dropped it, whomever dropped it, it was well insured, and the replacement was the first of the then new Dell Poweredge's with the Itanium 2 in them!

But, I soon left this role, the company was sold to a larger parent and stripped of assets.

The drunk, he had my eternal ire after doing such a good job initially I found him not so appealing.

The local toe-rag, got 3 months, all the assets took, IIRC seven weeks to be returned to us, and some bright spark had used aluminium dust to take finger prints off of them... JOYEOUS!

Gloriously Impatient

Good news, good news... Most all the decorating is done!

Yes, in the last three weeks, we've gutted the bathroom, laid new floors, painted lots and lots of gloss onto surfaces, repainted the kitchen, sanded and re-varnished hard wood floors and generally made the house a better place to be.

The reason being, we're moving back to the old house at Brinsley, we're not sure on the old rental market or valuations so that's all going on, but our old tenant is leaving so we're having a new hearing system put in up there and going into that.

The major difference will of course be the lack of storage, the Brinsley house has not got a Utility room, nor a cloak room, nor a loft space, nor an 18 foot out building... So where will we be putting our crap?.... Who knows.

The Virgin Connection is being switched over on the 16th November, so that gives you a heads up when I'll do full dark before hand.

The one worry we have at present is, I headed up to the Brinsley house to give the tenant her finalising letter and get a schedule for her moving, so I could get the plumbers in on the case with the heating, and instead of the tenant another girl hung herself out the window... "What you want?"...

"I want to come in"

"No F**king likely perv"

"No, you miss understand, I'm the landlord, the owner, I have an appointment to measure up for my new heating system, where's XXX"....

"Oh I live here now"....

Oh no you don't lassie, and so she's been oiked out, turned out the tenant could not fully afford it after her last relationship broke down and she got this girl in from her work to share the bills... This girl is the dirtiest schmuck I've ever seen... Uses feminine hygiene products thrown in corners of her bedroom, the carpet stank, she had dirty clothes and rubbish everywhere....

And when I mentioned this needed cleaning up she said "You starting?"... To whit I could only look at the used tampon and say "No, but it looks like you have".

Dirty, disgusting pig... 

The ex-tenant has to therefore pay to clean that carpet professionally, and clean the whole house...

The other thing I noted was that nearly every light bulb in the place was popped... These were new light fittings put in before they took possession, they're less than 11 months old, how did they pop them?.. And how, if "they've been gone ages" did they see, because the landing and stairs run down the middle of the house and are very dark....

Anyway, the lots of decorating will continue I think Friday is a key day, with the estate agents coming.. Then Sunday we have the bathroom ceiling being plastered, so when he's done I'll paint the bathroom wall and lay a new bit of lino... and finally when that ceiling is dry I can paint it.... I don't envisage many WarThunder or Code hours to myself in that time.

However, what I do have in the works is my own personal, and hopefully comprehensive, series (4 parts) covering my fascination with the BF109 fighter, I'm posting this 4 part history from my own sources soon, and also developing a series of "In Game" videos for the type.

I already have one large (45 minute) video ready for upload, but that was from pre-v1.43, so I'm trying to get sometime flying the type post patch.  And when I say "Flying", we're talking exclusively Simulator Battle level detail.

Right, we're in.

I'm back, we're in the new house, we're wired for internet and everything.

I even have my office/desk set up... But, I had to take a half of a wall out to fit the desk, because... the Man lab plan fell at the first hurdle.

The man lab building is huge, but its going to cost thousands to convert into an office.  It needs more than just lining and a floor, it needs basically rebuilding on new footings.

But I have taken the loft room over, and plan on getting up there later.

For now however, lets just say we're in and okay.

I had an epic few games in WarThunder last night, and got a new reward "hero fighter"... I was the highest scoring, highest kill count lowest death count pilot on both teams, my team still lost, but I got the reward, I'll post screen shots later... I wished I'd recorded the match, because it was pretty epic, I got into a head on pass in a Beufighter with like four aircraft... but that ended up in a turning fight with a Pe3 who knew what he was doing with me all shot up... Mind you the friendly P40 who just flew on past didn't help.

Anyway, more to come folks... More from the "Man loft" soon.

Dark for a Fortnight

Right folks, I'm going to see you all soon...

I'm about to go around the Darkside, and I'm sorely tempted to quote something from Apollo 8... Going behind the moon and bricking it in the radio darkness of that lonely place.

The reason is, we're about to move, so the home internet is going dark on the 1st, but we're packing everything up, so I'm packing all my home office up and storing things safe for the move - I am taking all the PC kit in my car with me - the wife can run behind like, riding two sauce pans on a bit of rope... Just so long as my PC is safe.

So, I'm not going to speak on here beyond maybe Thursday - from work - as things come together.

I've already told the wife the kit is going back up in the dining room until the outside ManLab work is done, but basically the ManLab work begins after the move is done... I got three different people advising me already... I might just let them do it, if they don't want to charge.

The plan has however run into one BIG problem, the roof has to go its asbestos... But this is a dirty war kind of situation, I got to clean it up and get it out... I've had warnings about it going to landfill and needing permissions, or paying £4000 to get rid... But then I've also had warning to double and triple and quadruple wrap the stuff...

They pulled my old Junior school down as it was full of asbestos... And wankers ruined the buildings.

It's like... ARGH I hate this.