I still think you’re engaging and charming. Even if you were quiet for the last two days.

Several years ago, when I was more just the unofficial office geek, our email was acting up. Though we had Internet access as normal. At the time, email (Exchange) was hosted on-prem on our server. Anything server related, I’d contact our MSP to handle it. Which usually meant they’d simply reboot the server. Easy enough, but I was kinda afraid and hesitant to touch the server unless the MSP explicitly asked/told me to do something.

I reported it to our MSP, expecting a quick response, but nothing. Not even acknowledgment of the issue. This was already going on for like an hour, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I went to the server, turned on the monitor…and it was black. Well, shit. Couldn’t even do a proper shutdown. So I emailed again, waited a bit, and again no response.

Well, if the server was being unresponsive, I figured a hard shutdown and reboot would be fine. I knew that’s what the MSP would (ask me to) do. What difference was them telling me to do it versus just me doing it on my own? I was going to fix email! I was going to be the hero! So I did it.

Server booted up, but after getting past the BIOS and other checks…it went back to black screen again. No Windows login. That’s not so terrible, since that was the status quo. Except now, people were also saying Internet all of a sudden stopped working. Oh shit.

Little did I know that the sever was acting as our DNS. So I essentially took down everything: email, Internet, even some server access (network drives, DBs). I was in a cold sweat now since we were pretty much dead in the water. I of course reached out AGAIN to the MSP, but AGAIN nothing. Wtf…

So I told my co-workers and bosses, expecting to get in some trouble for making things worse. Surprisingly, no one cared. A couple people decided to go home and work. Some people took super long lunches or chitchatted. Our receptionist was playing games on her computer. Our CEO had his feet up on his desk and was scrolling Facebook on his phone. Another C-suite decided to call it an early day.

Eventually, at basically the end of the day, the MSP reached out. They sent some remote commands to the server and it all started working again. Apparently, they were dealing with an actual catastrophe elsewhere: one of their clients’ offices had burned down so they were focused on BCDR over there all day.

So yeah, I took down our server for half a day. And no one cared, except me.

Team Kick Sauber? That just sounds weird. Like they want to get rid of Sauber.

Project Zomboid, hands down. Valheim is good, too.

But only with friends. And that’s case with pretty much all survival games; I won’t play by myself.

I guess Minecraft, as well, but I mostly play Creative. So to me, it’s hardly a survival game.

I’m enjoying Beehaw. I really haven’t looked around at other instances that much, but it’s pretty chill here.

Ooh that’s pretty neat and inexpensive. Thanks for sharing!

Not having to work. I was 12 or 13 at the turn of the millennium. So not working was nice.

I probably miss my Gameboy Pocket (and Pokemon). Yeah the screen was tiny, not in color, and it wasn’t backlit, and I have a Switch and Steam Deck and of course an smartphone, but…Idk, the Pocket was just so quaint and cute. I could just play that play Pokemon for hours on end, anywhere I wanted, without disturbing anyone. Which I did, sometimes even at school, which eventually got it confiscated by a teacher; I got it back at the end of the day.

It was such a paradigm change in gaming (Yes, I know the original GB or even Sega GameGear existed, but I knew few people who had one and they were bulky as all hell).

My brother collected these. I think he still has some of them somewhere. Like the original boxes for Diablo and Starcraft.

I collected some too, but I think I eventually got rid of mine. I was into the various Maxis Sim games, so I had tons of the boxes. SimCity, SimTower, SimPark, SimIsle…

The best manual was probably Ultima Online, an MMO. I read and studied the shit out of that thing. Used to bring it to school to learn all the spells and stuff. Also came with a good sized, folded-up map of the world on special paper.

I buy two at a time. And I can demolish a bag of chips in one sitting.

I try not to do that. I try REALLY hard not to. But sometimes it just happens, and I have no clue how. The chips just disappear somewhere 🤔

Palm Trees by Jungle. Honestly, anything on their latest album “Volcano” is amazing, as are the music videos. Seriously worth a watch.

It really was. I was more freaked out than he was. Even though it was video, I specifically yelling out, “someone needs to call 911!” So, so much blood…

FYI, you’re on a Beehaw community right now. This type of needless aggression may be acceptable elsewhere, but not on Beehaw.

I actually these little minigame ones as opposed to the text captchas or the “Click all the photos of traffic lights.”

I’ve done it before using Duet.

But it’s not like that’s the only “monitor.” It’s always been secondary (mainly because I’ve used it with an MBP).

Mastodon is great. Feels very much like the early days of Twitter and is a solid product so far. I have a PixelFed account, but I haven’t played around with it that much yet. Seems pretty good., though we shall see. I have an account on a Matrix server, but I’ve only signed-in and used it once; Discord is still far more useful.

Lemmy is…Eh. Idk. Rome (or reddit) wasn’t built in a day, I know. It can be difficult to find the content or discussion I want because people are so spread out. Usually when numbers are low, you don’t want people spread out because it makes communities feel empty, further driving people away.

But more than all that, I find the platform itself so limited. Like the moderation tools are terrible. Can’t even block a problematic domain. It seems like if you delete a comment in a thread, all the comments underneath it vanish. Makes it difficult to sometimes leave moderation comments. And Federation or Defederation seems way too binary to me; there should be shades of gray. Though I think the Fed/DeFed binary is true of all Fediverse services.

Like I enjoy spending time here. But I’m not yet convinced that Lemmy is the right platform. FWIW, I’m also trying Kbin on a separate account; in some ways seems better, but in other ways, just seems confusing.

Shh! You’re gonna tempt the DNS demons!

Microsoft Courier.

Indoor-issues aside, I get the feeling that people who would be willing to do this, probably wouldn’t care too much about the water quality either. How often are they cleaning or replacing the water? Do they still go in it even if it’s not being cleaned regularly? What does this smell like?

Anything Popeye related.

Astronaut. Space was my first love. At least up until about first/second grade (age 6-7).

Eventually, I became more interested in computers. My dad is a programmer in an IT capacity and he used to bring home parts from mainframes or servers. I was fascinated with these components. He would also write little QBasic programs for me that did cool graphical stuff, like colored bubbles floating on screen or colored “laser lines.” He’d bring me to his office to see the “computer room,” which was just like an entire floor of mainframes and servers and tape machines. I was amazed and thought I wanted to be programmer like him.

Around my preteen/teen yrs, I taught myself HTML/CSS and started making my own websites. By high school, I was taking programming classes.

I went to college for CS, but I also got a job as a part time website manager and email designer. Though I also became that guy who knew how to fix my coworkers issues with their computers. For various reasons, I never finished my CS degree, instead just opting for a 2yr degree.

Today, I’m solidly in the IT realm. Mainly in end user support, but I also do some more sysadmin-y stuff with the network and servers and even procurement. Still do some light web and email stuff, but it’s usually more on the technical side these days. Been just over 18yrs since I first got the parttime gig. I’m now on my second stint with this group and I’m the IT Manager. In a department of one!