Be Excellent To Each Other

Can you say why? Does that mean loads more work for you?

It's a long and annoying story, but he's been deemed to have caused a fire risk to the public. And yes, it means a lot more work for me.

On the upside, overtime. KERCHING!

Wow, just shows how serious fire safety is.

As long as your jobs safe though.

Can we have the long and annoying story please...

Still not entirely sure where I stand legally about discussing it.

Call him Dave and call it Manchester Uni?

Paint me pink and call me Dolly?

Mother?

Father?

Can't say I'm surprised, to be honest.

Me neither, but it's still a pain in the arse

Aw do tell

I'll type out the abridged version tomorrow when I'm back on a keyboard.

Maybe pop it into the members only forum?

Good plan

I've been asked to test some of the applications we support on a Windows 7 machine with an eye on the (allegedly) upcoming company wide upgrade from XP. On initially logging in I'm presented with the horrible fucking grey 'classic' interface. No problem, this is the case on our current XP builds as well because they disable the Themes service but you just turn it back on again and you're away. Open services.msc: Themes service already enabled. Uh-oh. Go to Personalisation control panel: all options disabled. You're stuck with no Aero shininess bitch! Godmotherfuckingdammit! I was looking forward to finally having parity between work and home machine and they've killed it all. Desktop team, you sons of bitches.

I can't think of any real reason to set everyone's theme to Windows Classic other than sheer spite.

I imagine it's partly in case the extra processing power Aero requires utterly dominates some of the shitty machines people are running in here; but mostly because the shock of a slightly different looking interface would give some of the geriatric computer-illiterates in here a fucking heart attack. The day this gets rolled out the helpdesk are going to be inundated with enough issues from idiots trying to deal with actual functional differences between XP and 7 so presumably they've decided that limiting the UI differences at least will buy them some breathing room. Which is all fair enough and I'm sympathetic in that regard, but people like me (i.e. anyone who actually works in ICT) should get the choice to use the new UI if they want rather than being forced to deal with the fucking acres of grey that the classic UI foist upon you. I'm not even expecting them to make it too easy, I'm happy to have to find and activate a service or whatever as I've done on XP. Given that I'm running the Zune XP theme on my current machine an upgrade to Windows 7 will mean things will actually look worse which is a stupid situation to be in.

Working in development means my computer is not locked down with any of the usual stuff that the rest of the company has to suffer with. This makes me happy. (we do, afterall, need to test that our software works with aero and the like)

We currently have near full admin access on our own machines so the stuff that's locked down is very minimal compared to others in the company (the most obvious thing is that, bizarrely, we're not allowed to change our desktop wallpaper) but I do fear that this will change with the advent of Windows 7; even if only accidentally while the Desktop team learn how to administer group polcies and whatnot and and inevitably fuck it up. The only applications we develop that can be accessed by external users are all web-based though so we don't have the same reasons you might do to complain about locking down stuff like Aero if it comes to it.

Anyway, I did find another option set I'd forgotten existed ("Adjust visual effects") and after selecting 'Adjust for best appearance' things are looking substantially less grey. Still no Aero though, I'm beginning to wonder if it's not offering the option simply because the gfx card isn't up to the job? Hmmm...

Anything with DX9 should be able to run Aero. A lot of older intel chips will not.

Bah. One of the gippies had a temper on last night and bit Snowcake on the eye. Just been to the vets and it's perforated and will be lucky to keep it. So I've got painkillers and two types of anti-biotics to give her.

So tired from filming yesterday that I haven't taken my documents to new employer because I'd need to have a conversation with them and look half alive and I am capable of neither today. Thus I am a day further from financial 'security' and an iPad than I was before.

Now to spend an hour and a half driving down the A15 in the dark, which is a bit like having unprotected sex with, I dunno, that Jordan or someone.

Because there's two man made hills and a heavily used tunnel on the route?

Dimrill: Hope your Gippy Nigs eye heals. Poor little thing.

Poor gippy

I took the girlfriend's car (our only car currently - she needs it most days, I use it when she doesn't, thankfully I can rely on buses) to the garage today because it has been leaking oil for a week or two. Came to a head today when there was a significant puddle in the car park at college after only sitting there for three hours or so. The sump is absolutely rotten and dripping oil everywhere. The exhaust is also completely buggered and needs replacing. £215. That we don't have. Argh.

The mechanic seemed like a decent enough sort, though. He even let me take a look at the damage myself when it was up on the ramp.

Windows 7 (and Vista) automatically disables Aero if the graphics chip can't do it (quickly enough). To unilaterally disable it in the group policy is nothing more than a "fuck it, it'll make our lives easier" measure.

Just been told that my brother's Father in Law died this morning. Suspected heart attack. Huge bear of a man he was and the nicest fella you'd ever meet. Huge loss to the world. He was 53.

Science speed you, Davpaz's relative.

So sorry to hear that, DavPaz.

Sorry to hear that DavPaz, you must be quite shocked.

Sorry to hear that Davpaz.

I don't like it when this thread pops up

Commiserations DavPaz.

Thanks all. My brother and his wife are in bits.

Fuck smoking. If you're a smoker, you're a fucking idiot.

Sorry to hear this DavPaz. Smoking is stupid.

Sorry to hear your news, DP.

Sorry to hear that, DavPaz. Thoughts with your clan. You're right, smoking is stupid.

Condolences Mr Paz. Smoking is indeed the silliest thing a person can partake in.

We've been told my Nan is on the 'home straight', in that she can barely move/breathe/eat and isn't long for the world. She's 89 and my last surviving grandparent. At some point in the next month or two I think I'll be getting that call.

On a slightly more whimsical note, I fired off a CV earlier at a job that fit me rather well, for which I have a dickload of experience. Reply: "I have reviewed your CV and unfortunately there are several candidates whose background and experience more closely match my client's requirements. Apologies, but on this occasion we will be unable to take your application further.".

The comedy here is that the recruiting company's slogan is 'We see beyond the CV'. No you don't, you lying fucks.

Or they do

Hmm. Just discovered that the rabbit didn't eat her pellets from tea time. She ate her hay though. This isn't like her at all. She usually goes insane for the pellets and eats them all within minutes of filling her bowl. I've only ever seen a Labrador eat more ferociously, in fact!

We've took the pellets out and will feed her in the morning as normal. Hopefully her appetite has returned by then. If not, I believe a trip to the vets sharpish is in order, yes?

[edit]Oh Lord, there's a setup...

Heh, cheers!

She was absolutely fine all day - doing her usual excited jumping whenever I went near the 'food cupboard'.

Who's for another round of cock?

She was her usual hungry self this morning (the rabbit, not Grim...'s mum) and ate her nuggets gleefully, followed by loads of hay and water. Phew. Will keep a close eye on her for the next few days regardless. Very strange behaviour - maybe she was just tired or having an off day or something?

Probably just worried about the prolonged economic crisis in the Euro zone.

Shouldn't have left Radio 4 on.

To anyone at all interested (i.e. nobody) in my Windows 7 issues from the top of this page of the thread; it turns out that the reason I couldn't get the Aero glass effect running was because I was remoting from an XP machine and apparently you only get Aero when remoting from a machine that's capable of Aero itself (i.e. running Vista or 7). I only bother mentioning it because it surprised me a bit and the info might be useful to someone else. I'd assumed that during a remote desktop session you were essentially seeing a 'picture' of the remote machine's screen so you'd just see whatever it had rendered and sent over. Presumably though, given this restriction, that's an over-simplified and just plain wrong idea of how it actually works and some amount of display rendering is actually done locally.

Yeah, it's actually using a virtual display driver. If you look at screen settings while you're remoted in and check what graphics card it thinks you're running, it'll show "MS RDP something something".

Indeed. Stuff like Logmein displays what is rendered on the machine, which is why it is dog slow.
Windows Remote Desktop just takes the calls to the display and renders them itself, hence it being "fast"

Yes, wrong. The client does as much of the drawing as possible, where the application doesn't hook into it for owner-drawing. It's more efficient than sending pictures (which is what VNC does, on Windows at least).

Edit: Oops, forgot I opened this tab a while ago.