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I am so full of myself today it is not true, I swear. I've had 2 real damn good shining moments and I feel I ought to brag about them 
Sling Box
Aaah the sling box. a nice easy way to break broadcasting laws and rape the shit out of your home broadband bandwidth at the same time.
The store wanted to set up a streaming demo to show what you can do over your home network. One of the things they wanted to demo was the Sling Box. Over the past few days, 4 techs have looked at this system and 12 other members of staff. No one could get it to work and when I was asked to give it a bash, I nearly ran away screaming.
it's much easier if I show you a wiring diagram.
http://www.advancedflea.co.uk/cs/img011.jpg
Basically they wanted to stream the incoming signal from Sky to the laptop. Simple enough yeah? Nope.
To set it up, the Sling box needs an active internet connection. We cannot have the Sling box connected to the store internet system as 1, it's too far away and 2, we have enough problems with that as it is. The Sling box had to be on its own network not connected to the net. No problem though because the laptop has a wireless card in it. We could turn the wireless on to run through the setup program then once the Sling box is working, disable the laptops wireless card.
Not gonna work. When you connect to the wireless, the computer goes "Yup. I've got an internet connection" then you connect the wired LAN card and load Sling player which says "Okay, I've found a Sling box. Wanna configure it now?" so you press yes then it comes up "Nope. You've got no active internet connection" even though I can click on internet explorer and load up any webpage I want.
At first I thought it was the trial version of McAfee that came with the laptop that was fucking things up, so I ran the McAfee removal tool, disabled windows firewall...Still in the same position.
Then I realised that to stop people going onto facebook in our Apple shop, we set up an OpenDNS free account to block stuff like that. Basically it blocks stuff that we tell it to, or that it doesn't recognise. So I change the computers default DNS servers to googles public DNS...nothing.
I thought that the fact the router that the sling box was wired to would have DHCP turned on by default would be fucking up the laptop, So I turned it off. Now the damn thing can't see the sling box. It accepted we were connected to the internet though.
So this time I change a cable around. I plugged the RJ45 cable coming out of the laptop into the "Internet" port on the router thinking I could bridge the connections on the laptop (easily done in windows 7) then the store wireless router would handle the IP addressing temporarily. That didn't work
So okay, I put the cables back, turn DHCP Back on and give everything a second to get an IP address again. I left the network connection bridge in place to see if that worked...Nope.
So now I'm totally stumped.
I was hungry so I thought "Fuck it. I'mna have my lunch then come back to it"
I went back into tech and everyone was saying "There's no way you'll be able to do that. You can't have 2 active connections at the same time, you idiot" seriously no one had any faith in me on this one since they had all failed. I was about ready to give up too.
I was about half way through my lunch when I had a brain wave. Network Interface Metrics. Basically you can change how the computer prioritises it's network connections if you can alter the metrics. I discovered this when I was trying to set up FleaVPN to our home server. I realised that if I set the wireless card's metrics to 10 and the lan cards to 20 that will give the wireless card higher priority for all network traffic, then if whatever the computer was calling for wasn't on the wireless network it would try the LAN card.
I tried it, stood their biting my nails as it detected everything it should be receiving, watching the little preview window as it stayed at "No signal" thinking that I had failed again. The just as my heart started to sink the preview window changed to "SKY HD. Believe in better" they heard me cheering across the store. The I disconnected from the wireless network and it was still running.
The managers who had asked me to give it a go came over and started patting me on the back....then asked me to set up all the other stuff they wanted on that network lol
The network ended up as having the sling box, Laptop, a PC, a TV (not including the one connected to the Sky HD box) connected to a media extender, an XBOX 360 and a PS both connected to their own TV to stream media off the PC.
I think idea of that network is just to see how fast we can burn out a router. Here's how the wireing diagram ended up;
http://www.advancedflea.co.uk/cs/img012.jpg
I think everyone was a little envyous that I had solved the problem, even after they told me that I couldn't do what I wanted to do...and I did it
KiBob
RetailWorkhorse will love this one.
We have this douche bag who works in our store, we shall call him KiBob. I think I have bitched about him before on here. Everywhere you work has one of these people. Everything you own, either he has one that's better or he had the first one. He'll make ridicules claims like apparently his sister basically invented the Carl Ziess Lenses, That he occasionally presents the Gadget show, That his clapped-out old Ford Escort that breaks down all the time is better than my new, damn site more reliable Corsa because it cost him less to buy.
I should add that he is also grossly overweight, always takes between an hour and 10 and an hour and a half for his one-hour lunch breaks he smells...and its that proper nauseating, eye-watering, nose stinging B.O smell. Honestly, it smells like he hasn't had a shower in about 20 years and, like everybody who smells, he has no respect for personal space.
He's also the type that does as little work as possible. In the old layout of the store he would sit on the tech PC all day, never come out on the desk and when we had a cue 20 million deep yet somehow his tech service figures would be £1000/week.
It took us a while to realise how he was managing that. It wasn't until there was a refund scam done at another store and that meant we had to start printing off a report of all the refunds that had been done through the day. I found that he was refunding services off my Solar pin and re-selling them on his own. In the eyes of Group Security, that's fraud. It stopped pretty quickly when I told him "If you EVER do that to me again, I won't bother pissing around, I'll just print off the report and hand it to group security" he was not happy about that hehehee
Anyway, I'm in tech at one point, looking on the internet at Slings Website trying to get the afore mentioned Sling box working by seeing if anyone on the forums has had the same problem. No, of course not.
Just at this point, KiBob walks past and says "You've got a person waiting there"
I look over and see its a customer Alex was dealing with, but Al has walked off to get something. "I'm actually busy right now"
so he comes up to me "Go and serve that customer"
Now, as you all know, I'm not always one to think before I speak or act. "Listen here, Moron. You have absolutly ZERO command over me or anyone on this department. You may think you're a manager, and you may tell customers that but I'll tell you this, you aren't even a team leader anymore. Wanna know why? Because you're a lazy, smelly fuckwitt who thinks he knows everything but in reality, knows NOTHING. As you can see I am very OBVIOUSLY in the middle of something that you tried to waste an entire day on but got nowhere. Since you are walking around doing absolutely nothing other than bragging that you've got a big camera hanging around your neck, why don't YOU actually do some fucking work for a change and go and speak to him"
"I don't appreciate your tone" he replied
"Yeah well I don't appreciate you. I also notice that you are once again offending my nostrils. You remember when Sally took you into the office and told you to have a shower? She didn't mean just once, she meant stick to the company policy of keeping good personal hygiene. Since you are standing in my department and I am the ranking member of staff here, If you don't like my tone I believe you can fuck right off"
He did not know how to react. He just stood there for a second then walked off, unable to speak.
Ade stood there and laughed "Nice one Flea! But ermmm...you know I'm the senior member of staff here, right? ...Not that I wouldn't have told fat boy to get bollocksed too." after which he pats me on the back
KiBob did later try to get me into trouble with Sally. I'd refunded a camera he had mis-represented. it was over 7 days old and had been used but the customer had kept it pristine (Seriously, the only marks on it were my finger prints from checking it) I'd refunded it as "unwanted unopened" on Solar when I was supposed to press "Misrepresented. Unopened" simple mistake but KiBob had been looking through Solar System reporting seen it and tried to get me into trouble.
Sally comes up and says "Flea, you refunded a Panasonic camera earlier that was over 7 days?" Not all official like just like she was asking me what I had been doing
"Yeah. It had been mis-repped. I just pressed the wrong button. Let me guess...KiBob told you about it?"
"Yeah, he did. Why?" she asked
"He was the one who mis-repped it and he was the one telling me that I absolutely must not bring that camera back as anything other than faulty. I wasn't sending a pristine camera back as faulty. Anyway, he'll be back to talk to Dan (our camera specialist) tomorrow about spending £700 on that new one from Canon"
"So you did the right thing customer service wise and P&L wise. Good job, my man!"
I then proceeded to dance around the department going "naaa-nanana. nana. nana...can't touch this" which got a few giggles from co-workers. I think they were more so laughing AT me than with me though
The reason why I say RWH will like this one is KiBob spent 3 years pissing me off and basically wearing down my own confidence in my abilities along with a load of other things about me including calling me a "Fucking fudge packer" RWH does not like people picking on his loved ones lol
Now if you will all excuse me...I have to go and be big-headed somewhere else after my victory over the Sling box and the fat controller. I'm not sure if my head is small enough to fit in my car with the doors closed...that could be a problem.
Sling Box
Aaah the sling box. a nice easy way to break broadcasting laws and rape the shit out of your home broadband bandwidth at the same time.
The store wanted to set up a streaming demo to show what you can do over your home network. One of the things they wanted to demo was the Sling Box. Over the past few days, 4 techs have looked at this system and 12 other members of staff. No one could get it to work and when I was asked to give it a bash, I nearly ran away screaming.
it's much easier if I show you a wiring diagram.
http://www.advancedflea.co.uk/cs/img011.jpg
Basically they wanted to stream the incoming signal from Sky to the laptop. Simple enough yeah? Nope.
To set it up, the Sling box needs an active internet connection. We cannot have the Sling box connected to the store internet system as 1, it's too far away and 2, we have enough problems with that as it is. The Sling box had to be on its own network not connected to the net. No problem though because the laptop has a wireless card in it. We could turn the wireless on to run through the setup program then once the Sling box is working, disable the laptops wireless card.
Not gonna work. When you connect to the wireless, the computer goes "Yup. I've got an internet connection" then you connect the wired LAN card and load Sling player which says "Okay, I've found a Sling box. Wanna configure it now?" so you press yes then it comes up "Nope. You've got no active internet connection" even though I can click on internet explorer and load up any webpage I want.
At first I thought it was the trial version of McAfee that came with the laptop that was fucking things up, so I ran the McAfee removal tool, disabled windows firewall...Still in the same position.
Then I realised that to stop people going onto facebook in our Apple shop, we set up an OpenDNS free account to block stuff like that. Basically it blocks stuff that we tell it to, or that it doesn't recognise. So I change the computers default DNS servers to googles public DNS...nothing.
I thought that the fact the router that the sling box was wired to would have DHCP turned on by default would be fucking up the laptop, So I turned it off. Now the damn thing can't see the sling box. It accepted we were connected to the internet though.
So this time I change a cable around. I plugged the RJ45 cable coming out of the laptop into the "Internet" port on the router thinking I could bridge the connections on the laptop (easily done in windows 7) then the store wireless router would handle the IP addressing temporarily. That didn't work
So okay, I put the cables back, turn DHCP Back on and give everything a second to get an IP address again. I left the network connection bridge in place to see if that worked...Nope.
So now I'm totally stumped.
I was hungry so I thought "Fuck it. I'mna have my lunch then come back to it"
I went back into tech and everyone was saying "There's no way you'll be able to do that. You can't have 2 active connections at the same time, you idiot" seriously no one had any faith in me on this one since they had all failed. I was about ready to give up too.
I was about half way through my lunch when I had a brain wave. Network Interface Metrics. Basically you can change how the computer prioritises it's network connections if you can alter the metrics. I discovered this when I was trying to set up FleaVPN to our home server. I realised that if I set the wireless card's metrics to 10 and the lan cards to 20 that will give the wireless card higher priority for all network traffic, then if whatever the computer was calling for wasn't on the wireless network it would try the LAN card.
I tried it, stood their biting my nails as it detected everything it should be receiving, watching the little preview window as it stayed at "No signal" thinking that I had failed again. The just as my heart started to sink the preview window changed to "SKY HD. Believe in better" they heard me cheering across the store. The I disconnected from the wireless network and it was still running.
The managers who had asked me to give it a go came over and started patting me on the back....then asked me to set up all the other stuff they wanted on that network lol
The network ended up as having the sling box, Laptop, a PC, a TV (not including the one connected to the Sky HD box) connected to a media extender, an XBOX 360 and a PS both connected to their own TV to stream media off the PC.
I think idea of that network is just to see how fast we can burn out a router. Here's how the wireing diagram ended up;
http://www.advancedflea.co.uk/cs/img012.jpg
I think everyone was a little envyous that I had solved the problem, even after they told me that I couldn't do what I wanted to do...and I did it
KiBob
RetailWorkhorse will love this one.
We have this douche bag who works in our store, we shall call him KiBob. I think I have bitched about him before on here. Everywhere you work has one of these people. Everything you own, either he has one that's better or he had the first one. He'll make ridicules claims like apparently his sister basically invented the Carl Ziess Lenses, That he occasionally presents the Gadget show, That his clapped-out old Ford Escort that breaks down all the time is better than my new, damn site more reliable Corsa because it cost him less to buy.
I should add that he is also grossly overweight, always takes between an hour and 10 and an hour and a half for his one-hour lunch breaks he smells...and its that proper nauseating, eye-watering, nose stinging B.O smell. Honestly, it smells like he hasn't had a shower in about 20 years and, like everybody who smells, he has no respect for personal space.
He's also the type that does as little work as possible. In the old layout of the store he would sit on the tech PC all day, never come out on the desk and when we had a cue 20 million deep yet somehow his tech service figures would be £1000/week.
It took us a while to realise how he was managing that. It wasn't until there was a refund scam done at another store and that meant we had to start printing off a report of all the refunds that had been done through the day. I found that he was refunding services off my Solar pin and re-selling them on his own. In the eyes of Group Security, that's fraud. It stopped pretty quickly when I told him "If you EVER do that to me again, I won't bother pissing around, I'll just print off the report and hand it to group security" he was not happy about that hehehee
Anyway, I'm in tech at one point, looking on the internet at Slings Website trying to get the afore mentioned Sling box working by seeing if anyone on the forums has had the same problem. No, of course not.
Just at this point, KiBob walks past and says "You've got a person waiting there"
I look over and see its a customer Alex was dealing with, but Al has walked off to get something. "I'm actually busy right now"
so he comes up to me "Go and serve that customer"
Now, as you all know, I'm not always one to think before I speak or act. "Listen here, Moron. You have absolutly ZERO command over me or anyone on this department. You may think you're a manager, and you may tell customers that but I'll tell you this, you aren't even a team leader anymore. Wanna know why? Because you're a lazy, smelly fuckwitt who thinks he knows everything but in reality, knows NOTHING. As you can see I am very OBVIOUSLY in the middle of something that you tried to waste an entire day on but got nowhere. Since you are walking around doing absolutely nothing other than bragging that you've got a big camera hanging around your neck, why don't YOU actually do some fucking work for a change and go and speak to him"
"I don't appreciate your tone" he replied
"Yeah well I don't appreciate you. I also notice that you are once again offending my nostrils. You remember when Sally took you into the office and told you to have a shower? She didn't mean just once, she meant stick to the company policy of keeping good personal hygiene. Since you are standing in my department and I am the ranking member of staff here, If you don't like my tone I believe you can fuck right off"
He did not know how to react. He just stood there for a second then walked off, unable to speak.
Ade stood there and laughed "Nice one Flea! But ermmm...you know I'm the senior member of staff here, right? ...Not that I wouldn't have told fat boy to get bollocksed too.
" after which he pats me on the backKiBob did later try to get me into trouble with Sally. I'd refunded a camera he had mis-represented. it was over 7 days old and had been used but the customer had kept it pristine (Seriously, the only marks on it were my finger prints from checking it) I'd refunded it as "unwanted unopened" on Solar when I was supposed to press "Misrepresented. Unopened" simple mistake but KiBob had been looking through Solar System reporting seen it and tried to get me into trouble.
Sally comes up and says "Flea, you refunded a Panasonic camera earlier that was over 7 days?" Not all official like just like she was asking me what I had been doing
"Yeah. It had been mis-repped. I just pressed the wrong button. Let me guess...KiBob told you about it?"
"Yeah, he did. Why?" she asked
"He was the one who mis-repped it and he was the one telling me that I absolutely must not bring that camera back as anything other than faulty. I wasn't sending a pristine camera back as faulty. Anyway, he'll be back to talk to Dan (our camera specialist) tomorrow about spending £700 on that new one from Canon"
"So you did the right thing customer service wise and P&L wise. Good job, my man!
"I then proceeded to dance around the department going "naaa-nanana. nana. nana...can't touch this" which got a few giggles from co-workers. I think they were more so laughing AT me than with me though
The reason why I say RWH will like this one is KiBob spent 3 years pissing me off and basically wearing down my own confidence in my abilities along with a load of other things about me including calling me a "Fucking fudge packer" RWH does not like people picking on his loved ones lol
Now if you will all excuse me...I have to go and be big-headed somewhere else after my victory over the Sling box and the fat controller. I'm not sure if my head is small enough to fit in my car with the doors closed...that could be a problem.
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