Archives: Adventures With Dave: In Class
3/4/13 - 3/9/13
Dave takes a week-long online training course for his job. It's stupid.
Day 1
Dave has entered.
Dave: HALO
Dave: I'm doing an "Accelerated Boot Camp" training class today. It's online. Several people in this advanced online training class can't figure out how to use Webex, or unmute their microphones. Grr.
TalkingDog: That sounds painful.
Dave: I always feel foolish when I worry about not being up to speed enough for these training course. It always turns out I'm one of the few non-retards in the class.
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Dave: I think I accidentally did two modules at once in this training class. Because I rule like that.
Dave: Also everybody else in this class is a complete retard. Seriously. I feel like a SUPER GENIUS because I know how to FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS.
Goosey: LOL YAY DAVE
Dave: It's like, some people don't have the ability to distinguish between important and not-so-important info.
Dave: We're learning about NFS, and the instructor is going over the RFCs that cover each version. And apparently people are stressing over this. It's pretty unimportant though. You don't need to read the stupid RFC to figure out how to use NFS.
Sam: More important question: Why is the instructor covering the RFCs?
Dave: He's not, really. It's just, like, part of the slide for some reason. He just mentioned that hey, these are the RFCs that cover NFSv2 and v3 and v4. And I"m like "Yeah whatevs"
Dave: Other people, however, are like "WAIT WHICH RFC WAS THAT FOR 3??"
Dave: Seriously, shut up. You don't need to know.
Dave: Just listen to how to use the /etc/exports file. That's important.
Dave: I don't think I've ever read an RFC.
Sam: Me neither.
Sam: I've read man pages, though.
Dave: Oh yeah, I read the stuff out of man pages.
Dave: Those have actual important information in them.
Dave: For all I know, so do RFCs. But I've never had a reason to read them, so I don't know.
Dave: Because "man nfsd" will probably take care of your nfs needs. If it doesn't, google will.
Sam: Yes.
Sam: But which version of Google? HMM??
Dave: Everybody knows classic Google is better.
Dave: Back when it was called Infoseek.
Sam: I'll be the judge of that.
Sam: Lemme see the Infoseek RFC.
Dave: It's RFC-Please refrain from aural content provision.. Look it up.
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Dave: SEVEN JAMES BONDS AT CASINO ROYALE!
Dave: DO DO DOO DO DO DOO DO DO DO DOO DO AT CASINO ROYAAAAAALE!
Sam: Great. Now I'll have that tune in my head for a week.
Dave: Better you than me.
Sam: Nothing's more Bondian than Woody Allen hiccupping in a casino.
Dave: Well, I managed to do two labs by mistake again.
Dave: So I guess I get to take a break while everybody catches up.
Dave: HAHAHAHAHA
Dave: "Lunch is wherever you want to go... YOur house, your job. Wherever." OH GEE REALLY? Thanks, I didn't realize we weren't all going to FLY TO WHEREVER YOU ARE to eat lunch together today.
Dave: You'd think that would be self explanatory for an online training class.
Dave: But, like I said, apparently this class is full of morons.
Goosey: LOL
Dave: I guess I'll play Minecraft for awhile.
Dave: Since everybody else is busy with this lab I already did.
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Dave: Seriously, I thought it was only lusers who couldn't follow simple instructions. Apparently admins can't either.
Dave: I didn't realize my ability to read directions and follow them was some superhuman ability until today.
Nyperold: Well, now you know.
Dave: And knowing is half the battle.
Dave: ...nobody?
Maryam: G I JOOOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEEE
Dave: THANK YOU
Dave: This training class is the worst thing ever.
Dave: This is supposed to be an advanced boot camp for this Netapp storage OS. But everybody here is an idiot and we're going so slow it feels like we're going to spend three days talking about NFS.
Dave: Nobody needs three days of training on NFS.
Dave: If you do, you sure don't belong in any sort of advanced storage class.
Maryam: Are you doing it for work?
Dave: Yes.
Dave: I can't believe this costs thousands of dollars.
Dave: I wouldn't pay anything for this.
Maryam: Is it worse than actually working?
Dave: Meh.
Dave: I get to sit at home listening to this guy ask people if we know about the exportfs command.
Dave: But I also have to get up way early. The class starts at 7. I usually don't get to work until 9.
Dave: On the flip side, we're done at 4.
Dave: But I'm on call this week so I still have to cover the helpdesk in the afternoon.
Dave: So I don't know, is the answer to that question.
Dave: AH!
Dave: A guy seriously just asked a question about something the instructor JUST GOT DONE EXPLAINING
Dave: It literally went like this: "So that's how you do that." "Question: How do you do that?"
Maryam: Oh geez.
Dave: It wasn't like he was asking for clarification either.
Dave: It was more like he literally just wasn't listening.
Goosey: Ugh!
Maryam: At least you get to feel all smart.
Goosey: Dave: blog about it and send them all the link
Dave: I might.
Dave: Also, who needs to be told to mute your mic during the class? So many people seem baffled by this. There's a big button next to your name with a picture of a mic on it. You just click it to mute yourself. Seems like common sense while the instructor is talking, but... apparently this is another of my super human abilities.
Maryam: Sounds like it should be muted by default.
Dave: Well, here's the awful part.
Dave: The presenter can mute you, and he did that at first.
Dave: But if the presenter mutes you, you can't unmute yourself.
Goosey: ...
Dave: So... that didn't work well. Just caused people to spam the chat box with "I CAN'T UNMUTE MYSELF"
Goosey: lol
Dave: Which was actually fine by me. Better nobody can talk than everybody can imvo.
Dave: AHH THREE PEOPLE ARE RAISING THEIR HANDS AND THE INSTRUCTOR ISN'T STOPPING TO LET THEM TALK SO THEY KEEP PRESSING THE RAISE HAND BUTTON AND IT KEEPS MAKING THE ANNOYING NOISE THAT APPARENTLY THE INSTRUCTOR CAN'T HEAR!
Sam: LOL LOL LOL
Sam: Well, I don't know about you, but *I* am enjoying this class.
Sam: I think you should have NFS training every day.
Sam: EVERY day.
Goosey: LOL
Goosey: Dave: It'll be okay, they just want to ask the instructor what he just said.
Dave: I don't even WANT NFS training! We don't use it on our Netapp arrays. And anyway, if you're a linux/unix admin and you don't know how to configure NFS, you suck balls and need to stop calling yourself a linux/unix admin.
Dave: HAHAHAHA! POP QUIZ
Dave: And nobody is paying attention, apparently.
Dave: Oh he got it right. Just took him like a week
Sam: He?
Dave: Yeah. Well, it was more like the instructor suddenly asked a random question and called on somebody.
Sam: Ah, right.
Dave: And the guy was like "Uh... um..." and then was silent for like 45 seconds.
Sam: He was googling.
Dave: Then he finally came up with the answer. So clearly he was playing minecraft too.
Dave: Oh, or that.
Goosey: heheeh
Sam: Was the question about which RFC something for some version of NFS was in?
Dave: Roy has a question! Hey Roy! Roy? Roy? Roy? Roy? Roy?
Dave: AHHHHHHHHH!!
Sam: LOL!
Sam: Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?
Goosey: LOL
Dave: I have FIVE DAYS of this.
Dave: ROY ROY ROY ROY ROY ROY ROY ROY ROY
Dave: Stupid Roy. UNMUTE YOUR MIC
Maryam: This just sounds like all kinds of fail.
Dave: I swear everybody here is a complete retard.
[RinkChat] The chat room's topic has been changed to 'ROY ROY ROY ROY ROY ROY ROY' by Sam.
Sam: Why do you have FIVE DAYS of NFS training?
Dave: It's not really NFS training. It's Netapp training on their storage arrays. We're just learning how to use NFS to mount things from the array.
Dave: Which apparently way more people do than I would think. Because everybody knows NFS is balls.
Dave: It also supports CIFS for file-level sharing, and iSCSI, FCoE and FCAL for block level. But apparently this class mainly focuses on NFS and CIFS because that's what most people use.
Dave: Which of course sucks because we do block level sharing over fibre.
Dave: So of course I have to learn a whole bunch of crap I may never use first.
Goosey: :(
Dave: Seriously, I know how to use NFS. I wish this class had a fast forward button.
Dave: Jeez, he's going over automounter now.
Dave: WHy is this even part of this class?
Dave: This has nothing to do with Netapp.
Dave: It's just standard UNIX admin stuff.
Dave: Here's how this should have gone:
Dave: "Here's how you start up NFS sharing on the Netapp, and here's how you export your mounts. Now go mount them however you want on your clients. If you don't know how to do that, you shouldn't be using NFS for sharing. Maybe try CIFS Windows boy."
Sam: Now you know why it takes five days to teach this.
Sam: Roy? Roy? Roooooyyyyyyyyyy?
Dave: "Can we circle the wagons real quick?"
Dave: WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN?
Goosey: LOL
Dave: Then he asks a stupid question. SO I guess it means "Can I ask a dumb question?"
Goosey: LOL
Sam: I don't think that expression means what he thinks it means.
Dave: Yeah, clearly what he meant was "I need to ask a stupid question." But he's STUPID, so he doesn't know how to just say that.
Sam: Moonraker circled the wagons real quick.
Dave: It sure did.
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Dave: "Yeah, Dave? Dave? Dave. Dave? Dave. Dave?" (He's not talking to me.) (Sounds of little child in the background, apparently talking to "Dave". Dave is clearly not paying any attention. Thanks for raising your hand, DAVE!)
Grishny: Do I detect an oncoming new HFSYD?
Dave: If I have the energy, maybe.
Dave: This is excruciating.
Sam: Dave didn't answer because he was writing up a blog entry about this class.
Dave: I hope so.
Dave: "When I right-click, instead of pasting into the PuTTY window, it's just closing PuTTY"
Dave: That's some serious messed up crap. How did you mange that??
Dave: Done. Do I get a cookie?
Dave: That's supposed to be an hour long lab. It took me like 20 minutes.
Dave: Ah, blessed silence.
Dave: If only this whole class was me just reading the book and doing the labs.
Dave: Or really just doing the labs, since they're pretty self-explanatory.
Dave: Better yet, if it were me just getting a week off from work, and TELLING everybody I did the labs.
Dave: That way I wouldn't need to actually do four different labs on NFS.
Dave: Only the last one actually had anything to do with exporting and mounting NFS volumes.
Dave: The rest were, like... getting ready to do stuff.
Dave: There was an entire 15 minute lab just to license NFS on the array.
Dave: WHich literally consists of clicking on "licenses" and then "add" and then typing in five letters.
Dave: Oh, I'm sorry. You have to click on "System Tools" and THEN Licenses.
Dave: If I don't specify that explicitly, nobody will ever find it.
Dave: That's another amazing super power I have. The ability to just look at what is in different menus.
Sam: Clearly you need to do the labs some more, or you wouldn't have made that mistake.
Dave: I'm not afraid to just click on a drop-down menu and see what that options are. That apparently puts me miles ahead of most everybody else.
Grishny: I... I've never shared this with anyone before, but... I have the same power. We should form a super team!
Grishny: We'd be called "The Menu Brothers"
Dave: Grishny: We could be "Super Team Zero" Or "The League of Non-stupid People"
Grishny: Kinda like the Power Twins, only without the stupid rings.
Dave: I hope Roy and Dave raise their hands again.
Dave: And then not ask a question when called on fixty times.
Sam: ROY? ROY? ROY? ROY? ROY? ROY? ROY? ROY? ROY?
Sam: The real stupidity there is the instructor not giving up after about two times.
Sam: "Roy? Roy? Guess he's playing Minecraft again. Anyway...."
Dave: I know.
Dave: It's like stupidities piled upon dumbosity.
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Dave: "I blew up exports by accident."
Dave: Nice job.
Sam: Blew it UP?
Dave: Yeah, he probably circled the wagons first? Then blew up the exports.
Sam: Nub.
Dave: Predictably, people are starting to ask dumb questions.
Dave: The lab progressively does less and less handholding as it goes on.
Dave: At first it says "Create a qtree with these properties" and then gives you the exact commands to run to do it.
Dave: Later on it asks you to do something similar, but doesn't give you the exact command. Clearly you're supposed to have pieced it all together by now, though.
Dave: But no. People are like "I DON'T GET WHAT TO DO HERE!"
Sam: THEY DIDN'T GIVE ME THE COMMAND
Dave: Right. Because it should just let you cut and paste the command. Why should I have to think?
Sam: Sounds like the earlier labs were, uh, not useful, though.
Dave: Well, if it takes you 15 minutes to type five letters (or just cut and past the five letters from the notepad file into the Netapp GUI) then they were useful.
Dave: "You're missing a slash in front of vol. You need a slash in front of vol. Do you have a slash in front of vol? You need a slash in front of vol. Andrew? You need a slash in front of vol."
Dave: Hey Andrew... I think I see your problem buddy.
Dave: You MAY need a slash. In front of vol. Not sure, just guessing.
Sam: LOL
Sam: Andrew? Andrew? Andrew? Andrew? Andrew?
Dave: I hope these guys don't hear me playing guitar and singing while they're busy forking up this lab.
Sam: Dave? Dave? Dave? Dave? Dave?
Sam: What's that singing? I hear singing. Dave, there is singing. Are you singing? I think I hear singing, Dave. Dave? Dave? Dave? Dave?
Sam: You should probably circle the wagons real quick.
Dave: "Stuart, are you there? Do you have a question Stuart? Can you hear me? Do you have a question? Can you hear me? Can anybody hear me?"
Dave: "Raise your hand if you're finished." ME and ONE other guy. Out of a class of 15.
Dave: The hilarious thing is, he asked before we started who hated the command line. Because this lab was heavy on command line stuff.
Dave: One of the guys who raised his hand was the other guy who actually finished the lab.
Dave: He must not hate it that much.
Sam: He knows it -- he just hates it.
Sam: The others don't know enough to hate it.
Sam: They're busy circling the wagons real quick.
Grishny: Maybe he misheard the instructor. "Raise your hand if you're Finnish"
Dave: His name is Quyen Dao. So... probably not Finnish.
Dave: Unless he's an immigrant. I hear they frown on those in Finland though.
Dave: "Oooh, you can browse. INTERESTING." Yeah, that's what the big button labeled BROWSE does. Genius, huh?
Dave: "We'll start up in five minutes. Raise your hand if we can start up in five minutes." Dude, you're the instructor. Just TELL EVERYBODY we're starting in five minutes. No need to ask politely. They've had way more than an hour to do this lab.
Dave: I'm not sure anybody is paying attention at this point.
Dave: "How you doing Roy? Roy? How you doing? Stuart? You there? You there Quyen? How you guys doing?"
TalkingDog: I don't suppose this is something where you'll get an evaluation thing to fill out.
Dave: I hope so!
Dave: HOORAY NOW FIVE MODULES ON CIFS!
Dave: Ugh.
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Dave: This guy is trying to set his time to 14:02 AM
Dave: So... many... things... wrong.
Dave: It even has a big red error that pops up asking for 12hr format.
Dave: And he keeps trying to put in 14:02
Dave: TEN MINUTE BREAK!
Dave: Seriously, this hour has been nothing but a break anyway.
Sentynel: Dave: You're on a training course I take it?
Dave: Yes. A scarily lousy one.
Dave: I can't believe this course costs thousands of dollars.
Sentynel: What's it training you on?
TalkingDog: Circling wagons.
Dave: Netapp ONTAP, in theory.
Dave: In reality, it's mainly been a day-long NFS course so far.
Dave: Which was completely pointless, since I seem to have forgotten more about NFS than these yahoos know.
Sentynel: I'm impressed it's even possible to draw out NFS for a whole day.
Dave: I KNOW
Dave: That's the worst part.
Dave: We just started CIFS.
Dave: This should last the rest of the day and on into tomorrow.
Sentynel: Sounds fascinating.
Dave: FOUR MORE DAYS of this. I hope at some point I learn something.
Dave: "We're going to go more into netgroups now. Kind of repetitious I guess. I don't know why. Repetition is always good though, I guess."
Dave: NO IT ISN'T
Dave: THAT'S HOW YOU MADE LEARNING BASIC NFS MOUNTS LAST ALL FREAKING DAY
Sentynel: I think I already want to punch the instructor.
Dave: I'm pretty sure I can teach you everything you need to know about NFS in an hour or less.
Sentynel: mount -t nfs host:path path
Sentynel: DONE
Dave: The only thing I needed to know was how it's configured in ONTAP. Which turns out, is just Linux. So.. I already knew.
Sentynel: I had a look at the ONTAP website. Which goes on about how revolutionary it is.
Sentynel: Man, NFS. Totally revolutionary.
Dave: Dude. ALSO CIFS! In the same box!
Dave: Totally mind blowing, right?
Sentynel: My gosh.
Sentynel: Network storage has been changed forever.
Dave: Why are we even covering WORKGROUPS?
Dave: No company that can afford one of these things is going to be dealing with workgroups.
Dave: Just freaking skip to Active Directory already.
Sentynel: That's day three.
Dave: Sadly, I think it is.
Dave: The worst part? This is the ACCELERATED course.
Dave: It's five days.
Dave: The regular "boot camp" class is TEN DAYS
Dave: TEN!
Sentynel: ...
Sentynel: wat
Sentynel: I don't even
Dave: They must stretch NFS out for TWO OR THREE DAYS in that class.
Sentynel: I think I'd jump out of the window by mid morning on day one.
Dave: cifs terminate -t 0
Dave: That's a good command to remember. Shut that crap the hell down.
Dave: AHHH!
Dave: This guy is asking quetions about what else we'll be covering with CIFS.
Dave: Dude, You have the books. We all got them, They are an exact copy of the Power Point slides this guy is working from.
Dave: YOU ALREADY KNOW IF WE"LL COVER THAT OR NOT! Just flip through the damn book.
Sentynel: I'm not sure this course is pitched at people who'd think to do that.
Dave: I didn't even take the basic admin course that is supposed to precede this.
Dave: The training sales lady tried to talk me into taking that class. She was like "You really ought to take the basic admin class first. This is the accelerated boot camp class! It's designed for advanced administrators."
Dave: I was like "Trust me, I'm good."
Dave: Soooo glad I didn't let her talk me into the basic course. Which from what I understand, is just this course, only dumber, slower, and stupider.
Sentynel: If these are advanced administrators, I fear for the world's servers.
Dave: Tell me about it.
Dave: Anybody who has ever touched one of these appliances and isn't bored to tears right now doesn't have a brain.
Sentynel: Worst training course I've done was introduction to regex. And fortunately that was only an afternoon.
Sentynel: I just played Minesweeper for three and a half hours solid.
Dave: That must have been nothing but people going "I DON'T GET IT!"
Sentynel: Yeah, pretty much.
Sentynel: I dunno why the heck the training computers had the Windows games available, but it saved my sanity.
Dave: It's over.
Dave: ONLY FOUR MORE DAYS
Dave: I have to get out of the house for a bit.
Dave is away.
Day 2
Dave has entered.
Dave: N00bz
TalkingDog: narbz
Sam: BARNZ
Sam: That class makes you weirdly early.
Dave: I literally just rolled out of bed.
Dave: I must have forgot to set my alarm clock. My phone went off at the usual time (7 am) and I freaked.
Dave: Because the class starts at 7.
Dave: But I don't think I was even the last one to show up.
Sam: Roy, are you here yet? Roy? Roy? Roy?
Sam: He's gonna say that for an hour until Roy logs in.
Dave: We're apparently down to ten students.
Sam: What'd you start with?
Dave: Nothing. We're still mucking with webex.
Dave: It's not set up right again.
Sam: No, I mean how many students did you start with?
Dave: Oh. 15 or 16 yesterday.
Sam: They must have flunked out. Couldn't handle the pressure of having know what all those RFCs say.
Dave: The best part was yesterday the presenter was talking about how webex is a "no brainer." And yet he's yet to actually get it working right and keeps screwing stuff up.
Dave: And now everybody has to relearn the "mute your mic" lesson from yesterday.
Dave: I can hear somebody's little girl talking in the background. Seriously, who doesn't get the "mute your mic" thing?
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Dave: Uh.
Dave: He's apparently going to revoke his own SSL cert to try to solve an SSH issue.
Dave: I don't think that's going to work, chief.
Dave: Oh, ok. He was just restarting SSH I guess. But he was talking about SSL certs for some reason.
Dave: We've apparently run into a bug where if your ssh session to the netapp times out and it kicks you out, sometimes it wont let you back in again. Which is awful, and also hilarious to watch the presenter try to troubleshoot.
Sam: hehe
Dave: Ugh. People are raising their hands.
Dave: And the instructor is deaf to that ANNOYING BUZZING BEEP NOISE it makes.
Dave: Apparently by the time the instructor gets around to calling on people, they don't have questions anymore.
Dave: So we get this "Dave? Dave? Do you have a question Dave?" (long pause, I'm frantically checking to make sure he's not talking to me.) "Dave, are you there?" "Yeah, I'm here." "Do you have a question." "No." "Oh, your hand was raised."
Sam: LOL
Sam: ONLY THREE MORE DAYS OF THIS.
Sam: TECHNICALLY CLOSER TO FOUR, SINCE TODAY IS ONLY JUST BEGINNING.
Sam: SO DON'T WORRY!
Dave: Yeah, this is horribad.
Sam: Teleconferencing tech is definitely cool, but anybody who thinks it's as good as being in person is kind of dumb. Last job, I worked as part of a group in Montreal, and we used state of the art teleconferencing hardware to conduct meetings and stuff. But it never works super efficiently.
Sam: This sounds worse than usual, though.
Dave: I do appreciate the ability to take a shower during class breaks.
Sam: Breakfast at the next one!
Dave: Worst thing about wearing glasses: When a lens pops out, and you have to try to find the tiny screwdriver without your glasses.
Dave: It's even worse if the screw pops out and you have to crawl around on the floor trying to find it. Without your glasses.
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Dave: So we went on 15 minute break about 25 minutes ago.
Dave: I'm not complaining, but hey. That's some quality timekeeping.
Dave: Apparently the instructor had to take his kid to school?
Dave: Again, not that I'm personally complaining. This is waaay better than listening to him "instruct"
Dave: Oh, he's back!
Dave: Darn.
Dave: Also, I'm completely shocked at how many people simply forget stuff from one day to the next.
Dave: You have to license features on these arrays to use them. Yesterday he showed us where the text file with all the license keys are located on our lab computers.
Dave: Today, this guy had to ask again where to find it.
Dave: It's not like it's in an obscure path either. It's in c:\netapp
Dave: Also, we changed the password on one of the arrays as part of one of the labs yesterday.
Dave: SO MANY people had to ask why the old password wasn't working today.
Dave: Duh. Did you forget all of yesterday already?
Dave: I mean, I tried. But I wasn't able to.
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Dave: This is great.
Dave: Going through this wizard, got to a point where it says "To continue, click Next"
Dave: My options were "Back," "Create," and "Cancel."
Dave: Hrm.
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Dave: I'm just constantly stunned people have problems doing these labs.
Dave: They literally walk you though everything. And when they don't hold your hand, it's because somewhere earlier in the lab they told you exactly how to do what you need to do in this step. So you can always just flip back a page if you forgot already.
Dave: Uh.
Dave: "1:30 Western we'll start back up"
Dave: I don't even.
Dave: THERE IS NO WESTERN TIME.
Dave: PICK A REAL TIME ZONE PLZ
Sam: LOL LOL
Goosey: LOL LOL
Dave: Here's the really scary part.
Dave: He DIDN'T mean pacific time.
Goosey: WAT
Dave: He meant CENTRAL time.
Sam: hahaha
Goosey: ...
Goosey: Not even Mountain Time? Which is WESTER than Central?
Sam: It's west of eastern time.
Sam: So it must be western time.
Goosey: lol
Dave: That's what was so confusing. 1:30 pacific would be 2:30 here, and that's a HUGE lunch break.
Dave: Sam: But he's IN CALIFORNIA.
Sam: LOL LOL
Dave: He should think it's all eastern time or something.
Dave: I have no idea where "Western time" came from.
Sam: Maybe "western time" means 1870-1885 in American history.
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Dave: AHHH!
Dave: HE TELLS PEOPLE TO RAISE THEIR HAND WHEN THEY'RE DONE WITH THE LAB
Dave: THEN HE THINKS PEOPLE RAISING THEIR HAND MEANS THEY HAVE QUESTIONS SO HE CALLS ON THEM
Dave: "Yeah, do you have a question John? Do you have a question? John?" NO HE DOESN'T HE FINISHED THE LAB AND THEN WENT TO LUNCH dumbbunny
Sentynel: LOL
ThePhan: Wow.
Sam: LOL LOL LOL
Sentynel: I'd forgotten we get front-row seats for Dave's descent into insanity this week.
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Dave: This guy I worked with had one of those calorie counter/food log things on his phone.
Dave: And whenever he wanted to eat more than he was supposed to, he'd just put in that he'd done 20 pushups or something.
Dave: So then he could eat more.
Sam: LOL
Maryam: LOL
Dave: Then he wondered why he never lost any weight on that "diet"
Goosey: LOL
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Dave: AHH
Sam: Dave, do you have a rant?
Sam: Dave?
Sam: Dave.
Sam: Dave?
Sam: Do you have a rant about this class, Dave?
Dave: "We'll do the module until 2:40. So, 2:40. Oh, and then go ahead and take a ten minute break. So be back at 2:45"
Sam: LOL!!
Goosey: LOL
Sentynel: Wow.
Sentynel: He can math.
Sam: Ask him if that's ten minutes Eastern time or ten minutes Western time.
Goosey: hhahaha
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Dave: So it's 1:40, so I'd better start my five minute ten minute break.
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Dave: Hey, this guy is gonna give us a bootleg cheater test for the certification this class is supposed to prep you for.
Dave: Now at least I know how *he* got certified.
Dave: Apparently I get a voucher at the end of this class to take the exam for free. So I figure I might as well cheater-prep my way to this cert I don't really care about.
Dave: I figure the only person I'm hurting is the idiot who hires me to admin their Netapp array based on the fact that I'm totally certified.
Dave: And screw that guy anyhow.
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Dave: Dammit people.
Dave: He was about to let us go early, then he's like "Unless you guys want another module? WHO WANTS ANOTHER MODULE?"
Dave: And people were like 'YEAH ANOTHER MODULE!"
Dave: No! Dumbstuffs, vote for GETTING THE HELL OUT OF THIS AN HOUR EARLY.
Sentynel: Well, if you don't do it today you'll have to do it another day.
Dave: Maybe they hope to get out earlier on Friday if we do more today?
Sentynel: With this said, I'd totally have been trying to get out today, and screw the future.
Dave: Frankly at this point I'm ready to slit my wrists anyhow.
Dave: Friday seems so far away.
Dave: I love that people are sharing their cheater software and braindump sites. One guy even linked to something on a website he says "I suggest you snap a VM before you visit this site, then revert the snap afterwards."
Dave: SO YOU'RE SAYING THSI LINK IS FULL OF MALWARE? WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?
Day 3
Dave: This guy is still stumped by time zones.
Dave: He can't figure out what time it is in central time.
Sam: WESTERN TIME
Dave: Right, right, sorry. WESTERN TIME
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Dave: This guy keeps saying INQ number. But all the slides show it as IQN.
Sam: LOL
Sam: *LLO
Dave: I'm gonna go with the slides.
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Sam: I'm gonna put in a /raisehand command into RinkChat.
Sam: It causes everyone to hear a beeping noise repeatedly until I say, "Dave, do you have a question?"
Sam: /raisehand
Broadcast Message from Sam: BEEP
Broadcast Message from Sam: BEEP
Broadcast Message from Sam: BEEP
Sam: Sam, do you have a question?
Sam: Sam?
Sam: Sam.
Sam: Do you have a question, Sam?
Sam: What?
Sam: Do you have a question.
Sam: No.
Sam: Okay.
Dave: Sam: Definitely add that feature. Also, add a "PUNCH SAM" button so I can press that constantly.
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Dave: Hahaha! "WHAT'S THE PASSWORD AGAIN?" <-- our brilliant instructor.
Dave: Dude, if you don't remember the passwords your company assigned us, I'm not sure I can help.
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Dave: Seriously, this instructor is a n00b.
Dave: There's this huge problem in the lab that we all seem to have had.
Dave: Where a connection to the storage array fails when you try to create an iSCSI initiator.
Dave: One of the students figured out a work-around and told the rest of us. But the instructor doesn't seem to actually understand the work around.
Dave: He's trying to walk another student through the issue and is failing miserably, because it's clear he doesn't know what he's doing.
Dave: I'm sitting here refusing to speak up because I want him to figure this crap out. Being all vindictive and such.
Dave: Anyway, finally the student who figured it out pipes up and explains the work-around.
Dave: And the instructor is like "No, don't do that. You shouldn't have to do that."
Dave: Well duh. That's why it's a "work around" and not "a solution" or "a fix"
Dave: It's how all of us who had the problem in the lab fixed it.
Dave: So the instructor proceeds to tell the student to undo a previous part of the lab, blaming the issue on that.
Dave: I have not yet heard if that was really the problem or not.
Dave: If it is, that's a problem they need to fix with the lab. If it's not, they need to figure out the technical problem that's causing these steps that "should work" to fail.
Sentynel: It's never a good sign when the shiny software you're being trained on falls over in the controlled circumstances of a training course...
Dave: ikr
Dave: To be fair, I think it's likely a Windows problem rather than a problem with their product.
Dave: And I'm not sure, but I think this may be the first time they've run an online class like this. But I'm pretty sure these lab systems we're remoting into are the same ones they use for the face-to-face class, so these labs should freaking work.
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Dave: "Yeah, use the 15k drives with the random access."
Dave: Are there any drives that don't have random access? That seems like a defining characteristic of a disk, really.
Dave: Otherwise, you're basically spinning tape.
Sam: LOL
Sam: I want a 2 TB drive with sequential access.
Dave: Here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open
Dave: Have fun booting off that.
Sam: I tried that, but I had trouble convincing the BIOS to make that my boot device.
Sam: Oh, you beat.
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Dave: "Did anybody have a problem with Task 11?" (The lab has no Task 11)
Sentynel: Dave: It's actually a philosophical challenge. Can "not existing" be said to be a problem with task 11, or does something not existing preclude it having problems?
Dave: It actually stops at Task 7. So, uh... yeah, I guess I had problems with Tasks 8 through 11, seeing as how they don't technically exist.
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Dave: "HA HA HA (BURP)" Well, that was gross.
Maryam: LOL LOL
Goosey: LOL
Dave: So weird, I can't tell if that was one guy or two different guys on the conference.
Maryam: I love how this lab just keeps on failing.
Day 4
Dave has entered.
Dave: n00bz
Dave: Ugh, overlsept again.
Dave: Had to jump out of bed and rush in here to get in the class.
Dave: But we're just chit-chatting apparently.
Dave: Glad I hurried.
TalkingDog: I think oversleeping is a natural defense mechanism against that descent into madness.
Dave: Oh great, we finally start 20 minutes after the official start time, and THEN he decides he needs something to drink.
Sam has entered.
Sam: LOL
[RinkChat] The chat room's topic has been changed to 'Adventures With Dave' by Sam.
Dave: LOL
Dave: "vol options volname nosnap [on|off]"
Dave: That's the command to turn on or off snapshots. But which way do you think it works? I want to turn snapshots on, do you think it's on or off for this command?
Dave: Sam? Sam? Sam. Sam? Do you know the answer Sam? Sam? Sam. Sam. Sam?
Dave: That's right, it's a double negative! Snapshots are on by default, so if you want them on, you do nothing. But if you want them OFF, you have to turn NOSNAP *ON*. Similarly, if nosnap was turned on and you WANT snapshots, you have to turn nosnap off.
Sam: I hate negated option names.
Sam: That goes for checkboxes on web pages. Things like "[ ] Don't send me marketing emails."
Sam: RONG
Sam: It should be "[ ] Send me marketing emails."
Sam: I despise negated toggles, and I have continually refused to code them at my various jobs.
Dave: GOOD
Dave: Or should I say, NOT UNGOOD
Sam: OPPOSITE INGRATITUDE
Dave: Always good to hear. Instructor changes slide: "Here's the command for X. I never look at this." Changes to next slide.
Sam: LOL
Sam: *NOT :-(
Dave: AHHH WORST THING EVER
Dave: If you snapshot a volume, usually it's not visible to the clients by default.
Dave: There's two ways to do file sharing on these arrays: CIFS and NFS.
Dave: If you want to allow CIFS clients to see and make use of volume snapshots, you have to use this command: "options cifs.show_snapshot on"
Dave: Now, you're probably thinking there's a an equivalent command for NFS. And you're sort of right.
Sam: nfs.hide_snapshot off?
Dave: Except this is the command to get snapshots to show up on NFS clients: "options nfs.hide_snapshot off"
Sam: hahahahaha!! I GUESSED IT>
Dave: HOW DID YOU GUESS? UNPOSSIBLE!
Sam: THAT.
Sam: IS.
Sam: HORRIBLE.
Dave: Yeah, that may be the worst thing I've ever seen as far as UI design.
Sam: Sure it's not that both the cifs and nfs modules support both show_snapshot and hide_snapshot?
Sam: That would almost make sense.
Sam: And this guy's slides just swap between the two.
Dave: It's so clear the CIFS code and the NFS code were written by two different teams. And they didn't bother to keep this crap consistent.
Sam: Oh, okay, yeah.
Dave: Nope, just checked.
Dave: There is no cifs.hide_snapshot.
Dave: And no nfs.show_snapshot either.
Sam: Well, the NFS team gets fired.
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Dave: OH man, now HE'S doing it too.
Dave: Usually he asks us to raise our hands if we're done. This time he's like "RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU'RE *NOT* DONE!"
Dave: And like four people put their hands up, and then like two go down, and then one guy puts his hand up and puts it down immediately.
Dave: And he's like "Ok, so you guys are still working on it?" "HAnds up if you're not done." Everybody puts their hand down.
Dave: "Ok, so everybody's done?"
Dave: WAIT WHAT DO I DO NOW?
Dave: HAND UP IF DONE OR... NOT DONE? NOT SURE...
Goosey: LOL
Goosey: It's like some sadistic game of Simon Says
Sam: Hand up if you're done, not done, or have a question.
Dave: I'm never raising my hand again.
Dave: I have no idea what it means now.
Sam: Dave? Dave? I see you're not raising your hand. Do you have a question, then? Dave? Dave. Dave?
Goosey: lol
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Dave: Um. "You can't revert a root volume. You can't revert a root volume. If you do that, it'll restore all the configuration files to a previous version. You can't revert a root volume." (Bottom of slide gives instructions for reverting a root volume.)
Dave: Question: "So, you can't revert a root volume?" Answer: "Oh, you can. You just have to reboot afterwards." !!!????!!!
TalkingDog: Is he on drugs?
Dave: Definite possibility.
TalkingDog: I heard drugs are bad.
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Dave: This is how lazy I have become. "I type 'bi' and then hit tab to auto-complete 'bin'"
Dave: That was exactly the same number of keystrokes. And yet... It felt easier.
Day 5
Dave has entered.
Dave: N00bz
Dave: Holy crap.
Dave: This one guy in this class has children at home who apparently SCREAM CONSTANTLY
Dave: Every time he unmutes to ask a question, all I can hear is "AHHH! AHHH! I'M HUNGRY! MOMMY! DADDY!" and such as that.
TalkingDog: Yikes.
Dave: Just one more reason I'm glad I don't have kids.
Dave: I would make a horrible dad.
Dave: I hate when he stops droning to ask random questions.
Dave: Listen dude, I'm busy reading reddit. Just keep droning until it's lab time.
Goosey: Dave: LAST DAY YOU CAN DO IT
Dave: I know. TGIF. SRSLY!
Dave: This week can't be over fast enough. Yesterday my ankles were swollen when I got done with class because this chair is apparently awful to sit in for long periods.
Dave: I have my feet up on a book today, see if that helps.
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Sam: I'm making an archive of your gripes about this class.
Sam: I'll tell Ticia "NEW ARCHIVE!" and laugh at her.
Sam: Hey, I got up to the part where you sing Seven James Bonds At Casino Royale.
Dave: SEVEN JAMES BONDS AT CASINO ROYALE!
Dave: DO DO DOO DO DO DOO DO DO DO DOO DO AT CASINO ROYAAAAAALE!
Sam: Great. Now I'll have that tune in my head for another week.
Dave: You're welcome.
Sam: This is kind of funny. On Monday, Dave's rants are detached, analytical observations about how people are stupid. As the week progresses, the rants gradually get more desperate and personal.
Dave: That's just my sanity going.
Sam: I take that back. There is serious amounts of desperation just by Monday afternoon.
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Dave: This crap makes no sense.
Dave: Let's say you have two products, one called "SnapMirror" and the other "SnapVault." Which one would you think is for regular, day-to-day snapshots, and which is offsite disaster recover type situations?
Sam: Dave: Er. Mirror for the snapshots, Vault for the offsite?
Dave: Now me, I'd guess SnapMirror is for regular snapshots, and SnapVault is for DR. I mean, "VAULT" just sounds like you're taking something offsite and, I don't know, PUTTING IT IN A VAULT, right?
Sam: Right.
Dave: But no, that's backwards.
Dave: SnapVault is for day-to-day stuff. SnapMirror is the DR product.
Sam: Honestly, both of those are kind of stupid names.
Dave: But these guys called their operating system "ONTAP" because they drank a lot of beer while writing it. So it's starting to make sense now.
Dave: Oh man, he's going to take his rugrat to school again. Love it.
Dave: FIFTEEN MINUTE BREAK SO INSTRUCTOR CAN PLAY BUS DRIVER
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Dave: "I've been doing this for 15 years" And yet somehow, you're still an idiot.
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Dave: STOP ASKING QUESTIONS ROY
Dave: YOU'RE ONLY MAKING THIS TAKE LONGER
Maryam: LOL
Goosey: LOL
Dave: "You're all muffled and cutting out a lot." "Sorry, I'll speak slower." ???
Dave: How is that supposed to help the technical issues???
Dave: That just means it'll take longer for us to not understand you!
Dave: ROY YOU'RE AN IDIOT
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Dave: Man, the dumbosity is starting to rub off on me.
Dave: I just tried to mirror something to itself twice before realizing why that won't work.
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Dave: snap list
Dave: Um.
Dave: Time to change focus back to the lab.
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Dave: Uh.
Dave: So we're going over this cheater test thing now.
Dave: We came to a true/false question, and the software claims there is no correct answer.
Sam: LOL
Dave: That doesn't seem possible to me.
Goosey: LOL
Maryam: "Mark true if you will answer false to this question."
Dave: This wasn't a trick question though.
Dave: IT was basically "The software supports this and only this: True or false?"
Dave: Pretty sure there's a damn correct answer to that.
Dave: If it supports THIS but not ONLY this, then it's false. So it could be tricky that way. But it has a damn answer.
LaZorra: You doing OK there, Dave?
Sam: No.
Dave: NO I AM NOT
Dave: But thankfully this is over soon.
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Dave: I JUST FOUND OUT I CAN LOWER THIS CHAIR
Dave: Too bad it was not in time to save my ankles from swelling.
Dave: Maybe they'll go down now, though.
Maryam: Dave: Aren't you at home? Isn't that your own chair?
Dave: Maryam: It is, but I don't usually sit in it 8 hours a day. So I didn't realize it wasn't good for that.
Sentynel: Dave: So have you actually learnt anything this week?
Dave: Sentynel: A few things? Mainly what I learned is not to trust these cheater tests, and also that this instructor is insane.
Sentynel: Dave: Worth the price, then.
Dave: These are the worst kind of certification exams.
Dave: Where it's all just trivia about exact command line syntax.
Dave: Nobody freaking remembers that exactly except for the most basic everyday stuff. Everything else you just look up when you need it.
Dave: And any orifice can memorize trivia. Actually understanding what you're doing is completely different.
Dave: This stupid cheater software seems to think every true/false question has no correct answer.
Sam: Does it accept "True" but not "true" or something?
Dave: It's just a check box.
Dave: It doesn't matter what you check, or if you don't check anything, it just says NO CORRECT ANSWER.
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Dave: "There's something you have to do to the host, and a command you need to run" (Answer was both things that you need to do to the host--no commands.)
Dave: Good job dummy.
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Dave: IT'S OVER!
Dave: YEEEAAAAAHHHHHH!!!
Goosey: YAY YAY HOORAY!!!
Dave: Today I learned there's no way I'm ever passing that stupid trivia-heavy test.
Dave: Nobody in the real world memorizes command line syntax.
Day 6
Dave: I HAVE BEEN IDLE FOR EXACTLY 15 HOURS
Dave: Awww
Dave: That's the problem with idle milestones. You can't tell anybody about them.
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