Category: Rants

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Wake On LAN

For a long time I’ve wanted to be able to send a “magic packet” from my laptop to my desktop in order to power on my desktop machine remotely. Unfortunately my old ass motherboard didn’t support it which was always a source of frustration.

my old ass dusty motherboard

Then I bought a new Raspberry Pi 5 because they released a new version which had 16G RAM which I desperately needed to build some software. When I bought the Pi I also bought an NVME HAT and a new 1TB NVME. Unfortunately something wasn’t working but I wasn’t sure what was causing the error. So I went ahead and bought a new NVME from Crucial via Amazon and it worked first time. So I knew the NVME was at fault and returned it to Pimoroni expecting a refund. I didn’t get a refund, I got a replacement.

My old ass motherboard had an NVME slot so I thought “oooh, I don’t really need a 4th drive in this desktop machine but I’ll plug it in anyway”. So I took it apart, plugged in the NVME drive, put it all back together and booted it up. Nothing, except for the dreaded BIOS beeps of death. 5 of them – which means something is wrong with the motherboard or the processor. Expensive. “No worries” thought I – I’ll just take out the NVME drive again. Took it apart, removed the NVME, put it all back together. 5 beeps. Damnit.

This desktop machine has been my workhorse for about a decade. When I first got it I absolutely maxed it out. It was beautiful. Silent. Fast. Compiled code in seconds. However, it seems taking a ten year old motherboard and plugging in a cutting edge NVME drive wasn’t a great idea.

I did some research and went for a reasonable Ryzen motherboard with a new AMD processor. £200 for the pair and my existing DDR4 RAM was compatible. The MoBo arrived and I ripped the entire machine apart. Came to put my RAM in and realised the new board only had 2 DDR4 slots – whereas I had 4 8G DDR4 modules.

So I fired it up with 16G RAM. Tried to do a build whilst some background processes were running and ran out of memory. This would not do. I quizzed Oli about his machine and he had 32G made up of 2 * 16G modules. So we swapped. It was a win win. I got 32G again and Oli got 32G but the RAM I gave him was faster than the RAM he had. Since he’s a gamer he’ll benefit from faster RAM – about 50% faster. To me the speed of RAM didn’t really matter so much.

Get to the point Darren!

After a few weeks of my new AMD Ryzen motherboard I once again remembered my goal of being able to do a WOL [ Wake On Lan ] – I did a quick check on the motherboard and it indeed supported Wake-On LAN.

So…..I set up a systemd job to enable Wake-On LAN each time it boots and I can now finally fire up my laptop and run a script which basically does:

wakeonlan <MAC ADDRESS>

and as if by magic my desktop starts up and gets on with doing it’s thing whilst I eat breakfast.

So I now have a slightly faster, slightly quieter desktop again and I haven’t quite got around to testing if the replacement NVME drive works anywhere.

Clouds, silver linings and all that.

But hey kids, in general if your machine is working fine and you don’t need another 1TB of storage then just leave it alone. Put the NVME in the spares cupboard and get on with life. But WOL is cool 🙂

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Merseyrail robbing bastards

Paul, Jason and I decided to go for a few drinks in Liverpool. We decided to catch the train – turns out we could have gone in a limo for less money.

The problems began at Ormskirk train station where there was an absolutely massive queue for the ticket office and the train was just sitting on the platform waiting to go. We decided to hop on the train and buy a ticket online. Turns out you can’t do this on Merseyrail. You can do it on pretty much every other train operator in the country but Merseyrail are a bunch of robbing bastards who would rather take the income from fining their customers rather than fixing their systems to accept e-tickets.

We all received a fine of £107.90 which is reduced to £57.90 if paid within 21 days. So it cost £173.70 for the three of us to do a 30 minute journey. But at least we got some nice receipts and a blog post!

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Number 2

The mission to make sure that somebody googling "Darren Steele" gets to me and not the gay choirboy that was bullied and ultimately hanged himself is proceeding nicely.  My ranking has risen to the dizzying heights of number 2 on the google search results but I suspect it will be a little tricky to displace the bbc in the number 1 spot.

Hope springs eternal and all that.

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Carphone Warehouse lost SIM

Somehow, and I’m not too sure how, but somehow,  I managed to lose the SIM card that I use for doing data stuff whilst travelling.  It’s invariably in a phone in my cupboard somewhere – or tucked into that condom pocket of a pair of jeans that I haven’t worn for a while – nevertheless, I can’t find it and it’s pissing me off.

So I called those helpful little girls and boys in Carphone Warehouse and mentioned that I’d lost it so they passed me over to the O2 sales team who told me it would cost me 15 quid for a new SIM.  I’ve lost hundreds [ well probably not hundreds but quite a few I reckon ] of these little rectangular plastic bastards with a little bit chopped out of the corner and never has anyone asked me to pay 15 pounds for the privilege of receiving a new one.  In fact, it happened just a few months ago when I lost my phone and SIM that is from a direct contract with O2.  They couldn’t be more helpful.  A new SIM was sorted out and sent out to me the next day.  Could it be that due to my average bill on that SIM being about 200 quid they were pretty keen to keep me as a customer?  Or could it be that unlike Carphone Warehouse, O2 seem to have a fucking clue?

So they want me to give them money so that I can use the SIM to generate data on their network which they will then charge me money for.  Fuck that!  If they want my cash then the bunch of pricks can send me a new fucking SIM,  Jesus!

The situation now is that I’m waiting for the contract to end [ September ] and in the meantime have to pay them the line rental on the SIM – ho hum.  Then promptly on 7th September I will jam my foot into the anus of Carphone Warehouse and tell them I’ll be taking my custom elsewhere.

Carphone Warehouse have crap customer service and I’ll not be dealing with that bunch of pricks again…once I’ve cancelled my contract.