>>> You didn't haggle with them?
>>
>> Why? It's not like they're going to change their mind.
> 
> Yes they will, it's up for discussion, in fact I think in the letter 
> they send it even says how to proceed if you want to dispute the amount.

Obviously I no longer have the letter any more, but it basically said 
"as per our contract, we owe you £25, here's your cheque".

>> How many cars have you seen on sale for £75 recently?
> 
> Exactly, so you just accepted it?

We're talking about an insurance company. It's not as if they're 
reasonable people. I'm just some nobody teenager who can't afford to do 
anything about it.

> After you've 
> sent them examples of similar cars with similar age and mileage and 
> exerts from Parkers, they usually pretty much match the going rate to 
> replace the car.

Doubt it - but without a time machine, we can't really settle this one.

>> Heh. Yeah. As if somebody who can afford a $100k Audi needs the money...
> 
> He needs it to replace his car that you have just smashed - I'd say 
> *you* need that $100k more than he does seeing as you owe him $100k now!

I'm not disputing the logic of your claim. I'm just saying it seems 
rather unjust that I have to financially cripple myself to pay to fix 
somebody's property when they can easily afford many times over what I 
can afford - especially given that I haven't actually damaged it yet! 
(And, in fact, I never did in the end...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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> I visited the bank a while back (i.e., before the entire financial sector 
> went into meltdown), and the guy there seemed to think that I could maybe 
> afford a £90,000 morgage. Assuming I don't eat or use any heating. (In 
> other words, on paper it would work, but it would be absurdly tight.)

Hmm, banks don't usually allow you to borrow that much that would make life 
that hard.  Usually it's capped to about 4x your annual salary to avoid 
exactly that problem.

> ...so 70% of my income then?

Yep, that's what happens if you want to get on the property ladder when 
you're not earning much as a single person.  That 300 you have left over 
basically then has to cover your utility bills and food.  Running a car? 
Forget it.

> Well, currently my bank balance is going down rather than up, because most 
> months I spent a few hundred more than I actually earn. Saving up sounds 
> pretty hard to me.

How the hell do you manage to spend over 1000 pounds per month if you are 
living with your mum?

Even if you rented somewhere small by yourself and had to run a car you 
should be able to save some per month.  If you *really* want to save up for 
a house you need to sacrifice some stuff.

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> Obviously I no longer have the letter any more, but it basically said "as 
> per our contract, we owe you £25, here's your cheque".

Was it insured 3rd party or fully comp?

> I'm not disputing the logic of your claim. I'm just saying it seems rather 
> unjust that I have to financially cripple myself

700 pounds a year, financially cripple?

> to pay to fix somebody's property when they can easily afford many times 
> over what I can afford - especially given that I haven't actually damaged 
> it yet! (And, in fact, I never did in the end...)

Look at it from the Audi driver's perspective:

What is unjust is if I drive my $100k Audi safely and some little teenage 
twerp who can't drive smacks straight into it doing 100 on a 60 limit in his 
50 quid rust bucket and writes off my car.  Why the hell should I have to 
pay for that idiot who shouldn't even be allowed to drive?

It's just unlucky that you (and me) were/are young males, we get charged a 
shed load for car insurance whether we like it or not, purely because other 
young males have lots of accidents.  Besides, after 4 or 5 years accident 
free your insurance should be down to just a couple of hundred pounds, but 
don't tell me you just pay up when the insurance company sends the renewal 
notice and don't shop around?

And by the way, nobody is forcing you to run a car, if you moved closer to 
work, or found a job closer to home you wouldn't need one.  How much would 
you save?

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>> I visited the bank a while back (i.e., before the entire financial 
>> sector went into meltdown), and the guy there seemed to think that I 
>> could maybe afford a £90,000 morgage. Assuming I don't eat or use any 
>> heating. (In other words, on paper it would work, but it would be 
>> absurdly tight.)
> 
> Hmm, banks don't usually allow you to borrow that much that would make 
> life that hard.  Usually it's capped to about 4x your annual salary to 
> avoid exactly that problem.

Which, presumably, is why I left the room without a morgage. The guy did 
a few calculations with a pocket calculator and suggested that it 
probably wasn't worth the bother of running the numbers through the 
computer.

>> ...so 70% of my income then?
> 
> Yep, that's what happens if you want to get on the property ladder when 
> you're not earning much as a single person.  That 300 you have left over 
> basically then has to cover your utility bills and food.  Running a car? 
> Forget it.

My job kind of requires a car, so...

>> Well, currently my bank balance is going down rather than up, because 
>> most months I spent a few hundred more than I actually earn. Saving up 
>> sounds pretty hard to me.
> 
> How the hell do you manage to spend over 1000 pounds per month if you 
> are living with your mum?

If I could answer that, I'd be a very rich man.

...or, at least, a slightly richer man, anyway.

> Even if you rented somewhere small by yourself and had to run a car you 
> should be able to save some per month.  If you *really* want to save up 
> for a house you need to sacrifice some stuff.

...or get a job that pays actual money?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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>> Obviously I no longer have the letter any more, but it basically said 
>> "as per our contract, we owe you £25, here's your cheque".
> 
> Was it insured 3rd party or fully comp?

I don't remember.

>> I'm not disputing the logic of your claim. I'm just saying it seems 
>> rather unjust that I have to financially cripple myself
> 
> 700 pounds a year, financially cripple?

When you have £0/year income, it's quite a lot of money...

> It's just unlucky that you (and me) were/are young males, we get charged 
> a shed load for car insurance whether we like it or not, purely because 
> other young males have lots of accidents.

Yeah, that's about it really.

> Besides, after 4 or 5 years 
> accident free your insurance should be down to just a couple of hundred 
> pounds, but don't tell me you just pay up when the insurance company 
> sends the renewal notice and don't shop around?

I think it's something like £500/year now - but I have a lot more money 
to pay it with, so it doesn't seem like so much any more.

> And by the way, nobody is forcing you to run a car, if you moved closer 
> to work, or found a job closer to home you wouldn't need one.  How much 
> would you save?

Hey, nobody's forcing me to work. I could go live in jail. Then all the 
honest, hard-working people pay to feed and clothe me. And I'm *sure* I 
could find somebody in there who fancies me... ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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>> Yep, that's what happens if you want to get on the property ladder when 
>> you're not earning much as a single person.  That 300 you have left over 
>> basically then has to cover your utility bills and food.  Running a car? 
>> Forget it.
>
> My job kind of requires a car, so...

You mean commuting to your job requires a car?  If your actual job requires 
a car then usually the company provides one for you.

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> You could keep a local cache of what was successfully sent to the 
> server. But I was actually thinking more of having a component running 
> at both ends and a custom communications protocol rather than SMB...

You could do that, yes. Not with shell scripting, mind.

If you go that route, I'd suggest you look at the USN functions, so you can 
actually iterate through all the changes to the local disk to figure out 
what you have to send.

>> net use \\xyz\pdq hispassword /user:xyz\hisusername
> ...that does something?

Sure. For example,
   net use \\thatmachine\c$ adminpass /user:thatmachine\administrator
will log you into the administrative share on "thatmachine".

Or do it the "right" way, and have the backup run as a domain user with 
permissions to log in to the appropriate shares. That's what domains are for.

>> Tell "at" to run *your* job under a different user ID. Not "at" itself.
> As far as I know, this is impossible.

Then have your job switch user IDs after it gets started, if you need to.

> And then there are other issues, like file access permissions 

Put your backup user in the backup operator group. That's what it's for.

> or files being locked. 

Make a VSS snapshot. That's what it's for.

How do you think "real" backup programs get around it?

> Heh, yeah, I never did get as far as figuring out how to send alerts 
> when it fails...

Or log it into a file you check until you figure it out. Easiest would be to 
generate a Windows event for the event log, then have the event log software 
notify you.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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>>> net use \\xyz\pdq hispassword /user:xyz\hisusername
>> ...that does something?
> 
> Sure. For example,
>   net use \\thatmachine\c$ adminpass /user:thatmachine\administrator
> will log you into the administrative share on "thatmachine".

You mean this allows you to access that folder as the specified user 
using only UNC pathnames? (Not that all programs support these, mind you...)

> Or do it the "right" way, and have the backup run as a domain user with 
> permissions to log in to the appropriate shares. That's what domains are 
> for.

Yeah. As I say, the trouble is I don't want my "delete the temp files" 
job to have full network access, only the backup job.

>>> Tell "at" to run *your* job under a different user ID. Not "at" itself.
>> As far as I know, this is impossible.
> 
> Then have your job switch user IDs after it gets started, if you need to.

As far as I know, this is impossible.

>> And then there are other issues, like file access permissions 
> 
> Put your backup user in the backup operator group. That's what it's for.

Being in the backup users group only gives you permission to use the 
backup API. Standard copy programs don't use this API, they use the 
standard file access API.

>> or files being locked. 
> 
> Make a VSS snapshot. That's what it's for.

You can't do that from a DOS script.

> How do you think "real" backup programs get around it?

By being able to access any Win32 system call they wish?

>> Heh, yeah, I never did get as far as figuring out how to send alerts 
>> when it fails...
> 
> Or log it into a file you check until you figure it out. Easiest would 
> be to generate a Windows event for the event log, then have the event 
> log software notify you.

Well, it logs to a text file. But you have to remember to periodically 
read that and make sure nothing bad happened. As far as I know, logging 
to the event log is impossible.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> You mean this allows you to access that folder as the specified user 
> using only UNC pathnames? (Not that all programs support these, mind 
> you...)

Yes. You could do that anyway, but this logs you into that share with a 
different name and password. Anything that takes UNC names will work with it 
until it automatically times out all by itself after however long you have 
your session idle timeout set. (15 minutes? 30 minutes? Something like that 
by default.)

>> Or do it the "right" way, and have the backup run as a domain user 
>> with permissions to log in to the appropriate shares. That's what 
>> domains are for.
> 
> Yeah. As I say, the trouble is I don't want my "delete the temp files" 
> job to have full network access, only the backup job.

As I understand it, "backup operators" get read but not write permissions 
(other than the archive bit, perhaps). I'm not even 100% sure you can use 
the normal file system calls to get to the files rather than the "backup" calls.

So make a user specifically for your backup job, and don't run as that user 
normally.

>>>> Tell "at" to run *your* job under a different user ID. Not "at" itself.
>>> As far as I know, this is impossible.
>>
>> Then have your job switch user IDs after it gets started, if you need to.
> 
> As far as I know, this is impossible.

Of course it's possible. Why do you keep saying this? How do you get logged 
in in the first place?

Why not just say "I don't know how to do this"? Then at least it might occur 
to you to say "Gee, maybe google does."

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb742511.aspx

Don't you have a "runas" command?

Suggestion: Google up the complete list of Windows command-line programs 
that come with your Windows. Or look at all the .exe and .com files in 
\windows and \windows\system32.

> Being in the backup users group only gives you permission to use the 
> backup API. Standard copy programs don't use this API, they use the 
> standard file access API.

Fair enough. Get a domain user with read permissions, then.

>>> or files being locked. 
>> Make a VSS snapshot. That's what it's for.
> You can't do that from a DOS script.

Bzzzt. I even offered you my scripts to do it.

>> How do you think "real" backup programs get around it?
> By being able to access any Win32 system call they wish?

Perhaps.

> Well, it logs to a text file. But you have to remember to periodically 
> read that and make sure nothing bad happened. As far as I know, logging 
> to the event log is impossible.

Yeah, because there's never anything in the event log, either, as it's 
impossible to log something to it.

Damn, dude, you can even do it from Tcl.
http://twapi.magicsplat.com/eventlog.html
That took about 3 seconds on google.

How to read events from the command line, and how to run programs
when particular events get logged:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc757231(WS.10).aspx

Create them from the command line:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315410

Dude, start googling. Each of these was the #1 hit on the obvious query 
parameters to google.

 > Or "using Google to find the lyrics to that song I heard one time", as I
 > prefer to call it. ;-)

I give up.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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> Don't you have a "runas" command?

I'm guessing this wasn't available in Windows NT server when I wrote the 
scripts. Nice to know this at least has been fixed.

> Suggestion: Google up the complete list of Windows command-line programs 
> that come with your Windows.

I've done this, several times. In the process, I discovered several 
useful things. (E.g., apparently there's a FOR command which can iterate 
over files.) But I also discovered that most things you might want to 
script cannot be scripted from DOS.

>>>> or files being locked. 
>>> Make a VSS snapshot. That's what it's for.
>> You can't do that from a DOS script.
> 
> Bzzzt. I even offered you my scripts to do it.

Let me guess: pixie dust?

>> Well, it logs to a text file. But you have to remember to periodically 
>> read that and make sure nothing bad happened. As far as I know, 
>> logging to the event log is impossible.
> 
> Yeah, because there's never anything in the event log, either, as it's 
> impossible to log something to it.

No, just impossible from a mere DOS script. Of course, a compiled C 
program can do it. (Let's face it, a compiled C program can do *anything*.)

> Damn, dude, you can even do it from Tcl.
> http://twapi.magicsplat.com/eventlog.html
> That took about 3 seconds on google.

And how much do you want to bet it won't work with the standard Tcl 
interpretter?

> Create them from the command line:
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315410

"Logevent.exe is included in the Windows 2000 Resource Kit."

In other words, I can't get it.

It's nice to know they've created an external utility that allows you to 
do this though. You do occasionally find useful stuff like that. (E.g., 
a while back I discovered an M$ tool that allows you to run stuff as a 
service, even though this is normally impossible. System Internals also 
do some interesting stuff...)

> Dude, start googling. Each of these was the #1 hit on the obvious query 
> parameters to google.

I could spend a few weeks surfing the net, finding all the utilities I 
need to make the job work, checking that they're all from reputable 
sources, working out their little quirks, getting them all to work 
together...

...or I could install the BackupExec Remote Agent for Windows and be 
done with it. Whilst I actually kinda enjoy the challenge of trying to 
make scripts work, I feel happier that our vital production systems are 
using a professional backup solution, rather than some probably-broken 
thing I cobbled together myself.

Now, if I was doing this for my home PC, might be different... ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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