Best posts made by alexntg

Do I sense a contender for the Darwin Awards?

If someone's considering this but isn't nearby, let's have a chat. I'm a master of last-minute relocation on a budget.

For issues like that, follow their Twitter feed and do other stuff while you wait:
https://twitter.com/Cbeyond

It was a sanity saver during the Windstream debacle last year.

Is it his next-door neighbor? Is the device on the same channel as his? There could be contention. Has he tried changing channels on his WiFi? Are there any 2.4Ghz phones in the area?

If the content company pays for [Big Fat Internet Pipe] and the consumer pays for [Big Fat Residential Pipe], why would the content company need to pay more? Their [Big Fat Internet Pipe] costs a fortune and covers their costs. If it's a bandwidth cost factor, the pricing on the pipes should be re-evaluated.

Dang it, I just took a position with another firm

For others, as someone who's worked with HDS's HUS, AMS, and HNAS products, I can safely say that it would be a "dream job" for a storage-inclined IT professional. The entry-level support issues are comparatively complex, so you wouldn't get bored for a while to come. They're also very big on training for not only employees, but partners and clients as well.

I'll be digging into Elder Scrolls Online

@Dashrender said:

OK Now I know I'm currently stretched to thin... the problem isn't on WIndows 8.1, it's on Windows 7 Pro.

Sigh.. Sorry guys - but the problem still exists where IE 11 wants to install Flash, and is requiring a local admin to do it through the IE Add-on Installer.

Have you considered pushing flash out via GPO?

It's easy to win a battle when only one side thinks there's a war. It's a matter of finding the right tool for the job, not about the code base.

@scottalanmiller said:

I'm tempted to play that but know that I have no time.

It's not bad. I'm in the process of trying to adjust to the new interface and controls. After playing MMOs for 10 years, movement and interface have become subconscious functions.

Side note: If you're considering this, make sure that you have a separate data partition. You can't dedupe the system drive.

@Dashrender said:

@alexntg said:

@scottalanmiller said:

Apple can get everyone to leave Snow Leopard but Microsoft is still struggling to get people off of XP!!

Custom applications, manufacturing systems, and SCADA environments aren't typically running on Mac. Until that changes, it's a bit hard to compare the two.

Are you really making excuses for companies who make poor business decisions? Those companies all decided to write software that only works on a platform that from at least 2005 they SHOULD have been aware would see an end of life (I say should because if they would have read about it, they would have known).

I suppose this gives a possible excuse to those running who made things on XP from 2001-2004, but come on... again, MS isn't supporting windows 95/98.

For those environments that can't be bothered with keeping security updated, or whatever excuse they want to use - fine. Segment your networks completely so this isn't a problem.

I simply can't understand a company that doesn't keep it's core business requirements covered. Clearly these companies don't have a disaster plan, etc.

Let's say that you're an IT person for a power plant. Sure, the critical systems are air-gapped from Internet-connected systems. However, upgrading critical components takes time. The platform has to be evaluated and show years of consistent reliability before even being a consideration. From there, there's the implementation and validation phases to go through.

For a manufacturing firm to upgrade can be incredibly costly. Let's say there's a 27-person firm with a $1m piece of equipment that has an ancient amber-screen DOS interface. The manufactuer of the equipment supplies replacement parts, but otherwise makes new models of the equipment. Other than the interface being old, the equipment works great, and will for years to come. The company then has 3 choices:

1. Buy a new one for $1m
2. Hire someone to reverse engineer the system and make a new interface for $50-100k
3. Leave it as-is
   Which do you think they'll do?

A 4000-person company is moving to Windows 7. Their LOB software doesn't support anything after XP. The company's working on switching over to a new software package, but that involves finding one that's a good fit, retraining their developers to write custom modules for the new system, implementing the custom code, training 4000 people, then implementing the new system globally without causing major work stoppage. They're working on it, but right now are on XP.

Would you consider these to be excuses, or valid business cases?

@Nic said:

I've been using the Getting Things Done system religiously for a decade. I highly recommend it!

THIS!! I can't emphasize enough how much of a life saver this is. It's quite literally saved my career and sanity. Read the book (or listen if you're an audiobook person). Enact the system and stick with it. You'll be more productive, less stressed, and may come out of it an entirely new person.

@Dashrender said:

@alexntg said:

@Dashrender said:

Are you saying that you don't need Pertino because the offsite devices would backup directly to the CrashPlan servers, and not your local server... that makes sense, but then you loose the fast recovery time of a local store.

CrashPlan uses secure transmission, so they could back up directly over the Internet to your local backup server. Additionally, you could set a bandwidth limiter on the CrashPlan inbound firewall rule so that it doesn't eat up all of your bandwidth. This is especially useful for environments where you don't want the end-user's computer connected to your network at all (such as an MSP's clients).

Do you have to publish your onsite CrashPlan server to the internet? or does CrashPlan act as a middleman like Skype used to before they decided to bend the will of the NSA?

For backups over the Internet with CrashPlan PROe, you'd need to open up some firewall ports and make an appropriate external DNS entry. Your machines would back up directly to your server. CrashPlan PRO is the version that backs up to CrashPlan's hosted service.

Perhaps just picking up some off-hours contract work for server maintenance may be a decent way to go? You'd get exposure to other environments, likely bigger ones, and get paid to do it. You'd also be free to work your day job without being impeded by your side work. You could also sign up with Onforce and keep an eye out for evening jobs.

Other than IT and my hobby of gaming, I'm an amateur voice actor. I'll retire from IT around 50 or so, then head to school to take that talent further. Once I lose some more weight, I'll be getting back into Krav Maga (I had tried earlier, but realized that I'm far too fat).

Mike Ralston, I dub thee Slade02.

@IRJ said:

@alexntg said:

Perhaps just picking up some off-hours contract work for server maintenance may be a decent way to go? You'd get exposure to other environments, likely bigger ones, and get paid to do it. You'd also be free to work your day job without being impeded by your side work. You could also sign up with Onforce and keep an eye out for evening jobs.

That's kind of what I was aiming for. Maintaining WSUS, packages, and etc

I am already talking to a potential client about doing an exchange upgrade. Which would need to be done after hours anyway.

Just make sure to take a few days off from your day job for go-live.

@scottalanmiller said:

I hear 29 is pretty nice?

It's like IE and Chrome had a baby and named it Firefox. I'm more comfortable using it now.

MAP would work; we use that with our clients. Also, if you have Spiceworks, you'd be able to glean much of that information as well.