I've never heard of printing on metal before. It sounds cool, and I will have to investigate further. Some really great photos there, by the way.

@Bill-Kindle said:

@scottalanmiller My jaw dropped when I heard that guy say that. Why does he still have a job? If it were any place else people would be calling for his head!

I find this one of those annoying examples where because someone is an expert in one field (running an IT company) they are asked for their opinion on another field (HR). The guy clearly hasn't a clue on whether or not women should ask for a raise, not least because he's not a woman and it's been a very long time since he was in a normal job. He knows about as much as me, but no-one would ever ask my opinion, or take my answer in the least bit seriously.

When "business leaders" are asked questions like this I wish they'd just answer "No idea - not my field. Why don't you ask an expert?"

I find it part of the culture where we worship the rich and powerful and seek their opinion on everything and I hate it.

It seems that Microsoft now make it easy to upgrade, but difficult or impossible to downgrade. How convenient for them.

Legos? The plural of Lego is Lego. I believe it's the number one toy here in Europe - is it as popular in the States? My lad is starting to grow out of it now. If he hadn't lost loads of pieces and hadn't scribbled on and ripped the instructions, his collection would have a second hand value of over $1000. As it is, it's worthless. But we had a lot of fun making it all.

@richard I'm gonna try your white pizza recipe this weekend! Do we have enough cooks and photographers here for a separate forum? Nearly all my photos are on my PC, but I'm intending to upload my favourites to 500px soon.

In the UK, most IT jobs are offered through employment agencies and most agencies refuse applicants without degrees., regardless of ability or experience I think that's nuts, but it's the way it is.

We also operate an old boys network here. So a lot of top jobs are only available to mates who went to the same private school or Russell group university they went to. Contacts are more important than experience or ability.

I've definitely got better jobs and more money than I perhaps deserved simply because I studied Economics at a top University, even though my knowledge of the Laffer Curve doesn't really help when a server goes down.

I use one job for multiple servers. If one server fails to backup, the others will still be backed up fine. It's less hassle to manage it that way, and the less hassle you get with backups, the more confident you can feel about being able to restore them when the shit hits the fan. I did have a problem when I removed a server once, as it messed up retention processing, so sometimes if you retire servers it might be easier to create a new job and remove the old job.

The only real downside I've come across is that you end up with one massive backup file, which limits portability. Having lots of small backup files can sometimes be handy. For example, you might want to copy a backup of a VM onto a USB stick in order to restore it onto a standalone Lab server.

I don't currently do any reports, but have you looked into Veeam One? That might be just the tool you need and it comes free with a B&R subscription.

@JaredBusch said:

power generating shows

I like the idea of power generating shows. You could utilise the power from the audience applause to power the performers' amplifiers. If the audience doesn't clap loud enough the show can't continue.

@Richard said:

@Carnival-Boy It's on of my all time favorite recipes. Cooking it for the lady friend this weekend.

Sort of made it tonight:

only I'd never heard of broccoli rabe, so made it with broccoli. I've only just discovered broccoli rabe isn't broccoli at all. It was nice all the same!

I'm not asking for an eloquent covering letter, I'm asking for a covering letter. What you're basically saying is that you refuse to carry out my simple request because you don't believe it's worth doing. Regardless of whether you are right or not, we're never going to have a healthy working relationship with that kind of attitude.

Anyway, my job is working for an SMB, and at SMBs I don't believe there are purely technical roles. We need all-rounders, so so called "soft skills" are a requirement. There is nothing here that is that technical, so I'm not just looking for the most technically skilled candidate.

I just followed this:
http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/907-gpo-to-push-out-local-administrators-across-a-domain

Two minute job and I'm all sorted.

@scottalanmiller said:

Running Lean is great, but I would see if you can't find literature on running Lean as a general thing and avoid things that talk about startups entirely. A good book would not be one focused on startups. Best if it does not even consider them.

Definitely not. You should get influences from everywhere. Don't close you mind and think "we're this type of firm so we can only think about doing X". That's why mature firms fail.

Northampton, England. 5,000 mile radius if you're prepared to pay Business Class and the job isn't too urgent.

@nadnerB said:

2. What are you looking for in a person? (minus the crap. GET TO THE POINT!!!!)

I'm not even doing this. What I'm looking for is someone who feels they can do the job I've specified for the salary range I've specified. I'm not going to pre-judge by listing criteria. If they feel they can do it they can apply and I'll judge their relative merits when I read their resume.

You're right. If everything is cloud based, there is little point in having AD. However, I've never come across an SMB that is in the position of having nothing on premise. Maybe in a micro-business, but any company with 30+ users I would expect to continue to need AD for some years. If a company was in that fortunate position, I would definitely go with Google Apps rather than O365.

I actually posed the same question on Spiceworks a couple of years ago, when I wrote "I'm starting to imagine what life would be like without Active Directory. I'm not there yet, but I can imagine it happening sooner rather than later." Two years on and I'm not really any closer.

I was more thrown by your statement "Very little in the SMB space authenticates to AD. Not even Office365". I can't imagine having to support two user databases, one in AD and one in O365. That sounds like a nightmare to me.

I'm trying to kill it off here, but it's not easy. There are always a couple of annoying users in any organisation who think it's great and fancy themselves as amateur software developers. Normally leaving me to pick up the pieces when it all goes wrong.

I think moving away from your family, friends and general comfort of your hometown to "see the world" is a really great idea. And there are awesome experiences you get from actually living and working somewhere that you can never get from just travelling. I lived abroad for a few years and wouldn't have changed it for the world. As Tom Waits wrote "I never saw my hometown until I stayed away too long. I never saw the east coast until I moved to the west"

Sometimes I wished I'd stay abroad for longer. But after I moved back to my hometown I started hanging out with my dad a lot more and developed a great relationship with him that I never had as a child. A couple of years later he died. I could never regret those 2 years I had with him. The older I get, the more I appreciate family ties.

The travelling bug hits me from time to time and I wonder about moving again. I've lived in my current town for 12 years now. But it gets so much more complicated when you have children who are settled at school and have some great friends. I also find it harder to make new friends as I get older, so no longer assume I could just make a bunch of new friends in a new area.

Moving within the US is obviously easier, because of a shared language and culture in different states. France is only 20 miles from England, but at times it can feel like a completely different planet. On the other hand, is there really much difference between living in Boston and Chicago? They seemed pretty similar when I went there. I could see the attraction of moving somewhere like San Francisco from the east coast. Mainly for the weather as I'm not sure I could survive Chicago winters.

@tonyshowoff said:

My point is, do what it takes to make more money now, so you can enjoy your life later.

I don't want to live in the future. I want to enjoy my life all the way through. I didn't pursue very good career options in my 20s but I had the time of my life and wouldn't swap it now. I have a few friends who earn a lot of money, but they have had health problems and rarely see their kids - that's not the life for me. I wouldn't want to be poor, but I've no desire to be rich either.

Having said that, I could do with some more cash at the moment.....

@ajstringham said:

When one person's job becomes obsolete, there are many new jobs created. The computer rendered people who worked on typewriters obsolete, but enter the age of the computer tech. As one door closes, so does another open.

Sadly, I think we've entered an age when technological change no longer results in new jobs. I think we can see this with the current mass unemployment in Europe and US, which I don't think is going to go away. Keynes predicted that we'd all be working for just 20 hours a week by now and would have loads of leisure time to enjoy. Unfortunately it hasn't worked out like that. Some of us are working 60 hours a week and some of us are working zero hours a week - madness.

I didn't see your talk though @scottalanmiller. Synopsis?

How can you do any productive work when you're checking your e-mail every 2 minutes?