After over 6 straight years of actual larger-Enterprise (heavy Windows/Linux infrastructure) experience and 3 intense years of practice and self-study, I finally made MCSE: Server Infrastructure (2012 R2).

http://www.mycertprofile.com/Profile/1943383021

My real (relevant) experience hadn't started in a business environment until closer to 2004, but it has been a goal of mine since then.

It just feels good to have finally reached that goal in a good way.

My wife is becoming a U.S. citizen today. As well as everyone else on the bottom floor. People still coming in.

Some entertainment on the stage while everyone waits for the Oath Ceremony to begin.

I posted a guide on my blog about setting up a Fedora 26 KVM / QEMU hypervisor that uses the Kimchi-project for remote virtualization management, which includes a working web-based VM console.

Here's the link: https://www.timothygruber.com/linux/fedora-26-kvm-html5-remote-access-with-web-console-via-kimchi-part-1/

I hope it helps anyone who needs it as much as it would have helped me had I came across it a long time ago.

It's easy to create on my blog because I can copy/paste images into the editor... it's like working inside of MS Word.

I was thinking of recreating it on here for ML, but not sure if it's worth it or not, as well as the chance of hurting SEO.

Should I take the time to do it and just change the wording a bit?

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

I know y'all are concerned... Snapchat just went down.

Nope, the whole Snapchat company could disband and I'd never even know it (until you post about it).

@momurda said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Ordered 2 ssd from newegg. They show up in 2 8"x4"x3" boxes which are packaged inside a 24"x18"x4" box. And lots of those airbag things.
Literally could have fit hundreds of ssd in this packaging.

Now if one doesn't work, you need to ship it back inside of a refrigerator box...

@dustinb3403 said in Recommendations for Cameras:

He wants something "more serious looking" what does that even mean?

I have had great experience with these:

That VMQ thing can be an issue on 1 GB NICs with out-dated firmware/drivers. The info of affected drivers and NICs and the resolution can be found here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2986895/virtual-machines-lose-network-connectivity-when-you-use-broadcom-netxt

This is a good write-up and how to resolve it. Or you can just run firmware and driver updates.

VMQ should be disabled on 1 GB NICs. The issue with the broadcoms is that it's enabled by default, and shouldn't be.

@RandyBlevins said in How should you handle a potential promotion?:

Should I consider taking the new position of my pay grade stays the same?

I think this is one of the big questions.

Is the new role something you would enjoy more irrespective of a pay bump?

Or would the only enjoyment or benefit of the new role come from the pay bump and not the role?

Would the new role be worth more should you take the role for a year or two with no pay bump, but result in like a 20% base pay increase at a new company later? Maybe that would be worth it. Maybe the new role would give a slight pay bump at your current company, and lead to more bonus/equity/etc, and/or more pay raises there too.

What do other companies pay for that new role now? What might they pay in two years? Maybe in 2 years of having this new role, you could at a different company get hired at a higher level like Principal or similar, resulting in a few hundred $K more total comp per year.

You could answer these best, but may help to point them out.

@pmoncho said in Powershell "-eq" operator and "False":

Trying to figure out why this will not work? I'm stumped

$UserID = read-host "UserID to disable"
$UserE = (Get-ADUser $UserID)

write-host "Account Enabled?" $UserE.Enabled

if ($UserE.enabled -eq "False") {
   $a = read-host "Move to Disabled Accounts OU? (Y/N)"
   $answer
}

UserID to disable: test1
Account Enabled? False

C:\windows\system32

If I use the following all is works whether "Enabled" is True or False

if ($UserE.enabled -ne "True") {...

In PowerShell, typically if it's in double quotes, it's a string. That's what you were were checking for, is if a given string equals the word "False".... instead of the boolean true/false, as $true/$false.

To find out what type of output you're dealing with, you can always use the built-in getType() method. You'll notice the Name property of String or Boolean.

@d-cunnings said in User Profile migration Problem AAD -> AD:

Customer pulling in smaller firm running Windows clean Azure.

I am to get those users off their Azure and onto the On-prem domain and have been given the task to move not only their data but also their current user account experience.

Going through everything I could find over the weekend I get to the point where I conclude that there is no way to do this.

-There doesn't even seem to be a way to link a local or domain profile to an Azure account?

Has anyone of you done this?

Maybe just get rid of computers and go back to pencil and paper?

@xavierdelaraunt said in User Profile handling anno 2022:

I have quite a lot of settings I cannot get into the default settings in any way like that.

I have not ran into any policies, settings, etc that could not be don't through Intune. It would be very hard for me to think of something that I can't do to a device related to those through Intune.

If you are referring to user profile migrations across different devices (old device > new device), most of that can be resolved by better systemic practices prior. That can be a shitty experience regardless of MDM or device management system.

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Today I was called communist for shopping at Walmart.

Lol what?

Here's a real example.

I'm renting. I love the area we're in. There are other areas where we would enjoy living as well that are exactly the same.

I'm paying under $3K a month for rent. It's a large condo, 3BR 2Bath, wonderful area, 4 pools 4 hot tubs, awesome view, great location, great & quiet neighbors, great community.

Renting other places around here are similar priced, many are a few hundred $ more for now, but still in range.

We'd like to buy a house in our current area, or another area we like, and pretty much keep our current standard of living as we are in this condo, but in house form.

If we did that, the minimum mortgage payment we're looking at MINIMUM is $6.5K, that is with dumping a bunch of cash as a down payment... note that the $6.5K does not include insurance, PMI, taxes, closing costs, etc.

So you see, renting and owning a home is not the same thing. Just because I choose to rent, doesn't mean that I automatically will rent the same kind of house that I would want to buy. So it's just not logical to me to compare them like that. Typically, you rent to save money. Sure, I could rent a house for $8K a month, but wtf would I do that? I'd rather buy! Except, I don't want to buy, because I need the freedom to be mobile and choose where to live and not be stuck... I don't want to throw all my money into a house and live paycheck to paycheck and be forced to sell at the next higher bubble than is currently to make anything.

Yeah, we could move to a cheaper area, but we don't want to. There's no point because we just don't want to give up what makes us live happy and looking forward to the next day/weekend/time off, etc.

I'd rather keep renting, and saving money, and investing money, that I'm not throwing into a house that I may or may not get back plus more later, if life works out perfectly for home ownership. I'm very likely to move as well, need that freedom, while saving! We can't time our life according to the house, we need our housing to work for us.

@Dashrender said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

How are these investment groups making any money buying all of these houses and then renting them all

It's not guaranteed that they do. Look at some recent examples of companies over paying for homes and getting screwed. It happens a lot. It's also not only about making money for them on the house, it's about holding money. There's so many loop holes in the system that it is a way to legally launder, avoid other things such as taxes, etc.

That said, when you can buy homes with cash, it is less likely to be a liability. They avoid PMI, mortgage, interest, not living in the home so aren't tied to it, much easier to time the market to buy and sell, etc. They tend to immediately find renters because these home are usually move in ready. If not, they have other plans.

@Mario-Jakovina said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

@Obsolesce House is definitely an asset.
The most typicall form of asset.

(Look at any balance sheet, and real estate is always in assets, where else would it be?)

Mortgage is liability.

https://biesingerfirejourney.com/house-asset-or-liability/

https://www.richdad.com/what-are-assets-and-liabilities

https://medium.com/the-investors-handbook/is-a-house-an-asset-or-a-liability-5c57ca3190bb

https://www.clevergirlfinance.com/blog/is-a-house-an-asset/

https://www.foreignersfinances.com/is-a-house-an-asset-or-a-liability/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-your-house-an-asset-or-a-liability/

I can keep going if you want.

@Jimmy9008 a house is not automatically an asset. In most cases when buying a house with a mortgage, it is considered a liability. It can take a long time to become an asset, if ever at all.

@scottalanmiller said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

@Obsolesce said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

@Obsolesce said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

Additionally, had you put 202K into an index fund in 2005,what would it be worth today?

Looks like gains of nearly $400K (s&p index fund) after adjusted for inflation, nearly $600K without.

So basically a loss of ~$400K comparing the two unadjusted numbers.

Assuming 17 years with zero maintenance or repairs or other overhead.

Can't forgot about closing costs and taxes, there's that too.