We've sent a lot of the Asus USB 3 MB168/9B series DisplayLink monitors plus I use one with my Tecra Z50-A series laptop. Together they weigh very little and it's neat to see the suits look over at the dual monitor setup while I'm waiting for a flight. ;0)

Both laptop and monitor have the same resolution which I find to be best as mousing about between two different resolution monitors can be a bit of a pain.

I'm looking to replace the Z50 at some point preferably with a 15" Surface Book series. But, they are quite pricey here in Canada so I'll stretch my Z50 out a bit longer.

I replaced the spinner with an Intel SSD DC S3520 800GB SSD. That was like being handed an entirely new machine!

I keep a 600GB Intel DC S3500 series SSD in a StarTech USB3 2.5" enclosure to provide added storage and for all of my demo VMs. The laptop, the Asus MB168B+, and the external SSD are about the best package I could and still can get for the money.

@valentina said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

We play UNO, Dutch Blitz, and a bunch of other card games regularly in our family. I'm not sure I get this one ...

Hyper-V Replica would work in this situation with a few caveats.

There is a 15 second limit on replication cycles. If the VMs are running database/active services this could be a problem.

Site link would be key relative to the amount of data changing on those VMs.

If Site A gets flattened then spooling the VMs up at Site B may require some tweaks if Site-to-Site VPN was being used and thus different subnets.

Then there's the need to either shift WAN IP(s) to Site B or flip DNS.

@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@PhlipElder said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

We play UNO, Dutch Blitz, and a bunch of other card games regularly in our family. I'm not sure I get this one ...

On a public bus?

Just noticed the one guy on the left may have one card left that's a colour changer?

@black3dynamite said in Firewall rules for outgoing traffic:

Block all DNS servers except for the one you provide via DHCP?

Correct.

If a SPAMbot get's in and tries to run itself independent of the production network it can't.

@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

There is definitely some truth to that.

I put in a rose garden for my wife's birthday this last weekend. This is me sitting by the fire after the kids are in bed relaxing with our little Momma, Pretty Kitty, who has a 3-week old kitten and was looking for some respite herself.

That was it. Just the fire, the cat, and the fresh air. No drinks though. Was too tired.

We set up our Intel RMM and Dell iDRAC Enterprise KVM/IP setups on the internal LAN with a static IP address. Self-issued SSL is fine for this.

Older RMM/iDRAC units may need a legacy Win7 VM with IE9 around for those moments when they need to be managed (we keep one turned off but around for this exact reason). This is especially true with the certificate structure changes that have come through recently. Modern browsers refuse to connect to legacy web management consoles.

Rules are set up on the edge to allow both inbound and outbound packets for their services to our office IP address. VPN is another method to gain access if the edge supports it.

Username and password are set up with both settings being custom with info kept in KeePass here. Make sure to change the Dell default setting! Intel gets set up in the BIOS before it allows site authentication and access.

Cost wise Dell is $300 to $450 here in Canada to license while the Intel RMM module is sub $150.

A blog post on what we do: http://blog.mpecsinc.ca/2017/06/disaster-preparedness-kvmip-usb-flash.html

We don't do SuperMicro.

@hobbit666 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

Just found this in the garden

My favourite insect critter. Takes them two years to full maturity. They have a voracious appetite. When they show up in numbers on our acreage in mid-august the mosquito population takes a noticeable dive. They like to float on the updrafts above the house (black shingles) so we see clouds of them for at least a month.

I'm pretty sure Igor Sikorsky took his inspiration from them to get to a workable helicopter model.

Need the service tag to pick up the right driver and firmware.

We've seen some really nasty bugs patched by some of the latest SAS HBA firmware out of Dell (they cook their own).

We deploy converged solution sets on their stuff (2+ nodes + JBOD(s)).

@dafyre said in No Facebook - 30 Days. Go:

@Dashrender said in No Facebook - 30 Days. Go:

@scottalanmiller said in No Facebook - 30 Days. Go:

@WLS-ITGuy said in No Facebook - 30 Days. Go:

I use Facebook as a way to keep in touch with family and friends who don’t live close to me. I use FB Messenger to talk to my wife throughout the work day. If I wasn’t in IT I doubt I’d have a phone with internet. I’d prefer to be disconnected from the world. I’d rather be on my boat fishing all day.

I was doing that (family and stuff), but honestly, it seems like if people don't move to something else to talk to, not a big deal.

15 years ago, before Facebook - what did you use to keep in contact with your family? I don't know about you - buy my answer was - oh yeah - nothing. We didn't stay in contact and we didn't feel like we were missing anything - otherwise we would have found a way to stay in contact.

15 Years ago? Ha... We were using Skype and IRC.

Edit: The old man still runs his own IRC server for like 5 friends.

ICU? MSN Messenger? AIM?

Heh, there are some vague memories in there of those in the latter part of the 1990s early 2000s.

We run NETGEAR XS712T and XS716T at the entry-level for full RJ45 10GbE and other than a few firmware glitches they've been flawless as the fabric between storage (SOFS) and compute (Hyper-V).

For Gigabit the SG500x series Cisco switches (the Cisco/Linksys child) have been solid whether standalone or stacked.

We have a number of environments with both sets of switches, a pair of each, and they've been running together for years now with very little issue.

@siringo said in Any Camera People Here?:

I'm looking for a camera and I know nothing.

I'm happy with the quality of the photos I get out of my Samsung Galaxy S6+ but I'd like to have, is it called a viewfinder? The thing you used to have to jam your eye up against with all the cameras we used to use before we used smartphones.

Also something with bluetooth, a screen so I can review what I just shot, maybe wifi, SD card. Also the ability to add filters, just like I do on my smartphone.

Manual focus and the ability to add lenses may be good as well.

Budget is up to $500.

With thanks.

There are plenty of good third party lenses that can attach to smart phones. I've been wanting to pick-up a good Macro and Zoom lens set for my iPhone X as I can't be bothered to carry around extra kit with me where ever I go.

^^^ This was taken with my iPhone using the native lens and built-in software. The built-in camera app sucks so purchasing an app that allows for full control is on the To Do List as well.

As a comparison, nothing has come close to the Lumia 1020 that my wife now has for photo capabilities. That was one awesome camera that had a smartphone attached to it. :S

@dafyre said in Edge (Sync) Favourites Toasted:

At least you were able to recover most of your bookmarks!

Edit: I have also started using NextCloud and the Bookmarks app. No syncing required to get the Bookmarks on all your devices. There are even apps that will let you add bookmarks from your mobile devices too.

Unfortunately not. I lost the week's worth of bookmark/favourites that were a part of the project.

There's a small silver lining: All code and PowerShell tweaks/steps that got modified in VSCode had a direct HTTP/HTTPS link commented into the line so it's not a total loss.

@RojoLoco said in Any Camera People Here?:

@PhlipElder sweet flower pic! I spent most of a year taking flower pics at my parents house. Totally basic camera though.

Thanks. Unfortunately, a camera kit is out of the question for us right now thus the pursuit of a lens kit for my iPhone X which takes half decent pics ... just a crappy camera app that is nowhere near as good as the Microsoft one was.

My wife's birthday presents for the last three years has been garden roses along with two rose gardens one two years ago and one this year. I love roses. My mother had an amazing rose garden when I was growing up and I have lasting memories of them.

We have a set of Group Policy Objects that are set up at the domain level with WMI filters in place for two of the three.
The first has all of the key settings for updates that are shared across the board.
The second using a WMI filter to point only to desktop operating systems with the necessary settings in place for all desktop OS versions that we manage.
The third is for server operating systems only. It delimits to download but not update automatically along with a few other settings.

We've been using this setup since I can remember and not once have we hit servers auto-installing and rebooting. It's too risky for that to happen.

@DustinB3403 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@PhlipElder I don't think any believes a generator is a long term solution to not having power. At least not of the "pallet sized generators".

If you were serious about keeping the lights on, you'd go with something like these. Or even larger ones.

Yup. Cummins Onan is the one. CAT makes a few models as well.

The tricky part is wiring it all in with an automatic transfer switch (ATS) to keep things seamless and not pump any generator power into the grid.

@scottalanmiller said in Outlook 2016 Export to PST Missing a Lot of Data:

We have an Office 365 account with Outlook 2016 attached and we need to archive the entirety of a mailbox to a PST file. When we do so, the PST is very large, 8GB or bigger. And it gets some stuff. But loads of emails are missing, too.

Outlook is configured to download all, not headers or anything like that. Cached Mode is on, and retention set to all. Slow link detection is off. Folders have been updated.

And yet still, we can go into a folder in the Inbox, and it still says "Click here to download more from Exchange" or whatever. If we click that, email shows up. Navigate away and back, and it is black again. Export it, and it is blank.

How can you get Outlook to get all of the email, not just some?

On-premises we'd run the Export-Mailbox PoSh in the Exchange Console. Is there an ability to do that in O365 (all of our hosted mailboxes are third party)?

Another option would be a MAPI sync tool that could do a full pull. EDIT: Veeam is da bomb. :0)

I was sleepless one morning during the New Moon. It was quite dark and this is what greeted me.

Merry Christmas everyone and a Happy & Prosperous New Year!

@gjacobse We have a tower beside our house that is isolated from the house to prevent a dual-ground situation.

All cables that run into the house are completely isolated to prevent anything jumping in.

We had a client in Edmonton that had a fax modem and a fax service running on a PC. When we set it up the POTS line was grounded prior to running into the PC. Somewhere along the way something was moved around and the POTS line in from the wall got plugged in to the PC modem directly.

An active storm had a strike against the pole in the alley and sure enough besides the boom scaring the carp out of folks the PC was dead. When we opened it up the controller chip on the modem was literally blown out as was the chipset chip under the heatsink. Time for a new PC!

@coliver said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@PhlipElder I have coal fired radiant heat in basement and part of the living room. Goal for this summer is the tear down the basement ceiling and put radiant heat in the rest of the second floor. Then eventually do the same for the third floor.

There's something special about walking about barefoot on a warm floor when it's -35C outside.