Best posts made by bbigford

I've saw this question time and again. The end result is the admin ends up changing the password of the user that needs an auto reply of "out of office" or whatever the reply may be, then logging in to that account and setting the reply through Outlook. I cannot change the person's password at all. Short overview, an admin is out indefinitely for health reasons. It was very abrupt (fine one minute, gone the next). I am not to change the admin's password as explicitly directed, but I need to configure the account for auto reply of out of office so vendors and others know. Is there a way to configure it in Exchange 2013? I have never found an answer online.

@Minion-Queen said:

@Dashrender They just suck that bad is my opinion. If they are screwing with us, well sucks to be them. We post online about these outages every time they happen. And now steer clients clear of them as much as possible.

With outages like that... I'll never be able to propose off-site cloud.

Someone smelled breakfast this morning and came running...

So I've setup Chrome user data directory by installing the Chrome ADM template to Group Policy. I've then gone into its properties and under "Set user data directory", enabled it, and set the value ${documents}\GoogleChrome. We have redirected My Documents, so I've verified that a folder does get auto-populated, is named GoogleChrome, and fills with user data. The problem is, I do a test by uninstalling Chrome and blowing away the local profile in C:\users<username>\appdata\local\google\chrome then reinstall the program. None of the test bookmarks get brought back. What am I missing?

Nobody ever screws up. It's inhuman to ever make a mistake.

Just kidding, I don't care that much. Shit happens. I think we're all smart enough to do multi factor authentication with email among other layers sooo we're good.

@coliver said in Is Texas Next?:

@BBigford said in Is Texas Next?:

@coliver said in Is Texas Next?:

I'm game for it. I don't really know of any major product that we still get from Texas. Thinking of major historical exports all of them have been taken over and done more efficiently by other states/countries.

The only thing that will be an issue for me is that if Texas does leave the US it will end up being a third world country in parts that aren't DFW or Austin.

Idaho uses them as a staple for gun law comparisons. So as an Idahoan, that affects me. Everything else, maybe just oil and other fossil fuels?

Haha, does Idaho often argue to become more like Texas?

Yeah. As of the first of July all Idahoans can carry concealed without a permit. I have a permit, and don't agree necessarily with that law. People need proper training not just on the weapons themselves, but the laws.

A common comparison with Texas and Idaho is the "Stand Your Ground" law in Texas. You can stand and fight in a just cause, but in Idaho it is frowned upon, and in some cases very discouraged unless you're in the confines of your own home. Not just your property in some counties, but the structure of your actual home. Most of the state is pretty lax though. We live in a nice neighborhood (middle class) and are surrounded by law enforcement (sheriff's and city police) and someone tried to kick in our door at 2am on a Thursday. I grabbed a gun and called the sheriff. They said that was the right thing to do but I could have dumped the person on the side walk. I just won't do that unless I have no other option like that person entering our house. But some drugged out guy, maybe drunk as well, nah. The officers can deal with that.

@BBigford Overall this is just poor planning. I shouldn't have built them on the actual machines. I should have built virtual images so I could:

*Obtain snapshots before sysprep and
*Get around sysprep rearm because snapshots date back prior to first sysprep.

If I can convert them, I don't have to rebuild them.

So wait, the Mango Lassi is not the official drink of MangoCon?? I thought it was so obvious...

@thwr said in Is Texas Next?:

@BBigford said in Is Texas Next?:

@thwr said in Is Texas Next?:

@BBigford said in Is Texas Next?:

@Dashrender said in Is Texas Next?:

How's the advertising over there compared to over here, Scott? I think of of the things that drives the crime sprees here is that our advertising drives people to think they don't have enough, they aren't good enough where they are. That whole thing where companies are trying to squeeze every last cent out of the spending public.

Is that the case there?

What kind of people do you think are committing crimes? It's not middle class workers that want a new materialistic thing that they can't afford. It's people who got addicted to drugs and are feeding their demons with every item they can pawn for cash to score more drugs. Along with people who are homeless and can't even beg for enough money to pay for stuff. Push someone to the edge of desperation; have them question if they'll survive unless they harm you, and you'll see the animal inside of them.

I've noticed you mentioning homeless people before. Is that really that big of a problem over at your place? Can't really imagine that, because we have a rather powerful social system. Everyone, virtually everyone, will get some place to sleep or even some small apartment, at least the most important things (very basic things like a toothbrush, soap, towels, something to eat, clothes, ...), healthcare (or help on getting away from drugs) and this way a real chance to get back into "normal" life.

Yeah it's pretty bad on the west coast. I haven't been on the east coast or the south very much but it is extremely problematic. When you get that many homeless in an area, especially around middle and upper class citizens, there is a kind of resentment when you interact with many of them. Also the "steal from the rich and give to the poor" mentality comes out, where people who wouldn't normally steal, start to do so because they think the middle and upper class can afford to lose certain things off their property.

Homeless people as a social behavior aren't the problem, it's when you put a desperate person in a situation where they can take what they need, because to them it is a life or death situation. If they don't assault you and take material items that they can sell for money to buy food and water (anything else like drugs or alcohol aside), then that is survival. It's the wildly aggressive homeless that are a problem, and it becomes more of a problem if you run across some that are high or intoxicated, especially at night in dimly lit areas that should be avoided.

There are shelters and programs, especially in really big places like Seattle. But they often get overrun and people stand in lines for many blocks. A lot of them don't get in, or can't get fed because there simply aren't enough supplies or beds available for the night. To rotate people, they will kick you out for the day to stand in line for another bed. You might not get one the next night.

There are some other REALLY great programs to help people find work, get them into affordable housing, and help rehabilitate them from drugs and alcohol, but it's a societal struggle because when you help 1,000 people, you may have another 1,000 that are newly addicted, unemployed, and their house foreclosed so they're on the streets.

Thanks for getting back. I was afraid a bit that you could take that personally what I wrote. Anyway.

I knew that the USA got a next to non-existing social system and that there are at least 633,782 homeless people and probably many, many more. That's completely different here in good ol' Germany: "Hinz & Kunzt" (1) - an INSP (International Network of Street Papers) newspaper sold by homeless with the idea behind to get them some (extra) income - stated back in 02/2013 that there are at least 1,029 Homeless people in Germany's second largest City of Hamburg (estimated 1,77 Mio ppl, 5,05 Mio with surrounding areas according to Wikipedia).

What's the point of all those numbers? Maybe we care about others. Sure, there are still people who are homeless, but I guess that's more kind of a lifestyle or to "fight the system". Anyway, if you take a look at the German constitution, you'll find this in the very first article:

Article 1
[Human dignity – Human rights – Legally binding force of basic rights]

1. Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.

2. The German people therefore acknowledge inviolable and inalienable human rights as the basis of every community, of peace and of justice in the world.

3. The following basic rights shall bind the legislature, the executive and the judiciary as directly applicable law.

Source: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.html#p0015

There are more detailled laws that define what that means, for example the amount of money you'll get per month or what "dignity" means in detail (a roof over your head, for example). Here's some good post about that: https://www.quora.com/How-does-Germany-deal-with-the-homeless-and-the-poor

From what I've been reading in this thread, the system itself seems to be failing over at your place. Or it doesn't exist at all. That isn't something new, I was just shocked by the sheer numbers. We got our own problems here, sure, but nothing compareable to homeless people raiding your home to get some food, out of desperation.

No worries. I've saw you post enough on here that I have a fairly decent handle on your demeanor to know you don't mean anything by what you say. Just genuinely curious is all. Aside from that, I'm also very level headed so it takes quite a bit to get me worked up. I'm always up for a good healthy conversation about controversial topics.

I've been reading more and more about VMware Workstation and Fusion devs getting the axe. Scott Alan Miller made a point in one post, that said people are more stringent about choosing a hypervisor, than they are about choosing something like a desktop. I do agree with that as I've bounced back and forth between VirtualBox and Workstation. Some love VirtualBox because of the price, others like Workstation because of their own reasons. I know some differences in the past had to do with cloning/snapshots/network adapters. But I've saw everything pretty much blend together now. What is your preference, and why?

Doing a class project in the coming weeks and we are allowed to use any resource, that includes online threads. I'm trying to find photos that are controversial, things like race/sexuality/gender/etc. Just can't be memes since someone has already assigned meaning to the photo. Here's some examples...

It's for things on social theories like conflict theory, postmodernism, feminism, etc. I don't necessarily need an explanation as I'll be doing all that. I'm just having trouble finding photos to start talking about. I just need some controversial photos (not just conflict theory like riots, etc, but those are good). If you have some, they'd be helpful and appreciated!

For Windows Deployment Services, I had downloaded all the drivers needed and dumped them in the driver repository (in their own group). Fired up a laptop applicable to those drivers and installed. All drivers installed but 3. So I go into the drivers folder where the actual drivers are and inspect one of the 3. No inf file anywhere... Okay, I'll unzip the actual exe file since it's just a wrapper for the inf. No inf in the exe file. Fine, I'll download the cab file from Dell and do it that way. Those 3 drivers installed, but now there are 2 other drivers not installing, one unknown which I know to be the Free Fall Sensor driver. What the heck? Where is the inf file??? Here's a link to the driver if you want to unzip it and see for yourself. http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=F91KT&fileId=2731102933&osCode=W764&productCode=precision-m6600&languageCode=EN&categoryId=AP

I had to share this...

Youtube Video

@scottalanmiller said:

@Dashrender said:

What is your stance of the UK? They are moving toward this too, if they don't already have it.

UK is in terrible shape. They will follow the US into total disaster. The spying five are all less than free and have citizenry that has never taken freedom very seriously. Societies use the word "free" a lot when they want to hide the fact that they aren't very free.

The Five Eyes are strapping their countries in for a scary ride. We're at the stage where mom is trying to strap her screaming and kicking child into a car seat... Though the twist of the story is that isn't her kid, the car is a creepy van, and mom is a previous offender. Total kidnapping of freedom and it's disgusting to witness.

@zuphzuph said in Can it end now? /rant:

I'm frustrated and feel as though at this point he's taking credit for what I do while he sits back.

That's just management, man. You're gonna have to get used to that.

If you aren't good at scripting, here's a link to Belvedere. It does a variety of automated copy/delete/move functions. I have some screen shots of my copy, purge, and recycle bin rules. This has been manual before I got here, and I'm not terribly good at scripting. Basically the newest ones get copied, age to 31 days and get purged to the recycle bin, which empties once per month. The file server they move to, retains copies for 6 months.

@Kelly said:

@Dashrender said:

@Dashrender said:

@scottalanmiller said:

How many simultaneous users do you need for the legacy systems?

This is still in question.

The issue is that there there three teams of people with random times that they could be needing to use the old system. What I'm hoping to avoid is needing three computers just for that one department. But that may be unavoidable.

Do their day to day systems have sufficient horsepower to be able to run VirtualBox VMs? It isn't as seamless as XP Mode, but would be cheaper assuming you have what you need.

Same thought process, but any OS past Windows 8 can just use Hyper-V to create local VMs, unless VirtualBox is the preferred flavor.

We have 2 domain controllers (Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise). We're moving to Skype for Business (at some point, still trying to get management to fund the project). We HAVE to move away from Communicator, I know that. I'm pushing SO hard to get us off of it. But we have pending issues immediately that I need to address. These consist of folder redirection not working, etc. Looking at the domain functionality, it is at 2003. The Office Communications Server 2007 R2 installation is on a 2003 server. I've been told by an admin they "think" OCS would break if I raised domain functionality to see if that fixes our GPO and file share issues but I want to be certain.

Anyone have experience with this circumstance?

@scottalanmiller I was thinking more along the lines of the Flying Dutchman, but that works too I guess.

@scottalanmiller said:

Does this new user have an under water locker?

I'm slowly going insane, so I try to make up funny passwords and usernames where it's possible.

Someone who doesn't like jokes got "Turd Ferguson" as their name on their VoIP phone screen. Everyone else thought it was funny.