Verizon appears to have made some updates to the Proxy used by their Hotspots.
As of today these users could no longer access self-signed security certificates.
Even if you accept the security warning, the connections just hang.
The fix was obvious, but the issue was far reaching and impacted SaaS/PaaS usage.

Internet Options > Connections > LAN Settings > Automatically Detect Settings (uncheck)

A Group Policy should have already taken care of this, requires further investigation.
Just thought I'd get the word out in case anyone else ran into it today.
Have a great weekend!

@BBigford said in BB-8 by Sphero: 100 (Buyer's Remorse: 0):

@chrisnbrooks said in BB-8 by Sphero: 100 (Buyer's Remorse: 0):

So my new "little buddy" BB-8 was a big hit around the office at lunch today.
If anyone has $150 in their toy budget this month, I highly recommend one.

Putting one of those in patrol mode with a camera feed on your phone would be sweet.

Un/Fortunately there's no camera or sensors (besides the accelerometer) in the droid itself. It uses the smartdevice via the App to do everything. I do love the "fodder" in the Patrol log ("unknown energy source detected" while it endlessly tries to cram itself behind the washing machine)
It can't really be used to "spy" on your home or office.
At best/worst it could establish a floor map, but I don't believe the official app remembers

So my new "little buddy" BB-8 was a big hit around the office at lunch today.
If anyone has $150 in their toy budget this month, I highly recommend one.

Encountered a problem this week while setting up some Win 8.1 VMs to be used for a PaaS solution. The problem was not new, but none of the usual TechNet quick-fixes were doing it this time. I'm sure you've all had the dotnetfx35 failures, resolved them with the usual group policy updates or removing the dreaded .NET rollup KBs. Maybe you had to use the offline client distribution or DISM from source media. After trying all this I was still staring at a failed install with the same generic error.

I took a break. A beer break actually, and in this case Flat Tire's Citradelic was my Newton's Apple.

I remembered 4 years ago when all the Engineers ran out and got windows 8 and the tried to reinstall their Autodesk software on it. There was something I had to do then, that I was forgetting now, and the canned forum responses just weren't going back that far.

bonk

I raced in and downloaded Microsoft's "dotnet removal tool" and removed .NET 1 & 1.1 which weren't even listed under Windows Settings as available features to add/remove, but were built into the OS. After a reboot I ran DSIM offline from the source media still mounted on my VM. After a subjective eternity at 64% ... 100% .NET 2, 3, & 3.5 installed successfully! Then immediately began repeating the process on the other 5 VMs which had all been cloned with the same embedded issue.

So no real message here but for this, don't forget that Windows is built much like the cities of Europe ... directly on top of the foundations that were already there. Hope this helps someone, or at lease provided a good Thursday afternoon read. Live long and prosper!

Prepare for big updates to Asset Management. Wish this was around when I was building ITIS (IT Inventory System) I'd revisit the project, but with so many offerings out there now, it's a flooded market. The implications for ISO QC in calibration labs and the like are titillating.

(perhaps technically a salad)
https://mangolassi.it/topic/10227/recipe-egg-avocado-bowl

Here's a quick and easy one to satisfy most dietary practices.

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 1 avocado
• basic seasonings

Driections:

• Set small pot of water to rolling boil.
• Carefully lower in your eggs with a spoon, allow to boil for five minutes.
• Halve avocado, remove pit, slice meat long ways and turn skin inside out.
• Place slivers centrifugally inside bowl
• After removing eggs from boil, blanch with cold water and carefully peel off shell.
• Set the soft-boiled eggs atop the avocado slices.
• Top with salt, pepper, and ground cayenne.
  (optionally cayenne infused or Himalayan salt and ground peppercorns)

Dig in, allowing the warm egg yolk and whites to mix with the avocado.
Melts in your mouth and satisfies basic dietary protein and fatty-acid requirements.

@chrisnbrooks said in Favorite Linux Distro:

... I've been thoroughly enjoying my new Korora notebook, and might finally leave Debian behind forever.

Update: Last night I tried to install Night of the Tentacle on Korora from my Steam library, and realized it only supports Debian file structures. Not wanting to mess around with ScummVM and also realizing many games on Steam only support Debian derivatives, I switched back to Mint. That's not to say there's no place for Korora in my life, but I may reserve it strictly for Workstations. (where selinux and increased r/w speed is an obvious advantage)

YUM (and I'm not talking about package distribution)

occurs to me I may have sounded a bit too harsh on Wordpress. Truth is I just got painfully bored of it.