I ordered marble whiskey rounders!

Thanks for the ideas!

Beer-o-Con in Rochester NY.

Next Month swing in, spend a few days drinking some amazing beer and have a grand time with myself and @QuixoticJeremy and crew.

Windows has Deep Freeze, Apple has Time Machine, Linux has Dafturn Ofris (which isn't exactly Deep Freeze or Time Machine) but is still quite good.

It restores your Linux system at system restart, much like Deep Freeze or Time Machine, where it falls short is that this restore can still be affected by an Administrator or Root.

So to get started, you'll want to download Dafturn Ofris, Unzip it, and move the entire folder to "/".

cd / 
./dafturn-ofris-1.9.05-en

You'll be prompted with six options at this point. Number 3 is the critical option we'll be focusing on (which "Freezes the system for all users")

Enter your selection by typing 3, hit Enter. 

Assuming all went well, you'll receive a system success response.

Reboot the system to complete the changes. 

At this point, the system is secured from misuse on the part of an End User. Which for a library, school system or any other such place where public computers are available makes returning the computer to "stock state" as simple as restarting the computer.

Root, still and always will have access to make file system changes. Such as disabling Dafturn Ofris, modifying the background, adding network shares or printers, or more importantly undo the action of someone attempting to cause trouble on the computer.

A few key things to keep in mind when considering the use of Dafturn Ofris

1. All changes must be made with Dafturn Ofris disabled (using the Root credentials)
2. It doesn't prevent files from being removed from your network shares
3. It's open source and is available for improvement.
4. Ensure you have a strong Root password

It's really that simple to protect a large number of Linux computers from abuse.

Oh you might also consider hiding the other Boot Options from Grub, or completely disabling the GRUB boot menu without the use of an Administrative Password. This will provide further protections for these systems, as well as prevent accidental access.

Would happy work bots improve productivity, would humans become emotionally attached to them?

To try and stop Skynet the idea is to give robots emotions, yeah that makes sense. Some pretty awful people have emotions and have done horrible things (just look at history)

I'm going for coffee, anyone want some?

@olivier said in Hiring a tech for support, based in US:

@dustinb3403 said in Hiring a tech for support, based in US:

@olivier said in Hiring a tech for support, based in US:

No phone support, only live chat and tickets. And yes, directly with the customer.

So they don't need to be comfortable talking to strangers (good for a junior tech for sure).

Yeah, no "voice" contact with customers. Everything behind a screen and keyboard, that's all. But it's not easy either to deal with people who can't RTFM

That is why you're looking to hire

I love IT because I'm constantly learning new methods of achieving new goals. Additionally, it's always fun to learn and improve upon my skills.

That's funny.

i'amygdala you tonight.

Ha I only saw part of the title and it was "Hunting is like online dating", and I thought, yeah everyone wants to bag the trophy deer!

http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/28/first-nano-photonic-memory-chip/

Let's go 12% + of their staff, and offers me $250 bucks.

Having an adult conversation from David (Spiceworks) about "gaming the badge system" for SW.

Regardless if the information is completely valid...

Fun time.

Hi David!

@tim_g said in If not A+, then where should someone start?:

If every employer you have ever known that lists job requirements doesn't care whether or not applicants meet any of the job requirements... then why list requirements at all?

To filter out people who emotionally feel less confident about their abilities.

Anywhere from 40-55 hours a week depending on how busy things are, currently things have been pretty slow. So we've been taking more time for ourselves.

I mean, glad I know about it now, but honestly, the only comment on the article is correct.

That's like saying,

Oh watch out the forest fire is coming this way, when its already past, but avoided your house by only a few feet. And was already contained in a tiny area*.

So as best practice is implied, it should be done everywhere in every case where some abnormality makes it impractical or impossible to follow "best practice".

So a question for the community

Where do you go to find out what the best practice is for a given scenario?

@scottalanmiller said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

@momurda said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

Trying not to condescend to users is a tough one; sometimes I am thinking "Youve been using a gd computer for 20 years, 8 hours a day, at least, and you dont know how to do this?" but of course one cant say that.

I found this a lot in online discussions... condescension is hard to define. To one person, speaking to them as a peer and expecting them to be competent is considered being condescending (to people with no clue what condescension is.) To others, and far more legitimately, assuming they can't do their jobs and even politely simplifying things for them is condescension.

Of course, to truly be condescending you have to act superior and be patronizing, and you can avoid that. But people perceive condescension regardless of how you talk to them in many cases.

TL:DR Don't talk down to me!! Then why the hell don't you know how to turn on the laptop you've had for over a year?!

So I figured (and with some people egging me on) here's as good a place as any for examples of the Cart being put before the horse.

Examples of where Businesses and IT Departments alike are doing things backwards. A very simple example would be purchasing equipment before knowing how it's going to be used, or without getting appropriate advice from an expert.

Another example might be trying to protect from an employee leaving the company, and a vital company function being left vacant without any documentation, so the immediate thought is "I must hire someone to learn and act as a backup in case this person leaves"

In both cases above the cart (the end goal) is to improve the business, which oddly isn't following any common sense process. Which in both cases involve speaking to people, documenting the desired business goal, and forming a process to achieve said goal. All of which is the "horse".

By building solid company documentation that can be presented to anyone coming in off of the street, the business can maintain its self. It can continue to function even if any person in the organization wins the lottery and up and quits.

By planning and discussing the business goals with professionals for any project, the company is likely to save money while having a much better final product; be it a server infrastructure or what have you.

By blindly saying "We need X, implement it" or having managers who say things like "Do your job" or "make it work" the Cart is literally being placed in front of the horse. No matter what you do from this point on, the end product will be cobbled together, and difficult to correct.

Here is an example of a company that has put the cart in front of the horse. Sadly the person would like to remove the topic. But to get the subject across the business purchased equipment before consulting anyone, saying we need "this". Which isn't bad, but it was immediately followed up with a purchase.

Said purchase could easily have saved the company a good amount of money with proper planning.

Always plan first, discuss whats needed, build a "model" and punch holes at it.

It just gets better and better as I read more on this topic....