@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@gjacobse said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@gjacobse I just made a video today about why we use desktops as servers now!

Well first off I get this message:

Uhm.. okay.

Desktops as servers; in some cases - they are useful. Sadly the issue I am running into is that the twelve year old computer has more cores than anything I have available to me in the office,.. I am running an old Dell with 8-cores, and everything I have only has 4-cores.

Were I running several rPi VMs that might be fine, but I am running full Windows or Linux for testing and Ham Radio. It's working but a little strained and I can't do much more without maxing the system resources out.

Oh well.. will find something some time..

What Ham radio tasks is using so many resources?

The basic of it is that it isn't so much the Ham Radio applications - but the Host: Windows. While there is a Linux equivalent to the one application function and appearance is vastly different.

Most of the applications written for Ham Radio are written by Ham Radio Operators themselves, so they use what they feel they can learn or already know as a programming language. Some of these don't port well to Linux from Windows, or iOS from Android.

Ham Radio is a hobby,..so there generally isn't much profit in it unless you are a 'commercial radio manufacturer'

Windows needs a certain level of resources to run. Windows 10 you could trim it down, but most are being forced to move to Windows 11 due to support.

Now, if you are aware of things you can do with Windows 10,.. you can get by with continuing to use Win10, but of course you accept some risk doing so.

You can move to Linux, but for many in the hobby, Linux is more then they will understand having been in the Windows eco-system for so long, and limited support or applications.

I have been able to shift between Windows and Linux as it is something I've done for years. But there are some aspects that still escape and frustrate me...

Realizing that I have left my Ubuntu VM off for to long. This means I have forgotten to keep it updated and it cannot be updated.. Ooops.. Guess that is a lesson learned.

Time to back up data and kill it.. not much of a VM anyway.. so - something to learn on.

xByte -

That is the name I just could not come up with.

Thank you

It's been some years since I searched for servers or such. There was one I recall being pretty prominent, maybe out of Florida. Sadly I cannot recall the name.

Does anyone recall the name - or a source for a used server? Just looking for the home 'lab' and ham radio tasks..

@travisdh1
Ah- the good old days of DEC,.. I had once thought about looking to pick up a DEC PDP 11/23 setup..

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@gjacobse I just made a video today about why we use desktops as servers now!

Well first off I get this message:

Uhm.. okay.

Desktops as servers; in some cases - they are useful. Sadly the issue I am running into is that the twelve year old computer has more cores than anything I have available to me in the office,.. I am running an old Dell with 8-cores, and everything I have only has 4-cores.

Were I running several rPi VMs that might be fine, but I am running full Windows or Linux for testing and Ham Radio. It's working but a little strained and I can't do much more without maxing the system resources out.

Oh well.. will find something some time..

Trying to remember / find a practical source for a actual server to replace the desktop trying to impersonate one... Don't need or want much... but a 4-core CPU just isn't cutting it for where I want to go. But I'm not needing dual 24-core systems with 2TB of ram..

@scottalanmiller

Sorry to hear this -

Is this State side or there in Nicaragua?

@scottalanmiller

Never finished B5,.. I should go back for it...

I've been trying to finish Airwolf, Streethawk and a few others...

Good luck. I didn't know that USMT was even still a thing used... Maybe some places disable / block it.

One Drive maybe? IDK.. If the vendor has the devices, profiles are difficult to move without the initial sign on. Now, I could be wrong on that... Maybe there is a way to do that without compromising the users password... because IT will never ask for your password. And if they do, it was a test,.. ONLY A TEST!...

@scottalanmiller said in Color Printer: new set up best practices:

Probably depends on printing patterns. We print VERY little, and only a few people, so for us a single printer and the end user is trusted to print what makes sense in the printer setup is what makes sense. If you have a huge office and only some people should print in color and you print a lot, then two printers would make sense.

Looking at it from that aspect - good plan. As much as I would love to rid myself of the printers it is a heavy need. They print all of the pick or pack slips for products to be shipped and they the commercial invoices - which have to use color.

I am only getting these three printers and they ruined five HP Color printers by buying and using sub-standard paper. Paper was such crap, I spent about eighteen hours tearing one printer down to the transfer belt and finding nothing. Of course, canned air on nearly every part of the disassembly could have help.

These three new printers will be on a service contract - so someone local can service them,.. or replace them. and I won't have to keep dropping upwards of two grand a printer every sixteen months.

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@gjacobse said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Traveled for work three out of the last seven weeks.. tad worn out.

Anywhere fun?

Well,.. let me think..

Yes and no.

Spent a week in Lansing, Michigan - our home office. Got to see the new building and the new manufacturing line and a number of my fellow team that I generally don't see often.

Following week was four days in Cincinnati, Ohio to support the regional conference and see other people I have worked with...

This past week was Oakdale, Minnesota at the lab and Beaver Dam, Wisconsin at the manufacturing site there..

All in all,. not really fun but got to catch up with people and take care of any IT needs they had.. resolved a few and postponed a few others.

We all hate printers,.. I'm not a fan either. I just realized with adding three printers this week or next I'll have to update two or three print servers and then the users.

But - For a color printer, is it still best practice to create two printers? One Mono and one Color?

Or just let the user deal with it and only create one?

Sitting here I've nearly given myself whiplash three times now. Start to doze off and head drops waking me up..

I'm really trying to see how I want to set three new color printers up.

Traveled for work three out of the last seven weeks.. tad worn out.

@JaredBusch
the UniFi Express 7 looks pretty decent in capacity and features - and likely a contendor replacement for the UniFi Lite Router I have since my NTG days. Has that really been ten years ago now?

I will say I sort of feel that they seriously missed the mark in the design. Seems that USB-C has to be shoved into everything - but seriously - why!!??

They could have easily put the PSU into the unit and only had the AC power cable. True, the unit shouldn't need to be moved once in place. But,.. really? Get real - Just because USB--C can do so much, doesn't mean that you need to use it everywhere - especially when all you are suppling is 5v. Incorporate the whole thing and it'll be a better format.

That said,.. I'm still likely to move to something like it or this in the future.

I used this for polling printers on specific print server for printers like:

#Printer - Get devices like

$remoteComputer = "PrintServer01"
# Get printer information
$printers = $printers = Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_Printer -ComputerName $remoteComputer |
Where-Object { $_.Name -match '^SITE[-_]' }

foreach ($printer in $printers) {
    $port = Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_TCPIPPrinterPort -ComputerName $remoteComputer |
        Where-Object { $_.Name -eq $printer.PortName }

    [PSCustomObject]@{
        Name       = $printer.Name
        IPAddress  = $port.HostAddress
        #Model      = $printer.DriverName
        #PrintServer= $printer.ServerName
    }
}

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Hey guys, in Houston for the week just hanging out. Last scheduled trip to the US. Not sure when I'll be back. Updated my driver's license, did some work in my storage unit. Back to paradise in the morning.

Hope you had a good visit - Hope things are going well for you and all your endeavors...

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Doing some platform updates today.

That explains why things look different..

@dbeato said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Working on a script to delete old profiles in Windows based on this tool
https://rsn.home.blog/2023/02/09/ad-profile-cleanup/

I've recently noticed some 'trash' user profiles on some computers. Sadly I don't have one to reference - but generally acts like it is the first signon, and creates multiples of the same profile incrementing in number. I'll see if I can't find a machine tomorrow with one - sure it won't be difficult to find one.

Here some some results that may help:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/disk-drive-stuck-in-read-only-state-despite/33aaaad5-75ee-4e6c-b5bc-3b5f816d99ba

One suggestion is the Samsung tool: "Please check your drive using Samsung Magician too"

SSD 970 EVO PLUS in read-only and shop wants me to send it - what would you recommend

Suggests saving what you can and move on.

M.2 NVMe Boot SSD locked in Read-Only

If you can read it, you can recover data and move on,.. Check warranty of the drive, but depending on what is on it,.. do you (risk)warranty replacing it? I generally always get a new drive and retain the old drives, make copies and pull the drive apart (platters and magnets) and anything solid state gets the hammer fire treatment. My bench is a black hole to drives or any type of storage.