Best posts made by jmoore

Installing Fedora 30 to my new work laptop

@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:

So both sides tend to stay quiet because each is, under the hood, offended by the other.

I can attest to this, I cant stand a few people I work with. They buy solutions to whatever problem they have. Yet I have never had a raise here after 5 years. I told our lead Dba I was learning more about Postgresql the other day and she asked, what is that?

Morning everyone. Time to get breakfast and head to the coffee shop

@gjacobse said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@jmoore said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@jmoore said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

One thing I found about portable apps is occasionally a smarter user will install these. Yeah, it gets around our permissions in Ad because they do not modify the registry. so I do not like them for that reason. I can't have users installing whatever they want.

Something else you can do to make chocolatey easier to install in multiple places is use an xml file with the apps you want for yourself or for departments. I made one for myself but I really don't use it, however I have one for a few different departments here because they some specific things and its hard to remember the install names on each. So I just carry them around on a flash drive.

I'm curious on how you set this up,.. I know I have just been using a simple batch file once the core is installed.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <packages>
      <package id="googlechrome" />
	  <package id="firefoxesr" />
	  <package id="flashplayerplugin" />
	  <package id="adobereader" />
	  <package id="jre8" />
	  <package id="7zip.install" />
	  <package id="vlc" />
	  <package id="powershell" />
	  <package id="silverlight" />
	  <package id="quicktime" />
	  <package id="irfanview" />
	  <package id="treesizefree" />
	  <package id="windirstat" />
	  <package id="crystaldiskinfo" />
	  </packages>
</xml>

this file is called staff.config
Then i just use:

choco install d:\packages.config –y

When I did A/V consulting a long time Canon and Sony were the best options. They had real high end cameras and others that were really good value. Not sure if that still holds true but maybe a place to start for you. For good prices try B&H Professional.

@scottalanmiller said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

No, you have no control. But you do have control over how you look at it and present it or talk about it. It's very, very important that you understand that it's hubris and confusion of an impotent admin who is attempting to flex his muscles (and failing) to try to show employees that he's their "master" and they must bow powerlessly before him, while defying HR and management, while also completely misunderstanding computing and failing to in any way do what he set out to do.

I get what your saying and am learning how to properly look at things. That is why these discussions are good!

I'll be getting the new Huawei, the Mate 30 I think it is. Waiting for it to come out.

@stacksofplates said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@jmoore said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@scottalanmiller said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@jmoore said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@scottalanmiller said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

A big question would be... why do you want to restrict binaries from users?

Thats the sysadmin decision. He considers it a security measure and I can understand it somewhat.

Does he? Because he's not restricting them in any way, and totally okay with all the portable apps delivered in the web browser, right? So he's totally okay with them. Just confused, I'd guess.

Well, I can't presume to know his mind but hes just trying to limit the damage that can be done i suppose. I am guessing that is what he is thinking.

Is this from a government requirement? The only way to do this is checksum all of your executables. Unless you are required to do this, you're insane.

Yes we are a 2 year college and this is what I am told.

@wirestyle22 I remember reading his Sandman comics. I bought the current edition as soon as they each came out. They were amazing.

@scottalanmiller I thought it was perfectly clear what the topic was about. I think people just like to argue or something.

@WrCombs Yeah I would help him out.

Is this a challenge to yourself? If not there are many better ways.

@black3dynamite can't wait to see this. big fan of bloodshot

@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:

This is very different. If I have a sales manager (and I do), I want him to be able to do sales, to know when people in the department are good at sales or not, to know how to hire and fire, to train, to mentor.

I like this point. Managers need to be competent in the area they are managing. They also need to do a little of the work to stay competent. Also nothing is more encouraging than seeing your boss in the trenches with you helping getting stuff done once in a while. That really improves morale.

Just upgraded my laptop to Fedora 31. Don't know how long its been out, I just saw it. Checking things out.

@scottalanmiller said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:

It's native to, and built into Ubuntu Linux which is our official platform. This means essentially zero IT support needed, it's even in the default install. Even employees opting for Fedora, Pop_OS, Raspberry Pi OS get it by default, too. And our one MacOS user gets it. And anyone playing with Windows gets it from Chocolatey.

This is a very valid point. I do all the installs at our campuses. I spend so much time installing and re-installing because it develops problems for us. While I have mitigated a lot of the install time by putting it in my user image, I still have to reinstall on a regular basis. We have close to 300 non-IT users and it breaks a lot. Too much in my opinion. I have to do 2-3 re-installs a week on average to fix issues it gets on its on.

Checking job postings then dinner

@scottalanmiller said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:

In reality, LO handles MSO formatting pretty well. Far better than people give it credit for. Even if we were in a situation where we needed to do it, it would likely not matter.

I use a combination of Zoho and LibreOffice myself. More Zoho to be honest. It's like 60-40. I could use either exclusively though. I can't remember the last time, if ever, that I had trouble with formatting so I totally agree with this as well based on my experiences. There are always exceptions of course as there will be some user that has trouble. However, I have never had an Excel sheet or anything else that LibreOffice did not handle. I see no speed difference either. So maybe in cases where people have trouble there are other circumstances not mentioned or things happening they are not aware of.

Off for rest of week so going to move a site over to Hugo and another over to Blowdown(based on Hugo) with Rstudio.

@scottalanmiller said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:

No account management. Hooks to online accounts are additional steps to manage that we are very glad that we can avoid.

I think this is huge. My sys admin spends so much time dealing with account issues for one product after another. Management wants everything tied into AD. I understand their reasons but I think it causes them a lot of trouble they just don't admit to. There are constant account level issues that have to be dealt with and some that never go away. This is a huge waste of time that could be spent doing more productive tasks.