It's the CEO's Birthday! As a present to all the IT professionals, we are having a 50% off sale on tickets to MangoCon this week. Reserve your seat today at https://mangocon.it/

At the request of many, Dominica and I took a trip over to the MangoCon venue to check out the hotel situation as the google street views have not been updated. We are happy to report that there are sidewalks and walkways from most of the close hotels. The top 7 hotels that are within walking distance and with reasonable walking routes.

The venue is next door to The Toyota Music Factory (Hotel Map)

Texican Court
Westin Irving Convention Center
Dallas Marriot Las Colinas
Holiday Inn Las Colinas
Aloft Las Colinas
Omni Mandalay Hotel at Las Colinas
Homewood Suites Dallas Irving

As you can see from the map, there are a number of other choices, although these would likely require a short Uber, Lyft, or Taxi ride.

Youtube Video

This is of the front of the venue, and the whole area is filled with similar retail and nice sidewalks.

Let me know if you have any questions.

@flaxking said in MS Audit???:

I wouldn't trust your reseller on being the licencing expert. I've talked to a CDW 'licencing expert' before and know first hand that they are only experts in comparison to your account manager

Absolutely true. Although in most cases, they'll generally keep you in compliance and you'll never hear from MS or BSA.

Yeah, a SAM audit, not to be confused with a Scott Alan Miller audit, is complete and utter BS. The easiest way to figure this out is to specifically ask them if it is a required audit or voluntary. If it's voluntary, why would you ever do it? There is simply no upside. The only time I would be concerned is if BSA contacted me. Then I would go to a CDW or a PC Connection for a licensing expert. Plus, in every case of the BSA getting involved, your company attorney(s) should be called in.

At the end of the day, those companies who are really violating licensing know they are doing it, and should not be surprise when BSA comes knocking. This is things like installing a retail Office on 30 computers, or using one server license across a whole server stack.

If you are working with a good reputable reseller, and are doing your best to be compliant, you will likely never have a problem.

Paul Chiodo, CEO of NTG will take you through IT Finance. You'll learn the ins and outs of getting your projects funded, appeasing the bean counters, and why understanding IT spend will make your life better.

Learn to talk the language of the CFO and their C-Suite counterparts, and why following the money is the key to project success. Paul will shed light on terms like ROI, CapEx, COGS, and other finance jargon to help you communicate with those that hold the purse strings.

We'll go through a concept that will lower your budget, while increasing your technology, and at the same time, reduce requests for non-value added technology.

If you have ever had a project turned down, or funding denied, this is a must attend session.

Reserve your seat for MangoCon 2019!

Nick Korte aka @NetworkNerd will be speaking at MangoCon 2019. Nick always provides entertaining and informative sessions, and this year is no different. This year he will be talking about "What Working the Help Desk Taught Me about Communication, Negotiation, and Salesmanship"

In this session, you will learn about the dynamic role of working the help desk, the lessons one can learn from interactions with end users, and the relatable experience this gives someone to prepare for other roles. Technically, it’s far more than just being technical.

Join us May 8-10th in Dallas for MangoCon 2019

@Dashrender Well that's not so bad then.

@Dashrender WAT!! PTO is just that. With more than 2 weeks notice ANY company should honor a PTO request. While the hell are you working if they won't even let you take the time off that you want to take off. It's a job. They pay you for 8 hours a day, which IMHO doesn't give them the right to tell you when you can use granted PTO. Not coming down on you @Dashrender but if your company treats you this way, maybe it's time to look at other opportunities.

@WrCombs Ummm... back up a sec here buddy.... why is there a "kitchen" printer?

@JaredBusch Ahhhh... good plan!

The countdown to MangoCon! Only 36 days

Reserve your seat at https://mangocon.it/#pricing

We will be talking about Mango topics throughout the month. Check back for updates. If you want to check out the whole schedule go to https://mangocon.it/#schedule

One of the great topics we will be exploring is Career Advice for Professionals in 2019 and Beyond

You will learn how to identify your market, your life cycle, your educational path, and many more ways to advance your career. At MangoCon, our goal is to provide you knowledge, not sell you products.

MangoCon - The Refreshing IT Conference

@lmorren1148 That's awesome - feel free to give them my contact info. I have quite a bit of experience with ERP systems and solutions.

@Suyeins

Bienvenidos

As with any company, be it Microsoft, IBM, Facebook, Verisign, Whoever.... We do not protect companies when we have credible knowledge of a company's failure, or on the other hand, accomplishments are reported.

In this case, we have first hand knowledge as reported by the OP.

Just as I reported, along with many major news outlets, Wells Fargo had an outage affecting a large number of their customers and all of their investors. I would not remove their name, nor the post just because they complain.

@DustinB3403 No doubt - An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In this case, that cure might be a couple tons.

Today, Wells Fargo experienced a system wide outage affecting virtually all of their customers. This was the second time in a week they had an outage. Just last Friday customers had issues logging onto their online accounts at Wells Fargo.

Their latest tweet confirms that the fire suppression was activated, and reports from Reddit and other sources indicate that they had to perform a system wide shutdown, and are now attempting to bring the systems back up.

To compound the issue, it appears their fail over failed, according to some inside sources. And to top it off, rumor has it that this came up in their risk management meeting and budgeting was turned down to fix the issue.

The consequences of this event are already impacting the company in countless ways:

• Their new head of technology, Saul Van Beurden, just 2 weeks into his new job, will not be getting much sleep, and may be looking for a new gig soon.

• Their stock took an immediate hit, and has lost 2.4% of it's value, or about $5.4 Billion, (yes, billion) according to The Street.

• Many customers who commented on social media have expressed they will be moving to a new banking solution as soon as they "can get their money!"

• Their will be a class action lawsuit filed in the next few days if one hasn't been filed already. Many customers are complaining about bills not being paid, incurring late fees, and having their credit scores affected due to late payments. One customer had to reschedule a medical procedure for their child because her card could not be processed.

Of course, the list goes on, and this won't be the end of the damage for Wells Fargo. The only good take away from this disaster is to bring to the forefront the absolute need for a well thought out and tested DR plan.

UPDATE: Looks like they either had a fire, or the fire suppression system went off:

https://www.abcfoxmontana.com/regional/wells-fargo-fire-disrupts-processing-of-debit-and-credit-cards/article_dd0ce346-6c09-5081-a6d1-e2bab1660adb.html

After 4 hours of continuous outage, this has been their only response. They also had a major outage on February 1st. This will cost them quite a number of customers.

Their Latest Tweet

"We apologize to our customers who may be experiencing an issue with our online banking and mobile app. Thanks for your patience while we research this issue. If you are impacted, please check back here for updates.

6:06 AM - 7 Feb 2019"

What am I doing right now? Watching people freeze up north @JaredBusch

How's Chicago?

https://9gag.com/gag/awAZnnW