Best posts made by thanksajdotcom

@SarawithanH said:

@scottalanmiller Absolutely!

Unfortunately, MailMeter for Office365 differs from MailMeter for Exchange or Lotus Notes because Microsoft does not allow us to access their servers and extract any information. Therefore, we are unable to do a history capture against Office 365, and we are unable to strip out attachments and leave shortcut stubs.

All other functions of MailMeter remain the same. We collect email from Office 365 using an SMTP listener that basically receives a copy of every email that is sent through the Office 365 environment. The archive can be either be stored locally or in the cloud.

Rightfully, this begs the question, why would anyone want to purchase email archiving when Office 365 offers local archiving and tons of email box space? I quickly made a comparison chart that answers this.

Snazzy! Looks really cool!

I've been on both sides of this issue over the years, and thought it'd prompt a good discussion.

A common idea held by many one-man IT shops is that if you can get something for free, usually software, that you're saving the business money. Don't want to pay for MS Office? Use LibreOffice. Don't want to use Windows Server? Setup something with Linux. Etc etc

However, the fact is that, in a business, NOTHING is free. It's limited thinking. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING is free. Everything costs something!

I've found many times that it's easy, especially in small shops, to only consider the dollar and cents right in front of you. Don't want to spend the money on licensing for a piece of software? Use an open-source or free alternative. However, there are things to consider:

User blowback. Most users don't like change. Most users are familiar with what most businesses use, and often what they also use at home, namely those products many small companies don't want to pay for but usually end up doing. It costs mostly time to the IT department hearing user complaints about how they "used to do X" and now it's a different method, which leads us to...

User training. In IT, we pick stuff up pretty quick. I mean, that's our jobs. We try a new piece of software and have no issues fiddling around with it for a little bit to see if it will do what we want, either period or possibly better than what we currently use. However, most users aren't that patient or eager to learn, so training people takes time away from them doing their job, and costs the company money.

Ongoing support. IT guys often think about solutions they implement very much around them. They find something THEY like that works for THEM that maybe they played with and got working. However, if you got hit by a bus tomorrow, or had some other reason that meant the company had to replace you and SOMEONE ELSE had to learn that system, how much effort would it take for the company to find someone? How much time? How much money to get someone with the qualifications? Ideally it'd cost them the same or less to replace you but in small shops, we often wear many more hats than we seem to get paid for.

The fact is that while sometimes you pay a premium to keep all of your <insert item here> the same brand or the same system or whatever, that initial extra cost can also sometimes mean a huge time and cost savings for the company down the road.

What are your thoughts?

@nadnerB said:

I'm not very experienced with Linux, but couldn't you try something like:
sudo apt-get xxxxxx
 
Does this help?: http://www.virtualtothecore.com/en/installing-vmware-tools-on-centos-6-via-yum/

You're thinking Ubuntu if you're talking apt-get. CentOS uses yum by default.

I have confirmed with @Minion-Queen that "once a minion, always a minion".

@Nic said:

There was some discussion of why go inkjet in a business setting - what's the cost compared to laserjet?

Inkjets have gotten so ridiculously cheap. The Epson WF-4XXX series, the HP OfficeJet 8600 series, and the high-end Brother MFC machines all have a much lower cost/page than comparable lasers. The HP X series has an insanely low cost/page. I think it's the lowest of any machine on the market.

I'd like to remove the license key in red from my console but wasn't sure how...maybe @Nic can help? Thanks!

@scottalanmiller said:

Maybe a webinar series would be in order. A single webinar is probably not going to cut it.

Agreed. @scottalanmiller , that'd be a great thing for you to put out. Video training. You should create a YouTube channel for it!

@IRJ said:

I absolutely hate printers. I don't know how anyone could be a printer buff...

Comes from my retail days. I latched onto learning about printers and really enjoyed it. Therefore, I'm VERY good with printers.

Before I start, ThanksAJ.com is back up!!

So due to some change in life circumstances, my ability to host my own website myself has been compromised. Therefore, I set out in search of a hosting platform. I asked @Danielle-Ralston about Rackspace, but that was too pricey. I looked at Azure, but even that was more than I could spend right now. However, AWS has quite a few things you can do completely free. For example, 1 CPU, 1 core, and 1GB for a Linux VM is totally free!! (as far as I can tell)

Anyways, so here's what I did to move my webserver over...

I setup my network back up with my router and server just to get files off. I keep my sites in their own folders in /var/www/. I copied the directories to the SAMBA share directories and then from there off to my laptop. Next, you need to run the following command...

mysqldump -u [username] -p [database_name] > [dumpfilename.sql]

Do that for every database you have, assuming you're using Wordpress. I copied the exported databases for each of my three sites to my laptop as well.

Next, I created a new VM, or instance as Amazon calls it, of Ubuntu Server.

Next I choose my instance provisioning, and I'm in the free tier category...

Configure instance details...I left this all default...

Next is storage...I made my server 10GB...

Next you name/tag the machine...

Now is the security settings/firewall rules...I added HTTP port 80 to the list to allow the webserver to work...

That's pretty much it! A full list of what you have access to is here:

Once the VM was up, Amazon uses keys to secure the SSH connections, and they give you a very comprehensive tutorial on how to use their key file, which is a .pem, with PuTTY, which involves converting it to a PuTTY readable-format using PuTTYgen.

Once I connected, I installed Pertino and connected it to my account. Then I shared the folder housing the files on my laptop and ran...

mount -t cifs -o username=*username*,password=*password* //50.203.224.5/Websites /media/websites

I made the folder websites in the /media folder so I'd have somewhere to mount it. After that, I did the following...(note: I was running in root mode, so I didn't have to type sudo before the commands)

cd /media/websites
cp -rv * /var/www

The -r makes the copy recursive, and my .sql files were in this folder as well. I moved those after they copied. Also, the -v makes it verbose so you can see the progress, which you will want. While that ran, I opened a second SSH session and ran the following...

apt-get update
apt-get install apache2 mysql-server libapache2-mod-auth-mysql php5-mysql php5 libapache2-mod-php5 php5-mcrypt

This installs Apache, MySQL and PHP so that you have a functional LAMP stack on your server!

Now, assuming you have the .sql files copied, which it might be better to copy these separately and first (which I did), we need to import them back into MySQL. However, first we have to configure MySQL. You would have been prompted to set a root MySQL password when you installed it, so you will need that now.

mysql -u root -p
> CREATE DATABASE thanksaj;
> CREATE DATABASE literaryworksbyaj;
> CREATE USER wordpressuser@localhost;
> SET PASSWORD FOR wordpressuser@localhost= PASSWORD("password");
> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON thanksaj.* TO wordpressuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON literaryworksbyaj.* TO wordpressuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
> FLUSH PRIVILEGES; 
> exit

You will want to recreate the databases using the same names you used before, or you can name it something different, as long as you update your wp-config.php file afterwards. Now, navigate to the directory of your .sql files. To import the database into MySQL, use the following command:

mysql -u [username] -p [database_name] < [dumpfilename.sql]

So in my case, I did this...

cd /path/to/sql_files
mysql -u root -p thanksaj < thanksaj.sql

So all that was left for me to do was setup the Apache Virtual Hosts and make sure Mod_Rewrite would work. Go to your apache.conf file in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf. It should be line 164 that will have the part you need, which is this:

<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Require all granted
</Directory>

Change the line in bold from ending in None to All. Now navigate to /etc/apache2/sites-available/ and make a .conf file for each website you're hosting. To do this, run...

cp 000-default.conf thanksaj.com.conf
vi thanksaj.com.conf

The default looks as follows (additions/changes from default in bold):

<VirtualHost *:80>
    # The ServerName directive sets the request scheme, hostname and port that
    # the server uses to identify itself. This is used when creating
    # redirection URLs. In the context of virtual hosts, the ServerName
    # specifies what hostname must appear in the request's Host: header to
    # match this virtual host. For the default virtual host (this file) this
    # value is not decisive as it is used as a last resort host regardless.
    # However, you must set it for any further virtual host explicitly.
    #ServerName www.example.com

ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
ServerName thanksaj.com
ServerAlias www.thanksaj.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/thanksaj.com

    # Available loglevels: trace8, ..., trace1, debug, info, notice, warn,
    # error, crit, alert, emerg.
    # It is also possible to configure the loglevel for particular
    # modules, e.g.
    #LogLevel info ssl:warn

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

    # For most configuration files from conf-available/, which are
    # enabled or disabled at a global level, it is possible to
    # include a line for only one particular virtual host. For example the
    # following line enables the CGI configuration for this host only
    # after it has been globally disabled with "a2disconf".
    #Include conf-available/serve-cgi-bin.conf
</VirtualHost>

Make on of these for each site. Afterwards, run...

a2ensite thanksaj.com
service apache2 restart

You can bring all the sites on at once and then just restart apache once. Now the virtual hosts are online!

Once I did this and had all my files copied over, my site was live once again! I know this is pretty long but I hope this helps someone else in the future!

Stay fruity Fruit Tarts!

Thanks,
A.J.

Reference Links:

• https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-linux-apache-mysql-php-lamp-stack-on-ubuntu - Installing LAMP stack on Ubuntu
• https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-wordpress-on-ubuntu-12-04 - Installing Wordpress on Ubuntu
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/putty.html - How to connect to AWS Instance with PuTTY
• http://www.itworld.com/article/2833078/it-management/3-ways-to-import-and-export-a-mysql-database.html - Import/export to/from MySQL

A really TED Talk that I thought was worth sharing.
Youtube Video

@QDesk said:

Nothing public to show yet, maybe as some progress is made Andy's team can post some screenshots of what is coming.

Awesome! Well, welcome! We're glad to have you!

So I've been trying for nearly a month now to figure out why I could install Dropbox but not open it. Here is a log of the things I tried and how I finally fixed the root issue.

• Tried uninstalling and reinstalling
• Tried uninstalling with Revo, followed by running CCleaner and Eusing (each step I rebooted after)

These were the basic steps. However, it still didn't fix it. So finally, tonight I went to oldapps.com and downloaded a Dropbox 2.x version of the software. I installed that, and this version was able to open! However, it was only because of this version that I determined root cause.

For some reason, which I'm assuming is so you can have multiple users with multiple Dropbox installs on one machine, Dropbox installs to your Roaming AppData folder. It needs permissions to not only this folder, but the Temp directory in %LocalAppData%. This program actually gave me an error I could derive info from, whereas the version 3.x Dropbox installs just refused to open.

I tried applying permissions to those folders and reopening the program but to no avail. Now what's weird is that Domain Admins are set to have Full Control over all these folders, and my user is a Domain Admin. However, I went to the C:\Users\ajstringham directory and applied Full Control with replacing the permissions of child objects for my individual user, ajstringham. After I did that and applied it, suddenly Dropbox worked!

It was a ****ing permissions issue all along! SO FRUSTRATING! I don't know what was the golden ticket it needed but it's working. However, what confuses me is why it suddenly just stopped working in the first place...whatever. It's doing it's initial sync now and I'm happy.

Hope this helps someone!

Thanks,
A.J.

http://i.imgur.com/CE8K6Lj.jpg

I hope everyone gets a chance to read this.
http://www.thanksaj.com/2015/03/disabilities-in-the-workplace-achieving-strength-through-weakness/

Thanks,
A.J.

Oh, and I purchased a server earlier for 50% off before I saw this...darn!

As a rule, I freak out if I'm not talking to someone. Ask @Minion-Queen how many times I bug her or @scottalanmiller at some crazy hour of the night because I see their up and I'm going out of my mind without someone to talk to! Since I got a gf, it's been easier. I end up talking to her right until we both fall asleep. I have been going to bed at 10 or 11PM lately as a rule! I am actually sleeping again too! I LOVE IT!

So I am often considered an expert opinion on most things printers. I get messaged on Spiceworks and constantly asked questions all over the internet. However, I realized a few days ago I have never written a good baseline article on printers for my site. Therefore, I wrote the first article in a series to follow called the "Printer Showdown" series. Please let me know what you think!

http://www.thanksaj.com/2015/04/printer-showdown-part-one-inkjet-vs-laser-which-should-you-choose/

Thanks,
A.J.

@Rob-Dunn said:

@thanksajdotcom said:

If the solution to a problem is "don't reboot", that's a pretty sad solution.

This is counter to everything that we in IT stand for. Not being able to reboot would make me twitchy.

Youtube Video

Setting up an interview for Friday!

Spiceworld Austin 2014 (when I was probably at my all-time heaviest...taken with @PackMatt73 )

Taken 09/24/2014

Me shortly after arriving back in NY last year

Taken 04/01/2015

Before I went to work today

Taken 05/10/2016

So at my all-time heaviest that I ever know of, I was about 360 lbs. While I wasn't really unhappy with my body, I wasn't happy with it. I always had insecurities about how big I was, and I didn't like how I felt. I weighed in at that weight when I went to a doctor's appointment in February of 2015. It was the result of a combination of things, namely a sedentary lifestyle, horrible diet, and medication.

As long as any of you have known me, I've always been big. And by big, I mean very heavy. When I was very young, I was very active and exceptionally thin, borderline underweight. I give you, exhibit A (I'm probably 8 in this picture):

Even in my early teens, I was not skinny like this, but still pretty thin (I'm 14 or 15 in this picture):

Forgive the captions on the pictures. Work of my mother...anyways! After being put on medication when I was 14, over the next 7-8 years, I gained 130 lbs. I did grow in height some. I was about 6' when I was in my early teens, but I'm 6'5" now, which is actually about two inches taller than when I graduated high school in 2010. And on that note, my senior picture:

Taken August 2009

When I graduated high school, I was 6'3", 270-275. I did maintain that weight for a couple years but after another couple rounds of different meds, I gained another 90 lbs total. Damn Lithium...

It's been a struggle, but I've finally lost that first 100 lbs. I'm currently about 260, give or take a few pounds. My lowest weigh-in is 260.2 so far. From working at FedEx for the past few months, I've dropped a lot of weight but also gained a lot of muscle. I've struggled for years to try and get back to my pre-meds body, and I'm so close! I would like to get down to about 225 ideally, but I'd settle for 240, given my current build. I do know for a fact that I'm thinner than when I graduated high school because I wear a smaller waist size than I did then.

I know it's not IT related but it's a huge milestone for me, and I'm very proud that I've been able to accomplish it. It hasn't been easy, and now that I'm getting back into the shape I want, I'm looking forward to getting back into a lot of things that I've haven't been able to do very well for a long time. I should be doing some indoor rock climbing this summer, among many other things.

To answer some of the questions that might come up ahead of time:

No, I haven't done any specific diet. I was just more active, primarily because of work. I haven't been so careful about what I eat, as much as how much I eat. If I have a slow day as far as output, I eat less. If I'm more active, I don't worry about eating more. Retail for 30+ hours/week, to be followed up by FedEx will do that.

So, while I know it's a long post, if you've made it this far, thanks. For me, one of the biggest aides was the FitBit I got for Christmas (my first Christmas present!) that allows me to track weight, steps, calories burned, heartrate, etc. If you're someone who loves looking at data and tracking things, it's a great motivator.

Anyways, have a great day everyone! Wishing everyone the best!

Thanks,
A.J.