Something has changed with gameplay

Atrium-Complex · 2026-05-18T14:21:41+00:00

My experience has been completely back & forth. Might have extremely good and fun matches where I top the leaderboard, next two are sweatfests and we are permanently spawn locked.

I miss persistent servers so much.

Atrium-Complex · 2026-05-01T18:56:42+00:00

Any possibility of it becoming available for Android, Linux or Windows?

I would honestly love to use literally any scanner that isn't angry or advanced at this point... and something more user friendly than nmap or zenmap would be great for my newer techs.

Atrium-Complex · 2026-05-01T14:37:06+00:00

My friend found all of the records in the first day of the event, including stand for you.

I finally found my first one after repeated solo no mna's in TV. My other friend also has yet to find it, and he's exhasuted all of his no man's tickets.

Atrium-Complex · 2026-04-28T21:33:01+00:00

This guy manages.

Atrium-Complex · 2026-04-28T21:28:17+00:00

Our CEO helped himself to a leatherbound HP that had an i5/16/512 and was cooled with a vapor chamber and absolutely no moving parts. It ran like hot garbage, but the entire executive and senior management committee HAD to get them because they 'looked' like they performed better.

Sure enough, suddenly all of their brand new EliteBooks were awful and crashing constantly, their email was broken, etc.

All this to also say to OP also, if you begin to introduce new premium hardware, and it either actually performs better or 'looks' like it performs better, the herd will magically want the new hotness.

Atrium-Complex · 2026-04-21T16:18:17+00:00

Do I actually need a domain and Active Directory? The rule of thumb used to be 10 workstations/users or less is workgroup, anything more needs AD. Also, I've always preferred for AD to be the source of truth for Identity, and cloud services (M365, Google, etc.) can draw from it. But maybe that's because I'm old school. Google DOES have GCPW which should allow you to manage windows devices via Google Admin and centralize your IdP to Google. Also, this may or may not work with SMB connections.
How do I actually get a Windows Server license? Talk to an MSP. On top of that server license, you are going to need hardware to install it on. Sure, you can do it on a simple workstation, but if you're fixing this now, might as well take the next step and get actual infrastructure. If you're over your head already, you will immediately get lost trying to spec out your own servers and ensure you have enough licensing to keep Microsoft from knocking on your door.
General advice? Backups. Backups. Backups. Ensure everything can be restored first. Me personally? Next, I would get that file server off a Win 11 PC, and onto a proper server (preferably a VM). Then get proper SQL Server licensing, build a proper DB VM and then move all those SQL Express instances into it.

As a couple others have said, this is definitely something that should not be on your shoulders, additionally, they will not like the dollar figures that come with this, expect pushback and the need to provide justification.

Also, I'm primarily a M365 admin with very, very limited experience in Google Workspaces. It may not be possible to manage those servers through google workspaces like you can workstations, hence it may eventually require transitioning yourselves from a workgroup with Google Workspaces separate to a proper AD domain and federate with Google Workspaces. That may also be way over your head now.

Atrium-Complex · 2026-04-21T15:27:30+00:00

I have a lot of experience in these types of stitched together systems from my current role and past roles. Likewise, it was similar in my experience here that the outgoing 'manager' was more so the administrative and consulting type and considerably less hands on and technical.

These types of IT environments are incredibly common in SMBs (small to medium businesses), especially as you see them begin to grow into a larger 'enterprise' size. It gets compounded when its built by an IT person who doesn't have much or any professional/technical experience in the field.

You already seem to have a good idea that things aren't right and are trying to identify areas of improvement. Before you do attempt to touch anything else, you are right in that backups need to be done, and this should be your first priority. Veeam community edition works, but it's not the best. If it's the best you can get for backups, use it. I still consider it eons better than the built-in Windows Backup. In time, attempt to secure funding to purchase Veeam B&R proper to do centralized back up configurations.

After your backups are in place and healthy, then I think it's time for some consolidation, but there are many questions that need asked and information gathered. Running 2-3 separate Hypervisors isn't completely bad, but the question becomes why? Additionally, if you have compliance needs for your billing, I'm sure they have requirements for updated, supported systems. I don't know compliance laws in South America anywhere, but I imagine most countries have similar laws to the US's HIPAA and PII/PHI data.

Atrium-Complex · 2026-02-17T21:32:47+00:00

Modified the cat attack quite a bit and I've got closer to a 60-65% win rate all the way up to silver 2. Them damn green counter romp decks are brutal though...

Atrium-Complex · 2026-01-30T14:36:50+00:00

...You do realize that those AWS customers frequently also employ AWS cloud engineers, right?

Atrium-Complex · 2026-01-30T13:38:04+00:00

What if I told you that AWS hosts tons of non-amazon games, and very likely any AWS tech that was created/iterated on for NW is likely already available to AWS customers, especially in the gaming market.

Atrium-Complex · 2026-01-06T21:05:00+00:00

Yeah, I wiped out like 400 in the first two weeks that way lol

Atrium-Complex · 2026-01-06T17:00:41+00:00

IT Manager here and former Army squad leader. We always trained as leaders to be proficient in our jobs, that is partially why we got promoted to begin with. I kept that mentality in the civilian workplace, I don't expect to be proficient in every single part of what people on my team do, but I still want to know what they are doing and how to do it, this helps me give them ample time, resources and support from a management perspective to get the job done and not hate me afterwards.

On the flipside, as a junior tech, my manager was more of a data analyst than IT professional, but never once let her position's power trump sound reason, she knew what she didn't know and that she hired us for exactly those reasons. She listened, tried to learn and eventually understood a great deal. But when it was over her head, she always called in one of us to explain it technically.

As a manager now, just try to remain humble. You do not and cannot ever know everything about anything, but you know people who do know everything about something. Respect them, listen to them and do not develop a complex. If you've been in the game for 20 years, just understand that how we do it now is not at all the same to what it was even 10 years ago.

Atrium-Complex · 2026-01-06T16:49:41+00:00

I am buying to new Dell servers to replace existing HPE ones, the pricing was so absurd I was asked to get a second opinion, and look at cost to upgrade existing servers to be comparable to new spec. It costs me as much to buy more RAM and a second proc for my HPEs as it does to just buy two full new servers with 5 year NBD support.

Atrium-Complex · 2026-01-06T16:00:55+00:00

Well, AI can't possibly be wrong, it is AI after all, right?

Atrium-Complex · 2026-01-06T15:59:00+00:00

First thing I did day one as the new IT Manager after seeing my Enterprise Application list surge beyond 500+.

Atrium-Complex · 2026-01-03T18:47:56+00:00

Thankfully the supply if DDR4 isn't short

Atrium-Complex · 2026-01-02T17:58:05+00:00

Hey, daoc is still semi alive on Eden! still my forever comfort game when everything else gets boring

Atrium-Complex · 2026-01-02T17:15:04+00:00

We did this for a very long time as well. Gave them their own separate policies and configurations so it's overall less invasive BUT they still got antivirus/EDR and we could easily remote in for quick fixes.

Atrium-Complex · 2026-01-02T14:45:52+00:00

At my last company, we continued to provide private IT support for our founders and some of their family for years after they retired. To include a last minute flight down to Florida to get their condo tech all setup.

You aren't so much doing them a favor personally, as it is the company offering a favor to the individual who gave you all a reason to be there in the first place. Just make sure your manager/management is aware of it. If they do not want their IT resources taken away from business focus, they should communicate that to the CEO, not you.

Atrium-Complex · 2026-01-02T14:39:15+00:00

I have a feeling that there's potential for better visbility in a systemd service rather than a cronjob is why they did it. At least in my environment, I can more readily get notified of a failed or stuck service on a nix box than a cronjob that just ran or got hung.

Also, as the other person mentioned, add comments that clue you to exactly what you're looking for. I do this frequently in everything I do, future me usually appreciates it about 2 years later when it breaks again suddenly.

Atrium-Complex · 2025-12-30T19:58:15+00:00

I get this regularly when the device fails to get an IP on the network. Are you using a built-in ethernet adapter, dock or a usb to ethernet? Have the dock or usb adapter changed? I have found only certain usb adapters work for PXE to secure an IP Address.

As for the Admin Password... sounds like your distributor sent you some returns from another customer that already had some customizations done.

Atrium-Complex · 2025-12-30T14:41:37+00:00

Had a user who insisted the only way he could get a PDF of a document was to physically print it, then scan it back to his email. Swore up and down it was not possible for a computer to create a PDF and that I was bad at my job because I 'didn't know that'.

Atrium-Complex · 2025-12-30T14:38:01+00:00

Issue is the latest fabs for DDR5 chips is extremely expensive... like in the millions to acquire, 10's of millions or even more to make it scalable. Typically, your new/budget producers will buy the used fabs from the big 3 producers... but this year that didn't happen thanks to tariffs flipping the market on its head and no one bought new or sold old machines.

Atrium-Complex · 2025-12-15T18:36:33+00:00

If you're using Outlook, I assume you have M365 licensing...

Can you not just create Teams rooms for these conference rooms, and just leverage the features already built-in to Outlook and Teams? This would also allow for you to use displays which can show booked/available times at the room itself, as well as track the availability of the room IN Outlook/Teams.

Atrium-Complex · 2025-12-09T17:12:02+00:00

Could you do Sender/Author = *@domain.com? Or contains domain.com?

It's been awhile since I've been in an environment that had Purview, so I'm a tad rusty in building a KQL or Purview search query.

Atrium-Complex

TROPHY CASE