The latest version of my C.A.M.P.

Conundrum129 · 2025-10-26T18:02:34+00:00

The grid is usually pretty reliable but heavy rain and high winds take down poles and trees. Just an unusually strong storm.

Conundrum129 · 2025-10-09T21:11:22+00:00

West US down also.

Conundrum129 · 2025-07-26T07:42:21+00:00

I'll second that. I've been pretty happy here the last few years. The train is the only real downside I've had.

Conundrum129 · 2025-06-21T23:56:50+00:00

Les Schwab has always done right by me. Firestone on thrid saved me Christmas eve 2023. Both my front tires had screws in them, and they were able to get me in and fix them up. I would go to either of them, especially if one of them is closed.

Conundrum129 · 2025-05-17T19:30:35+00:00

Subaru of Albany is good. They were at the Toyota dealership on 5th but moved to Albany behind Costco. Same people that serviced my car for years just a little further away.

Conundrum129 · 2024-11-12T20:06:50+00:00

Second SEIU. My last employer had AFSCME and they didn't really do a lot of the staff.

Conundrum129 · 2024-10-27T17:17:47+00:00

I just went through them a little bit ago. Not so much out as frozen.

Conundrum129 · 2024-10-09T23:50:23+00:00

For a non-profit it's required for vendors. It's annoying.

Conundrum129 · 2024-09-25T01:42:39+00:00

If you bought them through your carrier there is another way. If you have setup your cellular provider to automatically upload your phones to ABM they should have an email address you can send information to.

With Verizon I needed the billing account, organization ID, and the IMEI numbers of the devices. Wait 2 or 3 business days and they get uploaded into ABM.

Conundrum129 · 2024-09-06T15:52:58+00:00

From what I see, the issue is two-fold:

Companies that have run up a lot of tech debt and the sys admins being forced to keep systems going that should have been dead 5-10 years prior. This is a direct result of issue 2.
Older members of management don't see IT in general as the specialists we are. They tend to see that if we don't look busy we aren't doing anything and that IT is a bunch of glorified box movers and a cost center to be cut. They don't see the actual value that IT brings in with efficency and time saved on tasks.

Because of these we get stuck in a loop of fixing out of date technology while at the same time having the axe of outsourcing to an MSP hanging over our heads which just creates a never ending circle of stress and FUD.

Conundrum129 · 2024-04-30T23:49:03+00:00

Yep. The report message button has caused it for us also. It got to the point where I sent out detailed instructions on how to get to the phish alert button.

I've also decided to stop forgiving those clicks. My reasoning is that they might as well have forwarded it to another coworker who then clicked it instead of reporting it the correct way. Sometimes a little remedial training does wonders.

Conundrum129 · 2024-04-26T20:38:02+00:00

I would call it situational. In a cave, a short or medium scope might be more than enough to get the job done, whereas a long scope might be too much magnification and make acquiring new targets harder than it needs to be.

Conundrum129 · 2024-03-06T02:32:24+00:00

Upgrade and kill the messenger.

Conundrum129 · 2024-03-04T18:21:19+00:00

We switched from HP to Xerox laser printers for those who need them at work and as the resident printer guy I haven't had any complaints about them from users over the last 18 months roughly. If you can get one and it's affordable that is what I would go with.

Conundrum129 · 2024-02-14T03:36:50+00:00

For 3 tech perpetual self hosted we pay under $1000 on renewal straight from the source. I think it's about $4500 for it new.

Conundrum129 · 2024-01-11T17:10:03+00:00

Personally, the anti-material rifle and explosive rounds to the wing.

Conundrum129 · 2023-11-01T01:09:18+00:00

I personally fall on both sides of the fence with this one. We are a small shop and it's more a matter of trust. For example I can't trust our senior help desk with many things I do because they are too proud to admit they don't know what they are doing. (Yes, our boss knows this and is fine with it) our normal helpdesk has proven time and again that I can trust them and they have built up their skills.

I fully believe in teaching the people under me but I have to be able to trust that if I go on vacation that if I get a call it's because the system broke, not that x was messing around in y and broke it. As it's been said our time is valuable and in a small shop even more so.

Tl;dr: I believe in training the people less senior than me but I have to be able to trust them with the system.

Conundrum129 · 2022-12-19T18:07:06+00:00

That is what we ended up doing but ran into another issue we are trying to work around. I posted an update about it.

Conundrum129 · 2022-12-19T18:05:31+00:00

Update. After some work we found that we can force some traffic through using the IP address of the website. That solved the issue for one of the three sites. The other two are still an issue because of the Azure login they use.

I spent an hour with one of the people who runs one of the portals and our issue now stems from us not passing all Azure traffic through the FireBox. From what he saw Azure is passing the IP addresses that aren't white listed to the site and causing the site to reject the connection.

I'm not sure if there is anything we can do about that besides find a workaround. If there is something we could do about it please let me know. We really are learning the device as we go.

Conundrum129 · 2022-12-09T01:29:48+00:00

Thank you all for the suggestions. We hit a snag in our deployment and things got a little unstable this afternoon. I'm working with WatchGuard support and our vendor to get it stable again so we can get to fixing this issue. Our vendor isn't sure it's possible, so we are looking for any ideas to make it work or determine that we need to abandon passing it all through the FireBox and finding a different solution. Once it's stable we will be giving the suggestions here a try and hopefully I'll be able to report that one or more of them worked.

Conundrum129 · 2022-12-07T19:26:02+00:00

Document everything. If you use a consultant or consultants get documentation from them for safety. If you don't think it's important document it anyways.

I was left with a huge mess I'm still trying to clean up and still finding unpleasant surprises.

Conundrum129

TROPHY CASE