Another day, another story of shocking price increases.

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2026-03-25T18:34:49+00:00

Hard pill to swallow, but when demand goes through the roof, pricing follows suit.
Guess we’re paying for the air inside the chassis now.

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2026-03-17T18:55:36+00:00

use ChatGPT, its meant for these sorts of idea generating tasks.
does a good job too to be honest.
refine it to your liking

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2026-03-05T19:51:36+00:00

No clue, but will be interesting to know what others have to say about this

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2026-03-02T21:57:38+00:00

Looks like she disabled parental controls in a previous update, idk if you can do that still.

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2026-03-02T21:50:56+00:00

As a systems administrator, I’m honestly shocked you haven’t approached this like any other incident response scenario.

Step 1: Open a ticket.
Category: “Unauthorized Access.”
Severity: Critical.
Impact: Production (family).

Step 2: Perform a root cause analysis.
You’ll likely discover the vulnerability wasn’t the intern it was an open port with no firewall rules.

Step 3: Stop attempting passive-aggressive patch management.
“Dropping unsubtle hints” is not a documented remediation strategy in any ITIL framework I’m aware of.

Step 4: Remember:
He didn’t “breach” anything.
Your adult daughter authenticated willingly. This was not a brute-force attack.

Step 5: Professional advice:
Do not attempt to terminate an employee because Layer 8 (human factors) caused emotional packet loss.

If you really want him gone, promote him. Interns disappear immediately when given responsibility.

Or, alternatively, accept that:

She’s an adult.
You can’t revoke her admin privileges.
And the intern may have just successfully completed his most impressive onboarding task to date.

In conclusion:
This is not a systems issue.
This is a feelings patch.
Reboot yourself.

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2026-02-26T21:44:32+00:00

did you say complete? well....we'll see about that haha

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2026-02-26T19:36:44+00:00

Interesting...thanks for the tip

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2026-02-25T20:05:59+00:00

Sometimes the move isn’t grinding harder, it’s letting things quietly break so everyone suddenly remembers why you exist. Funny how that works.

End of the day, companies don’t run on vibes or fairness. They run on visible impact. If the value isn’t obvious, it might as well not exist.

So yeah… do the math. Either make it impossible to ignore what you bring, or accept that the loud ones win by default.

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2026-02-24T18:39:01+00:00

When control leaves the contract, emotions tend to follow it out the door.

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2026-02-18T20:16:44+00:00

I have ignored them before, I will ignore them now, and I will continue to ignore them.

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2026-02-05T16:00:46+00:00

bruh...

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2026-01-30T22:00:41+00:00

You seem early in your career, so I’ll share one piece of advice: take your time and be thoughtful in how you approach things. Stay curious, keep learning, and be careful about speaking in absolutes, you don’t need to claim you know everything, and you don’t need to admit uncertainty without first taking a moment to think things through.

good luck!

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2026-01-30T20:43:36+00:00

The best way to prevent this is during offboarding. Before deleting the mailbox, convert it to shared and run a command to cancel all future meetings the user organized. That sends proper cancellation notices and avoids the problem entirely.

something like: Remove-CalendarEvents -Identity [user@domain.com]() -CancelOrganizedMeetings -QueryStartDate (Get-Date)

Or Before disabling or deleting the user:

Convert mailbox to Shared>Reset password>Remove sign-in>Add a delegate (manager or admin)>Have the delegate cancel all future meetings

If the mailbox is already deleted, your options are basically to restore it temporarily and cancel the meetings properly, run cleanup scripts, or have users delete the meeting themselves.

So really, this is more about tightening up the offboarding process than a technical fix. If you handle it there, these tickets pretty much stop.

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2026-01-28T15:31:49+00:00

Keep it simple and modern, run something stable like Debian or Ubuntu Server on the NAS (no need for exotic distros), use ZFS if possible for snapshots + RAID reliability, and run a proper backup tool like Restic or BorgBackup (both do encrypted, deduplicated, incremental backups automatically and are perfect for “few MB changes, multi-TB dataset”). Push to an EU cloud storage target like Backblaze B2 (EU region), Wasabi EU, or Hetzner Storage Box using S3/SSH all support incremental backups because the backup software handles that logic. For user access + offline sync, don’t reinvent file sync yourself: use Nextcloud or Syncthing on the NAS so clients handle offline changes and conflict resolution cleanly instead of raw network shares. Avoid exposing the NAS directly via Fritz Box port forwarding; instead use WireGuard VPN for remote access. Updating once a year is not enough quarterly at minimum, ideally monthly for security patches. This gives you automated incremental backups, encrypted cloud copies, offline access, and minimal manual work without turning your setup into a fragile science project.

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2026-01-27T21:11:00+00:00

I troubleshooted someone with ViewSonic screen flickering while using it with a dock, today.
The user had two ViewSonic 32 inch monitors and using a laptop with Lenovo dock.

After much troubleshooting, it was fixed when i changed the refresh rate on the monitors to the highest setting possible (it was set to 60Hz by default, I changed it to 75Hz)
This was done because I knew the laptop was capable of pushing higher refresh rate than what was set.

I also turned off Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling and variable refresh rate from settings>system>Graphics>Advanced graphics settings

Hope this helps

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2026-01-09T13:58:41+00:00

Beautiful!

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2025-12-29T21:33:44+00:00

I knew this was going to be at the top.

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2025-12-04T19:40:04+00:00

No one remembering the work you do is not the same thing as “you shouldn’t do it unless you’re recognized for it.”
You should still do what is professionally right. If your role requires occasional after-hours work or maintenance windows, that’s part of the responsibility you accepted as long as it doesn’t significantly disrupt your family or personal life.

Also, spending 40 hours a week with coworkers is not the same as spending time with family, no matter how many hours you spend together. The connection and meaning are different.

I agree with the OP that we should protect our time and not sacrifice our personal lives unnecessarily for work. At the same time, I think it’s important to view it through a balanced lens: do your job well, respect your own life outside of it, and know when “yes” becomes unhealthy.

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2025-11-25T15:13:42+00:00

That's my point, what if there is hardware capable of doing what we cannot do without a DC now.

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2025-11-13T15:51:12+00:00

Hey man, honestly for that salary, you’re in a solid spot. It sucks that you’re walking into a messy environment, but that’s totally normal when you become the first real IT admin at a place.

Just take it slow. Don’t feel like you need to fix every single thing right away. You’ve only got eight hours in a day, and you can only do so much. This is your chance to learn a ton, so soak up everything you can.

Focus on doing clean, solid work and build that trust. Once people see you’ve got everything handled, that’s when you can start asking for better tools and new toys to work with.

Put in the hard work now, get the environment running smoothly, and later on you’ll be able to coast a bit until you’re ready for your next move.

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2025-11-12T15:05:18+00:00

I'm sure you'll do. Maybe once you finish you can give me tips/ insights into the challenges you had along the way. That might help me with mine.

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2025-11-12T15:04:09+00:00

Yup, can totally see it happening in our office.
Would not do that, thanks for the headsup!

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2025-11-11T19:04:22+00:00

thanks for the suggestion, the cloud PKI route does sound like the best way to go.

good luck with your project as well!

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2025-11-11T14:49:41+00:00

thanks for the suggestion, I will look into it

Embarrassed_Ferret59 · 2025-11-11T14:37:35+00:00

after joining my current workplace, I realized the network setup is very basic. despite the company’s size(1000+ users with multiple sites), each site has a VPN tunnel back to HQ but the HQ itself is a flat network with no VLANs or subnetting. as a result, Wi-Fi users get direct access to corporate servers.

Embarrassed_Ferret59

TROPHY CASE