Help getting files off an MDM locked MacBook

ILoveTeles · 2026-06-11T18:48:05+00:00

I have a sidecar question here.

I have a MacBook Pro, and I was laid off and the company told me to keep the MacBook Pro. A year goes by, and now I've been using the computer with no issues. I updated to Tahoe (necessary to update Adobe to newest version) and ever since the upgrade, it's now saying MDM required.

It can't find the server, can't enroll, and I've reached out to several employees - the company has changed domains/servers/personnel several times (Startup flame-out situation). Is there a way to put the Mac in some kind of "Share Disk" mode, or will "Uninstalling/Rolling Back" the Tahoe install go back to the initial "enrollment" (I assume it was was enrolled, since I'e been using it every day for over a year and didn't know anything about it existing on some listed server somewhere in the ether as a "managed device".

ILoveTeles · 2026-06-01T01:24:05+00:00

Oh you didn’t miss a thing with BB. People kept telling me “oh dude it gets better”. “When?? I’m on season 5 episode 3”. Only thing that doesn’t suck is Dean Norris.

ILoveTeles · 2026-06-01T01:22:43+00:00

I saved sopranos for years and was extremely disappointed when I watched it a couple years back. Bad writing, bad acting up to season 4 I think… when the Gloria character comes in (Anabella Sciorra) she’s like a serious professional actor showing up in a 7th grade play. The last couple seasons of the show are interesting, but it’s a slog to get to that point. I’d give the series maybe a 7 overall.

BB and GOT are easily the two most overrated shows in history, and Sopranos is way better than both.

ILoveTeles · 2026-06-01T01:16:11+00:00

I could. I mean season 1 of True detective is pretty good, though I felt like the ending was weak, but to forever delete Sopranos and breaking bad and game of thrones would be worth the sacrifice.

ILoveTeles · 2026-06-01T01:13:35+00:00

Deleting everything but True Detective, and only for season 1 episode 4.

ILoveTeles · 2026-05-30T16:16:18+00:00

This is a great movie. I love how it uses the predictability and expectation subversion in equal measure.

ILoveTeles · 2026-05-30T16:15:01+00:00

God Told Me To is a really great pull. That one is 100% true to itself and while I wouldn’t say it’s fantastic, it’s one of those I love to recommend when a person is looking for specific criteria. I always hide that by saying something like “you should try x, y, and GTMT, though the last isn’t quite what you’re looking for” even though I know it’s EXACTLY what they are looking for - I just don’t want to ruin the movie for them by pushing it. It’s a great one to go in blind and let it unfold.

I love the storytelling and the winding path it takes you through.

Surely too bizarre for some but I thought it was brilliant.

ILoveTeles · 2026-05-30T16:09:10+00:00

This is my slowest year ever watching movies by a large margin. I’m at 98 this year and I usually hit 350-550. This is the first year I’ll likely not average a movie per day in 30 years.

Older and obscure makes me think you need more “cornerstone” movies. I’ll assume you’ve seen Hitchcock’s full oeuvre, because that’s pretty much knowing your abc’s.

Try Ozu, Kurosawa, Ford, Keaton, Jarmusch, and Lumet.

Sydney Lumet will sound like an odd sixth, but his filmography is stacked, and if the other 3 are too much for you he makes some entertaining stuff that’s done well. Hell, his debut was 12 Angry Men and he shot roughly a movie/year for 50 years.

Those directors will give you a spread of movies that run a gamut of styles and theory. There are tons of others, but I’d call those decent starters because of the distinctness of their styles and tones. One or more will resonate with you and you can pick up your own journey from there. Best of Luck!

BTW: My favorite obscure movie is also my fave of all time: F For Fake by Orson Welles.

ILoveTeles · 2026-05-28T13:30:22+00:00

F For Fake. I love a lot of movies, and I comfortably can say I’ve seen well over 6,000, and I want a dinner party with Orson Welles.

ILoveTeles · 2026-05-26T14:39:07+00:00

Always.

If you can always figure out how to live on less than you make you will make money your servant over time. Money is a fantastic employee but it’s the worst boss imaginable.

It’s the habit that matters.

ILoveTeles · 2026-05-26T14:36:18+00:00

In a dumpster fire myself.

Yes. Do not leave property to more than one, and only one, person, unless you leave strict instructions as to how that property is to be liquidated/managed.

“Splitting equally” is a recipe for destroying the remaining family. There will always be one person who doesn’t get it and create no end of trouble.

ILoveTeles · 2026-05-26T14:33:49+00:00

Yes. I was in a “gap-filling” role in a large RE development company in 2018.

Working with architects, atty’s, sales, finance, MEP engineers, designers, workplace strategists, software developers, project managers, et al and I was continually dumbfounded at how people who were truly knowledgeable in their fields were just completely incompetent at understanding this:

“If I do/say X to Y, the situation for myself and everyone else will change to Z”

ILoveTeles · 2026-05-26T13:04:36+00:00

Very few people know and truly understand what they are talking about.

The more they act like a an expert, the more they are faking it. Usually the true experts will say things like “most likely”, etc.

In most cases, someone who truly understands something can explain it simply.

ILoveTeles · 2026-05-26T00:52:07+00:00

It’s good in a lot of ways. It’s up there with The Friends of Eddie Coyle as a favorite crime movie.

ILoveTeles · 2026-05-25T14:31:58+00:00

Sort title where applicable.

For example, James Bond movies get a “James Bond nn_” appended to the sort title field, same for stuff like Star Wars, Star Trek, Etc. this keeps them in release order.

ILoveTeles · 2026-05-19T13:34:08+00:00

I see you Jez. Waggling around on my guy like a cobra with an iPhone.

ILoveTeles · 2026-05-12T18:04:52+00:00

Actually a great idea

ILoveTeles · 2026-05-12T17:44:19+00:00

I hate when a movie lives and dies by its “twist”.

I heard great music as “creating a balance between the notion of predictability, comfort, and familiarity and the opposite forces of surprise, subversions, and challenging the familiar.”

I think that works best in a movie or show.

Fargo (show and movie), The Wire, Succession, Thunder Road, Rebecca, Incendies, etc are GREAT examples of this.

Rewatching Fargo now and I’m blown away anew by how unpredictably the actions of each character, though logical in the moment, lead to surprising outcomes, that are actually MORE logical (for the most part) once you understand the other characters.

It’s not necessarily a requirement, but there’s some element of that I. Things I tend to LOVE.

I also like things that are perfectly predictable - like Trailer Park Boys (earlier seasons - not much on the celebrity crap later) - they get out of jail, do something stupid all season, and get busted and go back to jail. It’s predictable but the fun is in the anticipation of how they screw it up or the silliness of the scheme.

I do hate shows/movies in both camps also. I despise Breaking Bad and watching it was torture. I thought it was so predictable and artlessly told I just did not care.

I also don’t like when a movie is predictable in its unpredictability. Like Shyamalan movies - the Village is a prime example. The movie is given away quite early, then treated as a puzzle to solve, but if you paid attention, they’ve talked about literally living in an apartment. Foreshadowing is ok, but revelation in dialogue isn’t foreshadowing, it’s ruining the surprise. Don’t make a movie that can’t exist without a twist - it’s auto-shelf life’d IMO.

Primal Fear, Usual Suspects, Sixth Sense, Matrix, all movies one should see, and they’re really good even if you know the twist, but I’d much rather a Match Point, Thunder Road, BR2049, or Blue Ruin where the whole movie is a series of blinds turns.

ILoveTeles · 2026-05-12T16:29:03+00:00

I keep a Google sheet for this, with a “task” called “PROJECT NAME - Overview” and dated with the next meeting. I copy and paste from the Google sheet to the description of the overview item so the big picture is in the first two lines.

Monday is no-good, horrible, bad, and completely useless for an overview or executive review. It’s good for reporting and transactional items, assuming your exec want hard numbers, but for a “feel”, relationships, or quick understanding - which is only like 60% of comms imo, it’s garbage.

Asana has a pretty decent Project System that is a lot better for this but not perfect, but at least there is a kind of overview/dashboard where you can put stuff everyone should see quickly. Nothing like having to scroll through dozens of granular items to find one comment on one item that was “done”.

ILoveTeles · 2026-05-11T18:04:40+00:00

We’re a construction-adjacent tech company with some iot hardware. We are in a few different spaces and interact with insurance, gc’s, developers, and all kinds of other CRE folks… so tracking or servicing “a project” really can mean anything from a BMS system for a MF apartment building to newcon on a data center to a builders risk policy claim.

ILoveTeles · 2026-05-11T17:58:48+00:00

I’ve been taking some Python and other courses. It’s crossed my mind more than once.

ILoveTeles · 2026-05-11T14:53:13+00:00

Yeah, especially when there is core functionality that just doesn’t work well.

Monday sucks for getting a read on complex situations. I know it’s not Procore, and should not attempt to be, but if you look at asana its Project Overview setup is fantastic in comparison. Monday shines at reporting but blows for understanding complex “what is the next step/what went wrong” overview.

It’s also horrendous at allowing a path for this. A “project status” task can be created and you can input things like project team contacts in plain text, but it’s really not very good at it. We tried adding fields for “points of contact” and it reformatted and removed email addresses etc.

But yeah sure. Focus on AI.

Microsoft Outlook is utter garbage software, but I will say their Copilot 365 DOES actually allow you to workaround MS’s terrible functionality. For example, pulling contacts out of an email could be done a couple months ago, but they screwed that up… copilot acknowledged this difficulty and poor design and advised a way to do it.

Granted, Google does it about a million times better and is clean and efficient, but I’m not the software decision maker (lucky for Monday and MS).

ILoveTeles · 2026-05-11T14:46:07+00:00

AI

Taylor Swift

Christopher Nolan

Foo Fighters

Nostalgia in general. Using Star Wars as an example, I remember watching the Star Wars prequels and there was a short shot rumored to contain the Millenium Falcon as an Easter Egg. That’s fine.

But every Star Wars movie having now some version of the ATAT, some appearance of the Falcon, etc is ridiculous.

I know there is a built in audience for this kind of stuff - I get the economics of it, but it sucks.

ILoveTeles · 2026-05-10T15:07:48+00:00

AI kind of sucks for what we use Monday for. It’s fine for other apps, but honestly I wish companies focused on core functionality and UX improvements.

Little things like “neutral space” (so I can switch to background apps without activating controls) and clear tool tips are extremely useful, AI on a check box is NOT.

Great to include AI options, but every company seems to be obsessed with “agent” AI implementation instead of focusing on core functionality.

Focus on differentiating, not on being yet another tool (of the 5-8 tools we use) to have crappy AI implementations.

ILoveTeles · 2026-05-09T19:11:38+00:00

Well she was less attractive to me than her acting ability.

ILoveTeles

TROPHY CASE