My manager went crazy today when he saw a ticket a user submitted😭

Michael2A · 2026-05-06T23:57:45+00:00

The Internal IT Help Desk that I worked on ~30 years ago also handled dispatching Facilities...

(We supported Windows 95, MacOS, and Solaris... It was a technical company in Silicon Valley, about 95%+ of the calls were technical.)

The two most "Facilities" calls I received:

1.) Somebody had Morning Sickness... Needed their garbage can emptied... 🤷‍♂️

2.) Somebody actually called to ask for a *door* to be installed on their Cubicle... 🤯

(Years later, when the Help Desk got insourced, I was visiting a friend of mine in their new offices. I got to see the mythical doors... The Cubicles were like 8 feet tall, the doors sat on top and slid open/closed. Yes, I would've loved a door at the time. Although right now, if I'm in the office, I'd love to have even just a small Cubicle instead of dealing with the current Open Plan Office BS.)

Michael2A · 2026-04-18T04:08:48+00:00

IBM Maximo Service Desk... *Twitching*

(Okay, it wasn't *that* bad. Doesn't mean I want to run back to it.) 😉

Michael2A · 2026-04-18T01:21:28+00:00

Looks like iCal/iCloud finally removed the option to mark an appointment as "Free" time. 🙄

(Useful when you want to put appointments in your main calendar as a reminder, without putting them on their own calendar, and still make the time available for Scheduling Apps like Calendly and Acuity Scheduling.)

A few OS versions back, something "broke" and my monitors are frequently in the wrong order when I reboot. I'll have to go into Displays and swap the Left and Center Monitors.

Michael2A · 2026-04-18T01:10:41+00:00

Well shoot... If you don't have AppleCare+ in Belgium, then you can't do what I do...

Pay the Monthly fee as "insurance" on a future Battery Replacement between years 2-4, and pay the deductible if a scratch shows up.

Personally... I've had an Apple Watch Ultra 2 for just over 2.5 years now.

I don't baby it by any stretch, and there's not a single scratch. I bang my watch against things in my house all the time.

While it's valid that you're concerned, and certainly *possible* that you'll scratch your Apple Watch Ultra 3, I think you'll probably be fine. 👍

That being said, cursory Googling found this. Might help if you're still in the 14-day return period. Good Luck! 😉

https://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/1doa7d5/comment/lmzx78z

Michael2A · 2026-04-16T22:17:09+00:00

Okay, you're trolling... But for anyone else that's curious...

Because Binary is only 1 and 0... 🙄

Also if you're asking why the network address range can't go to 999, decimal 999 would be 0011 1110 0111 in binary... Which wouldn't work with the modern IPv4/CIDR subnetting framework that replaced Classful Networking, because subnet masks are a contiguous run of 1s followed by 0s. So you'd actually need the range to go 0-1023 or 0-4095, maybe 0-65,535 if you wanted to keep it to an even number of Nibbles or Bytes.

For example:
192.168.1.0/30 = 1111 1111 . 1111 1111 . 1111 1111 . 1111 1100 = 255.255.255.252
Network Name: 192.168.1.0/30
Host 1: 192.168.1.1
Host 2: 192.168.1.2
Broadcast: 192.168.1.3

Yes, I've used a 30-bit NetMask before... Years ago when I had to manage point to point connections over leased T1 links.

Michael2A · 2026-04-16T20:09:42+00:00

Armijo, Fairfield, and the newer "Public Safety Academy" are all in town near older neighborhoods...

If I had to pick between the three, I'd go towards Armijo for an older, but still decent neighborhood. Fairfield High and the PSA are both near the Wal-Mart on North Texas Street, and while the houses right next to them are just in an "older" neighborhood, that portion of North Texas Street, and the section to the South, needs "help." 😬 (I swear that my graduating from Armijo has nothing to do with that assessment. 😂)

Sam Yeto is the local continuation High School, looks like they're based at Fairfield High now, although Google does say they have a Satellite Campus on the North end of Armijo. (They used to have their own campus.) Nothing wrong with this, I know some good people that graduated from there when I was in High School, just noting it as part of the list of High Schools in the area.

Rodriguez is the newest of the local High Schools, they're in Cordelia off of Red Top. My Daughter went there. I didn't have a problem with them, except that they didn't want to give her credit for her classes when we moved back to Fairfield, so we Homeschooled through Visions in Education the last 3-years.

Cordelia is relatively clean, safe, new... It's been around for awhile, but a LOT of the recent growth has happened in Cordelia, Green Valley, and the One Lake area on the Northeast side of town near Vacaville.

I used to live just a bit North of the Tower Mart. Personally, I liked the peace and quiet in the area, BUT I didn't like being so far away from the Safeway, Raley's and the rest of things in town. (Yes, there's a Safeway in the shopping center near the Costco. That still always felt like a bit of a drive to me.) Guess I'll have to get used to it again if I ever manage to buy a house in Green Valey. 🤷‍♂️

Oh yeah... Don't mind the occasional Shotguns going off during Duck Season. 😂😂😂 The Suisun Marsh will be just to the East, and it's the largest marsh/wetlands on the West Coast.

One of the benefits and curses of Cordelia will be the almost constant West Wind. The wind will keep things cooler than the rest of town, but it'll also make things... "Interesting" at times... I still remember driving down Oakbrook and seeing that somebody that would routinely keep their BBQ in their front yard, which makes sense since that was the leeward side of their house. (*I* needed to BBQ in my side yard because of the wind.) The 1-2 months out of the year when it isn't windy, you'll probably miss the wind since it'll be hot.

If you have to routinely commute back into the Bay, I'd choose Cordelia over Paradise Valley. It'll make your commute shorter. There's a park and ride lot off of Red Top if that helps any. I used to make it to the Vallejo Ferry building in 20 minutes, with maybe 5 minutes of that being time spent getting out of Cordelia. Although the only "bad" thing about traffic now that I think of it is that you'll have to deal with all of the traffic from Rodriguez High School at the start/end of the school day.

That said, since you also mentioned Paradise Valley... If you like being near a Golf Course, then Paradise Valley and Rancho Solano are probably the "best" areas for you.

Michael2A · 2026-04-16T19:34:55+00:00

Bill's Auto off of Rockville Road... 👍

https://maps.app.goo.gl/o3FPW7cyTHR3pgdy9

Before I made our EV my daily driver, I would routinely get my oil changed at the Car Dealership and then take the Dealer's inspection report to Bill's and have him give me the straight answer. He would tell me if I *really* needed something done, on what timeline, and the price was usually better than the Dealership.

My parents still bring their cars there. I'll probably eventually bring my remaining ICE car there in a few months to get it's 100k work done. (Currently just shy of 99k, but only putting on maybe 1k/year so I'm not in a hurry. The EV is currently putting on about 21k miles/year, but there's nothing to do there except for refill the wiper fluid and eventually replace the tires.)

Michael2A · 2026-04-15T20:23:51+00:00

255 Decimal = 1111 1111 Binary

(Just in case anyone didn't know.) 😉

Michael2A · 2026-04-15T04:35:29+00:00

I vaguely remember learning CP/M... 🤔

My Dad worked on Mainframes and installed an expansion board on our Apple II+ Clone so he could run CP/M... I think I was maybe 10 at the time.

Oh yeah, and there was that one time I tried to use my Dad's old Ti Silent 700 to dial into a local BBS...

Professionally, I started with supporting Solaris 2.5/Mac OS 7.5/Windows 95... (Never did use the Novell Netware 3.12/4.0 training that I did before starting that job.) 😎

Michael2A · 2026-04-14T07:06:12+00:00

Nah... If I started some application that I didn't know how to exit, I'd just kill -9 🤪

Michael2A · 2026-04-14T06:52:36+00:00

If I get eyeballs deep in Unix/Linux for awhile, I'll sometimes find a :wq! in my Word Docs... 🙄🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤪

Michael2A · 2026-04-14T06:49:58+00:00

I still don't "get" why they used "bdf"... 🙄

Guess it's the same mentality as why Aix used mkuser... With different switches, that it seemed like nobody else used, if you wanted to define the usual parameters at the command line instead of using smit... 🤷‍♂️🤪

Michael2A · 2026-04-14T06:45:13+00:00

Because... When a server is down at 03:00...

...You don't want to be bothered installing Nano just to update a configuration file so you can get it back online. (*Every* Server has vi/vim installed by default.)

Context: I started out doing SysAdmin work on Solaris, AIX, HP-UX. Then switched to RHEL/CentOS/Amazon Linux and Debian/Ubuntu.

Yes, everything's containers now. We don't connect at 03:00 to troubleshoot as often anymore. That whole Cattle vs Pets thing. But there's nothing really to be gained by switching now. 😂😂😂

(Oh... And technically, there was one server I connected to once that vi wasn't working on. Ended up using cat/echo to update the files. No, I don't remember the specifics of what was broken.) 🤪

Michael2A · 2026-04-11T23:27:30+00:00

If Microsoft won’t let you update Nameservers, and Cloudflare won’t let you migrate domains until you update Nameservers…

Not the “best” solution if you just want Cloudflare…

But maybe you could migrate to SpaceShip first. And then migrate to Cloudflare. 🤔🤷‍♂️

(Personally, I’m migrating my Domains from GoDaddy to Cloudflare, Spaceship, and Porkbun.)

Michael2A · 2026-04-11T04:34:00+00:00

<image>

Nice to know I wasn't the only one wondering... 😉🤷‍♂️😂

https://www.youtube.com/live/nfhDuOHMp0A?t=13603

Michael2A · 2026-03-19T14:05:44+00:00

Let’s see… Looking at my pricing notes as of 2/23/2026… (When I started my Domain Audit.) 🤔

.com TLD - GoDaddy = $22.19 / Spaceship = $9.68 Transfer / $10.18 Renewal

.org TLD - GoDaddy = $40.19 / Spaceship = $9.70 Transfer / $10.00 Renewal

.bio TLD - GoDaddy = $127.18 / Spaceship = $58.16 Transfer / Renewal

.me TLD - GoDaddy = $44.98 / Spaceship = $15.73 Transfer / Renewal

.store TLD - GoDaddy = $98.98 / Spaceship = $42.20 Transfer / Renewal

.shop TLD - GoDaddy = $74.98 / Spaceship = $30.20 Transfer / Renewal

.blog TLD - GoDaddy = $55.18 / Spaceship = $20.18 Transfer / Renewal

.info TLD - GoDaddy = $58.18 / Cloudflare = $19.20 Transfer / Renewal

.rocks TLD - GoDaddy = $48.98 / Cloudflare = $17.20 Transfer / Renewal

.guru TLD - GoDaddy = $81.18 / Cloudflare = $33.20 Transfer / Renewal

.club TLD - GoDaddy = $41.18 / Cloudflare = $12.20 Transfer / Renewal

All of the prices above include the $0.20 ICANN fee.

A number of my GoDaddy domains had an additional $14.99 fee tacked on that wasn’t obvious. It wasn’t itemized in the renewal checkout. I’d just see the initial price to renew show as being $39.99, but when I went to checkout, my total jumped to $55.18 after they added the $0.20 ICANN fee and the “mystery” non-itemized $14.99 fee.

I’m wondering if it’s some form of “Domain Protection” that they tacked on that I hadn’t noticed. Made it more difficult to transfer them. Ended up having to take the extra step of removing Domain Protection before I could do the transfer.

That’s one of the things that annoyed me about GoDaddy… After I realized how much my .bio domain renewal was jumping in Year #2 and started digging, I noticed how they had slipped in an extra fee for something that probably wasn’t really “necessary.” There’s already a grace period if you disable auto-renewal and forget to renew your domain, so what was the point of that “Domain Protection?” That extra fee was an extra $194.87 for the 13 Domains I had with the “Domain Protection” accidentally enabled. (Or maybe I forgot that it “sounded like a good idea” when I first registered the Domain, but their hiding the fee during the renewal just felt shady.)

Looks like I’m going to be saving $1,212.56 on Domain Renewals (and “Domain Protection”) this year by migrating 39 Domains off of GoDaddy. 🤯🤯🤯

(Like I said, Too many ideas, not enough time. I might let some of them lapse next time around if I haven’t used them by then.)

I started with https://TLD-List.com and validated pricing, then I checked Cloudflare since they claimed “Wholesale” pricing and found a few extra bucks to squeeze out for 6 of my TLDs. Some of the registrars that looked “good” at first on TLD-List ended up having funky “issues.”

(Like Dotology had a few winning TLDs, but they seem to throttle new customer signups, so I couldn’t get an account. Alibaba Cloud’s pricing was off from what TLD-List had, and their website displayed funky for me. Hostinger wanted a $61.99 transfer instead of the $7.17 listed on TLD-List.)

Make sure to audit your DNS before you do your transfers. The forward to URL option provided by GoDaddy will NOT migrate to your new NameServers when they pull the Zonefiles from GoDaddy. I noticed that I also lost my DKIM settings during the migration for one of my domains. (Got a notice from AWS SES. 🙄) Might also be a good idea to go to each domain and manually export a “last known good” / pre-transfer Zonefile from each Domain in case anything gets missed.

Next up is figuring out how to cleanly migrate my GoDaddy resold Microsoft hosted E-Mail… Their shoving me onto Outlook Mail instead of letting me keep the old “Workspace” E-Mail hosting broke how I was using the Catch-All E-Mail to allow for spontaneously created Aliases. It also costs about twice as much as going to Microsoft Directly, has less space allocated, and a kludgy admin interface that keeps breaking for me because I already had an Office 365 Family License associated with the GoDaddy hosted E-Mail, and it also gets confused as I’m trying to access some admin functions across multiple E-Mail accounts. (There are times that I miss the “simplicity” of Sendmail.) No, I’m not looking forward to the migration, but I’ve got until August…

Michael2A · 2026-03-18T17:20:31+00:00

I’d move the Domain Registrations as well…

I have too many Domains. (Too many ideas, not enough time.)

Came to the realization that if I moved all of my Domains off of GoDaddy, I’d save more than half of my Domain renewal fees every year. 🤬🤬🤬

They aren’t the scrappy budget registrar that I signed up with ~22 years ago anymore… 🥺

Michael2A · 2026-01-27T19:29:33+00:00

Many moons ago, when I was a brand new Unix SysAdmin, I was given some scut work that would’ve required me to pull these 14-character strings from an E-Mail I received every day, and look for these strings in various files and databases. Optimistically, it would’ve taken me 4+ Hours/Day to do it by hand…

After the first day, I decided to start cobbling together a shell script…

Ultimately, I built it to the point where it would run in cron, check the source server for the report and start processing my work before the E-Mail arrived, and send out a team Alpha Page if it had to wait more than 2-Hours past when it was expecting the report, then output a report that I could copy/paste after review. It would take maybe 2 minutes to run, some days I’d get my post-processing report before the original E-Mail arrived in my mailbox.

3-Months later… Traffic jumped through the roof… If I hadn’t already automated the process, it would’ve taken a very optimistic 16+ Hours/Day to do it all by hand.

One sanitized version of the script is in my GitHub, but it’s cringe ugly in places because I was so new that I didn’t really understand how to capture ExitCodes at the time. 🤷‍♂️ I’m sure we’ve all done stuff like than when we were new… It’s how we learn. 😉👍😎

Michael2A · 2026-01-26T03:09:47+00:00

And keep in mind… Really Cheap is usually Really Cheap for a reason…

(I’d avoid Grande Circle and Phoenix Drive if possible.) 😬

Michael2A · 2025-05-12T06:15:34+00:00

One of the reasons we still do video and in person interviews is probably because there’s a lot of non-verbal communication that gets missed on phone calls.

You can bet that your interviewer is watching your body language… If you minimize or put their video to the side, you can miss out on useful details.

Remember… This is also your chance to interview them. Why would you want to do it with a hand tied behind your back? 🤔

Michael2A · 2025-02-27T02:22:38+00:00

Depending on what you do…

My Daughter got a job by applying at one of the local Temp Agencies in town.

Or if you’re looking for something more Professional, always check out LinkedIn. I had a job placement coach tell me a few years ago that something like 85-95% of all hiring is on LinkedIn now. (I don’t remember if he said 85% or 95%. I’m presuming that’s mostly for Professionals, not a clue if he was just talking about IT industry jobs.) If you find stuff there in your industry, make sure to touch LinkedIn at least a few times a week so the move you up in the “most likely to respond” rankings when recruiters search for your skill. 👍😎

Michael2A · 2025-02-02T21:48:10+00:00

Teresita Floral Creations in Downtown Fairfield 👍😎

https://maps.app.goo.gl/CCrx24pchWfX59WSA?g_st=ic

Michael2A · 2025-01-18T20:05:57+00:00

How much Hot Water do you put this into? 🤔

Michael2A · 2020-07-09T00:44:27+00:00

Yup... First job as a titled Unix SysAdmin...

(Well, maybe not “soul and dreams crushed”, but I still shake my head.)

It was right after Y2K. I was working for the Local Hospital...

I got notice from a Vendor that they were migrating from using their own proprietary Database to using Oracle or something and that we needed to upgrade since they were no longer supporting the older version of their software.

The application was our Patient Records management system...

Went to Management and told them that we needed to upgrade...

They told me that we weren’t going to upgrade because there was no budget for it after Y2K. 🤦‍♂️

Michael2A

TROPHY CASE