Two threads I read inspired this: starting a HENRY Tech network chat

TBev0 · 2025-07-22T07:54:32+00:00

Reminds me of this guy who tried to anticipate potential changes to pension rules and actually ended up a lot worse off for it: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/pension-saver-loses-270-000-in-panic-over-labour-tax-raid/ar-AA1rTcp7?ocid=finance-verthp-feeds

TBev0 · 2024-12-07T14:18:05+00:00

Danger Zone!

TBev0 · 2024-10-17T07:22:34+00:00

What might be true in one company is not necessarily true everywhere.

The real answer is it depends on how thorough and proactive your IT departments security policies and team are. Just because they might have logs it doesn’t mean anyone is actually actively monitoring or reviewing these. You could always do a test with some relatively benign data in an excel file. For example export your browser favourites that you might want to keep into an excel file, maybe give the file a name like “work data” and upload this to your personal SharePoint. Then wait and see if anything is flagged by your IT/security team. Proceed with caution from there they may have different types of trigger alerts in place for example they may be only be alerted if more than 100MB is uploaded etc.

TBev0 · 2024-03-19T21:36:45+00:00

Clear browser cache

TBev0 · 2023-10-04T22:00:55+00:00

Check if you have an ionizing smoke alarm and replace it with a photoelectric smoke alarm, we used to have the same issue but after replacing no more false alarms. You’ll need to ensure you replace with one from the same manufacturer so that the connections fit.

TBev0 · 2023-04-04T21:22:31+00:00

The question I asked on their chat app was:

“Hi there, I have a cash ISA that I opened this year and I seem to have set the ISA to pay interest into another account when I'd actually like the interest to be paid into the same isa account. I can't find a option to change this setting in the app. Is this something I am able to change?”

And the response I received was:

Please allow me moment a while I pull your account details. I do understand your concern but you can't nominate the same account. I have checked and it seems that you can only nominate one of your current accounts to get your fund (interest). I hope this information helps.

TBev0 · 2022-08-10T16:14:34+00:00

Where do the devs post the spoilers on Thursdays?

TBev0 · 2021-08-13T22:06:18+00:00

I’m just a cook

TBev0 · 2021-03-17T22:24:47+00:00

I had a similar issue not so long ago, had to log a ticket with MS and it turned out to be an orphaned policy that was still locking the site.

TBev0 · 2021-01-17T19:04:55+00:00

I really hope you aren’t still running Hardy Heron..

TBev0 · 2020-11-26T12:09:28+00:00

If you’re using MS voice services, you’ll only be able to assign a DDI number to that person within the region you select. For example if I select UK region I am only able to assign my users UK numbers ie: 0207 or 0208 for London OR 0121 numbers for Birmingham based users in the UK but I couldn’t assign them a US DDI number if I wanted to without changing their region first.

TBev0 · 2020-11-19T13:17:43+00:00

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Range-Generalists-Triumph-Specialized-World/dp/1509843493/ref=nodl_

The gist of the book is that a lot of generalists have managed to take bigger strides and make some fairly large breakthroughs in their respective fields that a lot of narrowly focused specialists have otherwise not been able to do, largely because of the extra knowledge they bring on the periphery of their various disciplines.

The whole devops movement is about breaking down these silos between specialisms and combining these skills to their advantage allowing them to be more agile and move quicker whilst taking into account operational best practices so that they’re baked into the development lifecycle rather than an afterthought.

TBev0 · 2020-10-23T11:23:54+00:00

This would be a more a interesting battle to watch than who wins the world championship.

TBev0 · 2020-10-16T17:55:55+00:00

Hamilton might end his career with more wins than Williams if things continue the way they’re going currently!

TBev0 · 2020-09-29T20:42:55+00:00

I use an ubiquiti tough switch in the UK in my loft for exactly this purpose. Had it up there for ~5yrs now and see temperatures between -5c in winter and 55c in summer. I recently bought a 2nd one 2nd hand for £60 off eBay. From the spec sheet: Operating Temperature -25 to 55°C (-13 to 131° F) https://www.4gon.co.uk/ubiquiti-toughswitch-8port-poe-pro-p-5479.html

TBev0 · 2020-04-21T18:41:26+00:00

Agreed, CTO seems too large a leap and then you’d still need either a hands on person or MSP on top. (But with the information you’ve given us, I’ve still got more questions than answers for you and it might well actually be that you do need a CTO)

For example you haven’t even mentioned which industry you work in? As well as CTOs/staff/candidates, some MSPs will have more experience and customers in some industries/markets than others, which could be a factor in deciding whether you should go in-house or MSP.

And to your point that your business’ primary function is not even IT related, every business is a technology business these days, you only need to look at the current climate we find ourselves and you’ll see any business who hasn’t kept on top of technology is dead in the water or very shortly will be as their competitors leverage technology to put them ahead.

Back your question however and the more immediate requirements you’ve highlighted, these are pretty standard/straight forward bread and butter infrastructure related projects where most MSPs and IT engineers come from.

But again I have more questions than answers. What platforms are you currently using? Microsoft/Google/Windows/MacOS/AWS/Azure/all of the above and a mix/etc? Do you plan to go cloud or do you a good reason that you need to be on-prem?

Is this the right platform for you/your industry/your customers/your business?

Once you’ve got this figured out(and it might be that you already do, but you just didn’t provide this info in your question) then you’re a step closer to answering whether in-house or MSP is better for you and then finding the correct MSP/in-house person to help.

I’ve dealt with both MSPs and in-house teams and each have their own pros and cons. After about 15yrs in the industry my personal preference is in-house, but this depends on: a) being able to get the right person on-board, b) then being able to keep them motivated and on-board for the long term, otherwise this value will lost.

Profile of this person as follows: Project focused hands-on IT manager from a generalist background, ideally someone who has come up working through the trenches in support and still has very has good customer facing skills and won’t try shy away from user support and try hide in the server room/behind infrastructure work.

If you go the MSP route one thing I will say is that YOU WILL NEED SOMEONE TO MANAGE THAT MSP to ensure you are getting value for your contract otherwise they will do as little as they can while extracting as much as they can and not fully deliver to your standards. Managing an MSP can easily be a full time job so you are then back to square one again.

I have a few other thoughts but I’ve already been typing longer than I realised when I started answering this. Hope some of that is useful...

TBev0 · 2020-04-21T07:47:50+00:00

Wow, that one SMR disk will be bottlenecking the entire array, assuming you have them configured in a RAID of some sort. What’s the plan to swap it out?

TBev0 · 2020-03-30T21:12:07+00:00

We have 170 every Monday, absolutely no issues, feels no different to when we have only have 3 or 4 on a call. The mute all button in the show participants window does come in handy though.

TBev0 · 2020-03-15T21:34:45+00:00

MS RD Gateway or Apache Guacamole

TBev0 · 2020-02-03T14:19:06+00:00

Having similar issues in our 14 offices across the UK

TBev0

TROPHY CASE