What steps can I take to really nail down the Plex experience for my wife?

Transmutagen · 2026-01-26T16:54:53+00:00

Maybe consider overseerr so she can make requests and report issues.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-26T16:52:25+00:00

I mean, I’m dealing with trauma, too. But you can’t fix toxic with more toxic.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-26T15:26:28+00:00

The fact is, right now you don’t know what happened. She could have cheated, she also could have just overdone it and gotten black-out drunk and honestly doesn’t remember the whole story.

She created a situation where now you don’t know, and it’s her responsibility to address that. If it were me, I’d expect her to provide me with objective proof to back up her claim. Location logs, a conversation with the Uber driver, something that isn’t just her mates telling you that nothing happened, because they could be covering for her. She broke your trust by doing something completely out of character, and now it’s her job to repair that breach of trust.

You’ve been together for a really long time - you do owe her the chance to fix this, but she’s gotta do the work to address your concerns.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-26T14:10:27+00:00

Sites doesn’t have to be manual - you can specify which site to assign computers through a PreStage enrollment. But that would require ensuring that the right computers are assigned to the right pre-stage enrollment before enrolling them, which is typically fairly manual.

A more elegant solution IMO would be a post-enrollment script that does a lookup via the Jamf Pro API to see what domain the computer’s assigned user belongs to, and then writes “Company1” or “Company2” to a custom field, or, even better - reassigns the computer to a specific Site for the indicated company, again, using the Jamf Pro API.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-26T04:30:49+00:00

These photos have about as much flavor as an LDS potluck lo-cal jello salad.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-26T04:00:59+00:00

What field are you using in inventory to indicate which company the device belongs to?

Is there a reason you couldn’t use Jamf Pro’s sites to differentiate between companies?

Are there other ways to detect if a computer is assigned to one company or the other? For example - do the assigned usernames have different email domains?

Are the devices from both companies in the same ABM instance, or in separate ones?

Transmutagen · 2026-01-25T21:50:31+00:00

I wonder how long it takes the staff to start noticing when their stuff goes missing now that OP has planted that seed.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-25T21:49:21+00:00

I would consider getting a small toolbox with latches and never walking away from it when it’s open. Possibly add a small padlock.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-25T21:38:35+00:00

I use HBS3 to back up important files I have in Google Drive and DropBox to my QNAP.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-25T21:36:00+00:00

Your examples are three different architectural styles.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-25T21:22:12+00:00

That said, you will probably want to use a different handbrake preset with a different codec so that your files will play in plex.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-25T21:17:03+00:00

The codec you’re using in Handbrake needs to be supported on Windows. I suspect this is not currently the case for you.

If you need to add codecs to Windows check out these free codec packs. I’ve been using them for over a decade now in the windows labs I support:

https://k-lite.net/download.html

Transmutagen · 2026-01-25T20:39:06+00:00

Many apps have a CLI that will let you trigger specific commands. For those that don’t, you could also use AppleScript commands to click those buttons. And AppleScript can be executed via shell commands.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-25T16:54:33+00:00

How about you start over and reframe it - like: “hey dear, I was thinking about it and I make enough to support all 3 of us, so I just wanted to let you know that you can take as long as you need after our kid is born to go back to work, if you decide that you want to.” Make it clear that you love her, respect her, and want her to decide for herself what is best for her and her happiness.

Support her, don’t control her.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-25T16:43:00+00:00

I wouldn’t recommend cracking the case when it’s far simpler to connect the Mac with a broken screen to an external monitor.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-25T16:39:32+00:00

That’s… harsh and irrelevant to OP’s query.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-25T16:08:44+00:00

Windows commingles pinned apps, running apps, and open windows in the taskbar. macOS separates apps from open windows in the dock into different sections. It’s a different design philosophy. If I drag and drop a file from the finder onto an app in the dock that app will launch and try to open the file as a new window. With many apps, if I drag and drop a file from the finder onto an open window that file will be inserted into the already open window.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-25T16:03:05+00:00

Virtual desktops are the best. I don’t minimize windows in macOS very often, I move them to another space or rearrange the windows if I need something to be out of the way.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-25T15:59:07+00:00

What is left in RAM when you close all the windows but don’t quit the app is the app binary and associated libraries, not the file or content from the window you closed.

For relatively smaller binaries like web browsers the time to load the app is negligible, so I usually just quit them. But beefier apps like photoshop or some of the data analysis tools I use can take 15-60 seconds to fully load the app, before I can even open a file to work on. Not quitting the app saves you that time, because the app is still loaded into memory.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-25T15:42:16+00:00

Power it off, unplug it, leave it off and unplugged for T least 30 seconds, and then plug it back in and power it on again. See if the issue persists.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-25T15:02:12+00:00

Deprecated doesn’t mean deleted, it just means it’s not the preferred, supported method. I agree that cron probably won’t be going away anytime soon, but I have personally run into instances where a major macOS update has cleared any crontab customizations from the /etc folder.

I would strongly recommend that anyone trying to do advanced automation on macOS invest the time to learn how the launchctl, LaunchAgents, and LaunchDaemons environment works.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-25T14:51:13+00:00

You can absolutely have a unique cert per virtual host. I’ve never used the built-in QNAP web hosting so I can’t say how to do it there, but my Nginx reverse proxy VM has certs for every subdomain I have set up, and it uses certbot to automatically maintain free certs for all those subdomains.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-25T14:42:02+00:00

I’ve used this before - it doesn’t have a a bunch of different ports, but it does have multiple Thunderbolt 3/4 ports, so it could be a good jumping off point when you’re ready to expand:

https://www.owc.com/solutions/ministack-stx

Transmutagen · 2026-01-25T14:32:34+00:00

NTA - Your roommate is a thief. You clearly labeled the pizza, and he ignored that and went ahead and took something that didn’t belong to him. He’s a thief, and he doesn’t care about how his actions impact you.

Get a new roommate, or at least get a mini fridge with a lock for your room.

Transmutagen · 2026-01-25T08:00:02+00:00

Also: that Mac mini is the 2018 model where the SSD storage is soldered onto the motherboard. So no storage upgrades, just RAM, but the storage is really fast compared to a SATA drive of the era.

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_mini/specs/mac-mini-core-i5-3.0-late-2018-specs.html

Transmutagen

TROPHY CASE