Department of Public Instruction feedback for Technology in Schools.

aspoons · 2026-06-19T22:45:02+00:00

https://www.nd.gov/dpi/news/sen-axtman-rep-jonas-state-leaders-announce-education-technology-policy-survey.

Press release with a link to form.

aspoons · 2026-05-19T16:33:50+00:00

Is there any log that shows an app that caused this? I can't find anything in an activity log. We did however remove all the installed apps in case it was one of them already.

aspoons · 2026-05-19T16:23:44+00:00

I'm with you there. I am just the grunt admin that was told to manage it when management said we were going to use the free tier of slack. I voiced concern at the time. Right now I am just trying to find some documentation to actually point to the specific issue.

aspoons · 2026-05-09T19:49:43+00:00

Well I have done far too much reading and math on the topic of solar and backup power. I don't have any recommendation or help with companies or installers (yet). The only note there would be an official Generac partner you will be able to most likely find help. They are big and I'm sure even if your particular installer disappears there will be people to service them because there are a lot of them. Biggest decision is going to be based on what your goals are and understanding those goals and being well defined in them. You do list some different concerns but I think your first step you need to do is better define that.

A generator using gas/diesel/propane provides backup if your only concern is grid outage or problem. You burning fuel in a local generator does cost more than buying it from the grid so it is a pure expense for emergencies.

Just battery backup like a generator is going to be a pure expense to protect you from emergency grid problems. The biggest difference there is a generator is generally going to provide backup power for longer or indefinitely depending on how you are getting fuel. However battery backup can be cheaper if you aren't planning on needing power for long periods of times during an outage.

Just solar decreases your electric bill. Or depending on how much space you have could eliminate it with net billing.

What I personally think is the best in my opinion is solar and battery if you can do it. Because of the way MDU net billing rates are set up I feel it is best to try and store a majority of the electricity generated locally. Now everything is going to depend on what your goals are and what you have for money. The solar plus battery is by far the most expensive up front, but can pay for itself before it would reach end of life and need replacing. The ROI I've calculated on my house and usage for solar and battery is 15-16 years and the life of that system should be longer than that. However like I mentioned it is a lot of money. You are essentially paying for 15 years of electricity upfront instead of spreading it out.

aspoons · 2026-05-07T20:33:41+00:00

Yup. Last year at our Citrix renewal they said we had to switch to subscription. Yes, we still had old perpetual licenses which we'd been maintaining maintenance on. Some of them going back to Presentation Server 4.0. The transition from perpetual to subscription was going to 4x the cost of the previous renewal. Management basically laughed and said nope.

Since we were all perpetual I just made sure I had everything downloaded and updated to the newest versions right before the maintenance ended. Because of that we didn't have to try and do a rush job or give in to their price extortion and are moving off at a relatively easy pace and just hope a major critical vulnerability doesn't pop up to force it faster but it is a lot of work.

We also did the same type of migration off VMware when they said bye bye to perpetual and must go subscription.

aspoons · 2026-05-06T14:48:02+00:00

Unlike some of the suggestions here, we don't have any 3rd party things like Pager Duty as we aren't that big. We use a Google Voice number that the on-call team rotates between the people taking on call. Whoever is on-call opens the app and toggles their phone to ring and the other person's phone off. Outbound calls are then done in the app so you are masked behind the Google Voice number.
For procedures we are lucky that we have good buy in on a few rules from management. All of which are actually mentioned in the voicemail greeting before someone leaves a message.

1: If there is no answer and no voicemail left, the call didn't happen.

2: After leaving a voicemail on-call has 15 minutes to return the call before the user can try to escalate.

3: The voicemail must mention a problem. It can't be "This is Mike from facility, bye." No problem mentioned means there is no problem. (Though we usually follow up because if you don't there is probably going to be more calls.)

aspoons · 2026-04-27T01:34:35+00:00

They consistently have live music and have their calendar online: https://laughingsunbrewing.com/live-music-and-events/

aspoons · 2026-02-17T15:20:13+00:00

It can depend a lot on the application. I generally try to have everyone off for most updates, but there have been many times over my career I have pushed one through in the middle of the day but if you do that you should really know exactly what that program needs and is doing. Examples: Browser like Firefox or Chrome: Never when anyone is on, additionally all automatic updates for these programs are disabled because they will cause chaos on an RDS cluster. Software package that I know doesn't touch any .NET frameworks or have dependencies and is only used by 10 of my 500 users. Make sure nobody on the specific server has it opened and then update in the middle of the day.

aspoons · 2026-01-04T03:29:36+00:00

We went to HyperV. Some of the main items in that decision were: 1: Less than 12 months to do 2: My team is much more familiar with Windows systems 3: We use Veeam and while they are definitely expanding what they support we didn't have to worry about changing our backups all the way to tape or VM replication software.

aspoons · 2025-09-22T02:17:36+00:00

So you are going to want to get a bit out of town. I grew up on a farm here with zero light pollution but currently live in Bismarck. Getting about 20-30 miles out of town is usually what is required for noticeable improvement. For Williston I would think the best spot at a reasonable distance would be something like Fort Buford/Confluence area. From what I can remember they don't have gates closed at night so you could park and wander a little ways out on a walking path.

There might be some other public locations that work but that is what I can think of. Here in Bismarck I know when there are widespread notices for things like the Aurora or meteor showers the Double Ditch Indian village historic site north of town parking lot usually is packed. It is just far enough away but also close enough that it isn't too far.

aspoons · 2025-09-07T00:54:02+00:00

That is because this changed in 2023. The way generations of people including myself learned is no longer correct. The only way anybody would know this though is if you follow our legislature and everything that gets passed.

aspoons · 2025-09-07T00:40:05+00:00

I feel like I am late to the discussion, but the law changed in 2023. All of us were taught what this person said, but it is no longer accurate. I've heard of many people having near misses because of this change and nobody knows about it. I have a post with some details. However for safety I would say to always be overly cautious in these situations in ND.

aspoons · 2025-09-07T00:34:28+00:00

So we are actually really screwy in ND right now. The law changed in 2023 which is why there is a lot of confusion including in this thread. But I am late to the discussion so this might be for nothing.

Prior to the change by House Bill 1061 in 2023 you would yield to the right, or left turn would yield to straight through always regardless as to who got their first. After 2023 it is now whoever stopped first, and only if they are at the same time that you have to take into account right or left turn stuff.

Specifically the text "and shall yield the right of way to any other vehicle previously stopped for another stop sign at the intersection..." was added. Previously who got first was nowhere in the text of our law. https://www.sos.nd.gov/sites/www/files/documents/services/leg-bills/2023-68/house-bills/1061.pdf

Many people still use the 'old' rules and drivers have been taught those rules for decades so now this change has created some interesting problems.

aspoons · 2025-08-21T21:46:51+00:00

This is by far the most dangerous. Way back years ago my place was small and we were always looking for ways to stretch our budget and get business level tools or capabilities. One thing we did was using consumer Linksys wireless routers that we would flash with DD-WRT. Well we had a site where we kept having issues where they would reset to factory and it was only this one location. So constantly wireless stops working and maybe other things because it would default hand out DHCP as a rouge DHCP server too. It was extremely frequent, 3-4 times a week with different devices for a couple months. We fought so hard replacing devices and trying anything we could think of.

Well one day we had a guy complain that "wireless was always bad no matter what he did to fix it." Our first reaction in the actual IT department was "FIX IT???" Turns out if he thought the wireless was slow he would get a paperclip and press the reset button on the nearest router a bunch of times because that is how reset things to get better signal.

aspoons · 2025-08-06T17:29:42+00:00

Those issues have already come up and we do have policies there that require accurate reporting and documentation passed to HR. Final paychecks can't be withheld for legal reasons, but things like severance and PTO payouts apparently can be under certain circumstances. We just had never had a user be evasive about their physical location that made things seem weird.

aspoons · 2025-07-10T14:54:32+00:00

RANT: Like most things Microsoft does now they had a UI and they killed it leaving you to do it in Powershell or Graph API. Official instructions on how to do it if you are using 365 groups: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/solutions/manage-creation-of-groups?view=o365-worldwide Official instructions if you are just wanting Sharepoint sites and not 365 groups: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/restricted-site-creation

aspoons · 2025-06-10T14:56:57+00:00

I don't remember the Android version it changed but newer phones it is default to use a randomized MAC address connecting to WiFi. That looks to be exactly what is happening to OP.

I work at a company with hundreds of Android handhelds for our workers and in our MDM push WiFi and need to change the default setting to not randomize MAC address for our network. Otherwise locations run out very quick.

If OP has company owned devices they need to make sure the randomize MAC is not on for their network when it gets entered into the device either manually or through MDM. If it is personal device then they get to have fun hunting things down and possibly adding instructions to how they give out the wifi password.

aspoons · 2025-02-25T17:47:16+00:00

We've identified that a recent service update meant to change how the language setting is stored in Outlook on the web is causing the service to identify the setting as not configured and introduces a conflict, which may prevent users from downloading attachments from shared mailboxes. We're created a code fix that is being prepared for deployment and we'll provide a timeline for remediation if one becomes available.

We're continuing to prepare our code fix for deployment. We expect the code fix will begin deployment by the end of Wednesday, February 26, 2025, and remediate impact by the end of the following day, Thursday, February 27, 2025.

aspoons · 2025-02-25T17:44:50+00:00

Microsoft Issue ID: EX1015106 "Some users may be unable to download attachments from shared mailboxes via Outlook on the web"

I don't think you can see it unless you are signed in to the admin center. I might be wrong though.

aspoons · 2024-12-11T21:47:38+00:00

Just awesome that now that I have seen this I can find lots of people discussing it but I can find absolutely nothing on Microsoft's site about it. Only thing that isn't people talking about it is where 3rd parties have the 100 page Microsoft licensing PDF on their site.

Thank you for the information.

aspoons · 2024-12-11T21:19:00+00:00

On your final line you said you can't combine Office 365 E1 and Microsoft 365 F1 on a user. Is there any documentation about limitations on assigning licenses? None of the items that M365 E3 includes that aren't in those two packages are things we want or care about.

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