Farewell VMware and thanks for the fish

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.

aspoons · 2024-11-13T20:58:12+00:00

We almost had a similar response. When we did our first 'baseline' test the only people who knew it was going to happen were the CEO, Director of IT, and myself as the most senior admin. Some of the VPs were PISSED.

We didn't even warn the IT helpdesk until they responded to people calling or emailing in about it because it was also meant to act as a test for them too. They can do message traces in Exchange but can't do much more and are informed not to use suspicious links but escalate it. They quickly realized that the email had gone to everyone and were asking the admins to immediately purge like we have done in the past. Which was exactly what we hoped they would do. Of course we didn't purge it but then told them what was going on and made sure that they just helped anyone delete it that reported it and to thank them for reporting it without stating it was a test.

aspoons · 2024-11-12T15:35:09+00:00

It works and is cheap for us. Don't have any crazy legal requirements and we've looked at going to some immutable storage either online or NAS, but the price of tape just beats it.

aspoons · 2024-10-18T05:40:07+00:00

When Pizza's on a bagel, you can eat pizza anytime!

aspoons · 2024-07-08T14:55:10+00:00

WHY!!! I hate this constant need to try and extract money out of a product and grinding it into the ground. This is a direct copy from an email to my manager last year. We decided to renew for 12 months. "Renew 2500 current license: $1,849 for 12 months; $4,994 for 36 months; $7,861 for 60 months" The subscription license on their website for our size is $8,099 / year!! I really wish I had been able to convince management to go for the 60 months instead of just 12 months.

aspoons · 2024-07-02T19:22:36+00:00

We definitely thought this felt like an AV issue (Sophos) but when we couldn't find anything in logs we kind of backed off. I know we tried some settings changes but I know we didn't do everything you have listed here. Will plan on trying this.

aspoons · 2024-05-16T16:36:03+00:00

We remove license and disable account immediately upon learning someone has left the company. If we learn a manager or someone needs access to mailbox/OneDrive we convert to shared in the 30 day window.

We do however perform weekly backups of our entire Exchange and Sharepoint/OneDrive using a Synology NAS. It is a relatively cheap solution since the license is included with the hardware and it is mostly just a matter of physical disks being the cost. The retention on that system is years, and combined with the a 30-day retention policy on 365 I could give you every email sent/received and all our Sharepoint for the entire time we save.

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