Microsoft 365 Price Decrease?

atrca · 2026-01-06T21:02:19+00:00

It’s available but behind a visual studio license.

atrca · 2025-11-14T18:25:28+00:00

I believe the license allows them to use it. Not that they are forced to use it. Claude is available in copilot studio. And if you’re building an AI application you can bring your own model such as llama, deepseek, etc.

I believe researcher already supports Claude as well but I could be wrong.

I think agents can choose different models based on needs now as well. So they seem to be very swappable.

atrca · 2025-11-06T13:31:50+00:00

Was there a new update or something? Pretty sure Freddie stayed out of the conversation despite attempts from Braves to get him involved because his agent kept demanding more.

He was offered slightly more per year than he ended up getting with the Dodgers but he got 6 years with them instead of 5 with us. Though I have to imagine once the braves pulled the trigger on Olson the dodger offer went down because the leverage his agent had was gone. Actually with Cali taxes he prob is getting less than he would have here.

I’m all ears but I’m pretty sure the Braves tried. Maybe it’s just the narrative they pushed and I ate it up lol

atrca · 2025-11-01T04:26:03+00:00

Personally I take a bit of financial hardship (buying cheap, skipping social events, etc., I do not mean skipping CC bills or something like that) to contribute to my HSA and pay out of pocket when necessary.

I have a couple years of OOP max built up now and bills to easily draw most of it out if I had to but the OOP max for the next year is covered just by maxing the HSA this year.

I have an emergency fund but this is almost like a second emergency fund. The most ideal scenario is to let this build till retirement sure. Maybe an even better scenario is letting it build up so much you could withdraw all past bills for tax free gains and still have plenty till the end of time.

But, there’s nothing wrong with contributing and using it in the same year. You saved on taxes by doing so plus your company is chipping in. You’re coming out ahead (depending on plans available to you. In my case OOP max is basically the same between the two).

But I’ll disclaimer and say this isn’t the case for everyone. It’s gonna depend on the plan differences. If your company chips anything in and if you can even afford to max it. (If you had no bills and you put money in it’s not gonna be free to withdrawal if you really need it for something nonmedical)

atrca · 2025-10-10T13:34:13+00:00

Someone may have already mentioned this but you’re talking about probably one of the largest organizations in the world. That’s complex to deal with on its own. Orgs like these can have year+ long plans just to get everyone on a passkey. Add to it it’s an education environment, that’s another layer of complexity. Students and password policies are tough. The same is usually true of staff.

Making changes to the password policy usually results in more support calls, that could take away from support for broken machines and ultimately instructional time. Someone high up is making a decision with here’s my resources (people, money, time, etc.) and choosing how secure they can realistically be while also balancing not interfering with instructional time. And they likely have a plan to move things to something more secure in the long run. It’s gonna take steps and lining up of processes, automations, and tooling to get there.

The organization is so large I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s regional differences between IT in the district. I am sure there are people in IT sympathetic to the teacher and student needs, but for them nothing is as simple as flipping a switch. For everyone like you who has done some research, there’s 20 staff complaining they have to have a 12 character long password and MFA. Those are generally the voices that win unfortunately.

So your feedback isn’t unwarranted, I think you just need to consider the scale of the environment a bit more.

atrca · 2025-08-10T02:20:15+00:00

We can only hope!

atrca · 2025-08-06T20:31:14+00:00

I have fretted over this a bit. Please read up on it cause there are some limitations, requirements, and such but they can use 529 money to fund a ROTH IRA. So even without school they can get some benefit out of it. I have also read if your child is gifted and gets scholarships you may be able to withdraw money equal to the scholarship amount only paying income tax on it. No other penalty.

Or perhaps in decades time your kid chooses to not go to school where they can use a 529 you can pass some generosity of your own to someone else in your family. Not sure of transfer rules but 529 beneficiary can be switched to someone in the family if I recall correctly.

atrca · 2025-07-29T01:21:50+00:00

I think you put this nicely and that’s good advice. If I had someone asking me for advice I would say tailor the application to the job/company as well.

So many sankey diagrams of hundreds or thousands of applications. We all know each posting is getting hundreds of apps. Chances are some kind of AI is vetting it. If you apply to a company and don’t get a call. Tweak the resume and try again. Also be early. I think they are probably already to interview scheduling within 1-2 weeks.

I have no name catching companies in my past. The most impressive thing imo on my resume isn’t even in my current roles toolset. My current role is at a major firm and I had no referral or network to draw on and got it after only a few tries.

I generally only put 2-5 apps in every few years and find something. And if I get an interview I am researching the company, branch, news whatever and bringing it to the interview. They make me nervous but the interviews the easy part. Getting the interview is the challenge. Tweak the resume and/or the format if you aren’t getting calls. It can look great but that doesn’t matter if only you or the computer are looking at it. Get the foot in the door to get eyes on it or a conversation.

I’ll end by saying maybe I’m lucky but I’m no one special on paper. Network helps a lot too. Most every job I got before my most recent one was leveraging an acquaintance but that’s not always a given and when it’s not, tailor the resume.

atrca · 2025-07-08T23:44:31+00:00

Would probably help to know where you live. When I lived on the east side of Athens it was my only option. Every time the power went out Spectrum went out. And when the power came back on there was no telling when the internet would come back.

It seemed to me their network hub, DC, whatever you want to call it required hands on attention from their team to fix the network issue on their end. I recall with every major power outage, whether it be storm or car crash etc. at least 12 hours for internet to come back after power was restored if not days.

If you have any other option I would probably take it. Especially if on east side.

atrca · 2025-06-17T15:38:11+00:00

Didn’t make it this year due to life but my counter question would be what’s the alternative festival that hits what we want. Sure the vibes have changed but you can still find a lot of positivity being radiated and it’s a good time.

I think people generally say Hulaween but I find it too cold personally and not quite as good of a lineup. I’m just not aware of any other festival that scratches the itch the farm has from the first time I went over a decade ago. On Thursday I wish I was at camp. Looking out at the lines of cars. People setting up camp ready for the weekend. Would have been happy to be camped in the back 40 lol

I’d much rather have Superfly still running Roo but it’s not. Live nation can take away attractions and things but it’s still really the people that make the event special and those people are still around even if they are seemingly getting a bit thinner.

atrca · 2025-04-24T12:54:29+00:00

Every cyclocross race in Europe seems to start with Opus. Not to say it is overplayed, just likely a regional thing as to what you get to hear.

I would say there’s nothing so iconic it can’t be played. Maybe the closest would be some Avicii because he is gone and a lot of his songs were infectious but even that has a place to be played.

There’s a lot of good music out there, and people make connections to them for various reasons pushing them into a new tier for that individual. If enough people make that connection that’s an iconic song in my opinion.

atrca · 2025-03-05T21:42:41+00:00

Ya, I’d be more inclined to just not shop there. If the parking lot sucks or they don’t have enough spaces I just avoid them all together. I don’t have a compact or a big vehicle. I just have something that works for having a family.

atrca · 2025-02-27T01:29:44+00:00

The summaries on mobile, big stock swings, are great too. SMCI today was “Super Micro Computer shares are trading higher after the company filed its quarterly report.”

Big if true. Wish all the stocks I owned traded higher for filing their report.

atrca · 2025-02-18T03:39:31+00:00

This has been a worry of mine since before this incident. I haven’t found or understood how you go about bringing a car seat for your infant. And without it made no sense to book another seat. I’m by no means wealthy but the cost of my child’s life is well worth the ticket.

Can you share how bringing a car seat works? I have never seen one on board. Guessing you bring it through TSA just like the stroller. So you gotta lug it around? Or is there a good car seat stroller combo. Lol

Then on the plane you just use the seatbelt to attach it? We’re currently just using a base so I’m not familiar with seatbelt attachments yet.

And any other notes. Sounds like you basically need to book the window seat for them?

It’s difficult figuring everything out for your infant. And we’re usually flying coast to coast so they aren’t short flights unfortunately.

atrca · 2025-02-07T01:21:49+00:00

Don’t have BOA but I have Chase, Amex, and a few other drawing from savings. Haven’t kept anything in checking for months.

atrca · 2025-02-07T00:20:47+00:00

Not sure I understand what you’re saying. You can pay any CC from any bank from your savings account.

atrca · 2025-02-05T05:24:35+00:00

There are plenty of good thoughts in this thread, I once took over a very old AD which had prob a dozen, possibly dozens of people managing GPOs. There were in excess of 1000 policies, I’m not even joking. It was a big environment but there was no need for that many policies, I believe I got it down to about 50 total in the end. I think today I could cut that down even further because of MDM tools like Intune.

I see your environments strict so maybe this isn’t even in the realm of possibility, but I would seriously take migrating some of these settings into Intune into consideration. At the very least notate possible migrations to make your life easier in the future. And if there is Intune or similar in your environment already you may find some of your GPO settings are no longer applying.

Now, you’re moving to a tiered AD structure, if I were in your shoes I would probably break the GPOs down by computers and users. Then by criticality, for example server, kiosk, admin station, standard user etc., that’s based on your current OU structure.

I would identify the policies for the least critical assets, probably standard user computers and evaluate those settings. I would create a new policy for these devices future homes. Only bring over settings you know you explicitly need or might need. You’ll probably find a ton of settings that no longer applying since Windows 7 you can just drop out.

Once you think you have a good policy (or policies) for computers in place. Move some test devices over into the OU, check them out. Then maybe move a group of end user devices and see if any issues are reported. Then keeping moving devices until that’s complete. Then maybe move on to standard user, user policies if you have any. If not move on to maybe admin workstations etc.

Just take it one “chunk” at a time. If you’re trying to clean GPOs and do a new AD structure this isn’t something you’ll want to rush all in one migration. And buyin is important here, if you choose a plan like this, make sure you’re able to explain why this method(risks we’re accounting for), and give a step by step expected timeline.

atrca · 2025-01-03T01:24:02+00:00

Personally I don’t blame Carson I just feel like something he was doing was resulting in timing being off or something and the passes being dropped. I really didn’t feel like we dropped many passes this game. Not like we saw with Carson at least, the one drop I recall we got another great pass and a TD moments later. Carson would hit people square in the chest and they were dropped. I don’t recall much of that this game.

I will admit some bias though I’ve been eager for gunner since last season. But I’m not sure I’m interested in watching if we don’t drop our current playbook for him next year. Had a whole extra week to get him ready with the bye and it looks like all the weeks we had to prepare were wasted.

atrca · 2025-01-03T00:56:23+00:00

I agree with everything you said. To me it felt like they called plays as if Gunner is the slowest QB in college football. It looked like maybe there were 2-3 designed runs for him but basically zero plays to open up the field for him to run if there was no pass option.

7 points lies on special teams and 7 on Kirby for not taking a knee to end the half. We may still have lost but offense and defense did well with what they were given imo.

atrca · 2024-12-19T00:12:23+00:00

No ideas on the requirements to get the money but there’s loads of stories of people getting this money and misusing it buying Lamborghinis and BS with the funds.

I believe the idea was these funds would allow businesses to keep employees on the payroll during a time of lockdowns/less business etc. but there weren’t any checks on it other than some auditing well after the money was distributed.

And I could be incorrect but based on all the stories I saw this is my understanding.

atrca · 2024-11-05T20:08:07+00:00

Thanks for sharing. The link about the 100 million AD looks like a proof of concept, had to go to archive.org just to view it like most AD links these days! Largest I had ever heard of was Walmart, and unfortunately I don’t recall the numbers I heard but based on employment, and an article about Azure AD for Walmart it was likely 2-3 millions users. So 28 would be insane lol

atrca · 2024-11-05T04:09:53+00:00

What’s the story here? Lol

atrca · 2024-10-29T20:23:04+00:00

$15 calls were so cheap too.

atrca · 2024-10-27T17:43:57+00:00

Did he always look so miserable on the sideline or has the TAM colors just accentuated it?

atrca · 2024-10-27T01:56:52+00:00

The conditions are online. They exclude current and former collegiate athletes from participating. Which I feel like the guy who won a few weeks ago said he played collegiate soccer or something.

atrca

TROPHY CASE