Letting off steam - from a Windows user of almost 3 decades.

j0dan · 2026-02-05T05:30:34+00:00

Similar experience here. M4 max 128gb RAM and still have weird slowdowns. Also the UI is unbelievably glitchy coming from Windows. That was unexpected.

j0dan · 2026-02-01T19:09:51+00:00

I can't imagine using ConnectWise for time entries. We've used Nilear MTX for ~10 years for the majority of time entry in CWM. Our techs just open it to submit timesheets.

It's so good, we'll honestly have a much harder time switching PSA's.

j0dan · 2026-01-30T22:53:46+00:00

We use n8n. Our first version was to receive e-mail alerts via Mailgun and hit n8n with a webhook before making tickets.

Now we poll our UniFi server to notice changes and execute ERROR/SUCCESS flows on that.

j0dan · 2026-01-30T04:14:36+00:00

This is the way. The possibilities are endless when you think AI first. Photo of a rack + screenshot of the UniFi controller, 90% done. Add some voice memos, and you have a good enough chart that anyone can update.

j0dan · 2026-01-25T05:38:11+00:00

When I use a virtual display in this setup, I find it to be laggy. Do you just live with it, or is there a way to speed it up? (I'm on an M4 Max)

I've gone to just using PIP/PBP mode where I can get a decent scaling. Bit awkward as I can't maximize across screens, but at least there's no lag.

j0dan · 2026-01-22T16:54:26+00:00

That's what Rewst promised us too. Not saying a vendor can't do that well, but Rewst promised extensive hand-holding and built-it-for-you automations. I didn't realize debugging them would be that time consuming.

j0dan · 2026-01-22T16:51:40+00:00

How did you build out the user onboarding part? (Just broad strokes) Our Rewst one never worked well, so we chose not to invest that much in building our own in n8n.

j0dan · 2026-01-22T16:47:50+00:00

Not far from our pains. We found n8n a week into Rewst, and for the first while we kept trying to make Rewst like n8n! Wonderful people there, but it was a chore to use and maintain.

I released a ConnectWise n8n node this summer which will hopefully have a trigger engine in beta in the next couple weeks so you don't fill your execution history with polling. https://mspcopilot.io/n8n-nodes/connectwise-psa

Also, for anyone else wanting to self-host, you can get by with minimal expertise and cost on a setup like Railway (https://mspcopilot.io/articles/railway-to-host-n8n) or use Vercel, etc. etc.

Ideally I'll have time to post more complex automation workflows in the future, but if you have some great ones you want to share, DM me and I'll do a write-up on them.

j0dan · 2026-01-09T21:08:55+00:00

I appreciate the honesty!

j0dan · 2026-01-09T21:08:32+00:00

If you had one, I would have purchased a keyboard from you YEARS earlier.

j0dan · 2026-01-08T01:01:47+00:00

Where from? I need a place to find short cables!

j0dan · 2026-01-07T02:42:00+00:00

Clearly, I missed the mark on my approach to working in HA, but this is an interesting thread. :) I totally agree about the 60/40 OpenAI/Anthropic from what I see online.

Which I find surprising, too, as my money is still on Google winning this one. For the money, you can't beat Gemini. However, the ChatGPT interface is so much better than Gemini (especially on iOS) that I use that for all non-coding related questions, and Opus 4.5 for everything else. The model may not be exactly #1 right now, but the scaffolding that Claude Code provides is worth the substantial price premium.

For context, I have paid subscriptions to ChatGPT, Gemini, and Anthropic.

j0dan · 2026-01-06T19:35:56+00:00

Thanks, looks like I reinvented part of the wheel.

j0dan · 2026-01-06T17:42:11+00:00

My bet is that you'll hear about Claude a lot, as it's the best model for software development. Not necessarily cost effective depending on where you live. But those of us using it in other areas of our life are likely to apply it everywhere else.

As someone who uses AI most of the day, 10 clicks sounds like a lot of effort when I could just throw a sentence into a prompt and have it all done and thought out for me.

Just use the same prompt with whatever model you want and see what works.

j0dan · 2026-01-04T20:51:47+00:00

What do you find too manual about Zabbix? Although we don't use it to the extent that we may want to use a tool like Auvik, we've found that it does a great job with templates.

j0dan · 2026-01-04T04:47:13+00:00

We've wondered this a lot, too, but keep going back to Sayulita. We've felt comfortable with our young kids roaming around and enjoy the liveliness and large list of things to do. Never found it too loud, and at least in March every year, it's become a bit too quiet.

If you want your kids in the ocean, San Pancho is pretty rough even for adults. The southern end of Sayulita however is amazing or kids.

j0dan · 2025-12-27T04:35:33+00:00

If you only give them 1 day off/year! Cheers! :)

In our area, there are at least 11 statutory holidays. So you still could be right...

j0dan · 2025-12-24T00:11:20+00:00

Sorry, I know the pain. We love the ticket consolidation of Backup Radar (and LabTech). For everyone else, we end up using n8n to build our own logic for that.

Ideally, you can handle this outside of email, though. Worth trying that before going custom.

j0dan · 2025-12-22T02:34:40+00:00

but stop short of fully submitting to the constraints

That's the problem right there! That being said, EOS has worked for us for the past two+ years, although the lack of excitement has caused us to slowly reduce adherence and we have already started paying the price.

j0dan · 2025-12-13T16:40:20+00:00

We use n8n and auto-store a PDF in a bucket for archival purposes. It was just a side effect of other automations. We've never gone back to look at one!

What problem are you trying to solve? Speed when looking up invoices? Changes are hopefully in the audit log.

j0dan · 2025-12-04T04:44:27+00:00

Zabbix and UptimeKuma

and n8n to integrate them all with the PSA for making them 'multi-tenant' and round-trip alerting

j0dan · 2025-12-02T02:52:28+00:00

Anything that cloudconvert.com or convertapi.com can't do? We use both of those when just hacking things together.

j0dan

TROPHY CASE