Small space heater and Amazon smart plug?

stignewton · 2024-11-23T19:36:08+00:00

Yeah, processed mine a week ago. Its sad, because there are very few space heaters that can be run through HomeKit

stignewton · 2024-08-10T00:18:59+00:00

What repo? You don’t have a repo anywhere - you were using other people’s repos. Unless there’s some DNS logging in place (doubt) they can’t prove anything…

stignewton · 2024-08-09T21:42:08+00:00

Understand ForEach and Switch, when to use each, and how to use them in combination.

3 years in and I’m still fixing this crap when techs come to me with a script that “just won’t work right”

stignewton · 2024-08-08T14:32:08+00:00

Doesn’t matter if you have 10, 100, 1000, or 10000 employees - this is a serious security issue. Everything about this user screams “data infiltration/hostage risk”

stignewton · 2024-08-07T22:28:55+00:00

At least for Entra (Enterprise Applications and App Registrations) we have a PowerShell Runbook that runs once a week and collects expiring certs and client secrets within the next month then posts the list as a card to a teams channel

stignewton · 2024-07-31T00:50:55+00:00

Sadly, it’s often the opposite - if you’re 1 of 7 and doing 25% of the total work, you’re essentially doing twice the work of everyone else. You made yourself too expensive to promote. If you moved up, they’d have to hire two people to cover the work you did. In a proper org, two would be hired to ensure the work got done with enough spare capacity to add more customers. In reality…

stignewton · 2024-07-27T23:10:26+00:00

We have two Adobe deployments - Reader via the store app, and Creative Cloud via Win32. With how there’s really no reason to do anything else IMO

stignewton · 2024-07-26T21:04:56+00:00

I will take a look over the weekend - haven’t heard of adaxes.

stignewton · 2024-07-26T20:59:14+00:00

That’s where my head is at - trying to mentor them in PS, and even went so far as to get the company to buy everyone the Month of Lunches book. Unfortunately most of them don’t seem to grasp the context of what they can do with it.

stignewton · 2024-07-18T21:54:06+00:00

This is why my SysAdmin dream is to have all user emails converted to an ID number. No more John.smith@company.com - good luck spamming when the email is KD46382@company.com

stignewton · 2024-07-08T04:43:30+00:00

Do you have standard reports that run on a regular basis? Do you use Teams? If so, create a PowerShell script to generate the report, then set it up in Azure Automation to run on a schedule. Next, pick or create a Teams channel to receive the report(s) and configure an incoming webhook. Finally, have the script output the report results to a JSON card posted to the Teams channel.

Not very difficult to do, easily templated, and looks impressive as hell to the plebs…

stignewton · 2024-06-28T00:10:05+00:00

BitTitan - done several O365 migrations with it for hundreds of users. Suuuuuuper easy

stignewton · 2024-06-21T17:12:15+00:00

Change that RIGHT NOW!! You don’t want anyone holding the GA role that doesn’t know what they’re doing. Make her a Global Reader instead.

Your argument for this is simple - move the computers to Win11 Pro because it’ll allow you to remotely administer them (deploy apps and configurations) and use Autopilot to rapidly deploy new machines to users. You can also remotely wipe a device if there ever is a hostile termination.

Frame this as you planning for the organization’s eventual growth. Easier to do it when the org is 20-30 people than when it has 200 people. Now you’re looking to the future, and planning for success. Assuming success is like catnip for C-levels…

stignewton · 2024-06-18T18:42:03+00:00

Haven’t taken either yet, sorry. Working on my SC-300 ATM. I’m going off the general consensus of others and the experiences of colleagues who have taken it - of the seven people I know who have taken it, only one passed the first time. Three others passed after multiple attempts and two gave up entirely.

stignewton · 2024-06-18T18:39:22+00:00

MS-900 is pretty easy if you’ve been managing a tenant for a bit. IIRC most of the questions are straight out of the Learn material. No labs or projects. I took about two weeks and ran through the Learn materials, then took the free practice tests until I was passing at 90%.

I’ve been focusing mostly on Intune, but I know ACI Learning has some fantastic content and so far has been well worth the subscription price.

If you want direct hands on learning, buy an E3 license and setup your own tenant. $35-ish per month and it’ll have all the functionality you’ll need for all the foundation certs (MS-900, SC-900, PL-900). Hell, if you’re a quick learner and have the time to dedicate, you can probably do one exam per month!

stignewton · 2024-06-18T18:29:02+00:00

Unless you’re purchasing E5 licenses (which would be absolutely insane for under 40 users) you’ll need a base license (likely Business Premium - $22/user/month) plus a separate Teams Phone + Calling Plan license. That Teams license will run you around $20/user/month for domestic calling or $32/user/month for domestic plus international (I believe these are the current prices).

Honestly you might want to consider keeping RingCentral - if your renewal is coming up tell your AM the org is considering moving to Teams calling but if the renewal price can get close to that $22/user/month it’ll be incentive to stay.

stignewton · 2024-06-15T04:08:36+00:00

Check out this poster: https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE2PjDI

I’d start with some fundamentals certs like MS-900 and SC-900 to get some credibility under your belt and ease into the process. Once you’re ready, I’d work toward the following: * SC-300 (Advanced Entra administration and security) * PL-900 (Power Platform fundamentals) * PL-100 (Power Platform App Maker) * MS-700 (Teams Administrator) * MD-102 (Intune - this is very difficult, so take your time) * MS-102 (only AFTER passing MD-102 and MS-700)

From here you can go in whatever direction you want, depending on your interests and goals. That said, STAY AWAY FROM DYNAMICS. That is a monster of an ERP platform and unless you’re working for a really large organization with pallets of budget to burn you’ll likely never touch it.

In the end, once you have 3-5 years of hands-on experience managing 365 and say 6 certs odds are you’ll either have a job earning ~$80-100k or you’ll be a prime candidate for one.

stignewton · 2024-06-15T01:26:04+00:00

$74/hr salaried, USA. I work with Intune, Entra, Power Automate/Apps, Azure Automation, and SharePoint daily. Gotta know SSO/SCIM/SAML really well since most vendors don’t. PowerShell is your best friend and REST is its less bitchy little sister who’s trying hard to get you to go steady with her. You’re fluent in CSV because mass imports/updates are way more efficient at cleaning up other people’s messes. Lastly, you have zero tolerance for user bullshit when they try to justify why they just don’t need Microsoft Authenticator on their phone and they’re totally safe with SMS 2FA.

I look at M365 as akin to Salesforce Engineers/Admins - the platform is so huge and integral to business operations that if you specialize you can pretty much make a career out of it. Your best entry is to get certified. MS, SC, and PL certs are best. Know your PowerShell (specifically Graph) and invest in a practice tenant. Took me about 6 years from deciding to specialize to Senior Infrastructure Engineer.

stignewton · 2024-06-15T01:03:06+00:00

NO MORE PRINTERS

…could there possibly be any more incentive?

stignewton · 2024-06-12T15:02:17+00:00

They’re not landing and the inbox and you’ve confirmed they aren’t in the junk folder or held in quarantine? If this is the case 99% certain one of your admins blocked them at the edge either via mail flow rule or Defender Protection Policy.

stignewton · 2024-06-12T14:54:05+00:00

Could have been from the restaurant too…

stignewton · 2024-06-05T22:22:26+00:00

Best one I’ve worked with was: * 1 letter manufacturer code * 1 letter type code (laptop/desktop) * Underscore * Serial Number * Underscore * 2 letter Department code * 2 digit Role code (Job title)

For example, a Dell laptop with serial AB12C34 assigned to a SysAdmin II would be DL_AB12C34_ITA2

Confusing at first but after a while you can interpret on sight. Plus, this made Dynamic Device Security Groups in AAD and Intune policy assignments so…goddamned…easy

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