Walking in Hawaii - A Video NFT

This is a short clip that I made on my GoPro while walking through the water at Machida beach on the big island of Hawaii on November 8th, 2021.

In the beginning, you can hear a lady asking me something from far away - She was wondering what I was wearing on my head (I originally had the GoPro strapped to my head) and asked if it was a flashlight.

A little girl says "Hi".

I gaze in wonder at the beauty of my surroundings.

Ethereum Mining Today

 

Sheltering-in-a-Better-Place 2020

Good morning!

Being that there is currently a sleeping family member in every available space here and I always am up one or two hours before they are, I am having my morning tea (a delicious Milk Oolong, by the way) on the staircase!

44 hours.  That’s how long we get to stay at this AitBnB we paid for.  I thought that nothing would ever replace my grandparents old coach in the Pismo Beach Senior mobile home park, but this has been quite satisfying... it even smells like that place... the smell of sand and ocean air that has permeated the carpet over the years.  We have 4 hours left and I am happy to say that every minute has been a much needed infusion of happiness and relaxation.

We head back to Fresno and 105 degree (41C) heat in a few hours, but at least it’s supposed to cool down tomorrow.

It sounds like the entire state may be heading into another round of lockdown, though nothing ever changed much for us (and we’ve been careful to avoid other humans while here).  It has been really exhilarating to get away for just a couple days.

Why I support Bernie Sanders

I was recently asked outright why it is that I support Senator Bernie Sanders for President.  My initial response was something like, "It's complicated.  I'll write a 10,000 word essay on my blog and then post a link".  So I went off and wrote a few detailed paragraphs about anti-corporatism and the Green New Deal and blah blah blah... after working on it for an hour or so, I realized that it didn't explain all of the different facets enough and that I'd have to come back to finish it later.

A week or so went by.  During that time, my wife and I won tickets to go see Hamilton (the musical, for those of you who have been living under rocks) in San Francisco and decided to drop everything to go.  Somewhere near Oakland on the drive up there on Tuesday, we went under an overpass where someone had posted a homemade sign which simply read: "Bernie: People over Profit".  I saw this and thought, "Yeah, that about sums it up... I'm gonna totally steal that."

It's so beautifully simple.  In a society and economy where corporate profits hold higher importance than shelter for the poor, healthcare for the masses, or the declining state of the environment, "People over Profit" kinda says it all.  I mean, we can sit around and debate the finer details of a Medicare for All plan, or how something like the Green New Deal should be implemented, but I really think that for most people, our reason for supporting someone like Bernie Sanders is just that he exudes this attitude and always has.  It's synonymous with "Love thy neighbor as thyself" (and you would think it would resonate with more Christians).  People recognize this, as we also recognize the stark differences between him and other candidates who represent the same old mantra of the past which may have talked a good game, but was really still "Profit over People" when it came down to it.

Yeah, I'm good.  That was easy.

Sometimes, I just have to save these Facebook exchanges...

WMI Filtering in Windows Group Policy

Apparently, there is a lot of confusion out in the land of the Interwebs among people in the IT community regarding Group Policy in Windows and using WMI Filtering to target Desktop machines.

Being that the Global IT Team and I were attempting to set up new WSUS servers for each of the regions across the world where we have computers that need updating, we wanted to be able to specifically target Desktops, Laptops, DCs, and Member Servers separately, as doing so allows you to apply different policies for each (Keep in mind that this is essentially a new, entirely Windows Server 2016/Windows 10 environment).  There are a couple of key things that you'll need to know for the queries in the WMI filters that you'll need.  Namely:

"ProductType"
This value will look at the installed operating system on a machine.

1 =  Desktop OS
2 =  Server OS - Domain Controller
3 =  Server OS - Non-Domain Controller

"PCSystemType"
This value will look at the actual hardware type of a machine.

1 =  Desktop (Unfortunately, we had servers that were incorrectly being identified as this)
2 =  Laptop
3 =  Workstation (We have yet to come across any systems that return this value)

Here is a Powershell script which can be run directly on a machine, if you want to know what system type it is reporting as being:

function Get-HardwareType {
<#
.SYNOPSIS
Get-HardwareType is used to determine if a computer is a laptop of desktop.
.DESCRIPTION
Get-HardwareType is used to determine a computer's hardware type of whether or not the
computer is a laptop or a desktop.
#>
    $hardwaretype = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_ComputerSystem -Property PCSystemType
        If ($hardwaretype -ne 2)
        {
        return $true
        }
        Else
        {
        return $false
        }}
If (Get-HardwareType)
{
"$Env:ComputerName is a Desktop"
}
Else
{
"$Env:ComputerName is a Laptop"
}

After much research and experimentation, this is what wound up working for us:

Domain Controllers

These are the easiest as the computer accounts for your DCs should always actually be located in the built-in "Domain Controllers" OU.  Simply attach the policies that you want to apply to that OU.  Donezo.

Member Servers

Namespace: root\CIMv2

SELECT * FROM Win32_OperatingSystem WHERE ProductType ='3'

Laptops

Namespace: root\CIMv2

SELECT * FROM Win32_ComputerSystem WHERE PCSystemType = 2

Desktops

This was the trickiest of the three.  Some people suggested that you identify a Desktop machine as something that doesn't have a battery, but we have machines in Engineering and Finance with UPSs attached to them which show up in Windows 10 as being a battery.  In the end, this was the way to do it:

There are two separate queries here:

SELECT * FROM Win32_ComputerSystem WHERE (PCSystemType = 1) or (PCSystemType = 3)

and

SELECT * FROM Win32_OperatingSystem WHERE (ProductType <> 2) AND (ProductType <> 3)

The first one identifies the hardware as being either a "Desktop" or "Workstation", while the second one identifies the OS as NOT being a Server OS.  Again, it had to be done this way since the servers that we tested (on both Hyper-V and VMWare) were showing up as Desktops...

That's about it.  Happy Group Policy-ing!!!

Debating with Trump Supporters

I initially wrote this as a response to a conservative friend on Facebook, and wanted to save it here:

It feels like I've had the same detailed conversations about Trump's criminal behavior, impacts on the economy, etc. over and over with a number of conservative friends (I have 5 or so on Facebook) multiple times over the past few years. I've finally learned to just scroll past your political posts as I know that having a discussion about these things is pretty much futile on both sides, sadly.

The thing that has been going through my head over the past couple of weeks has been to continue to wonder how so many people like yourself (who are actually intelligent and usually well educated) still stick behind this President no matter what he does. A lot of people just say it's because of Fox News, but I know it isn't that simple - Though it may be for some people, shouldn't be discounted at all, and is certainly a factor. Going back to the last election, for a lot of people, Trump was the rogue-outsider candidate who was going to come out of nowhere and shake up the system, supposedly. He was purported to be a successful businessman, and many people believed that this is what was needed for decades now (since Ross Perot, at least). He was what was left as a choice after Sanders was robbed of the nomination by Clinton and the DNC, and he even took some of the narrative that Bernie was putting forth in an effort to bring those voters over to him. He struck a resounding and familiar chord with a lot of people in the simple slogans he was putting forth - "Build the Wall", "Make America Great Again", "Drain the Swamp". Once elected, he did actually move quickly to enact policies that were legally questionable, at best, and to put people into positions of power as he saw fit. He got the tax cut passed that the GOP and the corporations wanted. He started appointing hundreds of conservative Federal judges around the country and a couple to the Supreme Court. He pulled us out of the Paris accords and the Iran nuclear agreement.

I suppose that if you were initially a conservative who believes that:
1. Climate change is a hoax.
2. Tax breaks need to be given to the rich and corporations in order to create jobs.
3. Abortion should be illegal and even punishable with prison time.
4. The public school system, though underfunded, should be replaced with private schools.
5. Immigrants from Central and South America are criminals who want to come here to steal jobs.
6. Poor and homeless people only exist to suck on the taxpayer's teet. Government programs are a waste of taxpayer money.
7. LGBT people, women, and minorities don't deserve the same rights as everyone else.

[Plus multiple other things I'm probably forgetting at the moment]

...then this is "Your Boy" and you're willing to look past or completely ignore any shortcomings/wrongdoing of his to keep him in office for as long as possible. It's entertaining to see him get everyone so up in arms over everything.

I can (and already have, extensively) go into everything that is wrong with all that I've listed out above, but I may as well go into a church and play "The Last Temptation of Christ" in front of the congregation, because it's basically the same thing and I'd rather not bother anymore.

Oh, and my lunch break is about over. Well, that was fun.