The Pale Blue Spot

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 h

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

I had to go through this the other day when I discovered that the computers in our Houston office were three minutes behind the ones in our Fresno office (and the rest of the world).  Since it seems to be that this is a much more complex issue than you'd expect and it only comes up every few years at most, I had to search for answers... ultimately, I came across  this blog  that lays out the process quite nicely. On another note, I'm prepping to go and play bass with the Danielle Rondero band as we are scheduled to open for Bernie Sanders at Fresno City College this Friday... stressful, yet exciting!

Since this keeps coming up in conversations, I thought I'd just post this here as a reference so I don't have to keep typing the same things over and over... Let me reiterate that I'm not saying that Republicans or Democrats are better here, that I am for or against Trump (although you can guess where I stand on that), or that this article has anything much to do primarily with political stances - Quite the opposite, it's more of a critique of the Capitalist system which both parties have supported, and continue to support/defend without question. We have been consistently told that the economy is doing great and that all we have to do to understand this is to look at the unemployment numbers.  Yes, they are lower than they have been in something like 50 years, but there is a lot more to look at behind this one number and we should never take it at face value (even when it appears to be bad, it's probably worse, and still doesn't tell us all that much). Th

Christian Support of Trump An old friend/acquaintance of mine recently posted something in regards to President Trump and how he as a Christian would stand behind him, basically, so I politely asked him (and anyone else in the thread who wanted to) to explain why he thought that Christians should support a man like Donald Trump.  One person (who shall remain anonymous) responded as follows, and this seemed like a fairly typical response that is probably somewhat representative of the protestant Christian community as a whole: I wanted to offer a concise response to this, and there was no way that I would be able to in a format that would fit properly in a Facebook response, so I decided to edit it well and post it here on my blog (then link back to the article in the thread). Let’s get started… “Pro Israel” This is a touchy subject, of course, and I suppose I can start off by saying that being Pro Israel isn’t a stance that is uniquely held by Republicans… that much shoul

In recent weeks and months, it seems like the topic of Climate Change has gotten to be more and more difficult to ignore as it has not only shown up in the form of new reports like this one  by David Spratt and associates in Australia, but also in the form of what seems to be record-setting numbers of tornadoes and floods in the Midwest this year (though, you don't see any weather-people making the association on any mainstream news).  To top that off, we have the beginning of what will most likely be another devastating fire season here in California - I can't wait to breathe all of the smoke from that in the coming months (it tends to drift down to us in Fresno). Just some of the recent news articles found on Google News At this point, if you are someone who is still saying that Climate Change isn't real or that it isn't man-made, that's probably because someone is paying you to say so... In which case, I would like you to please go get a spoon and shove it

Maybe it's time to ditch Facebook and just post stuff here on my own blog?

Do you remember MySpace?  About once a year, something will come up that will remind me of all the good times I and my friends had with it.  We even had a page for our old band, "All Good Things".  When I would think about it and had some extra time to screw around at work, I'd go back and find my page.  Mind you, not everything had been preserved, but there were still some old posts, music files, and pictures. Well, I just read today that the IT department at MySpace accidentally deleted about 10 years of data in a server migration.  How did they do that?  Were there not backups, or some sort of contingency plan, or both?   Their IT department must be run by a team of monkeys. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/18/18271088/myspace-music-deleted-internet-archive-flickr-tumblr

Today is the last day of my Thirties. The end of a decade is probably as good of a time as any to reflect on the past.  It seems like many people I know who are in the same boat have been doing the same - usually in public on Facebook or Twitter - And after reading some of what they've been saying, I think I'm doing pretty well now... though it certainly wasn't always that way, and it's been a long journey. Most of the last decade was pretty tough, but that was mostly of my own doing.  I mean, it was pretty bad there for a few years.  I actually managed to rub quite a few people the wrong way, and I certainly wasn't in a good place emotionally or physically.  After struggling for most of my adult life with drugs and alcohol, I finally was able to move past it all (I had a lot of help and support from the woman who ultimately became my wife... I don't think I could have done it without her).  Since that time, life has gotten to be exponentially better.  A lot