Category: Uncategorized

Still getting used to writing out the new year. I did a build stream last week but other than that, I am trying to take it easy. Turns out being a parent is kind of busy and can make you tired.n nnn n nnn Enjoy your day!

Found some ancient group settings restricting uploads to about 100kb. Fixed up for all active user groups to be more modern and image-heavy.n nnn n nnn Optional, of course. n n It helps that bandwidth concerns for here are less as primarily just text I may share. Old long form is nice to think out a thought without chopping characters for spaces or word fragments to land a perspective before a gotcha snap back. Keep up on naps

Front page update reminder. The recent content is on the forums. I occasionally come to put some threads on this main page. We are experiencing 2020 and all the splendor it presents us. I could rant about all the things but it’s pretty apparent.

Still making time to play some games and dabble with new hardware. On occasion I do some computer stuff that is not work related and even share some scripts or tweaks I came across either by my own poking around or as usual, by the help of many other people out there sharing awesome content.

Thank you for dropping in and keep taking care of yourself. In the event you have been slacking on self-care, make that a priority – please. Too much serious is never a good time.

It’s that time of year.  Shop for stuff, see a bunch of ‘year in review’ articles and keep an eye out for extra awful legislation to pass.  Besides all that, 2018 is riding out to a close.

Security wise, hmm.  Diversify your portfolio.  By that I mean make sure your credentials to login are really different between sites.  Even if they are moderately doing password security correctly in the database, that doesn’t say the rest of the login stack is authenticating properly or some component is not vulnerable to exploit.  Just for the sake of repeating it, be sure to contaminate data you give to free sites and not like your real name, or other identifiable attributes.  Even if that company is not intending to correlate all that information to build a profile about you, surely some scammer and or data analytic company is looking to.

This year has been stressful but fun.  Considering I haven’t been a teen for a little bit of time (hahaha), the old scope of life is a little more complex than to wake up, do as I wish, have no obligations, etc.  On a fun note I have been hanging out on Discord servers and chatting up with people and being on some Stream chats.  ThugCrowd is one of the main places to find me as I also am the AV person who archives the show episodes, in case of issue with twitch or if you just want them to play offline, by video or mp3.  There are some very cool and smart people on that server, I’m happy to be around these chill people.  I also lurk around The Many Hats Club.  Good people to be found there as well, just many many more people and a faster chat.

Final plug for ThugCrowd, is to peep the archives.  I like archiving stuff, so it gave me a chance to normalize some of my scripts.

Other stuff?  I noticed today I am pretty bad putting content on the front page of the site, so I will back fill October post to the WordPress front end today. :p  I still drive a good bit, dabble in powershell and like setting up raspberry pi devices for various purposes.  Sometimes I sleep too, well ok, I take naps.

Hopefully you are having a nice Halloween!  It’s about mid-60 F temperature wise today.  I will step out for a break shortly.

Game wise, Fallout 76 had a Beta that was kind of a failure, since console and PC players had to download the same 45 GB multiple times.  On the upswing, the next beta window is increased to be from 2pm EST until 11PM EST tomorrow on 2018/11/01.  Most of the other ones are only in around 5 hour blocks, with a release on 11/14.  Speaking of such, Bethesda has their own launcher client now, instead of you being able to just get the game on Steam.  I guess they want in on those market demographics and not paying Steam a cut of sales.

Tech wise, Hmmm hahaha.  Red Hat was bought by IBM.  Kind of big news as I figure that recurring service contract income is a big deal for IBM to be able to attach to their financials.  Red Hat is only going to get bigger, well at least they were poised to before the purchase.  As a mainline Windows systems person, you kind of have to have your head in the sand to deny Linux computing in the server stack.  I have to say the inverse applies to thinking Microsoft is not going to remain in the business stack for some time as well.  But enough of my ideologies. 🙂

I recently got a better webcam so I can play Magic the Gathering with some buddies, using actual cards.  It’s a good time, I just tend to be out a bit between work and the occasional local tech event I like to turn up for.

I also helped the missus install Windows 10 in a VM on her Manjaro install.  She loathes windows so my powers grow stronger by enabling her to do so. Bwhahaha!
Have a nice week!

Oh yeah, we are on the 4th Nightmare on Elm Street film for our Halloween sessions.  She is getting to enjoy them for the first time.

I don’t know about you, but it has been pretty damn warm around here lately. In respect to Fall, Southern Tier: Pumking is out again. I have bought a few 4 packs and enjoyed them rapidly. The Mrs had a few but I kicked the last 4 pack solo in the night, last week.

Haha. So yeah when not working, I have been playing a few games and flying a DJI Spark drone. I have about 4 hours of flight time and am having fun dabbling with recording video, taking pictures, testing range and flight maneuvers. Game wise, I fly my drone like I’m playing Watchdogs 2. Granted I have not strapped a Wifi Pinapple to it (yet).

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is awesome. I love that game and I think I made that apparent in it’s thread. I also have about 9 hours into Octopath Traveler. I got it a few weeks after it released but I am enjoying it so far. Good story, each character has their quest line / initial meet sequence, the battle system is pretty good with it’s accrued tactical points and well, I was impressed and liked it much more than I did the demo.

I heard Diablo III / Diablo 3 is coming to Switch. I’m a sucker for portable dungeon crawling so count me in there. Rumor has it you can play local multiplayer without an internet connection too. If I come to your house to visit you, get a Switch lol we can slay some demons and shit.

Reminder I still have HouseOfPlus.com thanks to ImmortalBob scoring the domain back. If anyone is playing games and wants to network it up, go nuts those forums are all you. You are welcome to post here too, obviously if you have an account still but I know it’s wild here.

I’m chilling for now but may have some more content going up soon. Mostly random stuff I wish I saw around more. I gotta finish this beer since the cat almost knocked it over. We might get around to watching John Wick tonight. Netflix horror movie selection, kind of sucks.

Original Thread

As usual I have been slacking on posting to the front page of the site.  The forums are the active place for newer content.  Some threads of interest so far this year are:

• A Youtube channel for video benchmarks
• An Android security overview of privacy and security settings
• Macbook Pro 2015 Update issues to 10.13.4 and warranty screen repairs
• Using an Elgato HD60 S capture HDMI device, as used for video benchmark videos and POST videos.
• Raspberry Pi used for dd imaging of data drives
• Hunter83 asked about some memory, system diagnostics and stability tests while in Windows
• I fixed an ‘ipmap-binding’ error on my Pi-Hole Raspberry Pi setups
• Some extra details on Firewall log processing with use of MSSQL and Python
• Better elaboration on Cisco ASA configuration and light management

  Outside of those threads, I played some games and floated around some Discord servers.  A bit of fun chatting and light doses of trying to help people work on various projects, while learning tons from everyone else.
  I think that’s a hearty site news update so far!  Playing some Skyrim on Switch before the point I should soon go to bed for the night.

  Ah yes, HOPE is coming up in about 2 weeks!  Looking forward to enjoying the weekend of 7/20 – 7/22.  If you are going and want to IRL chill, drop me a msg or find me wandering around and say hello.

Reporting in for another year of computer stuff, video games and general contemplation and rambling. Holy shit though, the whole Spectre and Meltdown turned into more than just an Intel issue and they even got the branded vulnerability treatment. Patches continue to release and be tested, while it looks like you can count on some performance hits in the mitigation of these flaws.

If you have read some of my recent benchmark review threads, you will notice I used the Final Fantasy XIV Benchmark utilities for a couple of years. My laptop seems to have taken a score hit of about 2000 points / 20 FPS but I also have to make sure that’s not just the Oculus 2.0 Beta killing my GPU.

Even stepping aside of the CPU issues, patching has been getting way more rapid. Looking back on 2017, I can remember when devices like QNAP storage servers semi-rarely having firmware updates, to having a new firmware drop monthly. Between all the vulns at *nix kernel levels and core software packages last year, it has been an intensifying ride. Getting all armchair here, but it seems like the days of your biggest concern being default passwords, are getting side–stepped by core component flaws. Not saying default passwords are not still an awful practice, but more that the level of these core vulnerabilities are making the passwords irrelevant in scope.

Other than that, I keep reading tech and various other articles and books when I can. I’m also a big fan of trying to relax in the world of games. I have been spending most of that time on Nintendo titles, Indie Games and VR Content.
I also caught that crazy cold that was going around this week and it had my sinus’ in a knot for at least 2 days straight.

If you work in tech, be sure to take care of yourself. Speaking as someone in a role with limited funding for obsolete equipment, I can say I feel the trying pinch of keeping legacy gear spinning.
Enjoy the new year!