Recent Posts

451

Post New Requests Here / Re: System tray notification of remote computer status

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 28, 2016, 06:39 AM »

The darker sides of human nature aside... It seems that there is already an existing issue with the check media being accidentally used for other print jobs. So being that I work for a rather large MPS (Managed Print Services) company, I've run across this type of thing before. Frequently with doctor's offices and narcotics prescription forms (you want to talk about "Tightly Controlled" forms..).

The industry standard solution to this is to have one drawer of a printer - frequently locked (as a nod to Iain) - that has it paper type set to something other than plain paper (preprinted forms usually). This prevents to printer from selecting media from that tray "accidentally" - usually because the other tray(s) have run out. Then a specific 'Special Form Printer' instance of the driver is installed with its - in printer preferences - paper type set to the media type that was configured on the target printers forms drawer.

That way only one preordained person has legitimate access to that print option eliminating the need for convoluted shenanigans that require people to remember to look for something before doing something...which is incredibly disruptive to everyone's workflow.

Just a Thought..

452

Living Room / Re: Custom dice for board games, etc.

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 27, 2016, 11:26 AM »

I could just go with white dice with a single (but unique) color on each face.

-Deozaan (April 26, 2016, 11:38 PM)

If you're willing to use stickers, why not just get some medium - to any - size labels, print what you want on them (including face/background color), and then trim them to size for the die face.

453

Living Room / Re: Do we have any musical people on DC?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 22, 2016, 01:13 PM »

I didn't really mean anything by my comment about 50 being the new 35. I guess I was just surprised at 57 being considered "older" because to me it doesn't seem to fit my idea of an "older" person. Time for me to adjust my perspective.

-Deozaan (April 21, 2016, 07:25 PM)

Oh bullshit...there is nothing wrong with your perspective. 57 is older than 35 true...but it isn't older like people think of their grandparents being "older".

...Even if I am a grandfather at 51, that's different..

-Stoic Joker (April 22, 2016, 11:16 AM)

Once you get into the older upper middle age, you have to start thinking about it not as middle aged, but as older for certain medical things.

-wraith808 (April 22, 2016, 12:04 PM)

ftfy

I wish I'd thought about it as such, and I'm not yet to the half-century mark.

-wraith808 (April 22, 2016, 12:04 PM)

Really??? I thought you were a bit older than I am.

It was a lot harder for me to get over a full fledged blowout of the flu last year, so I make sure I get the vaccine.

-wraith808 (April 22, 2016, 12:04 PM)

I got vaccinated once back when I was 5 - Didn't like it much - haven't gone back..

Honestly I think genetics factors in to things much more than half the vaccines they push on people do. If you have a good immune system, you're most likely just fine. Despite just having had one, I seldom get colds and have never had the flu. I've also never had chickenpox, measles, or mumps ... My sister did. But not me.

And yes, I know I'm an odd case that shouldn't be used as advice for/by anyone, but...

It's that "I'm not old syndrome" that kills a lot of people younger than they need to be dead.  Especially in regards to going to the doctor regularly.

-wraith808 (April 22, 2016, 12:04 PM)

I'm old, but I'm not old ... and I've no interest in getting stuck on a bunch of pills by some quack that is "Practicing" medicine because they think I should be on something...for some reason...that's probably insurance billing related.

454

Living Room / Re: Do we have any musical people on DC?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 22, 2016, 11:16 AM »

I didn't really mean anything by my comment about 50 being the new 35. I guess I was just surprised at 57 being considered "older" because to me it doesn't seem to fit my idea of an "older" person. Time for me to adjust my perspective.

-Deozaan (April 21, 2016, 07:25 PM)

Oh bullshit...there is nothing wrong with your perspective. 57 is older than 35 true...but it isn't older like people think of their grandparents being "older".

...Even if I am a grandfather at 51, that's different..

455

Living Room / Re: Be prepared against ransomware viruses..

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 22, 2016, 06:51 AM »

Many of the ransomware variants actively destroy/encrypt any backups they can find - and they look - so this isn't a magic bullet of any kind. You would need a backup that was offline at the time of the infection for this to be a complete solution.

456

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 19, 2016, 12:34 PM »

^Bizarro Firewall kills Start Menu behavior has now been confirmed on four different machines at that location.

457

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 19, 2016, 11:44 AM »

I posted about a similar issue in the Windows 10 Tips thread.

-Deozaan (April 12, 2016, 05:01 PM)

Oh that's where that went ... Crap! I knew I'd seen it somewhere around here but couldn't fine it again.

Reeally annoying issue ain't it?

-Stoic Joker (April 13, 2016, 07:04 AM)

Yes. I know someone who encountered that issue but nothing we tried would solve it. Even doing a system reset only "fixed" it for about 24 hours before it started up again. I just helped them reinstall Windows 7.

-Deozaan (April 13, 2016, 01:32 PM)

So on that vein, here's a really new wrinkle - The Windows Firewall...is killing the Start Menu.

Best I can tell - and I'm guessing - If you have the Windows Firewall disabled during the Windows 10 upgrade, it's behavior become erratic at best. Because even with the service stopped and disabled, it will continue to block ports on the machine in a rather chaotically random fashion.

So you're probably wondering WTF?

So were we for the past two days. We had upgraded a customers network to Windows 10 last Friday and everything seemed to go fine ... Until Monday morning. Then all hell broke loose as the machines all started to randomly clench for no obvious reason and refuse to communicate with anything. Which is a real bitch when you're trying to work on something remotely btw..

After a myriad of reboots we finally managed to hammer our way into one of the more finicky machines, and there was our little friend the ultra shy Start menu. Multiple laps through the popular four available repair steps were to absolutely no avail. So finally the guy that works with me - who was working on the machine - decides on a lark to enable and start the Windows Firewall service ... And up pops the freaking Start Menu.

Only guess I can make is that some of the "Live Tile" Metro apps displayed in the Start Menu are holding up the show because the Firewall is blocking their attempt to update before being displayed. And the correlation is going completely unnoticed because the firewall is - or at least is supposed to be - inactive.


Now ain't that some shit?

458

General Software Discussion / Re: Homeland Security warns Windows PC users to uninstall Quicktime

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 19, 2016, 06:46 AM »

I don't fight that needless battle. 

-wraith808 (April 18, 2016, 07:47 PM)

Ditto. Which is why I don't own any iDevices.

-Deozaan (April 18, 2016, 08:25 PM)

Same here. 

459

General Software Discussion / Re: Homeland Security warns Windows PC users to uninstall Quicktime

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 18, 2016, 05:34 PM »

Seriously, who installs the quicktime garbage on Windows anymore?

-Shades (April 18, 2016, 10:23 AM)

People that install itunes.

-wraith808 (April 18, 2016, 10:26 AM)

Which is one reason I hate iTunes and refuse to install it.

-Scott_Y (April 18, 2016, 12:30 PM)

You don't *have* to install QuickTime with itunes.  I have itunes and no quicktime.  But it's checked by default.  And you have to keep unchecking it.

-wraith808 (April 18, 2016, 12:57 PM)

Yes, but IIRC they kept squirting it back in with every other "update" just in case you ~like~ "forgot" to install it before...

460

General Software Discussion / Re: desktop shortcut to do a Simple task

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 16, 2016, 03:02 PM »

Since passwords were mentioned can someone explain to me why it is necessary after all these years to have passwords with a mix of UPPER and lower Case, numbers, symbols and two teardrops?  They claim it is to prevent a dictionary attack.  For the dictionary attack to work there needs to be a lot of trial and error as it goes through the word list.  So why are these institutions letting whoever is trying to log on make all these attempts?

-MilesAhead (April 15, 2016, 12:33 PM)

Two side of the same coin. People are people...and some times they have bad days. So - Administratively Speaking - you can't make the lockout threshold too tight...or you're just creating work for yourself (trust me ..). However, after a certain point...where it becomes bloody god damn obvious that nobody on this planet could possible even begin to attempt to type that fast - even after doing a pound of cocaine. Then yes FFS the system should have the provision to lockout said user account. This would eliminate 95% of the issue and the - completely security theater - "need" for the rampant annoyance that is known as 2FA.

Naughty Stoic!  Are you chasing his girlfriend?

-questorfla (April 15, 2016, 04:52 PM)

Nope. I'm an Admin. And at that point I was a completely humorless Admin that was stuck on-site while coming down with a cold and was therefore deeply immersed in the process of feeling like total shit, and having far less that zero patience. So... While - in the interest of professionalism - I usually just note things, smile (okay smirk..), and move on. This time - warn as I was - I decided to say screw it, whip out my naughty hammer, and stroll through defiantly waiting for anyone to bitch about something that they screwed up.

I really do try to be nice ... I'm just not really good when cornered.

461

General Software Discussion / Re: desktop shortcut to do a Simple task

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 15, 2016, 11:10 AM »

Are that many people actually entering their passwords while people are looking over their shoulder and if so, what is to stop them from just watching your fingers to see what keys you hit?

-questorfla (April 15, 2016, 09:08 AM)

Actually shoulder surfing is really quite popular (it even got a name..). I used it the other day to get past a security door with a pin style lock. I just hung back a bit - pretending to be off in my own world - watched peripherally, and caught the guy punching in a pattern based code (naughty naughty - never use patterns). So the next time I got stuck at one of those doors...I wasn't stuck.


Situational Awareness Always.

462

DC Gamer Club / Re: Somebody actually made an Ikea furniture building simulator game

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 15, 2016, 10:56 AM »

^MC Escher would be proud..

463

Living Room / Re: remember last pdf session

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 13, 2016, 11:06 AM »

PDF Xchange does that.

464

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 13, 2016, 07:04 AM »

I posted about a similar issue in the Windows 10 Tips thread.

-Deozaan (April 12, 2016, 05:01 PM)

Oh that's where that went ... Crap! I knew I'd seen it somewhere around here but couldn't fine it again.

Reeally annoying issue ain't it?

465

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 12, 2016, 06:48 AM »

Just in case anyone else is having fun with the Windows 10 start menu disappearing periodically I'll stick this here. I never did find a specific trigger, but periodically the Action Center, Taskbar context menus, and start menu would all become completely unresponsive. Everything else worked fine...just those stopped working ... And that got annoying really (really...) fast.

The commands I found online that were supposed to fix it and their results are below:
1.   SFC /SCANNOW    -This one found and corrected some issues but ultimately had no effect.
2.   DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth    -This one did - best I could tell - do nothing.
3.   Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}    -This one finally got things moving again as all of the aforementioned problem children suddenly decided to spring into view about 2/3 of the way through its run. 24 hours later the machine is still behaving ... But time will tell.

466

General Software Discussion / Re: Shellbag Analyzer and Cleaner 1.25

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 11, 2016, 10:46 AM »

That could be quite handy if it can find and delete broken Quick Access links - that for some reason can't be deleted - in Windows 10. I've run across that occurrence about half a dozen time in the past 6 months ... so the issue is on the radar looking for a fix other than dumping everything under QA.

467

Living Room / Re: anyone else getting DNS error for easeus.com?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 09, 2016, 07:40 AM »

It spit out "unknown server" and the IP of the name server.

-MilesAhead (April 08, 2016, 01:38 PM)

Don't take no for an answer, run a whois on the IP address and it should return who the address block is registered to ... You can usually infer quite a bit from the response.

468

Living Room / Re: Twist Tie alternative?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 07, 2016, 11:37 AM »

I just thought someone may have invented a home made thing like a rubber lined alligator clip.

-MilesAhead (April 06, 2016, 08:35 PM)

this reminds me, I saw someone recommending hair clips for bundling cords (though IIRC they were talking about power cords, but the principle applies  )

-Target (April 06, 2016, 09:55 PM)

Along those lines are the rubber band style hair ties. And having had long hair for the past - many decades - I've found occasion to use them for all sorts of things in a pinch. It's really just like using a rubber band, except hair ties are a larger easier to use diameter.

Did I mention they're ultra cheap?

469

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Diskovery

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 06, 2016, 11:14 AM »

Wow...that is small! Mine came preinstalled in an HP Z440 workstation, and it's - comparatively huge - the size of the contraption I posted a pic of earlier.

470

General Software Discussion / Re: Software to allow Local testing of a website code while monitoring activity

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 06, 2016, 06:35 AM »

While not quite what you're asking for, I have found the (free) Fiddler Web Debugger to be quite handy for this type of thing.

-Stoic Joker (April 05, 2016, 06:52 AM)

And something that I've started using instead of fiddler is postman.

-wraith808 (April 05, 2016, 06:49 PM)

Interesting, I can see where that would be better for developing/tweaking your own code (which questorfla is doing). My purpose for Fiddler is generally - for ethical hacking - to find out what someone else's code is doing when things go awry.

471

General Software Discussion / Re: Software to allow Local testing of a website code while monitoring activity

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 05, 2016, 06:52 AM »

While not quite what you're asking for, I have found the (free) Fiddler Web Debugger to be quite handy for this type of thing.

472

General Software Discussion / Re: How to encrypt external hard drives using USB in Windows 7 Pro and Home?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 04, 2016, 06:48 AM »

Bitlocker was/is only available on Pro or higher versions of Windows 7 or later.

-4wd (April 03, 2016, 08:00 PM)

Unfortunately - since Bitlocker To Go would be great for this - Bitlocker isn't available in Win7 pro, as it's only available in the Enterprise and Ultimate editions.


EFS is best left to domain networks due to the level of complexity that is recovery key handling. So a third party solution is probably best for this.

473

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Diskovery

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 02, 2016, 06:25 PM »

It's all good man ... I'll test what I can for you.

474

Living Room / Re: What Killed the Middle Class?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 02, 2016, 01:19 PM »

I think the American people were primed -by dissatisfaction - for a grand social experiment back then...and the other options just really sucked.

-Stoic Joker (April 02, 2016, 08:07 AM)

Don't call a black president "a grand social experiment". You may be mistaken for a bigot. Or a racist. Or both.

-eleman (April 02, 2016, 10:39 AM)

That's just hypersensitivity driven fear trying to quell honest and open dialog. Because the first time anyone does anything it is in part, or is completely - by its own nature - experimental. Due to the fact that nobody really knows how it is going to turn out. If the thing in question involves people, it becomes a social experiment ... And if the thing being tried by those people for the first time is a really bid deal, well... Ain't that grand.

It simply is what it is. and if one equivocates on admitting the risks involved in a venture...they are also subsequently eroding away at the level of success it can therefore claim to have attained ... And frankly, I think that's rather sad.

-Stoic Joker (April 02, 2016, 11:33 AM)

Venture? Electing someone with a different skin color is a venture? How is that even a variable involved in the analysis? How is that a new thing? BO is the 44th president of the US. Not the first one.

-eleman (April 02, 2016, 11:44 AM)

Right, he's just the first black POTUS. And it's not like I did or am making a bid deal about it ... The 6 O'clock news did when he was elected. For months heralding the grand accomplishment that we as a society had achieved.

But you seem to feel that we should take that away from him...because it was really no big deal.

If Donald Trump gets elected, will he also be an experiment, on the grounds that he is the first one named "Donald"?

-eleman (April 02, 2016, 11:44 AM)

No, it will be an experiment because he would be the first- non politician -  political outsider to be elected in like forever.

How about Hillary? Will she be an experiment on the grounds that she will be the first one with ovaries?

-eleman (April 02, 2016, 11:44 AM)

Yes, because anything that hasn't been tried...hasn't been proven. And anytime anyone is the first someone to do something...it tends to draw a lot of attention. It has nothing to do with good or bad, it's simply human nature.

Why is Christa McAuliffe a household name??? Can you name another person from that flight without using google first - I bet most people can't - Because...


-----------------------

Since this is going quite badly off topic, I'm going to bow out of the thread. Hopefully before it goes completely off the rails.

Bye!

475

Living Room / Re: What Killed the Middle Class?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 02, 2016, 11:33 AM »

I think the American people were primed -by dissatisfaction - for a grand social experiment back then...and the other options just really sucked.

-Stoic Joker (April 02, 2016, 08:07 AM)

Don't call a black president "a grand social experiment". You may be mistaken for a bigot. Or a racist. Or both.

-eleman (April 02, 2016, 10:39 AM)

That's just hypersensitivity driven fear trying to quell honest and open dialog. Because the first time anyone does anything it is in part, or is completely - by its own nature - experimental. Due to the fact that nobody really knows how it is going to turn out. If the thing in question involves people, it becomes a social experiment ... And if the thing being tried by those people for the first time is a really bid deal, well... Ain't that grand.

It simply is what it is. and if one equivocates on admitting the risks involved in a venture...they are also subsequently eroding away at the level of success it can therefore claim to have attained ... And frankly, I think that's rather sad.