Computers – Electronics – UpCycle & More
In an effort to combat the Specter/Meltdown vulnerability Microsoft has rushed a few patches out into the wild that have been creating some odd issues on workstations and servers alike. I want to address the Unspecified Error when attempting to shadow a session in Remote Desktop 2012r2.
Continue reading “Remote Desktop 2012r2 – Shadowing Unspecified Error”
During my college days I worked in Radio Shack part time to help pay the bills. Its unfortunate Radio Shack has gone extinct, however when you are unable to adapt to the changes in the market only the strong will survive. During my career at The Shack one of the products that fascinated me was the police scanner. I spent hours behind the counter dialing up different frequencies and listing to calls all over New York City.
It was the dawn of the digital tuner age where a listener could punch up a frequency for police or fire and be right in the action. 476.3875 – BOOM.. you’re listening to NYPD! 482.04375 – Fire dispatch on the air! A few more clicks of the keypad and 482.2437 EMS is coming in loud and clear
If your parents are like mine they are tech savvy enough to get by. What I mean by that is they know how to launch Fire Fox and surf the web, maybe play checkers or chess and print a few documents when necessary. The problem arises when something goes wrong with their computer. Maybe they click on something they shouldn’t and get a virus or malware infection. Then again a Microsoft update could change some setting they are not familiar with and causes stress and a phone call to you. These days you have your own family and live an hour away from your parents and really can’t make the trip back home right now. This is where a remote solution comes into play!
Next time you are at your parents house, install one of these remote solutions and be prepared for the dreaded “my computer is broken” phone call.
Microsoft’s free video-calling software doubles as a very decent screen sharing program. Although you can’t directly interact with your friend’s desktop or take control of their computer yourself, you can view their screen as you both continue speaking, which makes the troubleshooting process more straightforward. And with the recent revamp of its appearance, Skype is easier to use than ever.
SKYPE.COM
This extension for Google Chrome can go beyond the web browser to share anything on a computer screen with someone else. Chrome Remote Desktop gives one user full control over the other computer for an experience almost like sitting in front of your mom’s machine.
CHROME REMOTE DESKTOP
Businesses use the professional TeamViewer tool, but it’s simple enough for anyone to use. And for personal, use—like helping out Dad with computer problems, it’s also free. It allows full control of the remote system
TEAMVIEWER.US
Remember when installing any remote viewing tools to keep passwords safe and out of prying eyes. Other than its nice to visit Mom and Dad for a few hours and fix their computer, a remote solution can come in handy when time is short or distance is long.
Thank you for reading my blog,
Joe
The technology world is continuously changing. Today’s awesome technology is tomorrows trash, its just a simple fact of life. I truly believe we should do what we can to reduce, reuse and recycle our old tech. Today while rummaging through the archive of stuff I came across an old Sony PRS-600.
The Sony PRS-600 was released in 2009 and by all standards ready for the trash heap. Before sending this device off to its finial resting place I decided to make a cute black and white picture frame.
Using an old 2GB SD card, I loaded up around 300 of my favorite photos, inserted it into the unit. On the settings menu I configured the PRS-600 to never shut off, and run a perpetual slide show with a 60 second delay between images. Continue reading “Make a Sony E-Reader Picture Frame”
The Optiplex 9020 is quite a number of years old now, and many are beginning to come out of mainstream service. As with many of my projects, I like to re-purpose older hardware for new tasks.
In this case I want to add an SSD drive along with a standard spinning disk. I will be using a smaller 400gb SSD for the boot drive, and a larger 2tb HDD for my storage. The only problem is the Optiplex 9020 only has one SATA power connector in the small form factor.
Before we begin I want to define the pin out of the SATA connector so you understand what’s going on. Also understand you can get the same result with a $7 splitter from amazon
SATA connectors are made up of 4 colors
Continue reading “Add extra SATA power to the Optiplex 9020”
It’s that time of year again when all the Elves are endlessly sitting on shelves. This year my office is having a contest for best Elf on the shelf photo.
Since I work in IT, I figured my photo entry must be IT related.
I found an old HP i3 laptop that was broken sitting around the house and decided to have some fun. In my head I pictured the Elf going through the screen (in one side and out the other) looking as happy as can be!
The first step was to remove any useful components still inside the laptop. I was able to recycle the hard drive, memory and processor. I also removed the mother board, DVD writer and battery and properly disposed of them.
First I dew an outline of the hole on the display using a sharpie, then using my Dremel MM45-06 Oscillating tool I cut the hole all the way through the laptop. WARNING! Laptop screens contain glass, use work gloves and eye protection while cutting.
I tried the Elf in a few positions to test how we would look.
Have you ever wondered what your life would be like if we never invented the micro chip? Micro chips and to that extent the micro processor should be hailed as one of the greatest inventions of all time. Most of our modern life 
would not be possible if we were not able to fit billions of transistors in the space of a postage stamp silicon wafer. Just think about that statement for a moment! Your mobile phone would be the size of a car, your home computer the size of a room in your house. Constantly swapping out burnt vacuum tubes.
Micro chips to the rescue.
Ever wondered how these chips are made? I never gave it a thought myself 
until I stumbled across these Silicon Wafers. For some reason or another these wafers were deemed defective so they were unable to continue the journey into computers, phones and other electronics. Some of the wafers were destined to become DRAM’s (memory) some designed to be micro processors, while others custom circuits for a specific job. Continue reading “8″ (200mm) Silicon Wafer With Amazing Chip Patterns”
I am a man who wears many hats at my day job, and one of my favorite hats is maintainer of our new Intranet site. I built the site on a WordPress foundation figuring any functionality I need could be added via plugin down the road. Recently ran into an issue with users accessing the site via an unsupported browser.
In the office I have designated the domain XXXX.LOCAL for anything that needs to resolve internally. Currently we purchase a piece of browser based software from a company that only supports IE in compatibility mode. This forces us to set XXXX.LOCAL to compatibility mode in all IE browsers. My WordPress intranet site does not like compatibility mode one bit. Since all my users have Edge, Firefox and some have Chrome as their available browsers the thought entered my mind to force them to use one of them.
HOW TO DESIGNATE iNTERNET EXPLORER AS AN UNSUPPORTED BROWSER
Continue reading “Detecting an Unsupported Browser with Apache Mod_Rewrite”
I had a couple of users in the office this week attempt to enable word macros on a document they received in email. I try to give my users as much information as I can to avoid viruses and malware, but each week the hackers come up with additional methods to attempt unauthorized network access.
This time around the hack was email based and the email came from a known source. The attacker has already gained control of the senders workstation and had sent the message as a reply to an earlier thread. Continue reading “Virus Email Reminder – Word Macros Are Bad!”
Here is another issue I encountered during my Exchange 2016 migration. A hand full of users have been getting knocked out of public folders with an Event ID 9646 and they have exceed the max of 32 session objects. What the hell does that mean? Why only a few users?
The Monday after I migrated public folders to Microsoft’s new “Modern Public Folders” a hand full of users began calling me they were unable to access them. Their specific error was:
“Cannot expand the folder. Your server administrator has limited the number of items you can open simultaneously. Try closing messages you have opened or removing attachments and images from unsent messages you are composing.”
