Month: April 2022

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Venting

WARNING: This is gonna be a long one. You might just wanna skip over and head to the next nekkid man.

It started out simply enough. I wanted to throw together a document at work that explains the new way one of our home-brew applications works. It's something I regularly do and add to our department OneNote binder.

I made an initial screenshot and was surprised that I wasn't offered the option of opening it in Paint 3D as was usually the case. I went to open the application directly and it wasn't there. I had just used it a few days ago, but now it was gone. Completely.

How the fuck does that happen?

Suspecting that someone in Main ITS had been fucking around with something, I checked with a colleague to see if he had it on his workstation. He reported that no, it was gone from his as well.

Okay, I thought. No big deal. I'll just go out to the Microsoft Store and download it again.

What. The. Fuck?

Now I knew that Main ITS had locked down the store tighter than a virgin asshole, forcing us to use our corporate ID to access the store and then only offering a small smattering of apps to download, but I'd never run into it being blocked completely.

Maybe it was something with my ID? I logged out of the machine and logged back in with my administrative ID. Same issue. The same ID I use to set up new machines and update the pre-installed Store apps that ITS put on the image.

I logged into a desktop machine I use for purely administrative tasks and saw that Paint 3D was missing there as well. I attempted to reach the store on that machine and it got me right in. This was getting really weird.

I immediately suspected this was related to the fact that I had Windows 11 on my laptop and my admin desktop was still on Windows 10.

I went ahead and submitted a ticket about the missing application and the fact that the store was blocked on my laptop—knowing full well the Help Desk would just turn around and throw them back in our queue. To their credit, they only threw the "store blocked" ticket back at us. I got a call from a guy asking about the Paint 3D and he told me he could make it available in SCCM/Software Center for a direct download.

Sure enough, about ten minutes later I checked and it was available to download.

And the download failed. Repeatedly. I even rebooted to make sure.

I believe it was failing because it was trying to open the Microsoft Store, and since I couldn't get there to begin with it wouldn't install.

My next thought was that something in my profile on the machine was causing all these issues; some obscure bit flipped the wrong way. Recreating my profile from scratch would solve the issue surely.

Don't call me Shirley.

I logged back into the machine with my admin profile, renamed my regular user profile folder with a .bak extension, and cleared out the reference to that profile in the registry (exporting it to a .reg file first…just in case I needed it later.)

Logged out, logged in with my regular user credentials and waited while the machine churned away creating the profile. It churned and it churned, and after about 5 minutes I left to use the bathroom. When I got back ten minutes later it had logged in. But the task bar at the bottom of the screen was completely blank. No start button, no application icons, no clock…nothing.

I rebooted and logged back in. Same thing happened.

I went through the entire process one more time. Same result. Searching the internet for "empty task bar windows 11" brought up several solutions, none of which worked in my particular case.

It was time go go nuclear.

Due to the amount of additional applications and customization I'd done to my laptop, the last thing I wanted to do was wipe the entire thing and start fresh. The hardware was also going on five years old, so it was beyond time for me to replace it with something newer and the only thing which had prevented me from doing so for the last several months was the amount of work needed to put everything back the way it was. But now I was forced.

It was already late in the afternoon, but I manager to get a much newer laptop imaged almost precisely at quitting time. I thought I'd join it to the domain, load the half dozen default applications that are not part of the base image, get my standard account logged in and VPN set up and leave the rest (that I could do remotely) for the next day, which was a scheduled WFH day.

It wouldn't let me join the domain. My admin account was now locked out because of too many failed login attempts.

WHAT. THE.  FUCK.

I called the Help Desk to have the account unlocked (because my colleagues had all left for the day) and was informed that "We can't unlock admin accounts. I'll open a ticket for Security & Identity Management."

I told him not to bother. I was just going to go home and let it reset itself overnight. I realized any thought of working from home the next day had been destroyed as I could not remotely do any of the remaining tasks necessary to get a functioning laptop.

I texted my boss and let him know what had happened and that I'd be coming into the office tomorrow (today)…but just long enough to get my laptop functioning again and then would finish out the day at home. He was fine with that.

As I texted Ben as I left work, "I have never had a more emotionally frustrating day at work than I had today."

Fortunately, by noon today I got everything up and restored on the new laptop and was back home shortly after lunch.

I also did not update this machine to Windows 11—nor do I plan to.

2025 cannot come quickly enough.

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Okay, I Get the Colors…

…especially the orange/yellow, but the gold tone arms are a real turnoff.

50th anniversary, Technics? Thanks for making me feel ancient. I remember when the 1200Mk2 first came out.

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Well That's Interesting

Oh Apple…

Since…oh, I don't know…the last two O/S updates I've been having issues with my external monitor coming on when the MacBook comes out of sleep mode. It's not that it doesn't turn on; it's that the displays are for some reason swapped from what they had been. In other words, the external monitor that was being designated my main display shows what had been on the laptop screen and vice-versa. The only way to get it to (quickly) reset itself is to unplug it from the laptop and plug it back in.

Well yesterday I needed to set the external monitor to its native resolution in order to do a screen capture of a Dell quote for work (don't ask). Anyhow the thought came to me to leave the monitor at the default resolution (I normally set it a bit larger—or is that smaller?—for my aging eyes) and see if everything works normally when it comes out of sleep.

Voila! Woke the machine up this morning and everything displayed as it should.

Stupid Apple.

"It just works!"

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Boosted…Again

Because I'm officially an old fart, I got a second COVID booster on Sunday afternoon. While I didn't suffer any side effects save for a sore injection site for most of yesterday, late in the afternoon the expected (based on previous shots) reaction hit, and by the time dinner rolled around, I was on the sofa bundled up in a blanket with fever and chills, slipping in and out of sleep.

At Ben's urging, I finally dragged myself upstairs and went to bed around 8. I threw an extra blanket on the bed and immediately passed out until his alarm went off at 6. I woke this morning with a horrific headache (I'm not sure if that was vax-related or simply that I'd not had any caffeine yesterday), but I'm happy to report all is pretty much back to normal now and I'm fully caffeinated again.

And my 5G reception still hasn't improved! Hmph!

I'm still going to continue to wear my mask in public and in the office, if for no other reason that I haven't had any of my usual winter/springtime respiratory maladies for the last two years and I'm happy to continue that trend.

 

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Right?

Also known as, "How to Raise an Entire Generation of Children Who Hate Their Parents."

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Great Takes on the Current Madness

From Darwinfish 2:

I love that President Biden has come out publicly for a tax on the Super-Rich. It's about time. But it's funny seeing so many of the lunch-pail brigade criticizing the proposal as if it wouldn't make their own lives so much better. It just shows they've been well-trained by their overlords at Fox "News," who bleat about the plight of those poor, trod-upon billionaires, who are only trying to put bread on their family's tables, just like you and me. And by "bread," I mean thick bundles of cash and reams of stock portfolios, possibly tinged with the blood of those who did the work that reaped such benefits for the executives.

Already I see lots of moaning about the terrible unfairness of it all, how these put-upon billionaires would be taxed on earnings they haven't even realized yet. I say, screw'em. All the better to get some of that cash before they stash it in off-shore accounts.

This is a group that has had so much for so long, they don't even understand how badly the rest of us get screwed. Or maybe they do but WE don't. All I know is they can afford to shake some cash down to better the lives of the rest of us poor wretches, slaving away in stores, factories, or god-forsaken open office seating areas. And once they've been taxed, they'll STILL be billionaires, with plenty of dough leftover to fund their next yacht.

And if they still want to complain, my counter-proposal would be to keep the tax structure the same but eliminate all the loopholes they use to pay a lower tax rate than do you or I or the janitors who sweep up their offices after they leave. Just pay the taxes as already directed by the tax code, on the straight up. Then we'll see how they like the new proposal.

Russia Russia Russia!

Did you see this headline/story?

So this is how they're going to handle the acts of savagery being brought to light in Ukraine… by putting out absurd lies that no one with half a brain cell believes*.

*Except on Fox "News."

I wonder if Republicans know that this is how the rest of us look at their ongoing stream of bullshit stories. You know… BLM and Antifa were behind January 6th, Democrats are Satan-worshipping, child-eating pedophiles, TFG really won the election, tax cuts to the top trickle down to the rest of us, abortion laws are to protect women, recent local election rules were passed to fight election fraud, etc.

I don't think it's a coincidence that both Russia and the Republicans dissemble information and distract our attention from the truth in the same way. Top Republicans crave the kind of sheer, all-encompassing power wielded by Putin and Kim Jong Un. It's such an inconvenience to have to pledge fealty to a system of government that sometimes puts them out of power for the flimsiest of reasons, like ""The People" want someone else in charge" or "they totally botched the economy the last time they ran things." It totally interferes with their siphoning tax dollars into the pockets of those who have the most. The rest of us would just waste it, I guess. Stupid peasants…

Out, Out Damned Twat

Speaking of distractions, did you see the latest verbal excrement from the Colorado half of the famous performance art duo, Heckle and Dyed?

The quick answer is that buying beer or cigs is a decision, whereas sexual orientation is not. And I think most kids know pretty early on regarding where their interests lie. I know that even from my earliest school days, I was interested in holding hands with girls, not boys.

I think that ignoring the signs from your child regarding their orientation would be akin to abuse. Why punish a child for knowing that they're "different" at an early age? This needs to be an issue between the parent and child, and not the government, least of all some uneducated freshman Representative who's better versed in attention-whoring than passing legislation.

Knowledge is Knowing That We Know Nothing**

I see a lot of impatience afloat regarding the progress of filing charges against TFG and the rest of the 1/6 Planning Commission. All I'll say is what I said while the Mueller Report was being assembled: There's no sense in speculation or even forming opinions because we don't know jack shit yet. This process has been buttoned up and leak-proof. The wheels are turning slowly and that goes against the grain of our "I Need Answers NOW" culture. If we don't have the beginning, middle, and end of the story in 42 minutes, plus commercials, we have a collective fit.

Look, you'd like to see TFG get rung up, I'd like to see that too. But they have to tread carefully if they want charges to stick. It will be unprecedented to charge a former US President with such serious crimes. And you know what they say, "If you take a shot at the King, you'd better not miss." Because if he beats the rap, it will be open season for presidential corruption for the rest of our days. Given what we already DO know, you'd think charges should be obvious. But we don't know what we don't know. So there's no sense in squawking about the lack of progress while we don't know what progress has been made. So let's just breathe, huh?

And hope we're not in for another Mueller-sized swing and miss.