IT BS thread

Just upgraded to Office 365 Pro Plus here at work.
New Skype = hello, old man mode. I hate it. Buttons are huuuuge.
Also, dark theme is great for Word/Excel, but looks like ass for Outlook. Of course, it's a universal setting

 

I favor dark theme, never seen it on outlook though.

 

I totally lost track of this thread... NewEgg has a sale on APC UPSes it seems today? Maybe tomorrow (9/20) as well?

Anyone script in Bash much?

 

I used to do bash scripting about 15 years ago. I do a ton of PowerShell scripting now, mostly for vmware stuff.

 

PowerShell? That sucks.

 

Sounds like you've never used it. It's extremely powerful. On the fly, object oriented scripting.

 

It's crippled Windurz attempt at Bash. Before they broke down and started implementing bash proper.

 

Working with a language that is well documented, has a good user base, and Intellisense does not suck. Having an IDE does not suck. Having access to .NET does not suck.
Come back to me when you have none of those and you are ready to write your own TCP/IP stack from scratch, and you have to fully manage all memory handling.

Granted, I can't do that on a whim right now, but I have done exactly the above.


EDIT: I should also mention that you have to write your own OS. No cheating by using UNIX or Windows, that would be easy.

 

Man you're seriously offended by the fact Windows sucks.

For the record I regularly use VI/M to do all my scripting 'cause I can hit it from any of my army of servers that run headless CentOS.

 

good luck using bash to manage anything in vmware. all of the commands bring back objects that you can act upon via the pipeline.

get-vm | where{$_.powerstate -eq "poweredoff"} | start-vm -runasync
this is a very basic example of acting on the object results... it gets all of the VMs, filtered them by the ones that are powered off, then turns them on.

 

You're scripting instead of using vCenter?

Talk about "roll your own"

 

the scripts run against vcenter. if you have a task to do on 1 VM, do it in the vcenter gui. if you have a task to do to 100 VMs, you need to script it. say you wanted to shut down 100 VMs and increase their ram. I can do that fairly quickly with a script. clicking through the gui would take for forever.

$vms = import-csv .\vm.list.csv

foreach ($vm in $vms){
stop-vm $vm
get-vm $vm | set-vm -memoryGB 8
start-vm $vm -runasync
}

 

That's really weird way of interpreting what I said. I said that the world can be a much rougher place than PoSh.
I'm also not for the bandwagon approach of 'Windows sucks'. It's typically the rallying cry of grizzled sysadmins in handmade hemp suits, or starry-eyed CompSci freshmen who need to prove street cred. You can rip into any OS and find fault, you aren't special carrying around a MacBook with an obscure Unix distro.

From the little I've done with PoSh, it is the exemplification of a stereotypical Microsoft product: it tries to do EVERYTHING for EVERYONE, but tends to clunk around because it can't get out of its own way with all the baggage coming along for the ride. Most stuff seems to follow the pattern "let me search for all the stuff, load all the stuff into memory, and then, if you haven't given up on waiting for me to buffer, let me start actually doing what you asked for in the first place, but only if I haven't run out of resources." I spent two weeks on a crash-course learning the language, and everything was about trying to inject .NET where possible or deconstruct cmdlets into smaller trivial cmdlets so the system isn't choking out.

WYSIWYG coding tends to puke out results with unused fluff. Rolling your own tends to produce lighter, faster results, no matter the codebase. The difference is how much time does it take to do one vs. the other, including the performance/legacy maintenance.

 

Question for you IT gurus. Have a Sony Vaio. Recently it started bugging on me so I rebooted it to factory. Came with windows 8. Before I rebooted it I had windows 10 because of the update.

Now, after rebooting it, still at windows 8.1 because of it starting off at Windows 8 and having to I guess do that upgrade first, it keeps telling me to register Windows and I need the product key.

Can't find any of my paperwork from when I bought it, and for some stupid reason there isn't a sticker on the bottom with the key. WTF!

So how do I retrieve my windows key from my laptop to be able to register it so I can upgrade to 10? Did a bunch of searches and can't seem to get it. A little unsure about downloading a product key finder since they're trial versions and won't give/display the full key, and don't really feel like paying for the full version just to get it.

 

Speccy is legit and will give you your product key IF it is in the registry already.

Usually, depending on the laptop, they put the product key in the BIOS hidden inside and the OS is modified to look for it.

You might be in for a tough ride.

 

I've used a product key finder before, but usually they get a key from a machine that's already registered. Did you back up Windows at all before the reset? You could call up M$, but they will probably try to get you to purchase another key. At that point, you'd be better off buying a retail version of Win10. One possibilty, is try to find an OEM product key for a Sony Vaio. An OEM product key for another brand may not work for long, or at all. Once upon a time, the product key was listed somewhere, or an OEM CD included.

I have two Lenovo laptops, one came with Win 8.1, the other with Win 10. I never activated them, so maybe one of the keys could work for you.

 

I didn't get a CD with it when I bought it, and to be honest I don't even remember if the paperwork had the key on it. Weird thing I find is that before it never asked me to register windows, before I rebooted it, and now it's doing it. Don't really feel like buying or paying for a key, don't think I "should" need to do that since everything I have is legit, it's not like I bootlegged anything. I guess if I really need to, which at this point I don't think I do since so far everything seems to work fine, is buy a copy of Windows 10 and just go that route. Everything on the laptop is working fine as far as the programs I use and what I use it for, so might just leave it as is if it's super complicated to get/retrieve the key.

 

My friend had run Win 8.1 without a key. Every hour or two, the settings window would pop up asking for a key. Looks like you can download and install Win 10 from M$'s website for free, but again, Windows will try to annoy you into registering it.

http://www.howtogeek.com/244678/you-dont-need-a-product-key-to-install-and-use-windows-10/

 

Gotcha. We'll see what I feel like doing and go from there. Thanks a lot for the help and input!

 

Try the product key section of the OS tab on Speccy from Piriform. It'll give you a product key if it's present, maybe you just need to reenter it into the prompt and let it reactivate.

As far as upgrading to W10 again you may run into trouble there. The upgrade was free for the year but only worked by sending "some hardware information" (I believe this was motherboard specifics) and the W7/W8/W8.1 product key to Microsoft who then used those two pieces of info to generate a key specific for your system. Which would be sent down to the client and activated.

Unless you pulled this specific W10 key out before your reinstall you might be up a creek with no paddle.