#it manager things

It's around this time of year that I normally start work on preparing new software images for deployment over the summer. Given the current pandemic, I — like so many others — have moved to working from home Using a laptop with VPN and and RDC I can access the tools necessary to put together packages and compile the image sequence. The challenge is — how to actually test OS deployment when the distribution point servers are only available behind that VPN.

I think I've come up with a solution:

Work laptop built-in Ethernet port connected directly to home internet router

USB Ethernet adapter connected to the WAN port of an old router

Router SSID set the same as the campus open SSID with MAC whitelist enabled

Laptop connected to VPN, using Windows internet sharing to share that connection to the USB Ethernet adapter

Initial tests are promising. A work laptop brought home for testing connects to the router, since it sees the SSID it's expecting, and it is able to access firewalled resources as though it were physically on campus.

Time to start testing deployment.

User attempted to copy a meeting from one calendar to another

User attempted to paste an image into the body of an email

A little bit of a different project for me. I was tasked with building a small studio for recording podcasts. I've done classrooms and conference rooms and other such meeting spaces, and I've worked in television studios. I've never been the one hanging diffusers on the wall though.

The end result is better than I expected, but there is still some air handler noise that comes through when all four mics are live. Those Shure SM-7B mics are very sensitive.

Today, after two months of bash scripts and preparing a Mac OS software image, I abruptly switched to batch scripts and preparing a Windows software image.

Six months ago, I had to send a mass notification email altering the teams supporting affected equipment that construction crews had caused a water leak and had flooded the building.

Today, just a week after finally replacing the last of the carpet damaged by the flood, I'm working from home notifying the same teams that construction crews have started a fire on the roof.

Lost half the day yesterday trying to figure out why I could no longer connect to our Jamf server, after spending the morning building a configuration for imaging my Macbooks.

Purchased 22 Dell Precision workstations for the new lab a year ago. Four have already lost their SSDs, and another four have reported SSD glitches at some point in the last year. Replacements have been Samsung or Toshiba, not the LiteOn that originally shipped.

Reach out to account manager regarding the excessive failure rate. Service manager responds that there are no known issues with the LiteOn SSDs, and suggests updating firmware before contacting Dell support on future cases.

New firmware was published six days ago. "Fixed drive not detected issue and blue screen"