Thoughts on many things
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Twitter: Exporting your data
I’ve been a Twitter user for the better part of fifteen years, now, and it’s a platform I’ve enjoyed using. With Elon Musks takeover of the site, and the sackings that immediately followed it, I have found continuing to use it much less of an attractive proposition, and I have made the decision not to…
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Powershell: A script to find all members of several groups refined
One of the scripts that I use most often is the one I wrote about back in September of 2019. Usually, I only run it for up to ten or so groups, so it’s not a big problem to simply swap out the group name, rince and repeat. Recently, however, I needed to run it…
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Prioritizing value
It is one of my strongly held beliefs that what we do must provide some customer value. If it doesn’t, we probably shouldn’t be doing it. I don’t mean that we necessarily do something we can charge for (the goodwill we get by NOT charging for it can be benefit enough to do it), but…
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Powershell: Add user to multiple groups
A while back, I had a user that had to be added to a large number (150+) of active directory groups. Rather than doing so manually, I spent a little time looking up how to automate it, and created a script to help me do it. Here’s how I constructed it: First, I needed to…
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Review: YubiKey 5 NFC
October is the national cyber security awareness month, where a lot of people emphasise the importance of InfoSec to daily operations. Here’s my small contribution; a review of my Yubico YubiKey 5 NFC U2F token. It’s a mouthful, to be sure, but let’s get into it: I’ve used password managers for years, and I’ve been…
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Top 15 Excel shortcuts
As I’ve described elsewhere, I use Excel a fair amount. To this end, keyboard shortcuts are very useful. Here are some I find to be very useful: Alt and = Sum up a column Ctrl and + Insert a cell Select a row/column and enter Ctrl and + Insert a row/column above Ctrl and -…
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Payment and product
I have previously written about the adage “if you’re not paying for it, you are the product”, and struggled with how it applies to myself and this blog. To be sure, there are – at the very least – exceptions to this rule, that go both ways. The exception to who or what the product…
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Outlook: Problems opening and organizing calendars
On a relatively regular basis, I find my days packed with appointments, reminders, and meetings. At other times, I need to organize a meeting, or talk to a colleague, and need to check their availability. For these reasons, and others, I’m an active user of digital calendars. Anything that happens during the work day is…
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Version control and me
In 2000, I spent a year abroad. At the time, desktop computers were the norm, and laptops were prohibitively expensive. USB flash drives had literally JUST hit the market, and the cloud was barely something industry insiders talked about. I produced huge amounts of text on computers, however, and the way I transferred it was…
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The ticket cost funnel
A common misconception among end users is that we (i.e. the IT department) charge them per ticket. While I don’t know where that misconception comes from, let me say right out that my experience of more than twenty years in the industry is that this simply is not true. While it is true that support…
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Powerpoint: Remove presentation notes
As part of my job, my role as head of my union local, and as a board member in my shooting sports club, I give presentations on a relatively regular basis. Whenever I do so, I usually share my slides so that people can refer back to them later on. I do not, however, share…