The Comms Room

12:01 AM

they put a new copier on one of their facilities and needed automated production printing from their Linux server to pull LaTeX-generated postscript documents from tray 2, to ensure the use of carbonless multi-part forms paper.

Konica/Minolta Bizhub 363...

and the official PPD file was janky.

So my morn was spent extracting the PPD from an Apple Mac OS X driver, modifying it for their use... testing documents and printouts.

and that's a firm with its own developers and a team of sysadmins... but the value comes in doing something they couldn't do.

WesleyDavid

@ewwhite Yeah I think something like that is way above my skill level. Wow.

ewwhite

so @WesleyDavid Two approaches.. help supplement existing staff... and be the go-to for firms with no dedicated staff

WesleyDavid

@ewwhite I prefer what I've done with the firms that have no dedicated staff.

ewwhite

think about how many companies can't retain a @mdmarra... but need some of that type of automation.

or a network engineer... or a linux guy... or a DBA.

Nathan C

lol, this is funny...someone has a project on freelancer to have a dissertation written.

Ryan Ries

12:07 AM

I just made my first Meta question.

WesleyDavid

@RyanRies cupcake

I'm spent on that topic. I'm not even going to read it. =P

ewwhite

@WesleyDavid or move?

WesleyDavid

@ewwhite Yeah, it's higher on the list of possibilities than it was in the past.

MDMarra

@ryanries what rate, winbro?

WesleyDavid

Seems like less keeping me here suddenly. Or maybe not so suddenly.

Ryan Ries

12:09 AM

@MDMarra Your job opening

WesleyDavid

@MDMarra He wants you to quote him a rate for your Winbro job.

MDMarra

@RyanRies oh. Probably not what you'd be interested in. It's not a senior-level role. Probably mid 70s?

I actually don't know what the rate is though, just a guess

ewwhite

@MDMarra bling

Ryan Ries

@MDMarra If you can beat $90k + insurance, adjusted for Texas -> Penn. move, I'd be interested :)

Nathan C

Better than the under $30k i'm making currently

ewwhite

12:10 AM

@RyanRies I have many job openings!

MDMarra

Heh, if a more senior position opens, I will def keep you in mind though. We're growing super fast

WesleyDavid

Screw you people. With a wrought iron fence post. Sideways.

=P

Nathan C

I'm sure eventually I

MDMarra

I am getting a surface in like 2 weeks though :D

Nathan C

I'll be making more...just gotta bite the bullet with the low-level positions

Ryan Ries

12:11 AM

@WesleyDavid Living in AZ is even cheaper than DFW, Texas, right?

Nathan C

I also hate how close ' is to the enter key

ewwhite

@MDMarra Hell yeah!!

►

Ryan Ries

Seems like Dallas/Ft.Worth Texas is one of the best places to live in terms of income/cost of living... every time I think about taking a job in another city and moving there, I run it through a cost-of-living calculator and I always have to adjust my salary upward.

WesleyDavid

@RyanRies No - we have one of the highest collective taxes here, groceries are out of this world, and so is car insurance.

Ryan Ries

@WesleyDavid Leave the desert?

WesleyDavid

12:14 AM

@RyanRies It's so healthy for me here though. I've never felt better in my life.

Ryan Ries

@WesleyDavid I know what all that sand does to your boogers

@WesleyDavid You're picking your nose constantly; I know it

ewwhite

@WesleyDavid I think you have a networking problem.

Nathan C

Try living in Maine. :P

WesleyDavid

@RyanRies Blowing. I'm a blower.

Wait, shit.

2

@ewwhite Yeah, all the people and places I've been to meet businesses and whatnot have ended in tears and "my laptop keyboard is sticky" problems.

@ewwhite The hell did I just watch.

MDMarra

@ewwhite free, son!

ewwhite

12:16 AM

@WesleyDavid little kids breakdancing with the Microsoft Surface that @MDMarra is about to get.

MDMarra

@RyanRies Cost of Living is deceptive too. I live a 15 minute drive from Philly but the cost of living (somewhere nice) in Philly is probably double what it is in the burbs

Don't get me wrong, shit is expensive around me too. I'm right next to Villanova. But still, not nearly as high as the city itself. There aren't really suburb living calculators though haha

Kevin Soviero

Alright, so I've given up on being an architect... But are there any Linux jobs that match these two criteria? 1) Network/server design, and 2) the ability to focus on a project...

ewwhite

@KevinSoviero yes, we need Linux help.

Kevin Soviero

@ewwhite Huh?

ewwhite

Systems Engineer

Kevin Soviero

12:28 AM

@ewwhite Austin?

ewwhite

Nope. NYC

Kevin Soviero

Um... But I live in Austin... ;)

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite No more Devops people?

Kevin Soviero

Anyway, are there any Linux titles that will allow me to design stuff and focus on a project? Right now I'm doing customer support...

Jacob

Well, this sucks.. Looks like my job at a certain a minecraft community has fallen through

Ryan Ries

12:33 AM

Yeah... I live in the suburbs of Dallas, I pay $800/mo for a 2 bed, 2 bath apartment... I'm always worried about the cost of living when thinking about taking a job in another city.

Although I would love to live in another city for a while, just because I've lived in Texas my entire life and I would like to see at least a little bit of another place while I still can.

Jacob

@ewwhite Need another late night admin for your personal clients?

Kevin Soviero

Are there an IT job title glossary?

Ryan Ries

@MDMarra Yeah that's pretty universal... I get by pretty cheaply because I live in a suburb of Dallas... Highland Park in Dallas proper is another matter. :P

MDMarra

My one bed one bath is about 950 with utils

includes a shitty gym on premises and a decent pool

Ryan Ries

My two bed two bath is $900 with utils :P

Jacob

12:46 AM

My DORM ROOM costs more than that :(

Ryan Ries

With shitty gym and shitty pool that I will never use because the pool is always full of bros who upset the chemical balance in the pool with how much Axe body spray they wear

Jacob

oh and it's about 300% smaller

Ryan Ries

Why do I not have Red Dead Redemption on my PC

MDMarra

@Jacob but it comes with a meal plan

Jacob

@MDMarra Naw, that's an add on at that point

Ryan Ries

12:52 AM

Man I feel extremely privileged that I never had to live in a college dorm. I visited lots of friends that did live in dorms... they're fuckin' prison cells, man.

Jacob

4.1K per semester or around 1022 a month

(total)

Ryan Ries

@MDMarra Yeah I saw that. And I agree 100%

MDMarra

Saw what ?!

Ryan Ries

whistles

Jacob

@MDMarra I saw it too...

:P

MDMarra

12:55 AM

So the MCT in my training today admitted to using braindumps

Jacob

@RyanRies I wish I didn't have to go

Ryan Ries

@MDMarra Your trainer?

@MDMarra Or someone else who was in your class?

MDMarra

No, the trainer

The labs were good, but the guy was useless

luckily I expensed the training and lunches were catered

Ryan Ries

1:10 AM

@MDMarra Wow. Well... I know that braindumps exist. Of course. They've existed for 15 years. Do they diminish the quality of the certifications? Well, yeah, a little bit, but I also know that in an interview, I will ask questions that no braindump could ever teach you, and I expect to be asked in an interview questions that no braindump could ever teach me.

MDMarra

yeah

But if I'm going to a Microsoft partner-only training...

I expect the trainer to have his MCSE: PC legitimately

Ryan Ries

@MDMarra Yeah that's fucked :(

sigh

MDMarra

I mean, fuck, I got it legitimately and never used Hyper-V in production. It's not brain surgery

I did get quality time with my boss though. It's the first time we've worked on things directly together since I was hired

(we sat in the back and fired up our VPNs on day 2)

Ryan Ries

Well I've used Hyper-V in prod but I know what you mean... they will ask you about things that nobody has ever used in prod.

"Hey what files you need to manipulate if you want to install GPOs in many languages simultaneously!"

3

2

1

FAIL

MDMarra

hahaha

yeah no idea

oh wait

adml

Ryan Ries

1:14 AM

It's like *.mui or something

MDMarra

i didn't realize what you were asking

Ryan Ries

What are the language ones

I don't remember

*.mui ?

MDMarra

.adml are the language-specific templates

Ryan Ries

@MDMarra Yeah. You got it.

MDMarra

but .muis are language add ons for other things

i think

everyone should just speak english

Ryan Ries

1:15 AM

Yeah don't bring back the nightmares

MDMarra

I get to do a cross-forest migration over the next two weeks

well, a "plan" and then POC for like 5 of each type of concept

Ryan Ries

Fortunately, almost everyone does speak English. It's us lazy Americans that don't have to learn anything

ADMT to the rescue

MDMarra

Then, for another company, I get to do 6-8 weeks for a cross-forest migration

start-to-finish

Ryan Ries

@MDMarra That is some seriously good experience; your resume should be written in gold

Edit: I always think faster than I type

MDMarra

This is what I've done since march

Insurance company: Service Manager design
Bank: AD Health Assessment
Large Law Firm: AD Health Assessment
Hospital: AD Health Assessment, New forest design, new forest migration plan + POC

Coming up:
Large national healthcare provider: Service Manager design/implement/customization
Large medical diagnostic company: migrate two forests into a new child domain in an acquiring entity's existing forest
Global Manufacturing company: AD Health Assessment, DC upgrades to 2012 (booooring)

My calendar is booked solid through Sept 27

Ryan Ries

1:23 AM

@MDMarra What makes that so valuable is that you have long since proven that you're not just an admin. You're an advisor and a consultant; that you come in and lay things out the way they need to be.

Shit... no homo?

MDMarra

The job we're hiring for is to take the health assessment stuff off of my plate

@RyanRies haha goes without saying

the plan is to add one (or maybe 2) competent people without the design experience. I'll do plan and design for a week, the other guy will actually implement, I'll consult on any abnormalities, and sign off of any docs they write

Ryan Ries

Someone sent me this email today: ""What are the technical mitigating controls in place that would prevent MiTM attacks on our self-signed certificates?""
And my reply was:

MDMarra

And they'll handle things like our 4-day health check service, which is a waste of my time but we dont have anyone else to do it

Ryan Ries

There is nothing to prevent man in the middle attacks on services that use self-signed certificates, because you have no way of proving the authenticity of the certificate you're given when it's self-signed.
I could sign a certificate that says "I hereby declare my name is George Washington," and hand it to you. You would be skeptical, unless it was stamped by a notary public whose stamp you could also validate.
(The notary public in this scenario would be the issuing CA.)

Communications are still encrypted over the wire with a self-signed cert, yes, but with self-signed certificates, the issue is that you can't be sure that you're really talking to who you think you're talking to.
I could be an attacker on the network, and I could be pretending to be SERVER01, and I could even present you with a certificate that says that I'm SERVER01... and because you always get certificate errors anyway,
you're already mentally conditioned to ignore this certificate error too. Only this time you're talking to a bad guy that's showing you a webpage that looks just like th…

MDMarra

hahaha oh boy

At the end you should have said "P.S. SSL/TLS is a giant ponzi scheme anyway. Fight the power"

2

Ryan Ries

1:26 AM

lol

MDMarra

Our config manager guy just gave his two weeks though

So if that ends up being a position comparable to mine, I'll be sure to let you know

I don't blame him for leaving though. $Coat_Customer has been paying our exorbitant rate to keep him there updating windows 7 embedded images for like 8 months

No one from our side could pull him out, since there wasnt anyone less experienced to put in and he got sick of waiting

Jacob

@RyanRies You're alive 200+ years after the first GW, kinda hard to impersonate him...

MDMarra

@RyanRies OH DUDE. I meant to tell you

I woke up to see traffic coming to my blog from technet

social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/…

It's been a good stretch for me lately

jscott

Quick AD domain name question, if I may?

MDMarra

go!

jscott

1:33 AM

So I've got an existing domain, let's call it fcsd.monroe.edu, with a short name FCSD...

I really hate the name, and we're not really a child of monroe.edu, so I want to move to, let's say ad.fairport.org. But...

MDMarra

the suspense is killing me!

jscott

My coworkers also hate change, so I was thinking it might be nice to retain the FCSD\sAMAccountName when moving to ad.fairport.org. However, I'm guessing there will be trouble migrating from FCSD + fcsd.monroe.edu to FCSD + ad.fairport.org

Ryan Ries

@MDMarra Wow. Congrats! <jealous>

MDMarra

@jscott You'd have to have them on physically separate networks to have the same netbios name

Ryan Ries

@MDMarra But now I have something for you to be jealous about in turn :)

MDMarra

1:36 AM

so migration would be...tricky

(impossible?)

jscott

@MDMarra To say the least...

MDMarra

Unless, you don't migrate and you do a rename

you'll have to reinstall system center, but you don't use exchange, right?

@RyanRies do tell

Ryan Ries

@MDMarra Mark Russinovich told me he might include my debugging case in one of his future talks. :)

MDMarra

oh whaaaat

jscott

@MDMarra Naw, other shit is fucked in our schema... I can't even trust what I thinkg I know.

MDMarra

1:37 AM

@RyanRies dude so awesome

jscott

No exchange, SCCM yes.

@RyanRies Props.

MDMarra

yeah probably not do-able

@jscott i have a GAPPS question for you

jscott

@MDMarra We use hashing-password-filter still.../

Ryan Ries

Well to be honest, it's a big 'maybe,' but I did at least get some acknowledgment

jscott

We use GADS to sync users/groups/etc.

MDMarra

1:38 AM

@jscott no no not that. You're using sync right?

ok, yes

I'm migrating a customer on GAPPS to a new domain in a new forest

how do i...um...not fuck up their whole shit?

jscott

@MDMarra The sync in GADS is all LDAP filter based. The domain names are almost irreverent.

MDMarra

how do I say "stop syncing with this AD domain, then start syncing with this other one, but the users are the same so dont delete their whole life"

Joel E Salas

wooo kvm on netapp

MDMarra

and can there be two directories with overlapping names syncing to the same gapps?

because there's going to be like an 8 week migration window

jscott

If you're using GADS, and not using a unique ID besides username/sAMAccountName, you don't really need to worry. Just make sure the usernames are the same in the new domain.

MDMarra

1:41 AM

ok

jscott

If you've used the GADS unique ID of objectGUID or something, then you got to play about a bit.

MDMarra

so i can point two GADS instances at the same gapps mail directory or whatever?

I've never used it so I don't know how it works

I just know if source objects disappear, so does mail, which is scary

jscott

Yeah, it don't care. You give it Google admin creds, and AD read cred and then it process the rules you've given it.

It won't actually make any changes unless you enable it. By default running it gives you a list of the deltas.

MDMarra

but

im going to want it enabled in two ADs at once

since there will be a coexistance/migration period

I cannot type tonight

jscott

Are you migrating by groups? OU? You can make filters to include/exclude on either domain with GADS

MDMarra

1:44 AM

havent gotten that far yet

jscott

If it's a one-and-done migration, I'd target the new domain with GADS and just sync from there.

MDMarra

so as I migrate users, I should exclude them in the gaps gads filter on the old domain?

jscott

exactly

MDMarra

@jscott its a national multisite company. migration will stretch 6-8 weeks

probably one department/location/whatever at a time

so there's going to be a pretty long coexistance with an increasingly ugly filter :)

jscott

@MDMarra GADS doesn't do passwords (not in a good way) so you may be OK to just disable old domain sync and start syncing from new domain.

MDMarra

1:46 AM

I need more details

I'll probably have a whole new list of questions in a month haha

jscott

GADS is Google Apps Directory Sync. We only use it for syncing everything but passwords.

brb

k, sorry, had to quell wifey.

GADS and GAPS are two different projects. There's mild overlap (GADS can "do" passwords, but you probably don't need it).

GADS can sync most everything (OU, Groups, Users, Resources, Contacts) from AD to Google Apps. GAPS is an AD Password Filter that will sync users passwords as they change them within the AD environment.

MDMarra

ah

got it

jscott

We started using hashing-password-filter long before there was a GAPS.

Ryan Ries

As far as I'm concerned, if you can explain to me how to update the unicodePwd, you're hired.

jscott

We have a million shitty rules for GADS because there's so many "rules" for who does/doesn't get an email, who they may/may not exchange mail with, etc...

@RyanRies I'm not a wizard

Oh! Another AD/domain/UPN question!

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