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Seriously. Say what you need to say. You can do it.

Functional level too low for catalog

Right now with Citrix Cloud it has an agent that runs on the system, called the VDA, there are VDA versions 1811, 2003 and 2106.

In the past when publishing the a new image I could safely update that from 1811 to 2003 then there was no affect on the running systems until the reboot would occur then you’d have a happy system running on the new VDA version.

Well not today, today when I updated both the base images and the catalog 2106 with a scheduled reboot for much later in the night instantly all systems running 2003 unregistered themselves.

The fix was to for now…. republish the base image with the minimum functional level of 2003 to keep the active systems operating then tonight republish for a 3rd time using the correct version.

Move an Appliance Disk to Azure

This process for making a Hyper-V based appliance disk images work in Azure. This has been used several times for Linux based appliance.

ESXi network configurations work different and don’t transfer correctly to Azure, always go for Hyper-V images.

Boot up VM, enable remote settings and remove Hyper-V agents.

Using Hyper-V disk manager convert whatever the disk images is to a Fixed VHD(NOT VHDX).

Upload to blob storage, slowly…. Disk images over 100 GiB will take over 24 hours apparently.

Create a template from the disk image stored in blob storage.

Create a VM from the template.

Boot diagnostics are useless, you’re flying blind. Thanks for no console Microsoft.

Squeeze a little break between Exchange calendar meetings

Set-OrganizationConfig -ShortenEventScopeDefault 2 -DefaultMinutesToReduceLongEventsBy 5

These are set using the Set-OrganizationConfig setting. The three new properties are ShortenEventScopeDefault, DefaultMinutesToReduceShortEventsBy and DefaultMinutesToReduceLongEventsBy. You turn on the reduced length meetings by setting ShortenEventScopeDefault to 0, 1 or 2 where 0 is the default and meetings are not shortened and 1 means to end meetings early and 2 means to start meetings late.

Once ShortenEventScopeDefault is set to 1 or 2 you can set the DefaultMinutesToReduce…EventsBy properties. These are set to the minutes that you want taken off the meeting. Short meetings are those of an hour or less and long meetings exceed one hour. So for example if you set DefaultMinutesToReduceLongEventsBy to 10 then all meetings over 1 hour would be 10 minutes shorter, either at the start or the end (not both) based on the value of ShortenEventScopeDefault.

Need an umbrella?

When I lived in Tokyo I had this weird habit of picking up umbrellas that people left behind on trains and busses. With a spare umbrella I could always offer a stranger an umbrella, share a smile and continue my day. Then I found out that bars would throw away hundreds some nights and this blew my mind. I had to get those umbrellas and I did. So there I was living next to a park with a busted awning. In my best Kanji I wrote a sign that said “need umbrella: take umbrella, spare umbrella: leave umbrella” and put 20+ out. After a few days I noticed a few were gone and it didn’t bother me because I had hundreds. One night I came home after it had been raining a lot and they were all gone. The next morning I opened my door and there were over 3 dozen and a thank you note with an action figure of the big chubby guy on Doaemon. It was amazing. Fast forward a month. I’m walking with my friend and they point to a house with several cylinders in front of their house containing a few umbrellas each and a note just like mine. My friend said it wasn’t there last week. I had a copy cat! I asked my other friends if they had seen borrow umbrella signs and they had started popping up around town! It was amazing. In a city of 35m people I started a thing. Then I moved back to the USA and haven’t touched an umbrella since.

Guns n’ Badges

A memory I had when I was gathering supplies to wire up my police buzzer and brake light disable switch in the El Camino:

When I was a kid my school had the D.A.R.E. program. My school had Sargent Joe Rindosh. He taught us how and were to buy drugs and how to tell the difference between good and cheap weed. He was also in a band called Guns n’ Badges and they had a concert.. A rock concert at my elementary school and many other schools. They played ZZ top, 38 special, Steppenwolf, Grand Funk Railroad and my favorite, Molly Hatchet. My mom being the groupie she was… Mr. Rindosh was at our trailer many mornings. I got to press the police buzzer and siren button a few times when he’d give me a ride to school in the mornings.

Cisco Umbrella can fuck right off

BYE BITCH

#!/usr/bin/env bash

CMD=$1;

if [[ `id -u` = 0 ]]; then
echo “You mustn’t be root when executing this script”;
exit;
fi

function usage {
echo “Usage: $(basename $0) COMMAND
COMMANDS:
stop Run sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.opendns.osx.RoamingClientConfigUpdater.plist
start Run sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.opendns.osx.RoamingClientConfigUpdater.plist
restart Stop umbrella, then start again.
status Is umbrella running?
“;
exit 1;
}
function start () {
sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.opendns.osx.RoamingClientConfigUpdater.plist;
launchctl load /Library/LaunchAgents/com.opendns.osx.RoamingClientMenubar.plist;
sleep 1;
status;
}
function stop () {
sudo launchctl remove com.opendns.osx.RoamingClientConfigUpdater;
launchctl remove com.opendns.osx.RoamingClientMenubar;
sudo killall OpenDNSDiagnostic &>/dev/null;
sleep 1;
status;
}
function status () {
ps auwwx | egrep “dnscrypt|RoamingClientMenubar|dns-updater” | grep -vq egrep;
if [[ 0 == $? ]]; then
echo “Umbrella is running. Checking debug.opendns.com DNS…”;
dig debug.opendns.com txt +time=2 +tries=1 +short | sed ‘s/^”/ “/’ | grep ‘”‘;
[[ 1 == $? ]] && echo “Umbrella is not functioning correctly!”
else
echo “Umbrella is stopped”;
grep -q 127.0.0.1 /etc/resolv.conf && echo “Without umbrella running, you’ll need to remove 127.0.0.1 from your DNS servers before you can resolve domains.”;
fi
echo “Currently using name servers: $(cat /etc/resolv.conf | grep nameserver | sed ‘s/nameserver //’ | tr ‘\n’ ‘ ‘)”
}

case $CMD in
(start) start;;
(stop) stop;;
(restart) stop && start;;
(status) status;;
(*) usage;;
esac

exit 0;

Star filled nights again

I remember when I was a kid I’d look up and see stars in the sky. Then over the years they slowly disappeared. Now we’ve made our own stars to see in the sky. Thank you Starlink.

Disable Reply All to Company Emails

To configure

In Outlook enable the Developer option on the ribbon under File > Options > Customize Ribbon. Check Developer in the right column.

From the Developer tab select Design a Form

Pick message and open.

Select the Actions tab, then select the line with Reply to All and click Properties.

Uncheck the Enabled box in the top right then select OK.

Select the Properties tab, then check the Send form definition with item box. Choose OK on the dialog box that appears.

If this gives an error click Properties again

Click Publish > Publish Form As…

Save it in your personal forms library as something easy to remember like NoReplyAll

Close the windows

To use

Click on Developer tab > Choose Form > Look in: Personal Forms Library > NoReplyAll > Open

Then send that message to AllCorp1 or as many people as you want and they will see…

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