Newsletter Archives

• There’s something about trains

  Posted on December 10, 2020 at 22:49 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  (I hope you’ll indulge me in this off topic post tonight)

  I love riding on trains.  In my personal experience they are vastly superior to planes.  It’s not that I hate flying, rather it’s the lack of leg room, and because I live on the West coast, getting up at the crack of dawn to get to the airport early.  In this era of lack of travel and lack of flying to conferences, I don’t miss flying, but I do miss train travel.

  I also love toy trains.

  

  As we decorate for Christmas, we get out our family’s vintage 1950’s era Lionel toy train that my Grandmother bought for my Sister when she was a little girl.  Tonight I’m watching a video on Amazon about Lionel Christmas toy trains.  My sister hasn’t (yet) decorated with as many trains as shown in that video.  We only have the one – and yes – it still works!  I’ve traveled to toy train shows where they have computerized consoles that control their whole train displays.

  Real Trains changed the world.  It was a game changing technology that totally changed the world.  It introduced the concept of time zones in England and in North America so everyone could agree on what time you’d need to meet the train and not have “local only” time.   It made transportation of goods and services possible.  It moved us all to more industrial production.  As much as the Internet has changed our lives, Trains changed our Grandparents (and even Great-Grandparents) lives even more.

  Now if you think train technology is stagnate, guess again.  Even Elon Musk is getting in on inventing new technologies for trains including – believe it or not – wind energy.  What technology do you see changing in your lifetime?

   

   

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• Sometimes a reboot is good

  Posted on December 5, 2020 at 16:20 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  So today as I’m taking a slight break from technology … well kinda (*)…. and baking Christmas spritz cookies I am reminded of a reboot I had to do yesterday.  A modem reboot.  I have a consumer Comcast modem at home that every now and then I have to reboot.  The comcast app lets you do it quite easily.  Mind you I have another router in FRONT of that Comcast because we all know how we love ISP provided things and prefer something between us and them.

  At the office I have a similar set up with a Business level model that I honestly forget that every now and then it’s good for it to be rebooted as well.  It’s more rock solid.  But just yesterday I thought the www.askwoody.com site was down.  Wouldn’t come up for me.  I knew that my internet was still up because I could get to other sites.  So then I started the normal…. is it me?  Is it them?

  I opened up a command line and typed in ping www.askwoody.com.  Everything came back with no packet loss.  Then I went to the is it down site.  Hmmm still not down.  I then took my iphone off of the firm wifi and tried on cellular.  Hmmm the site worked.  I had in the middle of that emailed PK and Kirsty and they said it was fine.  Must be me.  But my firewall me or my Comcast modem me?  So I have some guest wifi that goes through the Comcast but not through the firm firewall and I connected to that with my iphone.   I even remoted into my home system and realized for sure it was just the office.  (Home is also on Comcast)   So it must be the Comcast modem.  Had to wait until after 5 p.m. to reboot and sure enough, that was the issue.

  So a kind reminder…  EVERYONE including things you consider “rock solid” need a reset or a reboot every now and then.  What are you doing to reset or reboot your technology and yourself these days?  Do you regularly reboot your modem/router and any other wifi devices?  What steps do you use to troubleshoot connectivity issues?  What do you do to narrow down that it’s you and not them?  As calling anyone these days for tech support is not the most relaxing or fulfilling task these days.

  (*) Okay so not completely free of technology, I am using my phone to search for a Christmas spritz cookie recipe and listening to Christmas Jazz on my Sonos streaming system.

  Uncategorized Patch Lady Posts

• WSUS survey results

  Posted on November 19, 2020 at 12:11 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  For those of you that are patching admins, I recently did a survey on your attitudes towards WSUS.  The results in their raw form are located here and here.

  Lots of interesting comments.

  In the meantime I did a similar story about different Microsoft business patching options on Computerworld.

  Uncategorized Patch Lady Posts

• Patch Lady – be aware of potential issues with HP firmware

  Posted on November 3, 2020 at 17:49 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  Andrew warns

  Hey @HP Color LaserJet Pro printer owners seeing a boot cycle with error 79 in the last few days. I think HP pushed bad firmware. I was able to resolve by turning off all networking to stop rebooting and then uploading old firmware via USB

  He said

  in my case it was an MFP M281fdw, but I’m seeing a bunch of folks on HP’s forum with error 79 in just the last few days with different models. Symptom is constant reboot if wireless or wired networking is connected

  Here’s a sample of the forum posts here: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printing-Errors-or-Lights-Stuck-Print-Jobs/79-Service-Error-Boot-Loop/td-p/7842055

  and here https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/forums/searchpage/tab/message?q=79&sort_by=-topicPostDate&collapse_discussion=true

  Remember once you get it working again to disable the remote firmware update until it’s known that it’s been corrected.

  (Not all HP printer support over the internet firmware updates.  But if yours is a newer model it probably does)

  Uncategorized Patch Lady Posts

• National Hurricane Center: Get out of coastal areas between Freeport TX and Ocean Springs MS

  Posted on August 26, 2020 at 12:19 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  

  For those of you along the coast, get out. Now.

  Unsurvivable storm surge with large and destructive waves will cause catastrophic damage from Sea Rim State Park, Texas, to Intracoastal City, Louisiana, including Calcasieu and Sabine Lakes. This surge could penetrate up to 30 miles inland from the immediate coastline. #Laura

  Take your pets, too.

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• Patch Lady – pushing off 1803

  Posted on August 26, 2020 at 12:16 CDT by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  Well the pandemic is still impacting patching:

  “We have heard your feedback and understand your need to focus on business continuity in the midst of the global pandemic. As a result, we have decided to delay the scheduled end-of-service date for the Enterprise, Education, and IoT Enterprise editions of Windows 10, version 1803. This means that security updates will continue to be released monthly until May 11, 2021. The final security update for these editions of Windows 10, version 1803 will be released on May 11, 2021 instead of November 10, 2020.”

  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/revised-end-of-service-date-for-windows-10-version-1803-may-11/ba-p/1614136

  Uncategorized Patch Lady Posts

• PC sales rose significantly in the second quarter. Chromebooks, too.

  Posted on July 10, 2020 at 06:06 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  From IDC (which includes Chromebooks in its “PC” numbers):

  The second quarter of 2020 (2Q20) ended well for the Traditional PC market, comprised of desktops, notebooks, and workstations, with global shipments growing 11.2% year over year reaching a total of 72.3 million units… Early indicators suggest strong PC shipments for education, enterprise, and consumer, muted somewhat by frozen SMBs,

  You small and medium businesses (he says, looking in the mirror) haven’t been keeping up the pace. Maybe it has something to do with available capital. Or maybe it’s just “Meh, what I have is good enough.”

  United States Traditional PC shipments posted double-digit growth in the second quarter of 2020 compared to the same period a year ago. While the first quarter was record breaking for the lowest PC shipments seen in over a decade, the second quarter was record breaking for the opposite reason. With volumes expected to surpass 21 million units, the US has not seen such volume since the end of 2009.

  From Gartner (which doesn’t count Chromebooks in the “PC” category, for some bizarre historical reason):

  Worldwide PC Shipments Grew 2.8% (year-over-year) in Second Quarter of 2020… After a significant decline in the first quarter of the year due to COVID-19-related supply chain disruptions, the PC market returned to growth as vendors restocked their channels and mobile PC demand increased.

  I’d be hard-pressed to say that the dip in 1st quarter demand was primarily due to “supply chain disruptions,” but I don’t have a team of high-priced clairvoyants at hand.

  The big PC manufacturers: Lenovo (25%), HP (24.9%), Dell (16.4%), Apple (6.7% – doesn’t include iPads), Acer (6.2%), ASUS (5.5%).

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• Patch Lady – we feel your pain

  Posted on June 11, 2020 at 18:03 CDT by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  I remember seeing this video YEARS ago and thought many of you might enjoy it….  This was (I believe) done by Microsoft Europe back in the Windows XP days.  Yes it’s a joke but there’s a slight evil part of me that would love to have this ability … just a little bit

   

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