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The lonely tech post thread.

nick said:
I reckon you work in the same place I do (perhaps you are me)

The ongoing struggle to build an idiot proof submission template in Excel will never be won, as they keep on recruiting a better level of idiot.

Probably beyond the wit of said users, but you know that even the sheet locking can be overridden by a determined user who can go into the XML of the file and zap out the password bit?

  1. Make a copy of the Excel file and perform the following steps in your copied file.
  2. Open the file copy with 7-Zip.
  3. Go to the folder “xl”.
  4. Open the subfolder “worksheets”.
  5. Right-click on the file “sheet1. ...
  6. Find the XML entry “sheetProtection”.
  7. Delete this XML entry.
Click to expand...
Yeh I'm aware, I pointed it out to what happened to be our head of compliance and some other things in their title. Not as a concern but after they created a sheet and had said it was locked down now so people couldnt mess with it. I said well I could take the passwords off it if I wanted but have no intention to. Figured it was common knowledge, I overestimated.

People can hide things, password them, hide sheets bla bla but it's all available if determined. I had to do this to fix someone else's mess before.

I have a spreadsheet to hand over for monthly and quarterly reporting. It's a massive bodge, needs import from the new file, appending the tables, running a macro I wrote then changing the filters for month and quarter as appropriate.

I fully expect an immediate problem, failures and complaints. Despite the fact no one here knows much past a few pivots.
 
The problem re-occurred, so I tried downloading only one thing at a time.

This has done two things, firstly it is holding up, secondly the download speed for the single item has really shot up, moving from 4 - 5Mbs to 30Mbs.

Could I have been overloading the disks hardware? i.e. presenting it with more data than it can cope with when it comes from multiple sources?
 
newme said:
Yeh I'm aware, I pointed it out to what happened to be our head of compliance and some other things in their title. Not as a concern but after they created a sheet and had said it was locked down now so people couldnt mess with it. I said well I could take the passwords off it if I wanted but have no intention to. Figured it was common knowledge, I overestimated.

People can hide things, password them, hide sheets bla bla but it's all available if determined. I had to do this to fix someone else's mess before.

I have a spreadsheet to hand over for monthly and quarterly reporting. It's a massive bodge, needs import from the new file, appending the tables, running a macro I wrote then changing the filters for month and quarter as appropriate.

I fully expect an immediate problem, failures and complaints. Despite the fact no one here knows much past a few pivots.
Click to expand...
Excel - the second best solution to every problem

1695831597761.png
 
My (USB-C) phone was becoming increasingly reluctant to hold the charging plug. I tried the cocktail stick trick, but it didn't help. Once I'd found a few posts in the internet saying to really dig in there with it, I extracted a trivially small amount of dust/fluff, and now it's as good as new.
 
existentialist said:
My (USB-C) phone was becoming increasingly reluctant to hold the charging plug. I tried the cocktail stick trick, but it didn't help. Once I'd found a few posts in the internet saying to really dig in there with it, I extracted a trivially small amount of dust/fluff, and now it's as good as new.
Click to expand...

A long time ago, and with considerable drink taken, I went to get the axe to kill a PC that simply would not load windows.

I returned to windows loaded, and it behaved well until I replaced it.

Yes, the fucking things are sentient... and malevolent. :)
 
nick said:
Excel - the second best solution to every problem

View attachment 393165
Click to expand...
Yeh that's about right. It was supposed to go onto a CRM but the data is shite and no one bothered to tell me they were not now doing it, due to cost. I found out accidentally 3 weeks into a month project. It was supposed to be a temp fix. Which is permanent until it breaks as per usual IT.

Thankfully no one appears to have a clue about excel and I can use forums, thanks excel people, chatgpt and basic logic. So it works, ish. But better than filter and counting like they did before. May just keep my job cos of it. Tho learning power bi seems to be on the next list to keep ahead of them. Thankfully it pays way more than anything locally and is remote. Especially as my hands, feet and back are fucked.
 
Sasaferrato said:
The problem re-occurred, so I tried downloading only one thing at a time.

This has done two things, firstly it is holding up, secondly the download speed for the single item has really shot up, moving from 4 - 5Mbs to 30Mbs.

Could I have been overloading the disks hardware? i.e. presenting it with more data than it can cope with when it comes from multiple sources?
Click to expand...

I think this is unlikely. Even a slow mechanical hard drive on USB3 should easily keep up with your net connection. That's said I'd probably download things first to an internal drive, but if your also then planning on seeding, I can see why you wouldn't want to. I've read that USB isn't the preferred solution though for regularly transferring large amounts of data.

If you can afford it/be bothered I might look at some kind of network attached storage and hide it near the router or something.
 
I've just been reading about what seems to be the black magic of Unraid. I've not really bothered with RAID for home use as I've not needed the high availability of RAID 1 and not fancied the total data loss of 0, although having a single volume is quite appealing. I know there are other forms of RAID, but they have seemed quite complex and I've not liked the idea of having to have all the drives a single size.

It appears that I can load up a small server with 5x4TB drives and just use a single drive for parity, so end up with 12TB, but I can mix and match drive sizes in future, provided the parity drive is as big as the next largest drive. You can add a small SSD as a cache drive to speed everything up.

I've got an ancient HP Microsever Gen 7 which has nothing in at the moment and wondering how cheaply I can kit out. Taking it from 2GB to 8GB would be cheap enough with old DDR3 from eBay and the boss has asked if I'd like to help him decommission a rack in a data center, so I'm hoping to blag a good few HDDs and maybe a few SSDs.
 
It is an odd one. Even a slow-ish mechanical disk these days should manage a Gbit (100MB/sec) for a single, large file. And USB3 (it is a blue port, right?) offers 5Gb minimum. Yes, if it's a spinning disk multiple streams will really slow it down, but not by that much. The only USB disk I have around to test with is an old SSD, so I can't really tell how bad it would get under load.
 
Help please.

I should be able to do this, but my thought processes are a wee bit slow this evening. Mary had a not too good night, so neither did I, and I'm knackered.

I bought a wee PC to act as an easy way to view movies etc that are stored on the drives of the main PC. What I cannot remember is how to get the machines linked together.

Could some kind person please give me line by line instructions as to how I do this? That I would be grateful doesn't at all cover it.

Bizarrely, the network is showing the TV but not both PCs (I'm accessing from the new one).
 
Sasaferrato said:
Help please.

I should be able to do this, but my thought processes are a wee bit slow this evening. Mary had a not too good night, so neither did I, and I'm knackered.

I bought a wee PC to act as an easy way to view movies etc that are stored on the drives of the main PC. What I cannot remember is how to get the machines linked together.

Could some kind person please give me line by line instructions as to how I do this? That I would be grateful doesn't at all cover it.

Bizarrely, the network is showing the TV but not both PCs (I'm accessing from the new one).
Click to expand...

I'm sorry to hear that. This is absolutely the best use of Plex. You run the media server on the main PC and then a plex client on the other. You even get a nice interface which gets the art and similar for the films.

However your asking how to share files on a workgroup. Let me have a google to see if someone has written a proper guide, if not, I'll do one.
 
UnderOpenSky said:
I'm sorry to hear that. This is absolutely the best use of Plex. You run the media server on the main PC and then a plex client on the other. You even get a nice interface which gets the art and similar for the films.

However your asking how to share files on a workgroup. Let me have a google to see if someone has written a proper guide, if not, I'll do one.
Click to expand...
Thank you.

What is Plex please?
 
Sasaferrato said:
Thank you.

What is Plex please?
Click to expand...

It's a bit of software you run on your main computer. You point at your files and you can then access them from other devices using a nice interface. I've actually got an app on my TV for it, before that I used a cheap firestick, but works fine on a mini PC.

Big advantage is my partner finds it really easy, it's like using Netfilx

Here's an example of mine

1696269584399.png
 
Happy to help you with that, but you just want get watching tonight.

Share the drives (or folders)

pureinfotech.com

How to set up network file sharing on Windows 10 - Pureinfotech

You can share files on Windows 10 in many ways, and here I'll show you to share files using File Explorer, OneDrive, Nearby Sharing
pureinfotech.com pureinfotech.com

Browse to the PC that they are on.

On the PC you are on press start and type name. Click view device name. Write a note of your device name.

On the pc you are connecting with go to file explorer and in the top bar

\\pcname

It will ask for your login credentials and will then show the drives/folders you have shared.

If that doesn't work, then do it by IP address. On the pc you are accessing run press start and type cmd. Type ipconfig and note down your IP. It will look like 192.168.0.x (probably)

On the PC you are connecting with in explorer

\\192.168.0.x


More permanent would be map the drives as network drives on the PC on the TV. They layout to how to do this is slightly different in 10 and 11

kb.netgear.com

How do I map a network drive in Windows?

Mapping a network drive is a method to connect to a shared network folder, like a directory on a ReadyNAS storage system.
kb.netgear.com kb.netgear.com
 
Last edited:
Thread about Plex. If you want to go that route, we can help you set it up

www.urban75.net

Tell me about Plex

So if I install Plex on my PC, I can access all my media files from my nexus, yeah? Can I also stream to my PS3? Does it need a good connection or is my shitty powerline connection good enough? Will it work on my TV (Samsung non-smart but does have an internet connection)? Is there chromecast...
www.urban75.net www.urban75.net

You can even use it watch films when you are away from home if your internet at home is good enough
 
Last edited:
Finally got to hand my notice in today. NHS HR/Recruitment do not move fast. It all feels very weird. The boss was good enough to give me my first IT job and I think he thought I'd stay many years, the company does have a record for people sticking around and I can see why. I've got it super easy. When the shit hits the fan it really does and there are times I've felt very alone to deal with everything, but a lot of the time I'm not that busy, WFH, nobody checks up on me.

I'm going from a place where everything can change on the fly and I can do almost everything I want (if I dare) to a huge bureaucracy. I'm not going to have anywhere near the level of access or autotomy. I've built good relationships with most of my users and we certainly don't have billable hours. I've spent the afternoon bored out my mind staring at reddit, because I don't want to start anything. I'm ready for a change, but I really hope I don't regret it.
 
“Create a sharepoint list of all users”
“Why can’t we use the inbuilt web parts to look up azure ad data?”
“It’s not a list”
“But we have to spend time and energy generating it in list form, what’s the driver behind this?”
“We had one fifteen years ago and I think it would be useful”
“But people can just look the data up in outlook and azure and teams? Has anyone from the business asked?”
“It’s not a list and I think lists look better so you could print them off”


For fucks fucking sake
 
This has annoyed me more than it should do because it’s hit my this has no purpose button

Anyway it’s done. Setup a power automate to scan a list and delete all existing items then grab users via a 365 query and populate the list again
 
Artaxerxes said:
This has annoyed me more than it should do because it’s hit my this has no purpose button

Anyway it’s done. Setup a power automate to scan a list and delete all existing items then grab users via a 365 query and populate the list again
Click to expand...

Bet your glad it's Friday!
 
So it was today that I learnt that Windows 11 has an option not to show desktop icons? They are all still in the One Drive folder. They just just aren't displayed. That was a head scratching 5 mins.
 
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