Posts by wiredcanyon94

velvetmarlin6 said:I’m switching ISPs soon, which should hopefully change my IP address too.
Quick question: does anything actually happen to my social media profiles when I switch internet providers?

Absolutely nothing.

Kate Kelly3 said:Are you talking about a standard media player, or is this something specific to that sensor? Which exact programs would actually work here? What is the full list of requirements we're looking at?

Basically, you're looking at needing the sensor, some kind of medium to bridge the connection to your laptop, and then the software to actually run the show on the computer side.
As for specifics, I haven't got a clue.

Kate Kelly3 said:I have a somewhat peculiar—perhaps even slightly absurd—question. In the spirit of the holidays and given the mischievous nature of my colleagues at the office, a friend and I are looking to "install" a little system. The goal is simple: whenever someone opens the office door and starts walking in, a specific song should automatically trigger from a speaker or laptop. You know that annoying little beep you hear when you walk into a convenience store? We want to replace that irritation with a very specific melody instead. 😁

What would it take to pull this off, and what gear are we actually looking at? A motion detector, a speaker... is there anything else required to make this work?

I’m thinking you’ll also need some software running on the laptop to tie it all together.

Andrew Peterson2 said:I’m lost. What software are we even talking about? And what license?

Sent from my iPhone 15 Pro via Reddit

That checkpoint is basically just a firewall or a VPN, depending on how they set things up and what they're actually using it for.

Lisa Nelson3 said:Look, if I actually knew who we bought this license from, I wouldn't be asking! But I don't have that info, and I was told to try calling someone to find out if changing the Intel address messes with the license or not...

Usually, it doesn't matter, but I've seen some weird stuff happen. Honestly, it's pretty rare for a license to be tied directly to an Intel address.
But you really need to ask whoever sold you the thing. They’re the only ones who actually know how their billing and activation logic works.

And honestly, if you're just worried about whether it'll work, why not just swap the Intel address and see what happens? If it breaks, just revert it. Of course, you shouldn't let some random amateur touch it—if someone who has no clue what they're doing messes with your settings, everything will stop working even if the license itself is perfectly fine.

All we can do here is guess. One guy will say "it works," another will swear "it doesn't." Then you're stuck wondering who to believe. Are you going to listen to Nick Saban or Trump on some random forum?

Lisa Nelson3 said:Hey there!

I could really use some help here....

Our company is switching network providers. We’re currently running an old Check Point NG-1 (Apple), and we have to change our Intel addresses.

So, here's the thing... will changing those IPs mess with our license? Is everything going to keep running smoothly, or are we looking at needing to buy a new one?

Thanks in advance!

Good grief.. Why don't you just ask the guy you bought the license from? He'll be the first to tell you what he's actually charging you for and what he's throwing in for free.

jadehound8 said:Does anyone know of a good free program for formatting drives? I downloaded one that recognizes my USB stick just fine, but every time I hit the format button, it just throws a "format failed" error at me.

Look, macOS has built-in tools for formatting right out of the box. And yeah, they're free. But if that flash drive is actually fried, no software on earth is going to fix it for you.

Sarah King25 said:Hey there!

So, I sent an email to a bank out of state because I had to answer some standard questions regarding a transaction hitting my account.

They got back to me with the questions—nothing weird, stuff you could probably find on any small business website if you looked hard enough—and after three days, I went to send my replies. Instead, I just got this bounce-back message from Gmail:

Address not found
Your message was not delivered to the address unknown because the address cannot be found or cannot receive email.

Details:
Final-Recipient: unknown; unknown
Action: failed status
Status: 5.1.1
Remote-MTA: dns; unknown(196.200.90.154, the server for the domain xxxxx)
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 5.1.1 User unknown

I'm low-key panicking now because a friend suggested this might be a phishing attempt. But then again, there are a few different email addresses listed on their official site, and I can't successfully send an email to any of them. I keep getting this exact same error.

What's actually happening here? Is it possible their server just crashed, or am I looking at a legit phishing scam? 😲

🤷

Thanks!

It could be anything. Nobody here can tell you exactly what happened because none of us have a crystal ball.

It's like calling a mechanic and saying, "Hey, my car is acting up, what's wrong with it?"
It could be a dozen different things, but without more info, we're just guessing.

Kyle Cook82 said:I’m not entirely sure what you mean by that. Are you saying that because he’s my boss, he has the right to violate privacy laws? I don't see any reason why during a scheduled break I shouldn't be allowed to check my personal email at work without someone snooping over my shoulder.

We work at an agency with about a hundred employees. I couldn't care less about the central IT admin; what bothers me is that my direct supervisor has access to our unit's business emails—and especially my private oneswithout ever giving us a heads-up. Honestly, I don't care about my ISP or my cell provider at home either. They don't know me, they aren't my boss, and they don't breathe down my neck (except when the bill comes once a month).

Thanks for the suggestion. It's not like I've ever intentionally used my work email for personal stuff. It just bugs me that the boss can peek into things without my knowledge, especially since he uses certain info against us. We had a rough day once, and someone accidentally sent something private and confidential to a work address. When you have a manager who nitpicks every little thing and is just waiting for a chance to gossip behind your back to half the office about something that hit your inbox, you start wondering how to protect yourself.

Yeah, right. Because he's such a saint and so principled that he'd just admit it.
I'm not asking if it takes two or three clicks to find out; I'm asking if there's *any* way to know without having to ask him directly.

From what I can tell, your issues aren't really technical; it sounds more like a toxic workplace culture.
You already got the technical answer and the advice. You'll have to deal with the rest of this somewhere else. Maybe talk to a lawyer or something.

Anyway, welcome to the world of terrible bosses.

Kyle Cook82 said:I don't believe it. So you're telling me there is absolutely zero way to find out in Microsoft Outlook if he has direct access to my inbox? Not even just to check, but to disable it? Same thing? Of course I can't just ask him directly because of certain reasons—if I could, I would have done it ages ago.👎

I'm well aware of that. The issue is when someone accidentally sends something private to your work email, your boss sees it and then starts gossiping about you to the rest of the office, even though you didn't do anything wrong. I just want to know how I can tell if he has access to my mail.

I’m not sure what you mean by that thumbs-down emoji. But look, your boss is likely either the system administrator for whatever IT setup your company uses, or he hired an admin who reports directly to him. As for what kind of reports those are—you'd really have to ask him.
Basically, as an admin (or as the guy who manages the admin), they technically have keys to everything on that IT system. What exactly they choose to do with all that power isn't really a question for us on this forum.
Let me throw a counter-question your way: Is there any way for you, as a cell phone user, to know for sure if your service provider is listening in or logging your text messages?
Think about that for a second, and once the realization hits, feel free to start pulling your hair out.
Good morning, Kyle Cook82, and welcome to the real world.

My best advice for you today is to stop using your work email for anything other than work. Set up a private email address and use that for your personal life. To build on that... never, ever use the corporate network or a company laptop to check your private emails if you don't want your boss reading them.
Can he do it? Absolutely. Does he? Ask him.
Are you going to be able to figure it out with two or three clicks of a mouse? No, you won't.

Jacob Cooper5 said:I type pretty fast. Lately, I’ve been running into this weird issue where Firefox menus start popping up or toolbar programs launch right in the middle of a sentence. It’s incredibly frustrating because those random windows hijack my keystrokes, forcing me to close everything just so I can finish a single post on a forum.
If I slow down my typing speed, the whole thing seems to stop happening.

What's the deal here? I ran scans on my C: drive using Malwarebytes, Norton, and McAfee, and I'm definitely not seeing any viruses or anything suspicious.

Did you spill something on the keyboard? Maybe some water, juice, coffee, or a beer? Even a cat could have knocked a drink over onto it.
That’s exactly how a keyboard acts when it's been soaked.

wiredpilot25 said:So, I just got a Gmail alert about a login attempt from some fake address in Atlanta. How is that even possible? I don't know anyone there, and I've never even set foot in that city.
Is there any chance this is just some glitch?

It’s definitely possible it's just an error.

Joshua Allen16 said:My PC is crawling, it's absolute garbage. I'm running a Pentium 3 with 128 MB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive on Windows XP. I can barely even get Mozilla to launch.

What do you mean by "crawling"?

Bryan Rivera83 said:I take a similar approach—no coding and zero overtime—for about $2167. I’ve even racked up some 15 Microsoft certifications, though they don't bump my paycheck by a single cent.

So, which ones did you actually go for?

Steven Chase12 said:Hey everyone,

First off, sorry if I'm drifting a bit from the main topic here, but this feels like the right spot since it's all IT-related. I'm trying to figure out how much my current role is actually valued in the market and what people doing similar work are making elsewhere.

Basically, my title is "System Administrator," but I don't really consider myself an HBCU sysadmin because I handle pretty much every IT aspect under the sun. I have my Associate's degree and I'm just a few credits shy of finishing my Bachelor's (currently finishing up year 3).

My daily grind involves: maintaining about 40 workstations, managing servers and the network, keeping the surveillance system running, and implementing whatever new tech the business needs—everything from setting up a new PC or laptop to deploying a new data server or building custom software for specific business processes. I’m constantly writing code to automate tasks and make life easier for the staff. On top of that, I manage our mobile and landline communications, which means handling everything from phone hardware to service plans. I'm also responsible for the internet connectivity and managing traffic distribution across the company, though I'm not sure if that's standard for this role.

Since I started, I've completely overhauled the entire network (VPN, LAN, fiber optics) to get it up to standard, because when I walked in, it was a total disaster. Half the office was still running on Windows XP, so I've managed to upgrade about 80% of the fleet so far. I also developed two custom programs to streamline employee time tracking and built a tool to automate some heavy lifting within Excel for our massive reports.

Everyone at the office sees that I'm giving it my all; they know I'm genuinely here to support them and make their jobs easier. I won't even go into how many late nights I've put in to get everything organized properly, but honestly, I'm worried those overtime hours aren't going away anytime soon.

So, my question is: What is this kind of effort and workload worth in other companies? I'm going to leave my current salary out of this so I don't bias your answers.

P.S. I'm the only "IT guy" in the whole company, so there's no one to lean on—I do everything myself. =)

What kind of certifications do you hold?

Kyle Cook82 said:We use Microsoft Outlook for all our official business at work. Is there any way to tell if my boss is snooping through the emails I send or receive on my work account? Like, does he actually have access to my inbox without me knowing?

I think they call it a "shared mailbox" or something like that...?

If he isn't being upfront about it, there’s no way for you to find out.

Henry Evans3 said:So here's the deal: my phone says it's connected to the router's Wi-Fi, and my computer shows the same thing, but absolutely nothing is working... it's like there's zero internet connection, even though the TV is somehow pulling through...
I'm using Verizon, and I just got this brand-new router installed, but it's incredibly weird because everything is "connected" yet totally useless...

Any idea what could be going on?

Have you tried calling their support yet?
Are you actually getting an IP address on your computer? Can you try pinging your default gateway or something external? Like, maybe Google?

I'm not with Verizon, so I can't really say how their gear usually behaves.

John Wilson55 said:I've got this old machine running Vista. Where can I grab a newer version of Windows to install? Since the PC is about 7 years old, what would be the best move?

Usually, you just head straight to Microsoft to get Windows.
www.microsoft.com

If you’re hunting for something specific, like Windows 7, just throw "windows 7 download" into Google and see what pops up.

Robert James said:Greetings.

I have an inquiry regarding hardwiring a computer to the internet. We have Wi-Fi access available on the upper floor, and I am wondering if it is feasible to connect another computer on the lower floor via an Ethernet cable using the same service provider connection.

Thank you.

Totally doable. Just run a cable and plug it in.

Bryan Fowler7 said:So I just got this email and there's an .ODT file attached to it.
And honestly? I can't open the damn thing.
I tried downloading some ODT viewer, but every time I try to load it, it just says "failed." Like, seriously?
Then I went ahead and tried converting it to a Google Doc using http://www.zamzar.com, but even that's a total bust—it converts it, sure, but it just gives me a completely blank page.
I have zero clue what program was used to make this file, or how the hell I'm supposed to actually see what's inside.

I don't know about older versions of Office, but my Microsoft Office 2016—specifically Microsoft Word 2016—handles .odt files just fine.