Author: Jay Walker

Categories
Powershell Technology

Update Active Directory Users from csv file

 $userUpdate = Import-Csv -Delimiter "," -Path ("c:\FaxNumberUpdate.csv")
$rowCount = 1
foreach($user in $userUpdate){
    Write-Host  ($rowCount.ToString() + ") Update " + $($user.DisplayName) + " to " + $($user.Fax))
    # Find user
    $ADUser = Get-ADUser -Filter "displayname -eq '$($user.name)'" 

    if ($ADUser){
        Set-ADUser -Identity $ADUser -Fax $user.fax
        Write-Host  ($rowCount.ToString() + ") Completed Update " + $($user.name) + " to " + $($user.fax))
    }else{
        Write-Warning ("Failed to update " + $($user.name))
    }
    $rowCount = $rowCount + 1
}

The idea is to have a CSV file with column headers, and powershell reads the CSV file into memory, assigns the memory a label called $userUpdate. Then iterates through the memory label $userUpdate row by row finding a matching AD user (Get-ADUser -Filter) matching the AD value called displayname to the spreadsheet column cell being read with the header named “name”. Its case sensitive. Set-ADUser does the actual update updating the matched $ADUser.

Categories
Technology

Bent over a Barrel

Wouldn’t it be great if we no longer needed gasoline in cars? Sure right? Well I think it would be, and most people would agree. But like every change, there is a cost. For every action there is an equal reaction. It is very important that we not only understand the eco system of a barrel of oil, but that we also work vertically and horizontally on thee oil demand reduction project otherwise there will be massive negative impact if we were to do something like, wake up one day and no longer need or use auto fuel.

You say how can that be? Or maybe you say “We wont. have a planet if we keep using auto fuel”. I am not saying we would not figure things out if we just stopped using auto fuel, but there are better ways for change than white knuckling brute forces changes.

To understand what I am talking about you need to understand how a 159 liter barrel gets refined into 170 liters of product. And what products are produced from a barrel of oil. Then we cover the people (jobs) that come from the oil industry, and the byproduct jobs that come from oil. We will then talk about a conversion, and options or model some ideas on how to positively bridge a transition away from oil.

Oil Life Cycle

Oil has a life cycle and first we will learn that cycle. We will extremely over simplify the process or cycle.

  1. A barrel of oil comes from the earth and is 159 liters
  2. Barrel delivered to refinery which separates barrel into 170 liters of products
  3. Products are delivered to manufacturing or distributors
  4. Products are either purchased or used by end users
  5. Products are buried in the earth or recycled or released in the air
  6. End of cycle

Barrel Refining

What I learned about the refining process at a high level is a 159 liter barrel is warmed up, products separate because of their weight differences, and then products are extracted and stored for deliver.

We will not cover technically the process, but understand that a barrel of oil has a for the most part locked in ratio of products (See chart).

Courtesy of a great website called https://energyeducation.ca/ go there and learn some more. make sure to donate if you find value.

Once you have viewed the chart and understand it (go to the energy education site to learn more if you need to), try and think, what if we as a planet did not ned any of the 43 percent, but desperately needed plastics and diesel fuel. Think about repercussions, what would we do with that 43% of product that no one wants or we cannot do anything with. How do we dispose of it? What you will realize that our dependency on oil products must be a balancing act both on current pricing and usage to the transition to an oil free world.

Oil Jobs

Oil jobs are not just those jobs directly related to exploring, extracting, delivering through pipe lines or trucks or trains, refining facility people or the sales people, brokers, maintenance workers. Direct oil and natural gas jobs account to close to 6% of the US jobs or pushing 3 million jobs, but also think of the gas stations, custodians and all the other support services and restaurants, hotels related services. Plus the industries built on the oil industry like fuel filters, fuel pumps, gas tanks and all other internal combustion engine business. Then step away from ICE (internal combustion engines) and look at the other products, asphalt, plastics which are in everything. Imagine if we replaced ICE with solar and batteries on every vehicle, but could not figure out how to make plastics in mass, so now we have tons of excess barrel of oil products. You get the idea, it feels like it would be impossible to do what we must do, get rid of the reliance on oil. At least without creating the biggest world economic collapse that every happened as well as completely shutdown the world as a functioning unit. We need to either completely destroy the world or completely destroy the world.

Another Way

There has to be another way right? I believe there is always another way for change that does not destroy the planet. But like all change, complexity and difficulty and effort is either front loaded or back loaded or spread out.

  1. All oil product users must supply an alternative approach by x date
  2. Must be a bridge for businesses that would be harmed by oil disappearing to transition to making money with the alternative approaches
  3. All oil companies need to diversify at least 50% of their business to non oil based revenue.

Oil Products and Replacements

Almost all products have many uses, some can be replaced out some are very complex like Coke.

Oil ProductNon Oil Product
GasolineElectric Vehicle or hydrogen ICE/Fuel Cells
DieselElectric Vehicle or hydrogen ICE/Fuel Cells
Jet FuelElectric Vehicle or hydrogen ICE/Fuel Cells
Kerosene lampsLED
Kerosene heatHydrogen gas
Coke
AsphaltBioasphalt

https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/depts/cdph/environmental_health_and_food/PetCoke_Public_Comments/102512DustReport031314.pdf

https://www.api.org/~/media/Files/Policy/Jobs/Economic_Impacts_ONG_2011.pdf

https://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart

http://bulkcarrierguide.com/petcoak-loading.html

https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/In_a_barrel_of_oil

Categories
Technology Windows Server

Windows Server Event Log Clean up

Event 5152 Removal

If you have these

5152 useless event log entries

And want to get rid of these entries

Do This

C:\Windows\system32>auditpol /set /subcategory:”Filtering Platform Packet Drop”
/failure:disable
The command was successfully executed.

C:\Windows\system32>auditpol /set /subcategory:”Filtering Platform Connection” /
failure:disable
The command was successfully executed.

C:\Windows\system32>net stop MPSSVC
The Windows Firewall service is stopping.
The Windows Firewall service was stopped successfully.

C:\Windows\system32>net start mpssvc
The Windows Firewall service is starting.
The Windows Firewall service was started successfully.

Categories
Phone Systems Technology

How To Beat Robo-Calls

Robo-Calls can be legal or illegal and should be expected from time to time (especially during the campaign season). And are practically impossible for small to medium businesses to stop. But you will have some options personally

Illegal Calls

  1. If the call tries to sell you something and you have not agreed to it.
  2. It’s a private company working on behalf of charity and you are not allowed to opt out

Legal Calls

  • Political adds(at least it’s an honest abuse of power), and information calls like from a school or pharmacy
  • Charities that contact you directly

Learn More details here

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0259-robocalls

And make sure your numbers are on the Dot Not Call Registry https://www.donotcall.gov/

What can you do if you get an illegal Robo-Call?

  1. Hang up
  2. Report the call to the FTC at https://www.donotcall.gov/. record the caller and any number you are told to call back. This information is not only investigated if enough reports come in but also reported to a spam call database that the carriers and other call blocking solutions use. This blocks a lot of calls before they even get to us.
  3. You also can find a list of call-blocking apps for mobile SmartPhones at ctia.org, a website for the U.S. wireless communications industry. The site lists apps specific to Android, BlackBerry, iOS (Apple).

NOTE: Small businesses don’t have many options to block these calls except encourage reporting so our carriers can improve blocking

Categories
Health

Covid -19 is Different than the Flue

Author: from an immunologist at Johns Hopkins University.

Feeling confused as to why Corona virus is a bigger deal than Seasonal flu? Here it is in a nutshell. I hope this helps. Feel free to share this to others who don’t understand…

It has to do with RNA sequencing…. I.e. genetics.

Seasonal flu is an “all human virus”. The DNA/RNA chains that make up the virus are recognized by the human immune system. This means that your body has some immunity to it before it comes around each year… you get immunity two ways…through exposure to a virus, or by getting a flu shot.

Novel viruses, come from animals…. the WHO tracks novel viruses in animals, (sometimes for years watching for mutations). Usually these viruses only transfer from animal to animal (pigs in the case of H1N1) (birds in the case of the Spanish flu). But once, one of these animal viruses mutates, and starts to transfer from animals to humans… then it’s a problem, Why? Because we have no natural or acquired immunity.. the RNA sequencing of the genes inside the virus isn’t human, and the human immune system doesn’t recognize it so, we can’t fight it off.

Now…. sometimes, the mutation only allows transfer from animal to human, for years it’s only transmission is from an infected animal to a human before it finally mutates so that it can now transfer human to human… once that happens..we have a new contagion phase. And depending on the fashion of this new mutation, thats what decides how contagious, or how deadly it’s gonna be..

H1N1 was deadly….but it did not mutate in a way that was as deadly as the Spanish flu. It’s RNA was slower to mutate and it attacked its host differently, too.

Fast forward.

Now, here comes this Coronavirus… it existed in animals only, for nobody knows how long…but one day, at an animal market, in Wuhan China, in December 2019, it mutated and made the jump from animal to people. At first, only animals could give it to a person… But here is the scary part…. in just TWO WEEKS it mutated again and gained the ability to jump from human to human. Scientists call this quick ability, “slippery”

This Coronavirus, not being in any form a “human” virus (whereas we would all have some natural or acquired immunity). Took off like a rocket. And this was because, Humans have no known immunity…doctors have no known medicines for it.

And it just so happens that this particular mutated animal virus, changed itself in such a way the way that it causes great damage to human lungs..

That’s why Coronavirus is different from seasonal flu, or H1N1 or any other type of influenza…. this one is slippery AF. And it’s a lung eater…And, it’s already mutated AGAIN, so that we now have two strains to deal with, strain s, and strain L….which makes it twice as hard to develop a vaccine.

We really have no tools in our shed, with this. History has shown that fast and immediate closings of public places has helped in the past pandemics. Philadelphia and Baltimore were reluctant to close events in 1918 and they were the hardest hit in the US during the Spanish Flu.

Factoid: Henry VIII stayed in his room and allowed no one near him, till the Black Plague passed…(honestly…I understand him so much better now). Just like us, he had no tools in his shed, except social isolation…

And let me end by saying….right now it’s hitting older folks harder… but this genome is so slippery…if it mutates again (and it will). Who is to say, what it will do next.

Be smart folks… acting like you’re unafraid is so not sexy right now.

#flattenthecurve. Stay home folks… and share this to those that just are not catching on

Covid – The Virus and the Vaccine

This info below are some notes from Reading I have been doing.

Reading Reference Links

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-18/coronavirus-covid-vaccine-race-how-the-candidates-work/12310814?nw=0

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/03/science/coronavirus-genome-bad-news-wrapped-in-protein.html?action=click&module=moreIn&pgtype=Article&region=Footer

https://cen.acs.org/biological-chemistry/infectious-disease/know-novel-coronaviruss-29-proteins/98/web/2020/04

https://www.phgfoundation.org/briefing/rna-vaccines

Bullet Points

  1. Covid 2 is the virus that caused Covid-19
  2. Virus is protein with bad stuff inside
  3. Virus hijack living cells to spread
  4. When corona virus finds a suitable cell, it injects a strand of RNA that contains the entire corona virus RNA
  5. The corona virus suppresses the immune system and copies itself
  6. NSP1 Covid 19 protein slows down the infected cells making of its own protein. This causes the infected cell to make more Covid proteins and stops the infected cells ability to assemble antiviral proteins that could stop the virus.
  7. CoronaVirus is named after the crown of protein spikes covering their outer membrane
  8. Virus’s are dead. Need to attach to something that makes proteins. Human cells make proteins all the time.
  9. B Cells make and release antibodies, these anti bodies attach to the corona virus protein spikes, and make it no longer sticky. The big eater Macrophage (White blood cells) patrol around and look for things with antibodies on, and eat them up.
  10. T cells are the feet on the street looking for broken human cells, and eats those. Normally broken cells are dead, or dying or infected Non normal human cells.
  11. T and B cells stick around after a battle for days, weeks even years in cause this enemy which it has learned about and defeated ever returns.
  12. Vaccines gets the T and B cells ready ahead of time to know this enemy before you have it. That way if you contract the virus’s have have a prepared army waiting, and the battle is easily won.
  13. RNA is a virus’s equivalent to human DNA.
  14. RNA Vaccines are supposed to be faster and cheaper to produce than Whole an Part virus vaccines as the human is the growing vessel, and you don’t actually have a deadly virus being put in you.

Vaccine Types

  1. Using the whole live or dead virus and injecting that into the body to activate the T and B cells to start fighting. Things that can go wrong are the virus going rouge and completely taking down the human. West Africa is having this issue with Polio vaccines right now.
  2. Using part of the virus, for example NSP1 and let the body know it and build up T and B Cells. Since its not the whole virus, there is no danger of it taking hold. By itself NSP1 is pretty useless. But NSP1 is also the key for the virus to start to work. So if the body can destroy NSP1 on contact, theoretically the whole virus would never have a chance if treated before hand with a NSP1 vaccine.
  3. Genetic Vaccines is injecting the RNA of a protein of the virus into the body so your body makes disease fighting antigens of it. I don’t understand this one much, but seems like you are sending the design of part of a virus so the body can see its bad, and build defenses against the virus. Making you immune to it. To me it almost sounds like your body could start to think the virus is safe and no longer fight it.

Your Blood

What is in your Blood

Blood has red blood cells made in your bone marrow, white blood cells which aid in creating antibody’s and fighting disease, plasma which is the liquid that carries everything made up of all sorts of stuff like water, proteins, sugar, fats, vitamins. Finally there are platelets which stick to stuff and does things like stop bleeding.

https://www.redcrossblood.org/donate-blood/how-to-donate/types-of-blood-donations/blood-components.html

Antigens and Antibodies

https://www.britannica.com/science/blood-group/The-importance-of-antigens-and-antibodies

Categories
Remote Access Technology

Add AD user to remote computer RDP Group

If you admin a Microsoft domain, and users use Remote Desktop to remote into their LAN PC, you have to at times add the users account to the computers local remote desktop group.

Powershell Script

$sb = {
$members = ‘NET\persons.account’
Add-LocalGroupMember -Group ‘Remote Desktop Users’ -Member $members
}
Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock $sb -Computername station60

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