Andrew Hale: IT Talk & Other Topics

At the time of this writing, I live in a condo and have exactly 1 company who's authorized to provide TV service and exactly 2 options for internet access (one of which I've already had and dumped for poor reliability). We had a TV & Internet bundle through a company called Broadstar Communications, which exclusively services apartment- and condo-complexes. For my area, their internet is through leased fiber lines from Cox Communications and they're a re-seller for Dish satellite TV service (the cable box, remote and software all say "Dish", but I'm not directly a Dish customer.) For the purpose of this post, I'll be examining the pros/cons and cost difference of leaving a "traditional" TV package for Hulu Live TV, including factoring in the power consumption on the equipment.

Despite how much I've been blogging about Apple stuff lately, I still put in time on Microsoft technologies. Specifically, I've been working a lot with Sharepoint lately. If you've worked with Sharepoint, whether on-prem or O365, you've either used or heard of using InfoPath forms for getting data into Lists. InfoPath is due to be EOL'd in the coming years (2023, last time I checked), so I don't see it being a good idea to build complex forms in it any longer. MS' replacement for InfoPath, is called PowerApps. It's meant to be a low-code method for building forms and "apps" you can deploy to users of your organization. I'll be giving a general overview of what PowerApps are and when you, as a Sharepoint admin, would want to build a PowerApp vs an InfoPath form.

I'm by no means an absolute source for security wisdom, but after working in a handful of different environments, I've learned about using Password Managers in an IT environment. I generally recommend Keepass, but I'd like to expound on that recommendation a bit.

Bias lighting: It sounds really complicated but it's actually quite simple. Plenty of people much more knowledgeable than myself can explain how bias lightning works. I bought one for my TV and it didn't work out. Let me explain why.

My home PC isn't ridiculously old but it's not particularly new either. The only thing I use it for is doing homework and gaming (Star Wars Battlefront). However, when I built it, I didn't have enough money for an SSD larger than 120Gb, so that's what I'm rockin'. I have a larger spinning disk for any files and games, and I've got important stuff backed up in cloud storage, so the SSD is only for the OS and some apps. Due to it's small size, I've had to learn some tricks for saving space, without deleting everything.

It's about damn time Apple got into the smart-speaker market. I've been waiting to see what they come up with, but I'm not buying one. Let me tell you why.

As mentioned in another recent post, I've switched to a Mac as my main workstation. Thus far, it's been a lot easier than I'd imagined. However, there has been an abundance of Googling and I've picked up a variety of tips that I believe other new mac users will find helpful. Where applicable, I'll note if a feature is specific to the latest MacOS release (currently 10.13 as of this writing).