How-To
Unifi Ubiquiti Logo

Resetting a Unifi Controller’s admin password

If you use Unifi gear, you know that it can proliferate quite fast. Couple that with cameras, a second network for cameras, and you have a growing need for more Unifi controllers to manage devices. The best approach is to, uhm, unifi controllers into a cloud-based setup – but you can’t always do that. When controllers get isolated on networks, you may find that you’ve lost the administrator password for one. Here’s how you can reset it so long as you have root shell access to the machine running your controller.

How-To
"email" by Sean MacEntee is licensed under CC BY 2.0

How to gather email addresses from mail and other data to create a list

My problem here was that a client asked needed to extract data from a few disparate sources and build a clean, usable list of email addresses. Certainly, no small feat since some of this would have to come out of an email account itself. I wasn’t even going to benefit from working from contacts either – addresses had to come from the messages themselves. I’m going to describe what I did to get there.

Basics
IPv4-Address

Basics: How To Find Your IP Address

Internet Protocol (IP) is the general basis for all communications on local and Internet networks. These communications rely on some basic numbers that identify you to other computers on the local network, and to the world. Those numbers put together are what’s commonly called an IP Address. On occasion, someone in you IT department or support might ask you to provide this number format, and  I’ll show you how to find it.

How-To
Dell 8TB

The Strange Case of Dell VRTX Hard Disk Compatibility [Solved]

Early June of this year, I ordered five more drives for a client’s Dell PowerEdge VRTX server enclosure, This in addition to the currently installed seven 2TB drives that were humming along just fine. My only request from Dell is that these drives be the biggest we can get, and that they be compatible with the VRTX enclosure. Simple, right? So we ordered the $8,000 in hard drives, and waited. The drives themselves would kick of a strange saga of failure and support that I can’t recall since working on another blade system, one made by IBM.

How-To
Office 2016 Logo

Your Guide to the Confusing Microsoft Office 2016 ‘My Account’ Service and How to Take Control

You might have wondered why licensing Retail versions of Microsoft Office 2016 on Windows has become so cumbersome and clunky and confusing? Why does Microsoft force a login to install and activate Office?  Why is this service so bad at showing information and handling more than one installation? If fact, if you have more than one retail copy of Office to install and activate on the same account, you’re in for serious confusion. I can’t answer all these questions, but I’ll show you how to fix this mess so you can install Office and move on.

How-To
Google Logo

Tips for Migrating Outlook on MacOS to Google’s Mail

When I was asked to move a customer’s 2000-odd contacts and 13 gigabytes of mail to Google’s cloud services from his MacOS-based computer, I knew this was going to be more than a challenge. To complicate matters, he had been using Outlook as a POP3 client of Google Mail and kept all his folders locally in Outlook 2011. From the beginning, I knew this was going to be an undertaking but I have some tips to help you face these particular challenges.