IT

CIAOPS Podcast – Adam Fowler

Posted on by Adam Fowler

I’ve been a bit quiet here this month. One of the reasons was having a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer (PFE) onsite for a week for an Azure Fast Track. It’s a program provided by Microsoft to give you someone that can help you start onboarding to the product of choice. I’ve done a few Fast Tracks now and they’ve always been valuable – having a great tech sent onsite and pretty much doing whatever you want to focus on around the topic.

By sheer luck, that Microsoft PFE was Marc Kean, co-host of the Need To Know Podcast. That meant I had the opportunity to go on the podcast, which went live this week. It was great having Marc over, and we also caught up with Brett Moffett who co-runs the Adelaide Microsoft IT Pro Community with me.

I’d mentioned the podcast and CIAOPS only at the start of the month here, and this was before I knew I’d be spending a week with Marc, and even be on it. Funny how these things happen sometimes. I also said I’d have these links on my site by the time the podcast went live, but I missed that by a few days :)

Hopefully I’ll have some more techy posts up soon, there’s a lot of different things I’ve got happening so I’m sure it won’t be far off.

Also, if you’re ever visiting Adelaide and either want to attend or even present at our user group, please join the Meetup group and come along!

 

CIAOPS Academy

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Today I’m sharing Robert Crane‘s CIAOPS Academy service. He’s an Australian based Microsoft Office Servers and Services MVP, and seems to be rather busy with all his different projects, including the CIAOPS Need To Know podcast.

That podcast I highly recommend as an easy way to keep on on the latest Office 365 and Azure news. Even though I try to keep on top of it myself, they often raise other new features or changes that I hadn’t come across yet.

Beyond that though, the CIAOPS Academy is a service I personally pay for that Robert provides. I am on the lowest tier, but the private Facebook group that Robert runs is an invaluable source of fellow professionals who ask and help all things in the Microsoft tech space.

It’s different to other communities with it’s paywall, as everyone is invested and cares about the topics raised.

There’s also a referral program for signups – sure you can use my affiliate link to CIAOPS Academy or use one that doesn’t help me pay for my own access here. I’m not one to suggest services or products I don’t believe in myself, but I’ve had several questions raised already which has more than paid for the service in my mind.

The bronze level (which is what I use) is enough for me right now, but higher levels give you access to videos and other training materials.

The bonus news I can share here is that there is now a 7 day trial available, which is mentioned at the bottom of the patron page above. If you want to see what it’s about and check it’s worthwhile, you can now do it for free!

In summary, if you’re someone who is either new to, or currently managing Office 365 and Azure, this is a great group of people to be a part of. I’m not the only other Microsoft MVP there, which I think shows the value of this service.

Toreba Crane Game Prizes

Posted on by Adam Fowler

I’d stopped playing Toreba Crane Game for a while, but had recently gotten back into it again. It’s a rather expensive thing to do, unless you’re very selective and careful about what you play and when. If you’re not sure what Toreba Crane Game is, go back and read my post ‘I won a Japanese Toy?‘

Anyway, I’ve now stopped playing again after winning a bunch of stuff and requesting shipping. These boxes then turned up a few weeks later:

Within them were many treasures. Here’s each win and the resulting prize:

 

Shaun The Sheep

 

Ice Shaver

 

Hot Wheels Monster Trucks

 

Solar Powered Fan Hat

Racing Track Game

 

Luigi Hat

 

Dog Tooth Game

 

Fish Sausage

 

Capybara Slippers

Some of these items are pretty wacky. I couldn’t go past the Capybara slippers, which my wife is now wearing. The Fish Sausage was ‘not food’ according to the description, but it was an easy win and I was curious. After some research, I found out that fish sausages are a common snack in Japan. However, this is a fake, stretchy rubber one that was packaged up like a real one. I have no idea what use I have for this.

The dog tooth game was something I actually wanted to get my son, but the toy broke before I got to use it properly. The Luigi hat is pretty self explanatory, except the game to win that one was to drop a ping pong ball into the white circle. That one’s a bit random and more luck based.

The racing track game I haven’t opened, that’s gone into the cupboard as a Chrismas present for my son. The solar powered fan hat looks incredibly tacky, and I haven’t taken it outside to test it, due to fear of the fashion police arresting me, sending me to fashion jail and throwing away the key. The Hot Wheels were opened and actually pretty good quality wise (I can’t tell if they’re knockoffs or not) so that was an actual decent prize.

The ice shaver hasn’t been opened yet either – it’s to make shaved ice but I have no idea why/how/what or if I’ll lose a finger trying it. We’ll see. Finally up the top was a small Shaun the Sheep toy. That one I got first shot, but I still may have been able to get it cheaper from a $2 shop :)

I wouldn’t suggest you play this due to the expense, but if you want watch or play you can do it from a PC browser as well as on Android.

How To Suppress “A website wants to open web content using this program on your computer”

Posted on by Adam Fowler

As part of Windows 10 testing, I came across this prompt.

Internet Explorer Security
A website wants to open web content using this program on your computer
This program will open outside of Protected mode. Internet Explorer's 
Protected mode helps protect your computer. If you do not trust this 
website, do not open this program.
Name: XXX
Publisher XXX

Do not show me this warning for this program again

When you open a file from a site that is an internet site zone (that is, not in your intranet zone or trusted sites zone) for Internet Explorer 11, you’ll be prompted with the above Internet Explorer Security prompt.

This doesn’t happen for IE11 on Windows 7.

Because there’s a tickbox that lets a user suppress the prompt in future for when that particular program is called, it may just get in the way for users the first time they see it and cause confusion. It’s on a per app basis – once you allow Microsoft Word, it’s allowed for all sites, but that won’t allow Microsoft Excel.

To stop this prompt for commonly used applications, you can use Group Policy to roll out registry settings that would be applied if the user had ticked the box already for that app.

The registry settings live in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Low Rights\ElevationPolicy\ with a unique GUID for each application.

Here’s a screenshot showing settings for Microsoft Word:

Here’s the raw registry settings:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Low Rights\ElevationPolicy\{342263D0-430D-4325-919B-666CE94C4334}]
"Policy"=dword:00000003
"AppPath"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Office\\Office16"
"AppName"="WINWORD.EXE"

This can be saved into a .reg file, imported onto your PC, then using Group Policy’s Registry Import Wizard, imported into a Group Policy and deployed. Again, this will need to be done for each application you want to automatically allow.

Edit: I’ve found there’s a possible second location, depending what app the link is trying to call:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\ProtocolExecute

Under the specific protocol key, there will be a value for ‘WarnOnOpen’ with the DWORD value of 0 to disable it.

Half-Pink, Half Blue

Posted on by Adam Fowler

A light-hearted post today!

“Half-pink, half blue” was the answer I saw to an IT question from an end user, and for some reason it amused me. I decided to ask on twitter, what people thought the question could be that lead to this response:


Jess has a reasonable guess:


Shane however may need to reconsider what interactions he has with users:


John may have been having a bad day:


Daniel however, came up with a pretty good guess. Wrong, but still good:


Tim decided to use a word that made me google it, and even then I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m sure Tim does:


Daniel came back with another good guess, I’m sure I’ve seen a CRT similar to this:


David however, decided he’d rather a visit to the HR department:


Jim expected the worst from a user, and assumed self injury through poor choices. Maybe he’s been here before:


However, nobody actually guessed the correct answer.

Tough to guess since the colour’s actually red, not pink, but I still liked the answer.