Why I hate A.I., but I don’t?

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We’re all seeing it, AI getting throw into everything and shoved up in our faces.
Whether we want it or not.

If you ask me generally if I like AI, I don’t have a solid answer, but I lean towards no.
And it’s not because I don’t like the technology.
I think it’s amazing and has great potential.
It’s the excessive reliance on it, the excessive force of which it’s being forced on us.

I would love to use it to help improve my work and my life.

Since I work in IT you’d think it would be really useful.

Not so much for me.
Most of my tickets are what you would call Level 2/3, or projects like email migrations, server upgrades, network implementations.

When I’ve tried to see how AI would’ve handled something I did, it gave answers no better than 30 seconds of consulting Google/Reddit for results.
In fact, often times it gave worse answers. Most likely because it’s missing a ton of context, and I don’t know how to do that without releasing too much client info.
Am I using it wrong? Maybe. I’m open to learn it better, so if you’re gnashing your teeth at me using it wrong, use the contact page to educate me!

Getting back to the point, it’s not the tech that bothers me, it’s the “tech bros” claiming it will save so much time, money, effort, etc., but rarely deliver.
Or in the case of the arts, people who can’t draw a sketch, or don’t know a chord, claim to be artists.

I’m also seeing it used in computer code. With people who don’t know how to convert a series of “if, then, else’s” into a switch case, even worse, people who don’t know what any of what I just said even means!

AI can be a great tool to assist us in many tasks.
My clients have told me great stories of how it has shaved weeks of yearly tasks, or other processes.

And that’s just it, it’s a tool.

These so called “tech gurus” are trying to sell us a hammer saying it can build a house by itself, or all you need to do is provide the right prompts to do so.

You’ve seen it already.

You call in, or try to use chat to get help with something, and you get a chat bot running you in circles.
And I’m going on the record and NOT blaming AI for this.
I think AI could do the basics very well.
It’s how it’s made, and equally important, how it’s not improved.
If they aren’t feeding previous chat logs indicating satisfaction levels, and CONTINUOUSLY updating it, it’s going to be awful.
I see it with some of our vendors:

  • I submit a ticket
  • Get AI chat-bot
  • Get miffed at the bad results
  • Get transferred to real person
  • Issue resolved quickly

I open a similar ticket a few months later, and it’s a repeat of my experience.
Even if it’s not 100% correct, it SHOULD be taking that previous example and using it for the next chat, and yet it’s like a new employee that’s never trained and never learns.
AND keep this in mind, it’s not talking to your average consumer or end user. It’s only accessible by someone like me who should be trusted to know more, and not told “Have you tried rebooting?”.
Yes, I reboot, I reboot all the time, to the point my clients get annoyed at me, and yet it still resolves 50% of issues in 3 minutes. Don’t argue, just do it!

We need to demand more of the people making AI, the companies using AI, and even of ourselves.
We can’t relay on it to do everything for us, we still need to be cognizant of what we’re trying to do.
We need to hold those using it to account.
We especially need those making it held to generally accepted ethical standards.

Unfortunately, an executive order in the US was issued that essentially says only the federal government can make laws for AI, instead of the states deciding.
And even then, it’s a relatively small “task force”
This greatly limits guardrails from being put in and allowing companies to run wild as our slow-as-molasses federal government struggles to understand this technology, let alone regulate it.
This also allows the AI industry to lobby a single source, instead of having to be careful of what it designs and implements.
AI, like any tool, can be used for good or bad, restricting the regulation to just a small group of people is never a good thing.

Now, I’m not some deep insider or advanced technology person.
I’m just a damned good technician/engineer for small/medium business IT needs.
I’m closer to the end user this will affect the most, rather than the CEOs of these big AI firms.

Take from this what you will.


Resolving Acrobat Licensing Issues in AVD

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We have a client that’s having issues with Acrobat and licensing in AVD.

They’re getting the dreaded “you do not have access to this feature” when trying to use the paid features, despite being signed in with a licensed account!

We did the normal troubleshooting of repairing, reinstalling, etc.
WE also did the registry tricks like setting [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\DC\FeatureLockDown]
“bIsSCReducedModeEnforcedEx”=dword:00000001

It still refused to work!

I had them sign out and back in when I noticed it in tiny text under their login:
“Personal account”.

Hm.

They shouldn’t be using a personal account.

There was a “Join team” option and they jumped the gun before I could read the whole thing and they clicked “Skip”.

We relogged and clicked “Join Team”.

This time they got their license, had to deactivate an old install, and blam-o, licensed features working!

While this worked for us, it may not work for you.

Zebra label printer stops working with UPS after Windows 11 upgrade

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Noticed that for a client, all their PCs were unable to print labels from UPS.com after upgrading to Windows 11.
It kept saying no thermal label printers found.

After a lot of troubleshooting I found the answer.

I dug into the UPS Thermal Printing App, located here, and found that the tool REQUIRES that the vendor name needs to be in the Name field for the printer.

It appears during the Windows 11 upgrade, it renamed the printer to match the driver, in this case “ZDesigner Gk420d”.
Once I prepended it with “Zebra”, the app magically found it and printing started working again.

Monolith, gone but not forgotten

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The closing of Monolith Productions has saddened me.

I only played one of their games, F.E.A.R., briefly.
What I most remember them for is how they interacted with me back in the late 90s.

Back in middle school, in Home Ec. II, we were tasked with writing letters to a company we liked to ask them a question. I chose Microsoft.

I had inquired about a rumor about “Windows 97” and they responded they were working on a new version of Windows code-named Memphis, which would later be know as Windows 98.

They also included a CD with game demos, aptly named “Game for Windows 95”.

This demo disk used a 3D space station that you could explore and interact with to launch game demos and videos. I loved it.
It was like nothing I’d seen before and given my age and limited game exposure, it blew my mind.
It exposed me to other franchises I hadn’t known, and the station was so fun.

So, I wrote to the developers, Monolith.

Brian Goble answered my emails, which in hindsight I wish I could’ve kept. I was using AOL at the time and exporting was not an option.
Anyway, he wrote back and sent me the Monolith demo disc, along with the sequel demo disc “Games for Windows 95 2”.
I remember for the audio tracks on their demo disc, whenever they mentioned Brian Goble I got excited, “I know that guy!”.

I wrote Mr. Goble back and forth a few times and trailed off as my youthful attention pushed me to the next distraction. I treasured each message though. To think someone as cool as them took the time to respond to me was so uplifting.

I loved all 3 discs very much and poured through them over and over.

While they were lost to my childhood, I’ve thankfully gotten them back via the internet archive.
I still fire them up in a VM every now and then to relive some good memories.

When I heard the studio was closed my heart sank.
They have been making games for so long, and to see them shuttered so casually by WB, it was like a little bit of my core was shrunk and made cold.
They didn’t close up shop because of bad decisions on their part, or wind down to retire. They were just a line item in a budget to be axed.

I’m hoping they can all go on to lead happy lives, maybe even re-form under a new name should they be so inclined.

Mr. Goble, if you’re out there and read this, I wish you and your friends the best.
1, by 4, by 9.

Not happy with the direction of Windows?

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Odds are you can and could’ve been doing something about it, and have been opting out this whole time.

Back when Windows 8 came out I was still working retail and attended a demo and training seminar from Microsoft.

As part of this training, they explained a lot of their decisions as to why they moved to the “Metro UI”, which I kinda liked after a while.

During the years leading up to Windows 8, people using Windows 7 were invited to participate in the CEIP or Customer Experience Improvement Program.

As part of the CEIP Microsoft kept track of how people started their apps and found the of those participating, almost everyone had stopped using the start menu and launched from desktop shortcuts or the pinned apps in their taskbar.

As we now know people lost their ever loving minds and demanded the return of the start menu. I guess being stuck on something from 1995 even in 2012 was a form of a comfort?

The interesting thing about the CEIP was that it was offered to almost everyone, but so few people opted in. I have a strong reason to believe it was because of so many blogs and forums telling people that they should never opt in to these things.

Lots of claims of privacy invasion but I don’t recall anyone pointing out anything of concern in the privacy policy.

Regardless, I’m wondering how they expect companies like Microsoft to improve their product if the general public refuses to give them useful data or feedback?

On that same thought, I do understand many companies, Microsoft included are abusing their data collection and using it beyond improving their products and using it for targeted ads and such.

I’d like for more companies to collect anonymous data on how people use their products in ways that won’t allow them to link it to individuals.

I’d also like for influencers and the general public to understand that nothing will get better if they stay quiet and withhold any feedback in any form.

Can’t upgrade to Windows 11 because your PC is too old?

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I meant to post this a while ago shortly after the Windows 11 release and never did. I still feel the same after all this time.

If you don’t remember the pains for the free and forced upgrade to Windows 10, please pause for a moment and read this through.
Yeah, it may seem like a hot take, but I promise I have a valid point.

Back when Windows 10 was released it was shoved down everyone’s throat. Nearly every PC that was alive got the upgrade, and this included PCs that barely met the requirements. We’re talking systems with ancient onboard graphics and 2GB of RAM.
It was generous to offer it way back to people with Windows 7, a decent attempt at an apology for Windows 8.

They, ran, awful. We were flooded with calls about terrible performance, broken drivers, and massive instability. Best answers were to roll back or get a new PC. Yeah Windows 8 wasn’t the best, but 10 was great (after a year….

Now with Windows 11 they have what many people consider high requirements. I call shenanigans. The specs they ask for cover any mid range PC made in the last few years. The only odd item is the TPM chip, but if it means PCs are more secure well then so be it.

I see countless people and business running PCs well past their useful lifespan and are the ones that I feel complain the most and tend to get compromised more often.

So we’re finally at a point where a line is drawn in the sand. It’s time to finally upgrade your stuff to something nice, and the best part is it will end up saving money in the long run.

I’ve seen many clients shave $50 off a pc to have half the ram, a painfully slow hard drive, or a terrible CPU. But they don’t think about how the $50 causes employees to have drastically reduced productivity. Start putting that math together. Those savings drops off immediately.

So please, if your system can’t take Windows 11, it’s time to rethink how you handle your tech.

Kids and their gaming of today and tomorrow

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My video game journey started on the Atari 2600. Almost unplayable by today’s standards, but it was all we had.

As I progressed through the various generations, each one blew me away.

The graphics, sounds and music, more complex game play mechanics. Then came the extensive replay factor turning a game you could play for hours into games that can be fun for weeks, month, even years later!

I wonder now what will blow the minds of the generation growing up on the Switch/Xbox series X/PS5 era.

I’m really hoping the developers are allowed to create wild and revolutionary experiences. I’m worried there’s too much concern about investors and not about the audience.

They deserve to feel that same sense of joy and wonder I had when the next line of consoles came out.

Adobe Acrobat icons missing and “An internal error has occurred” fix

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While working with a client recently they had an issue where all the toolbar icons wouldn’t show, and doing any operations inside Acrobat results in a generic “An internal error has occurred” message.

A colleague tried to do a repair and then re-install to no avail.

I found the fix was the go into the %localappdata% and %appdata% locations.
Go into the Adobe folder.
Find the Acrobat folder and renamed it to Acrobat.old
I try to keep those around in case they need to be referenced later.

After the Adobe Acrobat worked without further issue.

I suspect the cache or preferences became damaged.

New to tech and some vets are complaining you have it easy?

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Well, you do have it easier, kinda. And I couldn’t be happier!

A lot of older techs will complain about how things were harder and how new techs are constantly using Google for answers.
Or they say how YouTube gives out too much information to the non-technical.

Honestly, I think they’re just jealous. There’s just too much these days to know how to do or fix everything. And yeah, doing something like upgrading a hard drive is plug and play nowadays. What feels like an eternity ago you had to add the drive and it’s attributes (cylinders, heads, sectors) into the bios before it could work. Don’t forget those jumps! Are you lazy for not having to do that? Hell no!

Doing anything shouldn’t be complex if it doesn’t have to be. When the old techs complain it’s because you don’t have to suffer like they did. Your time is more valuable in understanding your systems and resolving issues than it is making sure all your SCSI connections are numbered properly and have terminations.

I remember when something as simple as connecting a monitor required drivers, knowing the resolutions and frequencies each could run at! When monitors could relay this info directly to Windows I was ecstatic! And now realistically we only deal with a handful of resolutions and refresh rates, it’s even better!

I’m glad the the new techs I’m working with don’t even know what an IRQ is. They don’t need to, and unless Word starts requiring set IRQs it’s just mean to criticize them for not knowing.

If you’re new to tech and you’re curious about how things used to run, you should feel comfortable asking. If they start faulting you for not doing things the old ways because they had to suffer, just walk away.

You’re a tech in a great time. You should be spending your time learning and growing. Not grinding at menial procedures that should be automated away.

Unable to stay on Windows 10 after rolling back from Windows 11 Preview?

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The title shows a recent issue I was having.

While I was enjoying the Windows 11 experience, I didn’t want to reload my PC from scratch just to upgrade when it’s released so close to now.
I decided to do a roll back, which went well. No issues when it was back except one that reared its head after a few day.

My PC did not want to stay on Windows 10, it kept moving me back to Windows 11.

I turned off the Insider feature, but that didn’t seem to matter.

I read a few other people having this problem and they provided a slew of fixes, most of which required registry/policy changes, or changing telemetry data gathering (more on that in another post).
Ultimately it seemed the most sure-fire way was to do a factory reset to Windows 10.

Since this is being pushed via Windows Update, I tried something interesting.

It was prepared to restart the PC to do the install, but before I let it do that, I did the standard fix for most Windows Update issues.

I stopped the WindowsUpdate service, renamed the SoftwareDistribution folder in C:\Windows, and started the service.

Several reboots and a manual update check later, no more attempts to upgrade!