Matt Zaske Online Blog

UPDATE: Direct Slack Notification From a Task Sequence Step

• November 04, 2024
• 4 minutes
• automation, inspiration, powershell, tech

Last week I wrote about a basic process I have in place to fire off a Slack notification when a Task Sequence completes.

Triggering a Slack Notification on Completion of a Task Sequence

• October 28, 2024
• 8 minutes
• automation, inspiration, php, powershell, tech

A number of years ago I started having my primary OSD Task Sequences "check in" as one of their last steps. Specifically check in with key information so I can follow up as necessary ("trust but verify") with downstream actions to ensure our asset management systems are properly updated.

I chose a Slack webhook to accomplish this as I could set up a quiet channel for notifications and queue them for later review (once a day or a few times per week).

Creating a Generic OAuth Token Request to Microsoft Graph API

• September 16, 2024
• 4 minutes
• automation, inspiration, tech

After spending much of the month of August on a European vacation, I'm back and preparing for my sessions at MMS Flamingo Edition coming up in October.

Exporting Full MySQL Database Tables on Ubuntu

• August 19, 2024
• 5 minutes
• inspiration, mistakes, security, tech

...or, How I Suffered Through an 'If it Can Go Wrong, it Will Go Wrong' Scenario for a One-Off Export of Database Tables

This is one of those posts I'm writing up because in the moment I was so incredibly frustrated about how unnecessarily complex this action was, and I still have the various browser tabs that ultimately provided me the necessary bits open. I write this mostly for Future Me should I need to do something like this again.

Basic Dialog to Manually Name OSD Task Sequence Device

• July 29, 2024
• 3 minutes
• inspiration, tech

Many years ago I wrote about the way I automatically generate the OSDComputerName value for most devices in my fleet. Much of that process remains as it did back then, but I've never written about how I handle the one-offs (such as my testing VMs or other nonstandard hardware).

Manually Pointing Windows Activation At Alternate KMS Host

• July 08, 2024
• 4 minutes
• mistakes, tech

If you work with a lot of disparate dev and test devices across different domains, tenants, etc., you might run into the sort of Windows activation issue I encounter. In particular, when I'm doing dev/test work using physical hardware in my lab space (for things like OSD or OSDCloud), these machines wind up managed by my dev/test tenants/environments, and thus not pointing at our production KMS server for Windows activation.

Setting Up SSH Key Authentication: 2024 Edition

• June 10, 2024
• 3 minutes
• automation, inspiration, security, tech

A recent project I worked on required setting up more SSH key authentication, and seeing as how I'd not written about it for two years since the last iteration, it seems fitting to do another quick primer on setting that up for SSH...the 2024 edition.

Getting Started with WSL - A Quick Installation Guide

• April 29, 2024
• 4 minutes
• tech

I've been using the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) almost as long as it's been generally available, and I use it for all sorts of things.

Automatically Process and Send Google Form Responses on Submission

• April 08, 2024
• 8 minutes
• automation, inspiration, tech

I haven't written anything up about Google stuff in a while, and since this topic came up a few times in as many weeks (including from conversations at BrainStorm K20) I figured it's time to share the solution I've used several times.

Creating a Differential Sensor In Home Assistant

• March 25, 2024
• 3 minutes
• automation, home assistant, tech

If you've fiddled enough in Home Assistant over time, you might have encountered the situation in which it is useful to trigger off of, or simply display, a calculated value. There are a few different ways this can be accomplished but this post focuses on creating a specific sensor to do both: be used as a trigger value for automation, and also displayed neatly in a dashboard.

Belated Farewell to the Twitter/X API

• February 12, 2024
• 2 minutes
• bots, tech

This isn't much of a "real" post, and admittedly I needed a filler for this week, but it's been on my list to write about here for a while: Last summer I shut down my three Twitter bots when the Twitter API moved to a ridiculous new access rate structure.

Export CM Collection Member Details to CSV

• January 29, 2024
• 3 minutes
• powershell, tech

A script snippet I use all the time (and which gets a lot of search traffic) is something I wrote in 2020 about exporting AD computers to CSV with Powershell.

Lighting the Dark Days of Winter with Home Assistant

• January 15, 2024
• 7 minutes
• automation, home assistant, inspiration, tech

This fall, right after the time change, I found myself often working intensely enough to suddenly notice "it was dark outside" in the late afternoon. Good for productivity, I suppose; not so much otherwise? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Reflections on Advent of Code 2023

• January 01, 2024
• 7 minutes
• inspiration, php, tech

I finally gave Advent of Code a shot for 2023! In years past I'd think about/stumble across/remember it a week or two in and automatically 'nope' out of starting. This year, in large part due to the WinAdmins Discord, I was both reminded of it in advance and also had a small community of other folks taking part (and a private leaderboard to watch).

OctoPrint Webhook for Filament Change Notifications

• December 11, 2023
• 4 minutes
• 3d printing, automation, home assistant, inspiration, tech

I've been using OctoPrint to handle nearly all of my 3D printing operations since I moved to it a little over a year ago. It's an absolutely wonderful platform and I can't recommend it enough.

Hotend Thermistor With A Silpat, Revisited

• December 04, 2023
• 3 minutes
• 3d printing, mistakes, tech

I decided to post a quick follow-up to the original fix I'd implemented about ten months ago.

The $1M question was...

Back to a Regular Schedule?

• November 27, 2023
• 5 minutes
• personal, tech

Man, it's embarrassing to see that I haven't published anything really technical (beyond my MMS Miami Beach recap) since the end of July...and before that anything on a regular schedule since April! Despite my best intentions, some aspects of life got complicated.

MMS Miami Beach Recap

• November 13, 2023
• 5 minutes
• inspiration, tech

I had the great honor and pleasure of being a speaker at MMS Miami Beach Edition at the end of October. It was the first speaking event I've had since 2019, largely due to the pandemic, and the experience was marvelous! The entire team behind MMS is outstanding, and their attention to detail really makes a difference in the experience both for attendees and speakers.

The Overall Experience

The speaker attire this edition was pretty rad: lots of flamingo gear!

Enabling Pi-hole DNS Across Multiple VLANs

• July 31, 2023
• 4 minutes
• automation, inspiration, tech

I recently (and finally) upgraded my home network to a UniFi system after years of consideration and an incorrect assumption it would cost a small fortune to enact. My existing "core" router was reaching the end of its normal life, though, and I wanted a real mesh network with better outdoor coverage instead of using the range extender during the "not winter" months and connecting to a different SSID.

Turn off the fan already! Tales of an automation modification

• July 10, 2023
• 5 minutes
• automation, home assistant, inspiration, tech

It's been a couple months since my last post, and while I had some things in the queue I have lacked time to finish them out due to MMS in early May, being involved in a community theatre production that just wrapped up a couple weeks ago, and for random reasons building a chicken coop of all things. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Here's to a return of more regular posts, assuming I have adequate time to write and revise them!

Addressing Firmware Updates for Dell Latitude 54X0 in a Task Sequence

• April 24, 2023
• 8 minutes
• automation, inspiration, mistakes, powershell, security, tech

For about two years we fought with getting firmware (BIOS) updates to install on our Dell Latitude 54X0 models during their build/rebuild using a MEMCM task sequence. No matter what random trick I tried or thing I read, I just couldn't get the update executable to successfully apply the update in our primary build/refresh task sequence. Our techs (self included) would have to apply the update manually after devices were [re]built.

Semi-Automatically Offering Dell BIOS/Firmware Updates

• April 10, 2023
• 9 minutes
• automation, inspiration, powershell, security, tech

Several years ago I implemented a mechanism in our primary [re]build [Configuration Manager/MEMCM/SCCM] task sequence to address upgrades of our fleet's firmware (BIOS). On the whole, the process has worked very well and definitely helped keep things updated.

Creating a Reference Sensor Template in Home Assistant

• March 27, 2023
• 10 minutes
• automation, home assistant, inspiration, tech

It's been a while since I wrote about any Home Assistant stuff so I figured this was as a good time to write about something I'm super happy with: custom/reference sensor templates!

Going Dual Camera with OctoPrint

• March 13, 2023
• 6 minutes
• 3d printing, automation, inspiration, tech

Almost as soon as I started using OctoPrint, I also set up an old webcam to let me remotely "see" things since I keep the printer in the basement. That whole process was an adventure, because I don't use a Raspberry Pi for OctoPrint like most folks; I have an old Intel NUC (also used as a local dev server) running Ubuntu on which I installed OctoPrint.

Creating a Practical and Automatic Server and Data Backup Solution

• February 27, 2023
• 8 minutes
• automation, inspiration, personal, tech

If you had disk/storage failure (on any of your important devices/things/places), would you be "up the creek?"

For many folks, the answer to that question is "absolutely."