Life imitates lazyart
lazyart
Member Posts: 483
True story here...
Like most here, I have a lab at home for hands-on practice for exams. Had a chance to work on something I hadn't before when my son brought home poor grades and I restricted his computer use. Knowing he needed to visit a particular site three times a week for extra credit, i created a special account, and figured out how to lock it down via group policy. No desktop icons, and barely a start menu. IE opens without an address bar with the homework site as the homepage.
The next day at work I am given 24 PCs to prep and ship to another site. "Oh and Art... these machines will be only running one piece of software, so lock em down tight'. Heh.... I can do this.. I just did!
That was yesterday. Today I finished the master image and began ghosting it onto the other machines. As i was on the next to last set word comes to me "Art.. we need to use a different Admininstrator password on these because a different vendor will be installing and we dont want to give the standard one... oh, and add this domain account as a local admin as well."
Grrr. All that was left was to uniquely name each machine and join to the domain. Now i gotta do this and that... 24 times?
Then I remember a logon script I used in my home lockdown job that would fit the bill. I log in to my home machine via remote desktop, grab the script and make a tweak and an addition. Sweet. I join the PCs to the domain, run the batch file:
net user Administrator newpassword
net localgroup "Administrators" /add domain\user
Cool. Life imitates lazyart.
Like most here, I have a lab at home for hands-on practice for exams. Had a chance to work on something I hadn't before when my son brought home poor grades and I restricted his computer use. Knowing he needed to visit a particular site three times a week for extra credit, i created a special account, and figured out how to lock it down via group policy. No desktop icons, and barely a start menu. IE opens without an address bar with the homework site as the homepage.
The next day at work I am given 24 PCs to prep and ship to another site. "Oh and Art... these machines will be only running one piece of software, so lock em down tight'. Heh.... I can do this.. I just did!
That was yesterday. Today I finished the master image and began ghosting it onto the other machines. As i was on the next to last set word comes to me "Art.. we need to use a different Admininstrator password on these because a different vendor will be installing and we dont want to give the standard one... oh, and add this domain account as a local admin as well."
Grrr. All that was left was to uniquely name each machine and join to the domain. Now i gotta do this and that... 24 times?
Then I remember a logon script I used in my home lockdown job that would fit the bill. I log in to my home machine via remote desktop, grab the script and make a tweak and an addition. Sweet. I join the PCs to the domain, run the batch file:
net user Administrator newpassword
net localgroup "Administrators" /add domain\user
Cool. Life imitates lazyart.
I'm not a complete idiot... some parts are missing.
Comments
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lazyart
Member Posts: 483
Not quite a Desktop Admin (which is the official positon in the company) but close. I am actually working for an outside vendor at this same site for over a year now. I do new equipment installs, moves and upgrades. I run some help desk tickets when no one else is available.
Today an order came in for 30 PCs and monitors. I usually bill 3 hours for these but at that rate it would take me 2 1/2 weeks to complete. I could do it in an average of 30 minutes each (ghosting an image, join to domain and deploy working concurrently) so I'm going to try for a flat rate of 60 hours for the job, otherwise I screw myself over doing it. I save them 30 hours of labor $$$ and I effectively make double my hourly wage.
I just interviewed for a direct competitor for a PC Tech position. They really like the fact that I am in a similar role already in their industry. Don't know if they will pay the $$ to lure me away but it's worth a listen. What I really like about my current gig is that I can come in pretty much when I want to and as along as work and appointments are kept up I there are no problems. I can bill a full day and not actually work it. No benefits (I am the vendor's sole employee) but since I get paid quite a bit more than one would think for this position (should be $30-35k IMHO, but I am closer to $50k) I will budget my own time off and piggy back on my wife's insurance.I'm not a complete idiot... some parts are missing.
