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The Smoke – …It’s Smoke Time

This article was originally published on beingtheremag.com, an independent music and film magazine that ran from 2004 to 2007. It is presented here as part of the Being There Magazine archive. By Adam Anklewicz | Being There Magazine, August 2004 Rating: ★★½ (2.5/5) …It’s Smoke Time is a collection of the complete works of The Smoke. I found this one day when I had earned enough points to get a free CD from a record store. I’d say it was worth the price. The material found on this album was recorded between the years 1965 and 1972, with most of the songs being bonus tracks. “My Friend Jack” and “High… Read More »The Smoke – …It’s Smoke Time

Nero Wolfe – The Complete First Season

This article was originally published on beingtheremag.com, an independent music and film magazine that ran from 2004 to 2007. It is presented here as part of the Being There Magazine archive. By Adam M. Anklewicz | Being There Magazine, August 2004 Rating: ★★★ (3.0/5) Starring Maury Chaykin and Timothy Hutton Nero Wolfe (played by Maury Chaykin) is a fat man who rarely leaves his home, is easily enraged, loves his orchids and only enjoys the finest foods. Fortunately, Archie Goodwin (Timothy Hutton) knows how to get what he wants. Goodwin is the narrator for the story and the man who provides the audience with the insight. Through the eyes of… Read More »Nero Wolfe – The Complete First Season

In Need Of Radio’s Attention

This article was originally published on beingtheremag.com, an independent music and film magazine that ran from 2004 to 2007. It is presented here as part of the Being There Magazine archive. By Adam Anklewicz | Being There Magazine, August 2004 As I sit in a bar called Hugh’s Room on a Saturday night, I see the back door open and I see Joel Plaskett arrive along with Peter Elkas, guitars in hand. Just arriving late after the six hour drive from Ottawa to Toronto, these two men look dishevelled and tired after long months of touring and recording. “I was in the States for a couple of months.  I drove… Read More »In Need Of Radio’s Attention

Munki 7 Upgrade (with S3)

A few months back, Munki 7 was released. Thank you, Greg and all the other contributors. Munki 7 was a major upgrade, moving from Python to Swift. Munki no longer has a dependancy for Python, making it even easier to distribute to your fleet of Macs. For those unaware, Munki is patch management software. It allows you upgrade apps like Chrome or Firefox on your Macs. With Autopkg, you can also populate your repo with new software as it’s released, allowing admins to easily keep their fleet up to date and compliant. The upgrade was a pretty easy process, but an anonymous user on Mac Admins Slack posted requesting that… Read More »Munki 7 Upgrade (with S3)

Apple Business Manager in Okta Workflows

A few months back, Apple released an update to Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager to allow API access to customers. Apple has thoroughly documented the API.  I tried to implement the new API in Okta Workflows, and got it mostly working, but I wasn’t happy with it. Apple requires an assertion which can live up to 180 days. Once you have that assertion, you can request a bearer token, and with that bearer token, you can perform API calls.  Bart Reardon created a shell script that requests that assertion. What I had done was take that assertion generated by the script, and used it as an input. That… Read More »Apple Business Manager in Okta Workflows

Getting AppleCare info from Apple Business Manager API

Thanks so much to Dmitriy for posting this image to #toronto on the Mac Admins Slack. Also thanks to Arek to posting about it on LinkedIn, where I saw it. Both of them are awesome Mac Admins that I’ve had the pleasure of learning from. They’re also pretty great guys, too. With this new update to ABM shows AppleCare coverage, but the question is, can I get that data from the API? The answer is Yes. To get AppleCare information, make a call to https://api-business.apple.com/v1/orgDevices/REDACTED/appleCareCoverage The returned results looks like this:

SFIcons

I’ve wanted to make a simple app for quite some time, but I have had a hard time learning Swift. The Problem I sometimes need to create an icon for my Munki repo. I often use SF Symbols when I do that, and it’s really easy. But I want to make it look more like a macOS icon. So I played with making an app that layered the SF Symbol over a coloured square with rounded corners. The problem was getting the image out of there. Failed Solution So instead I decided to ask Google Gemini to help me make it. It SUCKED! Solution I switched to ChatGPT and it… Read More »SFIcons

macOS Device Compliance

I use two Smart Groups in Jamf to define how many devices are in compliance in regards to macOS version. The Smart Groups are pretty simple: The problem is that only gives us a snapshot of a moment in time, rather than historical data. My solution was to log that data in a Google Sheet. I created a new Okta Workflow. The Workflow kicks off once a day at 1 am PST. I want to store the date and time, so I need to convert it into the appropriate format. This will give me 2024-04-09 and 10:49:00 PST (based on time I’m writing this). It stores that values as dateReturn… Read More »macOS Device Compliance

Automating MDM Renewals Using Jamf and Okta Workflows

Hi, We have some computers that are in Jamf. Sometimes Jamf doesn’t like to play nice and renew the MDM on the device. To start you’re going to need an Advanced Computer Search in Jamf. The fortunately have a criterion called “MDM Profile Expiration Date” and we set that to less than 11 days. Alright, you got that? Great! Next you need to get the ID for that Advanced Computer Search. You can find that in the URL In the example above, it’s 888. In Okta Workflows, create a new flow, give it a name and tell it that it’s a Scheduled Flow. I’m not explaining every little thing. Here’s… Read More »Automating MDM Renewals Using Jamf and Okta Workflows

Toronto Mac Admins Meetup

We had a Toronto Mac Admins meetup this past Tuesday (January 30, 2024). I’m gonna embed the video for you folks.