Categories
Hosting Services

Gusto.com referral code – $100

We just migrated www.madgenius.com payroll over to gusto.com payroll services. I really wanted to do something that was not Intuit and gusto seems to have gotten rave reviews. It has a lovely UX work flow, and pretty brain dead setup. The costs are also more manageable for a smaller company as well. Once I get a few months run under this system, I will likely post a larger review. I also like the fact it has the ability to owner/Div withdrawals directly, outside of the payroll system. Super simple for small business S-Corp owners to do.

The deal, you get $100 VISA gift card if you use my link when you sign up and run your first payroll. I get $300 for some reason! I hear the referral offers change though, so if you check and it’s something else, let me know so I can update this.

https://gusto.com/r/anthony23eecee3

Categories
Gaming Uncategorized

Transfer CS2 settings and configuration to another account

Sometimes I use a second account to play with lower ranked friends. To copy settings to the other account, make sure you’ve logged into both on your computer, and opened CS2. You need to know where you install games/STEAM. The default is in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam . Once in there, navigate to

C:\Games\Steam\userdata\STEAMID\

Then for the new account, navigate to

C:\Games\Steam\userdata\STEAMID2

Now copy all of the 730 and recursive contents of folder into STEAMID2.

Categories
General Computing

Google search results showing incorrect date stamps and calendar – updated Sep 2023

I run into this a lot when I travel, or live in different parts of the world for a little bit. Example, my search results are showing up as BE while I am in Thailand. And as of Sep 22 2023, it looks like Google changed the way you modify this. So this is an update to what I previously posted November of 2022:

Same issue, slightly different way to fix it. Caveats, you will need to be logged into a Google account to fix. And protip, set your homepage to ncr, as that will not give you a region lock either: https://www.google.com/ncr

Click on Settings then Search settings in the bottom left:

Select other settings on the left, and then Language & region

Then select results region

Then search for and select your region and click on confirm

Then you are good to go. Enioy your search results.

Categories
General Computing

How to remove “All Bookmarks folder” in Chrome

This started happening a few days ago. Super annoying and takes up an extra folder or two in my bookmarks bar. But it can be removed. You can remove it by opening a new tab and typing:

 about://flags

Scroll to “Power bookmarks side panel” and change it to disabled. It will require a chrome relaunch.

Categories
Operating Systems

Did you get a Windows configuration update for Windows 11?

Did you received a Windows configuration update for Windows 11 on September 13th 2023 or so? I noticed this on 3 of my Windows 11 22H2 computers. This one was weird, typically there is a request for reboot based on a KB and lets you know. This one had no information regarding what it was related to.

Looking at my Windows update history (Search for Update History on your search bar), it is likely KB5030219 or KB5031217 . If you click on those links, it will direct you to the Microsoft KB and details as to what it likely was related to.

Let me know if I am wrong, but I am guessing this is likely what that meant.

Categories
Linux

Expanding / partition in Linux operating system live with no downtime

I had a disk that was not fully expanded. It only partitioned 4.8GB to the /. So I wanted to expand it live, with no downtime, or data loss. Either way, I would ALWAYS back up the data before doing this even you care about it at all. Either way you should have backups if you want to keep it regardless. I tested this just now with Almalinux 8, but I imagine it would work for a slew of other operating systems, as you only need fdisk and resize2fs, which all come with most operating systems.

I will say it one more time before we start, BACK UP YOUR DATA, always. And test those backups.

df -h to check current disk size or fdisk -l /dev/vda1

[root@72 ~]# df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs        3.8G     0  3.8G   0% /dev
tmpfs           3.8G     0  3.8G   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           3.8G  395M  3.5G  11% /run
tmpfs           3.8G     0  3.8G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/vda1       4.8G  3.8G  774M  84% /
tmpfs           777M     0  777M   0% /run/user/0

You will notice your mount pount/partition is tight or 100% used up. Expand that partition via KVM, VMWARE, Cockpit, Proxmox, etc. That is outside the scope of this article. It is technology dependent how you want to expand your disk. Once you’ve done that, you can reboot, or try running a rescan.

echo 1 > /sys/block/vda/device/rescan

Once that is done and you’ve expanded your disk, we can expand it. Drop into fdisk:

[root@72 ~]# fdisk /dev/vda

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.32.1).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.

Then we will run through deleting the primary partition, and recreating it with the entire disk you now have. Here is the combo of letters to get through the prompts. I will follow it up with text I ran, as I prefer to see it in console. p, d, 1, n, p, 1 and then hit enter for default first and last sector. Then n to NOT remove the signature, and w to write it out.

Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/vda: 250 GiB, 268435456000 bytes, 524288000 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x318ba904

Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/vda1  *         2048 507508351 507506304  242G 83 Linux
/dev/vda2       507508352 524285567  16777216    8G 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Command (m for help): d
Partition number (1,2, default 2): 1

Partition 1 has been deleted.

Command (m for help): n
Partition type
   p   primary (1 primary, 0 extended, 3 free)
   e   extended (container for logical partitions)
Select (default p): p
Partition number (1,3,4, default 1): 1
First sector (2048-524287999, default 2048):
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G,T,P} (2048-507508351, default 507508351):

Created a new partition 1 of type 'Linux' and of size 242 GiB.
Partition #1 contains a ext4 signature.

Do you want to remove the signature? [Y]es/[N]o: n

Command (m for help): w

The partition table has been altered.
Syncing disks.


Now that is done you can resize to expand it with resize2fs and run df -h once again to see the expansion complete.

[root@72 ~]# resize2fs /dev/vda1
resize2fs 1.45.6 (20-Mar-2020)
Filesystem at /dev/vda1 is mounted on /; on-line resizing required
old_desc_blocks = 1, new_desc_blocks = 31
The filesystem on /dev/vda1 is now 63438288 (4k) blocks long.

[root@72 ~]# df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs        3.8G     0  3.8G   0% /dev
tmpfs           3.8G     0  3.8G   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           3.8G  395M  3.5G  11% /run
tmpfs           3.8G     0  3.8G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/vda1       239G  3.8G  225G   2% /
tmpfs           777M     0  777M   0% /run/user/0
[root@72 ~]#

Boom, enjoy.

Categories
Uncategorized

Charles Schwab referral code

For whatever TD Ameritrade is dumping individual stock accounts. I’ll be moving my account over to Schwab which has a pretty decent new account referral bonus. If you create an account with this referral code: REFER48AYXMP4 or utilize this link: https://www.schwab.com/client-referral?refrid=REFER48AYXMP4 to get the bonus. Your transfer of your TD Ameritrade account will count towards these numbers:

Bonus deposit: $1,000
When you net deposit $500,000 or more
Bonus deposit: $500
When you net deposit $100,000 – $499,999
Bonus deposit: $300
When you net deposit $50,000 – $99,999
Bonus deposit: $100
When you deposit $25,000 – $49,999

If you are not depositing that much, you can also just use the start-kit code, it gives you $101 for only depositing $50: https://www.schwab.com/investing-starter-kit

As far as I have seen, I get zero benefit from this, but hopefully you get some free money for your transfer!

Categories
cPanel

Email accounts disappeared in cPanel

I am unsure why, but most likely this comes through via some sort of exploit of a plugin a user has. I have seen email accounts disappear in cPanel users email accounts page. Yet their email functions fine. I found this article and it spoke a little about the issue:

https://support.cpanel.net/hc/en-us/articles/360052477034-Email-accounts-are-missing

I found it was easiest to lay it out. My example shows user anthony@vivithemage.com was not there, and this is how to restore it. If you have the passwd file or if you recall what the usernames of the email accounts should be, you can get them back showing in cPanel to modify them. This will show you what user had an email account:

[root@madhost613 vivithemage.com]# cat /home/vivithem/etc/vivithemage.com/passwd
anthony:x:671:673::/home/vivithem/mail/vivithemage.com/anthony:/usr/local/cpanel/bin/noshell
[root@madhost613 vivithemage.com#

Or you can pull it out from your email_accounts.json file:

[root@madhost613 vivithemage.com]# cat /home/vivithem/.cpanel/email_accounts.json
{"vivithemage.com":{"quota_mtime":1676555934,"disk_mtime":1676530335,"account_count":1,"shadow_mtime":1676555934,"accounts":{"anthony":{"suspended_login":0,"disk_mtime":1494927201,"diskused":"8041555","diskmtime":1676530335}}},"__version":3,"vivithemage.net":{"accounts":{},"account_count":0},"vivithemage.org":{"accounts":{},"account_count":0}}
[root@madhost613 vivithemage.com]#

now create a new shadow file in the correct directory and change ownership to the ACCOUNT. In my case it is:

cd /home/vivithem/etc/vivithemage.com/
chown vivithem:vivithem shadow

and dump this line in for EACH user missing:

anthony:$6$eGMpFjEJEI3349z3$.dhfm1rs/ftxFa8Rt8zs4yAA5dHCBdOb7P2T42Pwi/i5GpXb45BjoXiDccRbtmrwwoQkAHWF3mOwOouloYvvS1:18635::::::

If you have a second user with Elyssa you would now have this:

anthony:$6$eGMpFjEJEI3349z3$.dhfm1rs/ftxFa8Rt8zs4yAA5dHCBdOb7P2T42Pwi/i5GpXb45BjoXiDccRbtmrwwoQkAHWF3mOwOouloYvvS1:18635::::::
elyssa:$6$eGMpFjEJEI3349z3$.dhfm1rs/ftxFa8Rt8zs4yAA5dHCBdOb7P2T42Pwi/i5GpXb45BjoXiDccRbtmrwwoQkAHWF3mOwOouloYvvS1:18635::::::

replace anthony with your username missing from passwd. The hash following is irrelevant, because once you do this, you can change the password via cPanel as you would normally.

Once done this auto populates them in cPanel with no restarts required. It’s a bit of a manual process, but at least this way you can get back on with your life and reset passwords.

Categories
General Computing

Google search results showing incorrect date stamps and calendar

UPDATE SEPTEMBER 22 2023 with a new link due to changes by Google:

I run into this a lot when I travel, or live in different parts of the world for a little bit. Example, my search results are showing up as BE while I am in Thailand.

This is actually a pretty easy fix. In chrome, while logged into my Google account, I go to google.com. Protip, set your homepage to ncr, as that will not give you a region lock either: https://www.google.com/ncr

Then click on settings, then Search settings.

Once there, scroll to the bottom and you will see the option for region settings. The default is current region, which picks up where you are based on IP address most likely, I have not investigated how it picks that region up.

Click on the show more option to show all of the other countries.

My preference is the United States, I select that and click save.

Once that is done, you are good to go. Your Google search results should always show your preferred date and calendar.

Categories
Android

Google Pixel 6 Pro Case vs Pixel 7 Pro Case

I really disliked what happened to my Google 6 Pro Case that I purchased direct from Google Store when the 6 pro was released. So it has about 12 months of daily driving use on it. It slowly started warping on the edges and flexing everywhere. Then it started to peal away from the inner plastic case. It was a shame. I was a huge fan of the Google Pixel 4 fabric cases, and they’ve since discontinued them. The good news is the Pixel 7 Pro case looks much better.