u/MegaSuplexMaster

The company I work at is growing which is great, however we have a guy who is the new VP of statigy. Hes a nice guy been there about a year however. He's as of late igoring processes in place in the business and building his own like 2.0 versions of those. Trying to make his mark I guess. However hes trying to buy web apps for that suit the business that we are in that will automate and make things smoother in the business. However he isnt including key people including IT. Is this normal? Is this somthing I should be angry or annoyed about cause I kinda am. I had to find out 3rd hand and say somthing and find and ask all the approiate questions like are they SOC 2 complainant is the data encrypted is the data used to train AI models, do they support SSO if so what do they use entra, duo etc etc. He did get them to answer all the questions however we''ve never been invited to a meeting or a demo of the sofwate and I dont even know if or when or if they even bought it alrady. Since this is a web app and its not tied to IT Directlly should I just ask the questions that need to be asked and move on?

I've been PF for 11 days and havent fapped either. I was on vacation with my wife and kids (older kids in there late teens) for 7 of those days. Weird part is it was allot easier than I thought im sure vacation helped. My wife and I are going through a rough spot she is peri menopause so we havent had sex in like 6 months eh. Thats a whole other story, however Ive been watching porn for a long time like way to much, I notice its caused me to keep erections and stay hard allot more difacult during sex. So I said enough, I even found myself looking it and not doing anything. So 11 days ive been fine however tommorow I work from home. Thats when I find it tough no one is home and i can take a break and start watching. I know there are safe guards like web filters and such those are already in place but so many times ive been down this road were I just remove them and do it anyway. Any suggestions? I really want to be done with this and fix my dick lol. Its really embarssing when you cant keep it up even when your excited during sex. I think thats why my wife may or may not be having sex with me much anymore cause its happend a few times.

Any suggestions would be great.

We're a pretty traditional shop with 12+ offices, most of them small remote locations and two larger HQs (600+ total users). Every site has a FortiGate firewall, and today most remote users connect with FortiClient VPN with FortiEMS. It's worked well overall, but I feel like we're starting to outgrow it.

The main reason we started looking elsewhere was AI security. Like a lot of companies, AI adoption has happened faster than our policies. Right now, we don't really know what AI tools are being used, what data is being shared, or where our risks are. We're trying to get ahead of that while also putting AI policies in place.

That led us to evaluate Zscaler, CATO, and Fortinet SASE. We liked CATO the best. It's more expensive, but we can justify it if it's the right fit.

Our plan would be to keep our FortiGate firewalls at all of our locations but use CATO for AI security, SWG, DLP, and Private Access for about five internal apps/services (we're a hybrid AD/Entra/Microsoft 365 environment). We also really like the idea of getting rid of FortiClient VPN for most users.

My question is, does CATO sound like overkill for an environment like ours? Or is this exactly the type of use case it's built for?

I'd love to hear from anyone who's made a similar move from a traditional FortiGate/FortiClient setup and whether you felt it was worth it.

Thanks!

We have a small fleet of Fortigates

1x 100F
2x 90G
10x 60F

Does anyone use FortiOS on any of those if so what issues do you see? We are currentlly on 7.6.7 and aside from having to login to it multiple times havent seen any issues. We just do basic in out rules, web filtering, app filtering, ssl, etc etc and some site to site vpn tunnels and ipsec in for fortiems vps clients. I've always been taught not to jump to the latest but wondering how its fairing for everyone else who is using 8.0.

Thanks in advace.

For all the IT veterans out there who've been doing this for 15+ years... do you ever hit a point where you're just mentally done with IT?

The endless projects, constant interruptions, being on call, always having something else to fix... it just starts wearing on you. Ever since I got back from vacation in April, I feel like I haven't wanted to do IT at all. I'm still getting everything done, but man, I'm exhausted.

I want to be clear I love my job and where I work. It's a great place with good people, and I have no desire to leave. I just feel burned out.

So what do you all do to reset? How do you get your head back in the game, stay sharp, and find the enjoyment you used to have? I'd like to hear what has worked for you.

Have you ever gone to log into a server or some random service with an admin account, and before you even realize what you're doing, your fingers type the admin password from a company you haven't worked at in 15 years?

I think I need a vacation.

Does anyone know if there is a text editor addon in obsidian kinda like say notepad++, I edit allot of powershell and python scripts and they dont paste well into obsidian. I was wondering if there is a plugin out there that can do this.

I've been really supportive to what my wife is going through. After reading allot online and reading on here this doesnt seem fun at all. I belive if I have to guess shes been going through this for atleast 2 years now. If not a little longer.

The one question I have is Its been probably 4 months since the last time we had sex or even showed any sort of affection. Shes never been affocaionate person but there is like zero and when I say zero i mean zero. I try and give her a kiss and she looks at me like a have poop on my lips. All joking aside I havent brought it up at all really ive tried a couple times and been turned down. The being turned down part is just getting harder and harder for me. So im kind of at the point were ill think about it and then be like ah forget it who cares.. should I keep doing that should i keep trying or just be supportive and deal with it. But im nervous cause a weird thing is happening to me. I used to check her out all the time. I find my wife very attractive. However in the last few months I barely look at her. I know sounds awful, and I feel awful about it I've never done that. Im not straying away to other women or anything its not like that. Its just I think without the any sort of affection I kinda say what is the point to look its a weird feeling.

Anyway there is my rant / questions / bitch fest lol.. thanks for listing to my horrible grammar story.

We're starting to look at moving to Zscaler and wanted to get some feedback from people actually using it Anyone Anyone?

Currently We have site-to-site VPNs between offices, FortiClient EMS for remote users, a hybrid on-prem/M365 environment, and only a handful of applications that are still hosted internally.

The idea would be to move away from the traditional VPN for those internal apps, file servers and printer shares and also use Zscaler for web filtering, application control, and AI access security.

For those of you running it, do you like it? Hate it? Any surprises during deployment or things you wish you knew beforehand? Also, if you looked at something else instead of Zscaler, what did you end up going with and why?

We're starting to look at moving to Zscaler and wanted to get some feedback from people actually using it Anyone Anyone?

Right now we're pretty old school. We have site-to-site VPNs between offices, FortiClient EMS for remote users, a hybrid on-prem/M365 environment, and only a handful of applications that are still hosted internally.

The idea would be to move away from the traditional VPN for those internal apps, file servers and printer shares and also use Zscaler for web filtering, application control, and AI access security.

For those of you running it, do you like it? Hate it? Any surprises during deployment or things you wish you knew beforehand? Also, if you looked at something else instead of Zscaler, what did you end up going with and why?

I wrote this with my normal crappy grammar.

Does anyone else feel like AI is moving so damn fast and between companies yelling AI AI AI , Agents Agents, Slop, vibe coding its all just going to expload in everyones face. I mean ive been using claude and chatgpt for a few years now as a resource to certain things but its not running my daily(s) tasks etc. However if you go online read or listen to management they act as if they have all these amazing things there gonna do with AI and agents but if you say "ok what would you like to do first" they dont have an answer. Right now my company refuses to devlope and AI policy so its like the wild west. I create what I think should be the policy and have given them suggested etc but they are just ignoring so I have my CYA but damn. ok there is my rant.

AI :

Does anyone else feel like AI is moving so damn fast that it's all going to explode in everyone's face?

Between every company screaming "AI! AI! AI!", "Agents!", vibe coding, and all the AI slop flooding the internet, it feels like everyone is racing to say they're doing something without really knowing what that something is.

I've been using Claude and ChatGPT for a few years now as tools to help with research, scripting, brainstorming, and problem-solving. They're great resources, but they aren't running my day-to-day tasks or replacing my job.

What gets me is when you listen to management or executives talk about AI. They make it sound like they have these huge AI and agent initiatives ready to transform the business. Then you ask, "Okay... what's the first thing you'd like to automate or improve?" and there's no answer. It's all buzzwords.

At my company, we still don't even have an AI policy. I've written drafts, made recommendations, and provided examples, but nobody seems interested. So I've done my CYA, but right now it feels like the Wild West.

Anyway... that's my rant for the day.

So this is odd, I never thought I had an issue with porn until now. I havent watched 4 days and its a stuggle. I also removed sexualized social media from my life to. It seems that was crazy amount on my instagram. I reset my algorhythm to get rid of it. Also delete app for a bit. I've noticed in this morning I woke up with a full erection for the first time in months. My brain feels like foggy and out of it but I also feel happy I havent watched any. Img onna keep it going or try my best, I have allot of bad habbits lol but this is one that needs to go.

My menopausal angry wife in the last year watches all these erotic, sexualized , romantic somtimes amost looks like porn tv shows. I sit here and think to myself.. she hates the thought of even having sex being touches or anything but watches this stuff all the time. Im about ready to dress up like a charitcutre in one of these shows and walk in the room and see if it works..

-end rant.

For the last 5 years I swear all I do in my spare time is watch porn, doom scroll on instagram, tiktok, facebook reels, etc. The only one that i find that is acctully good for me is youtube cause I learn things and acctully do things away from the screen from what I learned. My life is just going down a shit path, im 47 years old married with two kids and a decent job. However between the porn, doom scrolling,over eating and drinking (no i dont drink everyday all day). I feel like I need to better however I dont even know how to start its like every time i try I fail and have 0 motivation do change anyhting. Anyone got the good word?

My wife is right in the middle of it, and to be fair, I've been doing everything I can to support her. Since starting HRT, she does seem to be doing a bit better, which is definitely good news. Our sex life has taken a pretty big hit, but it is what it is.

The bigger issue is what it's doing to me. I'm in a terrible funk. I'm overeating, drinking more than I normally do (and before anyone jumps to conclusions, I'm talking about having a few beers a couple nights a week, not getting drunk every day), and I have zero motivation to do much of anything. I watrch porn daily, i play on social media like tiktok and instragram, all the time.

Honestly, it feels like I've become depressed because she's depressed. I know that sounds dramatic, but some days it feels like my life is just passing by and I'm stuck watching it happen. I feel like absoulte shit I dont do anything but work and sit on the couch. Anyone have any good advice or anything to get me out of this damn funk.

EDIT : I just wanted to say that I do sound kinda like a bitch lol, Im 100% what my wife is going through is 100 times worse.. not discounting that.

Looking for some opinions from other IT folks.

My company recently purchased a new domain and plans to change all employee email addresses from example.com to example1.com. Management does not plan to notify clients, vendors, or other external contacts before making the change. They want to just do it on the fly, my VP of IT is on board with this.

I suggested sending a communication ahead of time so our customers and partners are aware of the new email addresses. My thinking is that it would also give their IT teams a chance to update spam filters, allow lists, and email security policies, reducing the risk of legitimate emails being flagged or blocked.

Management / IT Upper Management feels this is unnecessary and would rather make the change without any announcement.

I understand it's ultimately a business decision, but I also feel it's my responsibility to explain the potential technical and communication issues that could result from the change.

What would you do in this situation? Is this something worth pushing for, or do I make my recommendation, document it, and move on?

I’m 100% a newbie when it comes to working with local models, but I had a question for the group.Has anyone here successfully built or deployed a local AI model for the company they work at? If so, what are you running, and what are you using it for?I know that’s a pretty vague question, but I’m mainly trying to see what others are doing in the real world.

Right now, we’re testing a local setup using Open WebUI + Ollama with:

qwen2.5:7b-instruct-q4_K_M

We have about 8 people using it in a small test group, and so far they’re happy with it. It works well for basic chatbot stuff like writing, editing, summarizing, and general questions.

The next step is figuring out how far we can take it. Long term, the goal would be to keep an internal AI chatbot where the data stays inside the company, then eventually have it connect to internal systems and maybe perform some automated tasks.

That said, I know the hardware we have now probably won’t scale much, so I’m curious what others are using and what kind of use cases you’ve actually had success with.

Thanks in advance.

So we are doing a POC at work, and I’m currently running Ollama (systemd) + Open WebUI (Docker) on Ubuntu with Llama 3 on T4 GPUs. It’s working great as a chatbot for simple questions, editing emails, summaries, etc.

However, I want to connect it to other sources that would help people in the business. I keep reading about MCP, and I’m trying to understand if I have this right.

Would I create an MCP server for each service I’m trying to connect to? Then once that’s done, when I ask questions in the chatbot, it can reach out to those services and return answers based on those connections?

If anyone thinks I should be doing this differently, or recommends a different frontend other than Open WebUI, please let me know. Also, bear with me, I’m new to this. Thanks.

This is partially a joke, but also kinda serious. I got diagnosed with ADHD when I was 7… I’m 47 now. I’ve basically struggled every damn day since then with finishing tasks, talking too much, interrupting everyone and everything, oversharing, being hyper as hell, being lazy, starting 27 projects and never finishing them, putting stuff off forever then feeling guilty about it later. Sitting around depressed thinking about dumb shit that happened 10 years ago for absolutely no reason. The list just keeps going.

But this week something kinda crazy happened. I wrote down a list of projects around the house I’ve been avoiding or never started. Last night I finally did one of them, built a firepit in the backyard and cleaned up an area that looked like total garbage.

Long story short, when I finished, I felt freaking amazing. I slept through the entire night for the first time in years. No waking up, no racing thoughts, no overthinking nonsense at 2AM. It honestly felt like my brain finally shut off for once.

I think I found the key: stop letting projects and unfinished crap linger in my head. Just do them. The problem is… I already know this, and e I feel like most of us with ADHD do too. But every time I do this its like I just figured out the key to life. How do I making it stick.

Right now I feel like I’m on cloud 9. My wife calls it my “ADHD upswing” because I’ll crush life for a week, get a million things done, feel unstoppable… then somehow slide right back into being miserable again.

Morning,

I’m in a pretty rough place lately and honestly don’t know how to pull myself out of it.

I’m 47, married 20 years, two daughters (17 and 22). On paper, things look fine decent job in tech, nice home, all that. But the reality feels completely different.

My daughters are going through their phases and are miserable a lot of the time. My wife is dealing with perimenopause and it feels like she’s constantly angry or checked out. On top of that, we’ve burned through our savings and 401k just trying to keep up with credit cards and dumb financial decisions. I have no clue how we’re supposed to retire, help the kids with college, or really do anything long-term.

Mentally, I feel shot. I’ve been pretty depressed for about a year now. I've gone to see a shrink last year and to be honest i felt like a big waste of time. I go to work, come home, have a couple drinks (nothing out of control maybe 2 or 3 beers), go to bed, repeat. That’s about it. My wife and I barely connect anymore. I try and get close to her get pushed away, i try to get close in a non sexual manner get pushed away. However she does seem like she wants to be here obviouslly its just not the same anymore. One kid is never home working, the other is busy with school and work. Feels like I’m just existing in the background.

People always say “work out, find a hobby, do something for yourself,” but I can’t get anything to stick. I was diagnosed with ADHD as a kid, and it honestly feels like that plays into it. I’ll start something, it goes okay for a day or two, then I drop it. Plus, money’s tight, so even trying new things feels like a stretch.

I’m constantly angry, frustrated, down, and just tired of feeling this way. Nights are the worst my mind races, I overthink everything, and it feels like I barely sleep. Then I get up and do it all over again.

Anyway… that’s my “short” version. If anyone has advice or has been through something similar, I’d really appreciate hearing it.