• Bushel,  JAMF,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    Second Interview With Command Control Power

    Was interviewed by the most excellent guys from the Command Control Power podcast. Wetland everything from Bushel, to IBM, to Apple, to OS X Server, to Krypted, to Instagram nerdy and even a little reading It’s now available at http://commandcontrolpower.com/podcast/2015/9/12/117-charles-edge-of-jamf-software-and-kryptedcom-talks-about-the-response-to-bushel. I have tons of fun with these guys and look forward to gettingĀ a good excuse to hang out with them again! Maybe next time I’ll interview them!

  • Home Automation,  Mac OS X,  Minneapolis,  sites

    Control the Weather Using Curl

    Wait, did I say control, I meant query… Sorry to disappoint! I am a home automation nerd. Recently I’ve noticed that as it gets closer to warmer or cooler extremes that it takes longer for my hvac system to bring my house to the temperature I want. I’ve also noticed that NEST claims to automatically learn these factors. Not to be outdone by the Griswolds, I decided to look at building this into my system. I had been experimenting with using the weather.com site to pull this data but then someone pointed out that NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) actually publishes this information on their site. I was…

  • Home Automation,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  Xsan

    Lights Out Managing Mac Mini Servers with Vera

    There is no Lights Out Management for a Mac mini Server (btw, am I the only one that noticed that these are now called Mac mini with Lion Server, where mini isn’t capitalized). While the Mac mini Server doesn’t have the Lights Out Management (LOM)/IPMI chips in it, there are a few things that we can control anyway. Convention would say that we’d get a NetBotz card for that spiffy APC we’ve got, which can do minor automation and even a little environmental monitoring. And there are a few other systems out there that can do similar tasks. But I’m a home automation nerd these days. So I decided to…

  • Home Automation

    Home Automation :: Mi Casa Verde's Vera Light

    Mi Casa Verde has had the Vera appliance for a number of years. Recently, they released the Vera 3, which controls practically any Z-wave device ever made (in fact many are guaranteed to work). The Vera 3 is also wireless (802.11), so you can place it practically anywhere in the home. Now there’s Vera Light, which retails for $100 less, has a much smaller footprint and no 802.11 networking but otherwise it appears to have pretty much the same feature set. I’m sure it can’t control as many things concurrently, given the smaller footprint, but it looks to me like a great deal for those looking to get started with…