Technology Solutions for Everyday Folks

Welcome to Matt Zaske Online

Behind the scenes of Matt Zaske Online is Matt Zaske: automation evangelist, technology grief counselor, developer, systems admin, freelancer, father, moustache aficionado, and jack of all trades.

I provide practical advice, extraordinary ideas, and no-nonsense technology solutions for everyday folks. Let's work together to do something amazing!

Recent Tech-related Blog Posts:

October 28, 2024 7 minutes

A number of years ago I started having my primary OSD Task Sequences "check in" as one of their last steps. Specifically check in with key information so I can follow up as necessary ("trust but verify") with downstream actions to ensure our asset management systems are properly updated.

September 16, 2024 4 minutes

After spending much of the month of August on a European vacation, I'm back and preparing for my sessions at MMS Flamingo Edition coming up in October.

August 19, 2024 5 minutes

...or, How I Suffered Through an 'If it Can Go Wrong, it Will Go Wrong' Scenario for a One-Off Export of Database Tables

This is one of those posts I'm writing up because in the moment I was so incredibly frustrated about how unnecessarily complex this action was, and I still have the various browser tabs that ultimately provided me the necessary bits open.

July 8, 2024 4 minutes

If you work with a lot of disparate dev and test devices across different domains, tenants, etc., you might run into the sort of Windows activation issue I encounter.

June 10, 2024 3 minutes

A recent project I worked on required setting up more SSH key authentication, and seeing as how I'd not written about it for two years since the last iteration, it seems fitting to do another quick primer on setting that up for SSH...the 2024 edition.

April 29, 2024 4 minutes

I've been using the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) almost as long as it's been generally available, and I use it for all sorts of things.

April 8, 2024 8 minutes

I haven't written anything up about Google stuff in a while, and since this topic came up a few times in as many weeks (including from conversations at BrainStorm K20) I figured it's time to share the solution I've used several times.

March 25, 2024 3 minutes

If you've fiddled enough in Home Assistant over time, you might have encountered the situation in which it is useful to trigger off of, or simply display, a calculated value. There are a few different ways this can be accomplished but this post focuses on creating a specific sensor to do both: be used as a trigger value for automation, and also displayed neatly in a dashboard.