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In March, 2004 I wrote and posted this article to my website. I was reminded of it this evening when I opened an e-mail from someone warning me of the latest and greatest virus. Some of the wording had not even changed in six years! My article is a bit dated, but worth the read. –Mitch...
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I had never been to Halifax (or anywhere in Nova Scotia) before, so I was not upset that a scheduling blunder gave me a free day to tour around. My arrival coincided with the arrival of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, who began her 22nd Canadian visit here. It also came during the celebrations...
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This morning my son broke a rule. He was punished. Last week he forgot a school book at home. He had to suffer the consequences by sitting in class without his book. While as a father I was not happy with either situation, I was at least glad that he accepted the consequences for his...
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As many of you know I spend a lot of time working in, consulting with, and teaching virtualization. Because I am such a strong believer in certifications I was proud of the three virtualization certs I previously held – two Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) certs and one VMware-centric...
Posted to
The World According to Mitch
by
Mitch Garvis
on
05-03-2010
Filed under:
Filed under: MIcrosoft, Beta, VMM, SCVMM, Virtualization, Virtual PC, Windows, IT Pro, Microsoft Learning, Article, Server, Operating System, Certifications, Certificates, Exams, Learning, Server 2008 R2, Server Core, VMware, hyper-v, Infrastructure
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If you are looking for a good deal on electronics, you should consider heading to one of the big electronics stores in the weeks after Christmas. .Not only do they have pretty good specials, but you are also very likely to find open-box specials – returned items that are complete, new products...
Posted to
The World According to Mitch
by
Mitch Garvis
on
04-01-2010
Filed under:
Filed under: warnings, Toys, Article, Professionalism, contents, Piracy, Family, Retailer, Video, Big Box, CamCorder, Camera
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If you are looking for a good deal on electronics, you should consider heading to one of the big electronics stores in the weeks after Christmas. .Not only do they have pretty good specials, but you are also very likely to find open-box specials – returned items that are complete, new products...
Posted to
The World According to Mitch
by
The World According to Mitch
on
04-01-2010
Filed under:
Filed under: warnings, Toys, Article, Professionalism, contents, Piracy, Family, Retailer, Video, Big Box, CamCorder, Camera
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As I sit watching Rabbi Wise’s computer upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 I am thinking about a conversation that he and I just had. Three weeks ago he and I started discussing the benefits of Windows 7 over his currently Windows Vista, and he asked if I thought it was really worth the upgrade...
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In her recent article ‘ Windows 7: Seven points of imperfection ’ (posted on IT World Canada, and written for PC World US) Jacqueline Emigh calls out seven deficiencies in Microsoft’s new client operating system. While I understand that columnists have to find a hook to please their editors, I...
Posted to
The World According to Mitch
by
Mitch Garvis
on
12-07-2009
Filed under:
Filed under: MIcrosoft, Windows 7, Windows, Microsoft Canada, Article, Client OS, Windows 7 Launch Party, IT World Canada, Jacqueline Emigh, Imperfections, PC World, problems
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This article came over my RSS feed from Global Knowledge; it is an article from January by David Davis which outlines 10 things you shouldn’t do with your Cisco router. If you were to turn it upside down, it is a really good reminder of ten tips you should always follow with your Cisco router…...
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<Originally posted October, 2006> Earlier today someone referenced this article from my old blog which will, eventually, be migrated over to my new blog. However in the meantime I am reposting it. To be frank the perfect record no longer stands true. –MDG Don’t Mess With Juju: Even...
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There are two schools of thought when it comes to physical memory over-commitment between virtual machines. The first school of thought is that it is a great way for virtual machines to leverage more memory than the host server actually has. the memory resources available to the Guest OS machines exceed...
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My wife’s 17” HP Pavillion laptop broke; when I say that it broke I do not mean that the OS crashed or that the hard disk was defective, or even that the motherboard fried, which are all legitimate reasons for computers to stop working. It seems that a couple of people liked to carry the open laptop...
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Back when I was a computer support technician I used to carry a binder of CDs and DVDs, including (but certainly not limited to!) every version and edition of Windows client and server. This came in handy every time I replaced a hard drive because I could reinstall the OS without having to take...
Posted to
The World According to Mitch
by
Mitch Garvis
on
10-16-2009
Filed under:
Filed under: MIcrosoft, Windows 7, Windows, USB Deployment Point, Article, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, Tim Mintner, Multiple-OS Deployments, Server 2008, Server, Servers, Business Desktop Deployment, Deployment Point, Deployment, Operating System, Server 2008 R2, Server Core, BDD, MDT, Client OS
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If a tool is cumbersome, unwieldy, inefficient, and difficult to use, would you use it? Would you look forward to the experience? Neither would I; so when at the end of last year my son’s Grade 5 homeroom teacher told me that the computers in the school were unreasonably slow, extremely cluttered, and...
Posted to
The World According to Mitch
by
Mitch Garvis
on
10-15-2009
Filed under:
Filed under: Windows 7, Windows, STEP, Springboard, Microsoft Canada, Article, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, School, MGA, Meadow Green Academy, Case Study
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This article explains how to install a new domain forest on Windows Server Core, or in the Windows Server CLI (Command Line Interpreter). I will not discuss any other option for RODCs, existing domains, child domains, and so on… there are a plethora of articles out there that describe those already...
Posted to
The World According to Mitch
by
Mitch Garvis
on
10-12-2009
Filed under:
Filed under: Article, Server 2008, Server, Servers, Operating System, Domain Controller, Steve Syfuhs, Server 2008 R2, dcpromo, unattend, Server Core, Forest, Domain, dcpromo.exe
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I want to start this article by stating that I do feel sorry for Joel… but I have no sympathy for him. If you are unfamiliar with the case, here is the article written by none other than Joel Tenenbaum about his case: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/jul/27/filesharing-music-industry ....
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I have noticed of late a trend… a plethora of articles listing the contents of one’s laptop bag. Far be it from me to miss a writing bandwagon, so here it goes! Laptop Bag: Firstly I should mention that I switch laptop bags with boring frequency; at present I have the Ogio VP Messenger which was...
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Of all of the innovative technologies I came face to face with at TechEd last month the most incredible of them all was a gentleman in a wheelchair. It wasn’t just any wheelchair of course… it was (I would later learn) an iBOT… a wheelchair designed to free the disabled from the shackles that truly bind...
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I am a member of a private community of Microsoft Certified Trainers on a well known networking site. In the last couple of days one of my colleagues complained that his students were passing their exams by using Brain Dumps, and that these tools diminished the value of the certifications. ...
Posted to
The World According to Mitch
by
The World According to Mitch
on
03-19-2009
Filed under:
Filed under: IT Pro, Microsoft Learning, Article, Education, Certifications, Cert Security, Certificates, Exams, Learning, Scams, brain dumps, CertGuard, Professionalism
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I came across this piece in the 180 Systems Blog ( www.180systemsblog.com ) this evening and found it fascinating. Please feel free to visit them for more insightful pieces. -M A man sat at a subway station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He...
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On Sunday I was shoveling my driveway, and quite enjoying myself. I had decided ahead of time to only do one side of it that day, and finish it Monday or Tuesday. As I stood at the base of the driveway admiring my work someone came up to me and said ‘It looks like you didn’t plan that...
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The following message appeared in my Junk Mail box today. (These are only the first few lines… it looked complete and quite official) From: paypal.support@520838.com Security Center Advisory! PayPal is constantly working to ensure security by screening accounts daily in our system. We recently reviewed...
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So now that I have a day or two to play (and need it up already!), I decided to start installing my Essential Business Server environment today. This is not my first kick at this can (I have installed eight or nine previous iterations in either beta or RTM Escrow) so I know there are a number of...
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I encountered a problem this week-end that baffled me for a while… Here is the infrastructure, the problem, and the solution. This network diagram is a rough sketch of the relevant portions of the network. At present I have a server (HP DL585 G2) working as my virtualization parent, with my Windows...
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The entire world runs on DNS. While that is not true, the Internet does, and without it the entire infrastructure would screech to a deafening halt. In short, DNS (or Domain Naming System) is the directory service that lets us use friendly(ish) names to remember sites, such as garvis.ca/blogs,...
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(Note: It has been brought to my attention that I inadvertently named this article the same thing I had named a previous article. As such I am renaming this article, four hours after the original publication time. Thanks for understanding. -M) For the past several years I have been...
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There is a big difference between things that can be done as opposed to what should be done. I have discussed virtualization in great detail of late because of how interesting it is to the average IT Professional. Windows Server Virtualization, or Hyper-V, is a server role in Windows Server...
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For years I have been saying that Small Business Server was the best solution for small businesses that did not have huge IT budgets; it allowed them to take advantage of the same enterprise-level tools such as Microsoft Exchange Server, SQL Server, and SharePoint Server without having to purchase several...
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The following is a comment I made to a blog article on Network World on the topic of certification exam security. The actual post can be found here: http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/26502 Using the MCP ID card as your security poses a number of downsides. To mention two severely...
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I got to Sweden on Tuesday and it did not take me an hour to be fleeced by a taxi driver (A four minute taxi ride from the Kista subway station to the Microsoft office which was not my intended destination cost me 195SEK, or about USD$33). Later in the evening I was speaking with one of the clerks...
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I have a confession to make: I was a bad kid. I was rebellious, I was anti-authority, I did or tried to do what I thought was cool without much concern for what was right. Up until my eighteenth birthday and probably a bit beyond that I was more than a handful, nearly getting expelled from...