Category: Uncategorized
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The Vasa – learn from History!
In 1625 King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden ordered his shipyards to build (among others) a mighty fighting ship called the Vasa. He gave very specific instructions for what he wanted in this ship, how he wanted it outfitted, and made it clear that it should be the mightiest ship on the seas, and it was……
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My Famous Pooch!
I am so proud of Gingit… Yesterday she attained immortality! At 8 months old she has vaulted to the Number Five spot (worldwide!) on the auspicious site… http://www.thingsmydogate.com. To see her story, please click http://www.thingsmydogate.com/gingit.html! Sigh… at least some good came of all that loss! M
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Of Mice and Puppies…
This is my mouse… from the day I got it in March of 2007 I fell in love with it, because despite the (slightly ridiculous) price tag it was not only the most comfortable mouse I've used in a long time, but it also had the added bonus of being a presenter mouse, with the…
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DNS: A flaw in the root of all evil?
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, rather than having to remember http://209.97.218.133/mitchgarvis/blogs. …
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Unified Messaging (UX perspective) – COOL!!
I had a conversation with my Exchange Server last night. Microsoft has been talking about Unified Messaging for a couple of years now, and I have been interested in it since the outset but because I do not always have the infrastructure (or the time) to do a lot of the things I would like…
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The end of a long day…
I tend to work a lot of late hours. I am not entirely sure why, but it probably has to do with the fact that there are fewer distractions about at midnight than there are at noon. The phone doesn't ring, there's really nowhere to go. I can sit at my computer and work. It…
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Recording video into Windows from your analog device
…So my brother-in-law, like most people I know, assumes that when it comes to computers I will know the answer. This led to my learning something new this week. The question: ‘I have an analog camcorder with which we have documented our lives over the past eight years. We recently purchased a Media Center PC…
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Getting Past iastor.sys Errors in Vista Deployment with the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit
They say that when you cannot do, teach. I am not entirely fond of this particular expression, chiefly because I am primarily a teacher in my profession. I do tend to 'eat my own dog food' and work with the tools that I instruct on though, which is why at the moment I have, for…
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A backup hiccup!
For the past few months I have been using Windows Home Server (WHS) to backup my workstations at home… two laptops, one desktop workstation and my Media Center PC. The WHS box has 650 GB of hard disk space, about half of which is dedicated to file storage, and the other half is for backup…
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Essential Business Server – Tell me more!
(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 a huge proponent of Microsoft Small…
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Can vs. Should
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 2008; presently it is still…
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A Simple Explanation of Microsoft Essential Business Server
So what is Essential Business Server (EBS)? In simple terms EBS is a complete corporate network for mid-sized companies in a box, or rather in three or four boxes depending on the version. Let me explain: In the beginning there was the PC. And of course Microsoft looked up at the PC and said it…
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Essential Business Server: Coming soon to a mid-sized company near you!
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 servers with tens of thousands…
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Homeward Bound
It occurred to me that thanks to the US Government (and my wacky travel schedule) 2008 is the first year that I have 'sprung forward' twice. I am of course referring to the fact that North America switched from Daylight Savings to Standard (or is it the other way around… I never remember) a couple…
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Certification Exam Security… what can be done?
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 opposite issues: 1) A new candidate, or one who…
The World According to Mitch 