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Remembrance Day vs. Christmas Decorations: The battle begins.
I was listening to talk radio as I drove home from wherever recently and there was a discussion about Christmas decorations, and the discussion was whether or not it is inappropriate (In Canada) to put up Christmas decorations prior to Remembrance Day (November 11th). One of the commentators said that Christmas decorations before Remembrance Day…
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The Technology Life… From anywhere!
When Emily from ChargeTech reached out to me recently and asked me to blog about the new ChargeTech Plug she sent me a video that their CEO had recorded. It talks about the ability to work from on the go and to power any device from anywhere, eliminating the need to sit on the floor…
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Canadian Politics…
A month ago I sat down with my Member of Parliament, the Honourable Karina Gould. Ms. Gould is a member of the Liberal Party, and is a very nice young lady who despite knowing I did not vote for her was happy to meet with me and listen to my issues. I should mention that…
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Applying Hockey Rules to Elections…
In hockey, before a face-off, if the two players can’t settle down and play nice the referee kicks them both out of the circle and the teams have to send two different players to start the play again. Who thinks it would be a good idea for someone to tell Hillary and Donald to skate…
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With the American Elections Coming…
For all Americans who say they will move to Canada if one or the other jackass wins the election: 1) The War of 1812 we kicked your asses. 2) You had better be prepared to know and understand our geography. 3) Learn Metric. 4) it is important for the gorgeous women to understand that in…
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Single Sign-On Woes
I love the idea of Single Sign-On. The fact that I can use a single set of credentials when I log on to my laptop, and then not have to keep entering passwords for subsequent actions, is in theory a great idea. However there are four ‘great ideas’ that, when combined (as they so often…
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Why I Need to Be Escalated…
I got a message from a faithful reader yesterday pointing out in rather interesting terms that I have not been posting as much as I should. Sorry about that! –MDG — Recently I noticed that a ticketing system that my client uses was taking an unusually long time to apply updates. Every month it would…
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Work from Anywhere: The gold standard PPO
There are days when I love being a blogger. A few days after I published my recent article on the ChargeTech ThinCharge case for the iPhone 6, I got an e-mail from the company telling me that they wanted me to try another one of their products, the Portable Power Outlet. They shipped it off…
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I’m Back!
As many of you know I left Microsoft to pursue other adventures when I did my first gig with Rakuten in the fall of 2013. The plan was, according to the managers I spoke with, for me to return to Microsoft when I got back from Japan. That obviously did not happen. I will not…
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Keep it in Your Pocket…
Here’s a tip for travelers going through Airport Security: you are going babe asked to empty your pockets … Everything, including wallet and car keys and passport. It all has to go in one of those plastic bins. Lots of coins? Put em in da bin. Matches? Bin em. You also have to take off…
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Drive Space Nightmares with Hyper-V
As you know, I have been using Hyper-V since before it was released, and am a huge proponent of the solution (although I am also a huge proponent of VMware). The fact that Hyper-V is also included in Windows 10 makes my life easier – I use it on my Windows Client for several reasons. …
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The (Solar) WInds of Change…
I used to love System Center. Simply put, if you were a systems administrator / engineer / architect it did… everything. It monitors, automates, protects, virtualizes, scripts, patches, deploys, integrates… everything in your environment. It is, in a word, comprehensive. It is also big. There was a time (prior to System Center 2012) when you…
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Rules: Why are they Client-Side only?
For several of my clients I use a great monitoring tool called SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM). It does a spectacular job of monitoring my environments and letting me know when there are issues. What I like to do is set up the mail alerts to let me know everything that is going on…
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Smoke ‘Em While You Got ‘Em!
Okay, as many of you know I am stuck at home with pneumonia, so I am not smoking anything this week. With that said, many of you know that I am a cigar lover, and have over the past couple of years accumulated a decent collection of them. The thing is, whenever I speak to…
The World According to Mitch
The day to day ramblings of an IT Professional (and so much more…)
The World According to Mitch 