Archive

A comically long time later...

So much has changed since 2023. I'm back to journaling, and have returned to social media, but slowly. My tech babble has dwindled into other areas but am still up to things. I wanted to start the 2024 year with a few nuggets - particularly, a thought about

ourselves.space

Welcome to https://www.ourselves.space - a place to be our authentic selves. The Doodle Project (https://www.thedoodleproject.com) is pleased to announce the availability of a free activitypub instance for yourname@ourselves.space, available now for up to 100 users in our preview. In addition, we are

HOME LAB RENEWAL - PT 6

Having a big family means making sacrifices. I had my own closet in the house to run my noisy server. It paired nicely with the wiring drop for all the wires in the house (network/phone/audio visual/etc). But, alas, that room needed to no longer be the guest

HOME LAB RENEWAL - PT 5

Now that my two servers are built, it's time to build the ultimate VM - my daily non-work driver. There's something special about this VM though: This will not do. In fact, it won't do at all. Other than Civilizations, which I've

HOME LAB RENEWAL - PT 4

So, Linux VMs imported fine - this is good. There was some wonkiness with the network adapters as HyperV names them different, so I had to adjust the netplans to match the new adapters. Next, I needed to install the guest agent which was easy enough, although not strictly required.

HOME LAB RENEWAL - PT 3

A long time ago, I came upon some 8TB WD USB3 drives. They serve a decent purpose in my ghetto fabulous compute server - they were the data drives for all the joy hanging out on my M.2 drives. Now it was time to bid adieu to my HyperV

HOME LAB RENEWAL - PT 2

In our last encounter, I had teased you with my need for more. Specifically, more storage since I had ditched all those spinning disks. I've been a YouTube Premium subscriber for like ten years and had somehow NEVER been introduced to "TechTube." Boy did I go

Home Lab Renewal - Pt 1

About two years ago, I purchased myself a pretty sweet deal on Ebay: Dell RX730xd 2 x 2.5Ghz Xeon Gold 128 GB ECC RAM 28 TB RAW 2 x 1oGB Ethernet and 2x 1GB Ethernet At the time, it was to be may main multi-purpose server for the home:

Reverse Proxy & Home Internet

I really love my network at home and the small network I've built over the past few years up in the cloud. It's gone through a number of machinations to suit my needs, but I've decided to finally start writing things down in case

Minio and Azure

When one simple thing breaks, the fix is definitely gonna be more complex. But, at least I learned a few new Azure tricks!

Fascination with Dropped Packets

For the longest time, my network has been rock solid. Recently, however, a single device (my work one of course) has started misbehaving. Here's the drill: 1. A complete Ubiquiti setup - we're talking USG Pro, CloudKey, PoE Switch, Access Points everywhere - the full deal.

It's hard being a dad...

There are times when I'm happy, but sad at the same time. This has always been the case, but it comes into sharp relief when I'm not sad at anyone, but rather, the mixed situation I find myself in. I'm happy because yesterday I

My Favorite Way to Host

When in doubt - host it yourself. Unless you don't know how, then let Cloudron help you.

Nerding on Crypto - Part 2

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and now...Blockstack? Oh yes - and it is so good.

Teams Devices are Amazing!

I attend a LOT of meetings. It's actually the only thing I do as a Principal Program Manager. Well, okay, sometimes I have to make TPS reports. TPS ReportsIn truth, my meetings are almost always pretty fun and efficient. I also run on a decent screen setup: Sorry

Nerding on Crypto

Part one of my nerd fun with crypto tech - storj.io

Personal Commentary - Beginning A New Year

We all know that 2020 was shit. We also know that I suffer from acute anxiety, triggered primarily by scarcity and hypocrisy. So, last year was ROUGH from just about every angle. I do have a shining light though: My Precious FamilyThey keep me grounded, and on my toes. I&

I was lost...

A while ago, I stopped blogging, mostly because I had little to say and even less time to say it. Then, a tragedy happened - well, at least for me. My blog server crashed and I didn't have an adequate backup. Well, there was a backup, but they

Day 5 of Surface 2 as Primary PC - The Results

I was excited to see one of my heroes Scott Hanselman blog about his using an RT 2 for primary PC. We drew a lot of the same conclusions (link [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/UsingASurface2RTARMToGetActualWorkDoneRemoteDesktopVisualStudioAzure.aspx] ). My week ended on a high note – took the advice of one of

Day 2 and 3 of Surface 2 as Main PC

Second attempt at Day 2 and Day Three – I shouldn’t have to do this – type my blog in Word and then copy and paste to the WordPress app.  I realize that’s an app fault but I’m literally steaming over losing my decently lengthy post about these two

Day 4 of Surface 2 as primary pc

Not good start. Was typing up day two and three in my car waiting on my meeting. Internet flaked out as I hit publish, WordPress app crashed. Seven decent paragraphs gone.

Day 1 of Surface 2 as Primary PC Recap - Good(ish)

I was pleased that I was able to get so much done using Surface today.  I think I’m good to go for tomorrow.  Sure there are things that require me to remote in (business apps) and sure there is just not a use case for staying all RT mode

Afternoon Roundup - Day 1

So far this seems to be going pretty well.  I had to switch to my backup laptop to work on a couple of 80,000 row CSV files.  Processing that on the RT was a bit cumbersome and also needed a bit more screen real estate. The only things I’

It's 9:30 - and?

Who woulda thought I’d need Access of all things this morning.  HA!  And Visio.  And Project.  Hrm.  This is why I am having to remote into Beefy at home and would certainly be nice to have with me, however, I don’t use them all that often so things

First 30 Minutes

In the first 30 minutes, I had to do the following: 1. Open up all of my email and do a search – worked good – yah Outlook 2. Realized that the second kickstand position is worth the price of admission itself – much better angle for actual work 3. Did a join.

Starting tomorrow - One Week with Surface 2

Starting tomorrow, I’ll be attempting to use my brand new Surface 2 (not the Pro) as my primary work PC.  I’ve got a type keyboard, a mini-HDMI to HDMI converter a USB hub for my various USB things (mouse, thumbdrives, etc). Will it work?  Not sure – with ALL

That Just Happened

For four years, I’ve railed against Android.  Everything about it is vile – it’s fragmented, it’s got malware all over the place, buggy, crashy and it’s written in Java.  It is, in a word – awful.  Being the Microsoft purist that I am, the very moment Windows Phone

Hacking RT - Getting Exciting

More news from the webs this morning that indicate MSFT now seems a bit more interested in the recent hacks of the running kernel in Windows RT which allows you to install and run any ol software you want (as long as it is compiled to ARM).  After the excellent

SharePoint 2013 + PowerPivot/PowerView + Excel Web App

Here’s a funny one for you as identified by my buddy Bryan: What do you get when you cross SharePoint [http://sharepoint.microsoft.com] 2013’s BI Stack (PowerPivot [http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/bi/ff604673.aspx], PowerView, Excel Calc, etc) with the new version of Office Web Apps

SharePoint 2013 PowerPivot + Dynamic Memory in a VM

This is a ‘quick press’ for something that I just noticed by way of my colleague Bryan.  When you are spinning up your SharePoint 2013 environments and getting everything good to go, it is important to consider memory demand when you are in VMs on Windows 2012.  If the current

SharePoint 2013 Following Sites

Pro-Tip – when you’re setting up your 2013 farm and the ‘follow sites’ features don’t work between web applications…make sure the web app’s app pool account has SPDataAccess rights (that’s one of the new schemas in 2013 in the databases) to the content database in question.

SharePoint 2013 Distributed Cache Service Tuning

When needing to tune the DCS, just starting and stopping the service on servers by way of CA is a swift ticket to a completely borked farm.  ProTip – see article here [http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219613.aspx].  Note that you can’t control this service remotely, apparently you

SharePoint 2013 My Site Publishing

Quick protip – if you are publishing My Sites and need to change the URL (but not the actual location – think AAMs or TMG publishing) – the only way to do it from what I can tell is to set the URL of what you want it to be as DEFAULT in

Been A Bit...

I’ve been building a private cloud for a large company and it has been going very well.  Lots of great challenges.  The downside to that, I haven’t had any time to post here lately and that’s been a shame cause I’ve got lots of ramblings to

Part 6 - Hyper-V

In Windows 2012, the concept of the private cloud is finally at your fingertips.  Long gone are the half baked, half delivered features of Windows Server that promised ‘virtualization.’  VMWare had Microsoft and the rest of the cloud folks well under control – which explains, at least in part, their very

Part 5.4 - Cluster Shared Volumes

Sorry about the delay in continuing my series.  In the time I was away, I attended TechEd (always an impressive show) and got wrapped up with two different clients.  All good things but I got a bit distracted.  But here is the next installment of the Windows Server 2012 goodness

Part 5.3 - Clustering and Hyper-V Awesomeness

One of the challenges I can already see with all that is new and good when building out my private cloud is – which amazing clustering storage ‘thing’ should I use to enable my cloud: 1. SMB Direct 2. Cluster Shared Volumes 3. Traditional Block Storage 4. Shared Nothing I don’

Part 5.2 Cluster Aware Patching

One of my particular annoyances and pain points with Windows is patching.  Oh how I hate patching.  It happens at least one Tuesday of every month and while WS8 does improve greatly on reducing the attack surface, which reduces the need for restarts, by making the GUI optional, it still

Part 5.1 - Clustering Fun

I was thinking that I’d just go through each of the technical preview documents, call out the stuff that I thought was cool, break it down into easily readable prose, go in order and keep each post short and sweet.  Then I realized, a lot of the documents bounce

Part 4 - Direct Access

Remote access is a tough nut to crack.  On the one hand, every employee needs access to their corporate resources at all times of the day and from whatever device they can shake a stick at.  On the other hand, IT can’t just tear down the firewall and let

Part 3 - Branch Cache

Perhpas my favorite WS8 feature, Branch Cache, has received tremendous updates in this release.  Branch Cache is a technology originally released in the 08 versions of Windows Server that allows companies with large remote office deployments to ease WAN traffic for file server purposes by securely caching files at remote

Part 2 - Making the Administration of Servers Easier

It comes as no surprise that in order to build a private cloud (or a public one if you’re in the hosting space) that the fewer server admins per server, the better.  Some enterprises have a hard limit of say 20 to 1, others with impressive automation and orchestration

Part 1 - Active Directory

One of the most stable and well designed pieces of software to come out of Microsoft – ever – is Active Directory.  While its development was riddled with twists and turns (and the occasional run in with Novell), the identity platform for millions of businesses is a stalwart of stability.  Few outside

The Coming Storm - Introduction

If ever there was a time when the technology of the world that enables millions of businesses and this new concept of the cloud converged on a single piece of software, it is occurring with Windows Server 8.  While the rest of the planet contemplates the good, the bad and

The Coming Storm - Windows 8

I am beginning a series on all that is amazing in Windows Server 8.  There will be 55 posts in all.  It’s a very exciting time!  Look for them to start early next week.

The State of Storage in 2012

There is a great article in Information Week this week about the 2012 State of Storage [http://bit.ly/wAy04n] that I wanted to comment on.  If you don’t have a subscription, that’s okay – the basic premise is that SSD costs are really starting to drop and the

Captain Thomas

I was en route the other day from Seattle to DFW. Home from a fun and thoroughly educational trip to Microsoft HQ for a super secret top classified semi-decoder ring style event. Had managed to swindle a window seat on the airplane side that only had two seats which was

Mass Updating Site Owners

In SharePoint, if you’re smart, you have written a custom footer to display the site owner (or primary site collection administrator) so people know who to talk to when something goes wrong.  They get all of the grief.  What’s more, sometimes those that get all the grief are

Switching from Claims to Not Claims with SharePoint 2010

Working with a client the other day, I had the need to take a web application from one SP install to another. Normally, no big deal. This time, however, client has two different kinds of environments. One was using claims mode. The other wasn’t. In this instance, we needed

More Tools for 2012

In addendum to my previous toolset count – I’ve decided that this year, I’m going to invest in a few more tools to make life grand.  All of these are ostentatiously to better productivity, but I think we all understand that I’m just a nerd that needs toys.

Tools for 2012

Given that these cloud things all seem to be coming together, I find myself looking at specific scenarios whereby me, myself and my family can live more fruitfully in the cloud.  Here are a few things that I’ve cooked up so far: 1. Google Docs [http://docs.google.com]

2012 - The Year of the Cloud

It may come as no surprise to anyone that I do in fact, heart the cloud.  Having spent the passed few weeks reading the most excellent book ‘The Big Switch’ and generally reveling in my post Proof of Concept week at Microsoft (to be epically blogged about later), I am

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone. Here’s hoping for another great year of crazy technology uses, random thoughts and some other stuff. Big posts coming soon on 2012 in Technology, The Proof of Concept and more!

More Thoughts on Messaging

So my original impression of iMessage turned out to be incorrect – kind of.  If you have an iPhone, you know by now that iMessage and the SMS app are in fact, built in.  That’s good.  My reaction was based on the fact that I only have an iPad.  So

iMessage kills SMS? Nah.

Headlines and banner messages abound on the Internet today about iMessage killing off SMS. Here are some reasons why I am pretty sure that’s over inflated: 1. Not everyone has an iDevice (contrary to popular opinion). iMessage only works with iDevices. I don’t know what kind of phone

Thoughts on Public Speaking

Every encounter in life can be measured easily by the application of one or more quotes from my favorite show, The West Wing.  There’s an episode in Season 2 (Episode 34 in case you were wondering) called ‘The Drop In’ where Sam is working very hard on an upcoming

My Experience with Mac OSX Lion

So I was eagerly anticipating the release of Mac OSX Lion.  It’s not cause I’m a huge Mac fan or anything – far from it, but I like new toys and Windows 7 is getting old.  I have a Mac Mini server at the house that I use for

A New Experiment

Have you ever found it more than a little frustrating to find out which cumulative update rollup service pack release to web version subversion of SharePoint 2010 Enterprise SP1 (or other Microsoft product) you have and where to get the latest and whether Microsoft has chosen to retract it post

Making WP7 Gain Faster

WP7 is gaining impressively on the competition.  Microsoft is clearly out for 2nd place in a three way race (Apple, MSFT, Google) for the time being while mopping the floor in the enterprise space with the coming Mango goodness.  However, I find that MSFT has got one thing going for

Slalom Blogs - The App!

Slalom Consulting has some great bloggers.  If you haven’t read some of the thoughts they (we) have been talking about across various subjects, you should really head over to the website…but, if you happen to own a Windows Phone 7…iPhone version coming soon…why not just go

Too Many SKUs

Quick post today. Dear Microsoft – there are too many SKUs for Windows: Windows 7 Professional N with Service Pack 1 (x86) Windows 7 Home Premium N with Service Pack 1 (x64) Windows 7 Professional with Service Pack 1 (x64) Windows 7 Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (x64) Windows 7

Texas Road Side History? There's an App for That!

Have you ever wondered what that historical marker says that you just passed while driving down the road? Well, there’s an app for that, if you live in Texas. * WP7 Fanboys –Open in the WP7 Marketplace [//navigate/?phoneappid=952dcaf3-2262-e011-81d2-78e7d1fa76f8] * iPhone/iPad Fanboys –Open in the App Store [http://itunes.

SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Wiki Page Layouts

Let’s say you have some custom layouts you want to make available for all of your users when they create new pages in SP2010, but the Enterprise Wiki page layout is bumming you out.  You can of course just change them and/or add your own!  Found a great

Be What's Next

Every now and then, particularly on lazy Sunday afternoons, I stop to reflect on life.  Typically this reflection involves making a list of things that need to be done, or in many cases, reflecting on the list of honey-do’s I just got handed to me.  Today was an exceptionally

A Very Helpful PowerShell Script

I don’t normally post code samples as I try to do just commentary here, but I created a PowerShell script today based extensively on a sample from Phil Childs’ PowerShell Scripts site [http://get-spscripts.com].  My need was to change about 1000 SharePoint sites’ site collection quotas and the

Where the Cloud Meets the Road

It occurs to me that a lot of gesticulation has been going on about the cloud over the past few quarters: is it good for business, is it secure, will it really reduce costs, etc. ad nauseam.   I myself have pondered these questions, much to the benefit of theoretical mind

The Coming Multi-Cloud

Okay, the name ‘multi-cloud’ probably won’t pass muster with the marketing types, but I am very excited to posit on the near future of what a combined public/private cloud will look like.  It is beyond discussion at this point that the cloud is a fad at this point

I'm still here

Oh I hate these kinds of posts, but just to let everyone know, I’m still here and working away on my next brilliant breakthrough. However, I’ve been a bit quiet of late due to the arrival of my second son Connor! Three cheers and more than a few

The Large Enterprise and the Cloud

Recently, I was privileged to begin working on a project where a feasibility study was being conducted similar to other studies that are happening all over the world these days.  “Shall we go to go to the cloud or to not go to the cloud; more precisely, to go Exchange

SharePoint 2010 and the Site Directory

I’m working with a client right now that has a large SharePoint 2010 deployment (8 web apps, couple hundred site collections (not counting My Sites), a couple thousand sites and about 80,000 users (potential)).  They were in need of a tool to keep site collections and sites categorized

Day 2 of Windows Phone 7

Just to be clear – it was essential that I be the first person through the T-Mobile store yesterday morning to purchase my new HD7 from HTC.  Took a little longer than it should have because despite having about a year to prepare, the store wasn’t quite prepared to sell

Enterprise Content Management & SP2010 - Ready for the Big Time

It should come as no surprise that I’m a bit of a fan of SharePoint. I’ve practically built my career on the platform and truly enjoy the breadth and depth of solutions that the product offers to enterprises of all sizes. SharePoint has come a VERY long way

Cooking Up a Storm

Last month, my team and I had the opportunity to present at the Dallas Cloud Computing User Group.  It was a fantastic presentation, led by our lead developer extraordinaire Trent (www.trentacular.com [http://www.trentacular.com] ).  The topic was centered around fusing Windows Azure and Windows Phone 7 and

Windows Azure's Value Proposition

The value proposition of Windows Azure is very unique.  It can be articulated to the qualification of three major feature sets with different patterns of implementation to introduce a broad range of solutions to the information technology space.  Those three feature sets include: * SQL Azure – a fully functional SQL server

Practical Tip - Painful Lesson

Normally, printing is the bane of my existence.  I don’t like to print, I find that it is not necessary given the 70 different devices I have to read things on and generally speaking, they are just dumb.  In 30 years, one would expect that the various (and there

Visual Studio SharePoint Packaging / Deployment

So there I was, just working away and minding my own business when Visual Studio 2010 decided to  throw a very nasty curve ball at me.  The new SharePoint Development Tools native to 2010 are really nice – particularly the ‘Deploy’ and ‘Retract’ stuff whereby I can create a SharePoint Project,

Prospects for Better Apps

I’ve been working with this particular client for the better part of a year.  During my time there, I’ve gone from 100% IT Pro style to, sometimes grudgingly, to about 75% IT Pro and 25% Custom Development.  Previous to this client, my experience in custom development was focused

What to Expect from Microsoft & BPOS

The previous several days have been quite busy in the cloud collaboration front, in part because the General Services Administration is shopping for a new email system.  The GSA, as detailed by MJF in today’s article [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/the-federal-cloud-another-microsoft-vs-google-battleground/6933?utm_source=feedburner&utm_

Woot - I Got Published!

Can I brag?  I was very excited to learn today that I got published – TWICE!  It isn’t my first time being published but is exciting none-the-less! Check me out: Here [http://whitepapers.technologyevaluation.com/view_document/21244/the-challenges-of-multitenant-aware-crm-instances-with-entity-and-function-commonalties.html] and Here [http://www.insurancenetworking.com/news/insurance_technology_cloud_

When to Use Comic Sans

I’m not a sports fan, but I know that the owner of the Cavs is getting a lot of ‘stuff’ for using Comic Sans when ranting about some basketball player leaving.  Had a great discussion with our UX guy and GM this morning about Comic Sans and he put

User Experience Matters Part 2

In my previous article about UX [http://derekmartin.org/archives/579], I talked a lot about how the buy in from users is greatly affected by the design of the application.  At the time I was referring to a specific example in my mind, although I didn’t call it

A Nice Encounter

There I was, minding my own business, when out of the blue I get this requirement to connect a SharePoint search system to Documentum. Normally, I’d go, great – download connector from MS.com, install, done. However, the particular environment I find myself in necessitated a custom code approach. Now,

Shocked and Dismayed

I was shocked and dismayed this morning to discover a very pathetic thing.  After many moons of wanting and begging, I finally bartered my way into a brand new Mac Mini with Snow Leopard Server.  Now, before you go and say, what’s this – the Microsoft Fanboy playing with a

Eliminating the Moving Button

I use this term to describe the tendency of enterprises to look at products not for what they offer but for what we need to move around. It’s like fitting square pegs into round holes; spending untold sums of money and time to make changes to native functionality that

Biggest US cloud deployment - BPOS :)

Was reading this article about the largest BPOS (Live@Edu) rollout.  Then realized it was the largest Cloud Deployment in the country.  Then realized they migrated HALF A MILLION mailboxes from on prem 2003 Exchange to Exchange 2010 in the cloud IN A WEEKEND. Security? Reliability? Scalability?   ….. Check Biggest US

Download details: RDCMan

Just a quick note.  I fell in love today.  Microsoft released a tool that is very similar to its server cousin but better and for client.  It’s called Remote Desktop Connection Manager and it is glorious and it is here: Download details: RDCMan [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.

User Experience Matters

I didn’t mean for this article to turn into a specific rant, but I failed horribly in that regard.  I was doing some follow up research on my previous post regarding the final two silos and was being constantly reminded about how much productivity is lost in the enterprise

The Final Two Silos

It is interesting to see the Enterprise space, with all the efforts of integration and collaboration, continue to struggle with fundamental technology differences and the lack of willingness to improve. There seem to be two final silos of not just data, but process and infrastructure. The silos are between historically

Fun with PowerShell Recently

Normally, I try to keep my blog high level, in the architect space. However, I am currently assigned to a client and they were needing a migration script to convert accounts in SharePoint from AD to LDAP for about 100,000 accounts. The following is what I threw together in

Creating SharePoint 2007 Timer Jobs

So here’s a quick tip, in case you ever find yourself wasting 24 hours of your life trying to figure out why your freshly created MOSS timer job never runs…restart the damn timer service. Good lord.

Abstract: Pivot on This! Excel 2010 x64 Edition and PowerPivot Revolutionize Utilities

How Excel 2010 x64 Can Help an Electric Utility Truly Measure Success Within the walls of the rural electric utility, many situations arise where the need to quickly and accurately depict the current state of the electric grid.  Much like their bigger cousins in urban centers, these data are vital

Abstract: The Challenges of Multi-Tenant Aware CRM Instances

By Derek Martin and Jake Watkins Wherever possible, organizations tend towards centralization of data.  Whether that be from a taxonomy perspective, document management perspective, or a customer data management perspective, these centralizations are critical to information security, awareness, conformity and efficiency.  The need for these commonalities are brought into sharp

Abstract: Collaboration and Integration with SharePoint 2010 in Electric Utilities

The evolution of the modern IT infrastructure in the rural utility space has transformed what is possible in the assessment and understanding of business metrics and objectives.  The key to fully understanding utility and cooperative success, like any other company, lies in the ability to rapidly and accurately articulate the

Visual Studio 2010 Online Templates

I haven’t normally taken a lot of stock for ‘online template’ repositories.  In Office, what promised to be a great feature introduced in the 2007 iteration on Office Online faded into a small collection of meager ‘I could have done that in 5 seconds’ templates and never any fresh

iPad Review Part 2

The iPad, which like all of my toys has a name, went to work with me today.  I wanted to check out how good it was at taking notes even without the yet to be purchased Bluetooth keyboard.  In a word:  awesome.  I had hooked myself up with a little

iPad Review Day 1

Day 1, Part 1, I’m not sure, but yesterday at 11:30, a very chipper UPS man that obviously knew what he was carrying delivered an iPad to my door.  I had been on pins and needles for quite some time as can be attested to by my friends

Absurd Elegance But VERY Cool

We’ve talked before about me not being a coder, but I saw this the other day and actually found myself trying this out in Linux land.  It was moderately hard to understand but for you code heads, this is what you call a purist!  Great article. Hello from a

Test Driven Development in Visual Studio 2010

By all accounts, I’m not a developer.  Not “really” a developer anyway.  I do code, when needed and I find that I can articulate my code with decent patterns if not syntax when I do.  A project I am currently working on, in fact, is heavy coding.  Fortunately, I

Some Windows Azure Thoughts

I’ve been pondering Windows Azure lately.  I know that a lot of folks are investigating the great potential of the cloud to offer on demand or even throw away computing resources.  Two things come to mind when I consider where this particular technology is going to take us.  I’

A Very Strange Encounter & Social Media

Yesterday, my wife, son and I ate at a new restaurant in downtown Dallas called Fadis.  The food was fantastic!  Great Mediterranean food and the hummus – wow.  I was so impressed by the food that I took out my Android phone and opened up the Google Maps app and decided

Upgrading your MOSS 2007 Farm

In planning for your MOSS 2007 upgrade to SharePoint 2010 (SP2010), please realize that there really isn’t an upgrade per se.  SP2010 is radically different under the covers so an in place upgrade is really a migration or conversion.  However, before you roll your eyes in frustration, check out

Currently Reading

I’ve been reading a great book on practical IT Management ‘things’ called The Windows Administration Resource kit (Amazon link here [http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Administration-Resource-Kit-Professionals/dp/0735624313] ).  It provides a very practical look into some of the things you can do to your systems to bring additional value.  One

The Coming Storm – SharePoint 2010

It comes as no surprise that I’m excited about SP2010.  MOSS 2007 was an amazing product which introduced many great new features.  But like most things Microsoft, it typically takes a version or so to iron out the kinks and get it just right (think Windows Vista to Windows

SharePoint 2010 and Composite Applications

One of my favorite design stories around MOSS was the ability to use the OOB experience to fundamentally enhance a given business process.  In fact, in the seven years I’ve been doing MOSS, I have only found a SINGLE business process that didn’t lend itself almost perfectly to

Why SQL Server isn’t my Forte

I know, you follow my Techno-Twitter feed with eager anticipation.  So when you saw that I was struggling with SQL Server this afternoon and that I’d post why it isn’t my forte, you could hardly keep yourself still until this post dropped…right?  Yeah. Here’s what SQL

Follow Up to HealthVault Article

I wrote recently about a new deal in progress with the US Government and Microsoft HealthVault.  It can be found here [http://derekmartin.org/archives/520].  It seems as though MS isn’t sparing any horses and keeping the investment going.  Mary Jo Foley, whom I follow quite closely in

BPOS for Governments

One of the biggest concerns that governments and even some specific industries have with cloud based services is the absence of control.  Physical controls to your data is critical for lots of these guys and the hesitation isn’t unwarranted.  A recent spat of news relating to compromised data (including

A Geek’s Phone

This is a bit random, but I had some spare time this weekend and decided to wire up something semi neat.  First the background: My wife and I have been cell phone ‘exclusive’ since we were even dating.  I, myself, haven’t had a land line since 1998.  When we

Microsoft Health Vault and the Gov?

MS announced today along with the Man that they were going to be in partnership together with HealthVault.  You can read the press announcement here [http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2010pres/02/20100224a.html].  Normally, you wouldn’t find a bigger Microsoft fanboy than myself, but I have to

Using DAPI to Secure MOSS Data

Saw this very interesting post from Dr. Z’s blog located here [http://bit.ly/cqnNQe] about using the Windows Data Protection API inside of SharePoint to secure data.  It is a little thick for me since I’m not truly a developer (yet), but anytime I can see a

SharePoint 2010 Development is (Slightly) Better

Let’s be real for a sec.  Developing on the SharePoint 2007 platform is more than a bit of a pain.  Despite all of MS’s and other folks efforts, it is just complicated.  It is basically impossible to reliably and cleanly develop for SharePoint 2007 and not have SharePoint

OCS Auditing Made (Slightly) Easier

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 is an unbelievable product.  There is literally nothing I don’t love about it.  Okay, maybe there are a few things – like redundancy, clustering, ease of installation, number of systems required – okay maybe there are more than a few things…BUT, overall – what a great

Exchange 2010 and SIS

I’ve been a fan of the Single Instance Storage groveler since I figured out what the heck it was way back in Windows 2003 land.  It is used in quite a few systems, not the least of which is Windows itself in the file server role (if enabled as

OCS Ethical Walls

I do a lot of work with OCS 2007 and its R2 friend.  One of the challenges that I’ve come in contact with is the prevention of certain users from contacting other users (perhaps those higher up the food chain).  Contrary to some beliefs, not everyone should be able

Patterns and Practices for MOSS 2010

Via the Innovation Showcase [http://blogs.msdn.com/innov8showcase/archive/2010/02/22/patterns-practices-sharepoint-guidance.aspx] The Patterns and Practice group at Microsoft recently (today) updated some patterns for MOSS 2010 which provides a good read and some great sample code.  I recommend at the very least looking over and understanding

Welcome Home

I’ve had various blogs throughout my life. This site in particular, was home to the personal blog that was even published (I sold three copies I think). Now it is time to break out my ubber technical writing. This is where the ultimate in my geekery shall live. So.