No blog post this week. However why not check out Troy Hunts blog article about Windows Update . I am probably fairly unique in that I like installing updates whether it be on my phone, my PC or for one of my favourite programs. One of my tasks when I used to work in a sysadmin role was ensuring all windows updates got...
For the past few weeks my software developing has been taking a back seat as I planned and coordinated the IT requirements of an office move. The company I work for has been working out of a converted barn, but as the company has grown we have outgrown the building and for quite a while it has been a real squeeze to...
Next month I will celebrate ten years working at my current job, two weeks after that I will start a new chapter of my life at a new company. Lets take this opportunity to look back ten years at some of the great stuff I have achieved. 2006 In 2006 I had no IT experience. If you were to ask me where Event Logs could...
So after five and a bit years of being an IT Manager here is some advice I have learned along the way in no particular order. On the whole I have enjoyed myself but it has been a real challenge at times. 1. Figure out what plates are still spinning Being an IT Manager is all about keeping everything running all of the...
Today is my day off, but I wake up and have a quick look at nagios to see if there is anything I need to worry about. Yes there is, SQL Server has run out of disk space on its data disk. I race downstairs and VPN onto the server to find out what has happened. One of my monitoring databases has had runaway log growth...
I have spent most of the day tweaking my Azure websites. Lots of fun! Last week unfortunately Azure had some problems and many websites that were running in the North Europe data centre were unavailable for several hours. And you guessed it my websites were hosted here. All hosting providers are going to have downtime...
My desktop is always a mess. I constantly download files there and forget all about them. Every now and then I copy files into sub directories, so my desktop looks sane for a day or two before it gets out of control again. Why don’t I write a script that I can schedule to do this for me. Then my desktop will always be...
I am lazy, I won’t try and deny that. When my alarm goes off in the morning, I will snooze it for twenty minutes or so before getting out of bed. In my work my laziness continues. Remote Desktop (or RDP) is probably my number one laziness tool. For those that don’t know RDP allows you to connect to another computer and...
For a while now I have been listening to podcasts. For those that don’t know a podcast is an audio file that you can download and listen to, usually about a topic you are interested in. The topics that interest me are obviously Star Trek, Science and Technology and IT stuff. I mainly listen to them in the car when I am...
As today is New Years eve I thought it would be a good chance to look back over the last year. At the start of the year I finally got agreement for the installation of a 30MB leased line. This was an amazing achievement as I had been really struggling to keep everything working on our ADSL connections and the...