Hello, After reading so many other blogs, I figured that it was about time for me to start one of my own. Since I'm undertaking this, I should probably introduce myself. I joined Microsoft as a full-time employee in March 2004 as a Rapid Response...

OK, so while I've mentioned a bit of what I do, I should mention the sorts of technologies that I help customers with. First and foremost, I work with the Windows operating systems and Active Directory. Much of my focus is Active Directory and all the...

I almost titled this “My 4th of July was better than you’re 4th of July” but thought better of it. So I realize that it has been awhile since I last posted on this blog…OK, ‘awhile’ is an understatement, the first two posts were in April 2007 and there...

As you’ve no doubt heard by now, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 reached RTM today.   More info on that at the Windows 7 & Windows Server 2008 R2 Team Blogs.   So what does this mean for me?   Well, I’m thrilled...

Since this blog is hosted on Technet, it is probably good to talk about technologies from time to time.    So I wanted to mention some things that I’ve come across recently.   While some of these are anything but new pieces of...

While teaching the Windows Server 2008 Directory Services workshop this week a student asked me, “How can I grant access to the DNS MMC to a user that I don’t want to put into the DNS Admins group because I only want them to be able to view the contents...

One of the great things about the Premier Field Engineering group at Microsoft is that we have a fairly aggressive hardware refresh cycle for our engineers in the US.   To keep us with a solid experience as road warriors, our laptops are refreshed...

I seem to have a habit of alternating between technical and non-technical posts, and this seems to be little different.   I was scheduled to fly up to Anchorage Alaska on Sunday to visit a customer.   Last Friday I was talking to one...

This week I’m attending the TechReady conference.   For those of you who have never heard of TechReady (which is probably 99.999+% of you), it is an internal version of the Microsoft TechEd conference. Here on Day 1 I’ve seen some interesting...

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a few weeks, but only now have finally gotten around to it.    I should start with some history of my experiences with Windows Media Center.   My first Media Center PC was home-built using...

A common paradigm in the technology field is, “If you’re not using it, uninstall or disable it.”   While that can be an excellent way to reduce the surface area of a system by removing components that you don’t need and may never use, there...

As a follow-up to my earlier post about leaving IPv6 enabled in the OS and bound to the NICs, I wanted to share some additional resources from my IE bookmarks: Arguments against disabling IPv6 http://blogs.technet.com/b/netro/archive/2010/11/24/arguments...

As someone who works with computers, I’m often getting calls from my family and friends asking me to clean viruses off of their computers.    Generally, they’ve avoided my earlier encouragement to install Microsoft Security Essentials and...

(NOTE: IP Addresses changed to protect the innocent) I was onsite with a customer recently who asked me a question: “What is 2002:836b:0F1E::836b:0F1E and why am I seeing it?” I explained that this is a 6to4 address and is automatically assigned to the...

This week I was onsite with a customer performing a visit called the Risk and Health Assessment Program for Active Directory (ADRAP).   Within the ADRAP, we collect data on many aspects of their Active Directory environment and discuss a wide...

When I was younger, I heard a phrase “The cobbler’s children have no shoes” and similar things which implied that frequently, people within a particular industry are less likely to want to utilize their skills as home when they’re not working.   ...