April 2007 - Posts
I am not giving up on my rant to drop the user group moniker but I am taking some time out to highlight the upcoming Take Control User Group Tour. May 9th - Montreal May 14th - Calgary May 16th - Vancouver May 22nd - Ottawa May 29th - Toronto We are going
Read More...
Longhorn Beta 3 is out the door and in the hands of a lot of people now. You might be one of them. If you are like me you'll poke around, try a few things and blow away the install a few times before you get it right. Now you may not have the time to
Read More...
There I said it. USER GROUPS ARE DEAD! You probably think I am crazy. You are probably thinking about the 30+ IT pro user groups in Canada with 10,000+ members with monthly attendance at meetings surpassing 2500 nationally. You might then remember me
Read More...
I was busy with internal events yesterday and traveling back to Ottawa when the announcement was made. I noticed this morning that the Windows Server Team blog announced Windows Server codenamed "longhorn" Beta 3 has been declared and made available for
Read More...
Ghostbusters? Maybe, but what if you need to get clarification or help on something Microsoft related? If you guessed the IT Pro or Developer Advisors you guessed right. We are your connection point back into Microsoft. Now we will never claim to know
Read More...
A few weeks ago Jennifer Waters posted the first blog entry dealing with certification and asked the question Does Certification Really Matter? . In the next post, she asks whether managers care about certification. ----------------------------------------------------
Read More...
We've been having a lot of questions regarding certification and what is the current state of affairs for existing and new individuals to the certification process. We had a couple of blog posts over the last while: Jennifer Waters posted on whether or
Read More...
I had a couple of pints with my good buddy Bruce Cowper at the beginning of the week at one of my favorite Ottawa pubs D'arcy McGee's ... He's moved on from the team into a new role last summer as a Senior Program Manager for Microsoft Canada's Security
Read More...
You haven't heard much from my side of the blogsphere lately - I have been heads down working on completing the reference network infrastructure that Rod and I will be using in the upcoming Future of your Server Room tour. Someday I should share our framework
Read More...
Wow! A few days ago, less than a week in fact, Damir posted on this blog about the Certification on the Brain and Special Certification Offer . We had 2200 study kits consisting of a MS Press book on one of 6 certifications to give away. Also the first
Read More...
Graham Jones (Surrey, British Columbia, IT Pro) Graham sent me a nice note to complement the recent series Rodney has started around "Proud to be an IT Pro". I agree with a lot of his comments even though I do not have one of the iron rings (although
Read More...
I recently got an email from Ralph Shillington, an MCT and former colleague, on a new resource that he is making available on the web. His company, iFoundTime Inc . is posting a series of SQL Server and .NET tutorials online and is also asking for your
Read More...
Rory McCaw , a principal at Infront Consulting , as well as a Microsoft MVP on System Center Management products in general and MOM and Operations Manager 2007 will be delivering this month's TechNet Monthly session on Tuesday, April 17 at the Microsoft
Read More...
I got my lovely email reminder that my mailbox was rapidly approaching my max. When I get one of these, it means I go through my folders, delete stuff or start my auto-archiving feature. The main culprit is usually the 75 or so internal mailing lists
Read More...
Rosemary Warren (Montreal, Quebec, IT Pro) IT Professionalism Rosemary Warren sent me this email in response to Proud to be in IT and I wanted to share it with you. My teammate Ruth Morton knows all about working in a male dominated industry and I wanted
Read More...
Simon Collier (Edmonton, Alberta, IT Pro) IT Professionalism A week or so ago I posted a question on this blog as to why you are proud to be an IT professional. I got this email from Simon and wanted to share it in it's entirety with you. --------------------------------------------------
Read More...
Recently we have had a couple of posts dealing with the topic of certification. Jennifer Waters posted on whether or not certification matters any more, while Graham Jones’s entry dealt with the value of certification. Looks like the discussion is timely
Read More...
In the past two weeks you've seen a lot of guest blog posts and such about proud to be an IT professional. I wanted to know what people thought about their careers and was happy with the responses I got. We also get a few guest bloggers on various topics
Read More...
Here at the Canadian IT Professionals blog we've been doing what Rick likes to call "Commando Podcasts" in which we grab someone turn on the recorder and have a quick chat about a (hopefully) interesting topic. A lot of you may listen to more "professional"
Read More...
The other day I wrote a post on how I secured my Vista installation . I also mentioned that there was going to be a series of webcasts on the security features in Vista, how to manage them via Group Policy and some of the new tools available. Well the
Read More...
Edward Letendre (Calgary, Alberta, IT Pro) IT Professionalism A week or so ago I posted a question on this blog as to why you are proud to be an IT professional. I got this email from Edward and wanted to share it in it's entirety with you. --------------------------------------------------
Read More...
Last week I gave some insight as to why I am proud to be an IT professional. I got a pile of responses and wanted to share some of what others told me about why they are proud to be IT pros. Blake Handler MVP I get paid to do what I love I help people
Read More...
Whenever we announce a tour, we get emailed asking why we missed city X . Even before I joined Microsoft I would email the IT Pro Advisors and let them know they were disappointing my community (Winnipeg in this case) by not making a tour stop. Since
Read More...
It was about time, I needed to reinstall Vista on my Toshiba M7 now that all the drivers and applets were RTM. In fact they have been for a while now, but I never got around to it until today. In rebuilding this install I decided to go all out on the
Read More...
I always enjoy hearing about interesting UserGroup sessions that have gone on from any of the groups I stay connected with. This post came in my mail last night from Graham Jones - president of VANTUG. I did a little reading about Ryan and some of the
Read More...
YES! I am proud to be an IT professional! Scream it out loud with me! I AM PROUD TO BE AN IT PROFESSIONAL! Feels good doesn't it? You want to know why I am proud to be an IT professional? Well let's see... Meeting the constant challenge of changing technologies
Read More...