Category Archives: Tech Posts

For all technology/work related articles

Taking on higher duties – being the manager of your own team…

For those who don’t know the back-story – my manager was lucky enough to get 6-7 weeks of leave and buggered off to Europe. Yay for him, boo for us poor sods left behind. Because he was going away for such a significant period of time, he figured the team *should* have a manager – so he kindly asked me… Read more »

Do you need formal qualifications to be a sysadmin?

Thought I’d write this to get my two-cents out there. As someone who has been on both sides of the fence, I feel like I’m in a good place to put this out for discussion. I see a number of sysadmins who feel they aren’t “good enough” because they have no formal qualifications. They feel “less than” because they don’t… Read more »

Getting certified – my experience getting my MCSA

I lurk on Reddit. A lot. I mainly sit in the /r/sysadmin subreddit, because there are quite a number of interesting articles and discussions that come out of it. One discussion that appears to come up far more often than most is certifications. What are the good ones to get, how to get them, good study materials, how to ensure… Read more »

Windows Updates in an Enterprise environment

I’m finding that a lot of my posts are based on things that I repeatedly have to rehash over and over again in other places – Reddit, tech forums, Twitter. This is no exception. I keep seeing people ask about managing updates in an enterprise environment. With that in mind, I decided that writing some high-level “This is how we… Read more »

A couple of IT things *everyone* should know

So, as usual, lurking on Reddit and a topic comes up about things that non-sysadmins (read: normal every day people) should know in relation to being a sysadmin. I thought this was interesting and a bit silly until I thought about it for a while – I’m somewhat amazed by the number of people who are working who have little… Read more »

Working from home – it can be done…if you’re not a jerk!

I’ve seen a lot of talk lately, as we’re coming up to the holidays, about working from home. This post is going to focus on IT workers because we can commute quite easily, no matter where we are. I’m personally all for it – I have a study of my own, with my computer and extra desk space for my… Read more »

Regular AD Maintenance & Checks

I was inspired to write this post based on a question posted on Reddit a little bit ago. While I was happy with my response (and that so many people agreed with me!) I figured it would benefit those who read my blog or go searching for this information and aren’t Reddit readers. I’ve also added in a few links,… Read more »

Issue installing .NET 3.5 on Server 2012 R2

So – interesting bug. Built some Windows Server 2012 R2 servers for someone (because I’m just nice like that) and they went on their merry way. They then came back and said they wanted .NET 3.5 installed and would do it themselves, but they didn’t know where the install media was – because (as you know…or now know) a number… Read more »

FIX: Cursor disappears on ASUS Win 8.1laptop/tablet after using touchscreen

So, going away soon and wanted to buy a laptop/tablet that I could use for travel that wouldn’t weigh 2.7kg like my Alienware would. Had a bit of a hunt around and, considering how much I loved my original ASUS Transformer, I decided to go with the ASUS Transformer T100. Beautiful little machine – I really do love it. Full… Read more »

AD Security & Administration – righting the right rights

NOTE: This post is in the process of being updated due to being used in a presentation. Please let me know if there’s anything that you believe requires updating by leaving a comment, sending me an email or poking me on Twitter! (Before I launch in, try saying the title three times fast…sorry, couldn’t help myself :P) So, we recently… Read more »