You might remember I used to do a fun set of predictions on this blog. I would then take the previous year’s predictions and tally up my successes and failures. For some reason I stopped doing that. It’s a shame, because it allows for a great amount of introspection and foresight. Well, I’m back at it and I’m going to use this space to look back a bit, and then tell you what I think is coming for 2017.
While in the Dominican Republic I made it my personal mission to gain data access on my smartphone. Over the years, this process has become easier as the companies have accommodated smartphone users. With an unlocked smartphone, you can get reliable and useful pre-paid cell phone and data access in the Dominican. I’ve learned a few things along the way that you’ll want to know if you plan to do this.
Book authors like anyone in a creative industry are feeling the crunch of piracy. By all accounts, this is a big problem, but most reports we see from online outlets are bonkers, dubious and stated as pure loses. This is more than stupid when reasonable people should have good, useful information. The reality is, we should buy books and support authors more. The world needs to read more. This holiday season, I tried something new, and I thought I share it with you.
Whether for business or pleasure, you won’t find it hard to get travel tips from others. But, often the really important “in-transit” knowledge is skipped because we’re resigned to it being painful. I’ve probably travelled more than a million miles to some amazing places in all kinds of vehicles, and no matter how or where I go, I’ve learned there are always some basic things that would improve a trip. I want to share these 7 tips with you. These are distilled from a wealth of mistakes and a desire to learn and be better.
The long waits. The difficult and intrusive security. The cramped feeling on flights. The nickle-and-diming checked bags and food items. Over-priced everything at airports. Now, this insanity is going to ratchet up to a new class of ticket below economy named “basic economy“. This new class of ticket appears to be finding widespread adoption among airlines, with United Airlines setting incredible new lows. If your last class ticket is with United expect no chance at seat selection, no access to the overhead bin, and be forced to board the plane last (and look like a cheapskate).
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
It can be hard to admit that.We’re naming the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of an Active Directory domain either a valid name, or using .local TLD and these are both incorrect. Recently, when I was again tasked to build a small (200-ish user) Active Directory domain from scratch, I was again confronted about how wrong those of us in this industry have been. What’s even worse is that Microsoft has been recommending the “Right” way for 14 years!
If you’re following trends on the Internet, you’ll know that Google (and others) are really pushing web encryption. To this end, Let’s Encrypt has really aided in getting sites easier, and quicker encryption. On November 10, the crew were nice enough to do a Reddit AMA, and here are some things I gleaned from that.
I’m a big Apple product user. Currently, I regularly use a Macbook Pro for administration duties, a Magic Mouse v2, an Apple Wireless Keyboard, Apple Watch 1, and an iPhone 6s Plus. For the most part, I think these products are rock-solid and reliable (for what I do). Given this, every Apple announcement is generally met with great interest for me, mainly because I’ll probably be in there at 3am Eastern Time buying the next iPhone on Friday like many of you.
Every new version of Exchange Server seems to need more space on a server’s boot drive. Given that, you may be faced with building an Exchange Server and wish you had made the boot partition larger. Once it’s done, though, you can’t always take it back and reconfigure everything. Here, I have some strategies for redirecting drive use from an Exchange Server installed on C: to another, larger data drive.
Note: This article is focused on Exchange Server 2016 on-premise. Newer and older versions of Exchange may act differently.
One familiar refrain amongst all Canadian Internet users when talking about service levels is “There’s nothing we can do”. We’re resigned to bad connections, routing devices that appear untested, over-priced services, and systems that are truly hellish. Big companies operate as if they were monopolies. In fact, you don’t have to go far to find horror stories. If you even look at the history of my blog, you’ll see that I write much more about negative topics than positive. The challenge, I find, is surfacing the good stories, so they can also compete for attention just as much. This is a story about Teksavvy.
Kevin Costain