Talking Out Loud with ASB

Home Network Overhaul 2010 – Conclusion

2010-02-22T05:11:13Z

This is the sixth part in a series of articles tracking the implementation of virtualization on my home network . Planning for the project originally started at the end of 2007, with some equipment purchased in early 2008, but the bulk of the work was completed in the past 2 months. For those interested in seeing how this all played out over the past 2 years, please see the list of articles below: Time for Virtualization at Home Home Network Virtualization Project, Part 2 Let’s Get Ready to...(read more)

Charting the Right Course: The IT Manager’s First 90 Days

2010-02-11T21:50:00Z

Starting a new position is always an interesting challenge, especially if you have a leadership role. It should go without saying that it is very important to start things off on the right foot. While it is possible to recover from all but the most egregious of mistakes in the early going, you really want to take advantage of whatever honeymoon period you have been granted (implicitly or explicitly) , and set the groundwork for future success. Simply put: A good start gives you a tremendous advantage...(read more)

Home Network Overhaul 2010 – Part 2

2010-02-10T03:54:47Z

It has been a very productive year so far, as it pertains to my ongoing Home Network Re-Engineering Project . In fact, the past few days have been especially productive. I was finally able to fix the hardware problem that prevented my old domain controller from booting, and since the boys’ old Windows XP machine began to fail (spontaneous reboots under any kind of load, even when booted from a BartPE recovery disk), I built a new Windows 7 workstation for them with this hardware. The...(read more)

Contributing in Online Business Communities

2010-01-27T13:15:02Z

Online communities are an excellent way for people to interact with other individuals who they can help or who can help them. For business and technology professionals, they also represent a way keep an eye on trends and thought leadership within ones industry that can help solve a company’s issues. They also provide one element of career growth, in that they expose a professional to tips, tricks, issues and concerns of peers in other organizations in a reasonably safe environment. And,...(read more)

Is Google over-extending itself?

2010-01-15T15:42:41Z

Google is in the news quite a bit, lately, but not all of that publicity is good… Google lists $350 fee for early Nexus One returns Update: Google may pull out of China because of cyber attacks Nexus One fiasco continues for Google Contrary to popular opinion, Google is not made of Teflon®, and not everything they touch turns to gold. The fact is that no matter how many super geniuses you have developing products, code and ideas, a considerable amount of coordination and integration is necessary...(read more)

Home Network Overhaul 2010

2010-01-12T04:07:07Z

For the first time in over a decade, my home network saw no major improvements for almost 2 years. Let’s just say that the past few years have been interesting… From March 2008 until December 2009, several major undertakings that I had planned for my networking environment were put on hold. Additionally, I suffered a few hardware failures (one of my domain controllers, also doubling as the source of my redirected folders) that were not easily (or cheaply) resolved. So, I’ve been...(read more)

Lessons from 2009: Functionality still trumps Security

2009-12-31T23:34:06Z

Yes, you heard me correctly… We still think about personal and corporate security only as an afterthought. Despite all the regulatory and industry compliance that has been created and updated in the past 15 years, as we close out this decade, we are hardly any closer to proactively applying security guidelines in our personal or professional lives. Certainly, we don’t apply them ahead of convenience or functionality, in any event. We still leave our keys under our welcome mats, or inside our...(read more)

The End of an Era

2009-12-23T17:34:25Z

It’s about time – at least, that’s what my wife will say when she learns that I have finally ditched the last remnants of a stockpile of old computer parts that I was hanging onto. These are parts which were actually dead at the beginning of this decade, but I was loathe to part with them for reasons which continue to escape me. Here is a short list of the relics that will finally meet their demise by tomorrow: One Diamond Multimedia Monster 3D video card One PCI 33.6K modem A couple PS/2 Keyboards...(read more)

Getting Real Benefit from your IT Department

2009-12-16T17:03:55Z

Earlier this month, I came across a provocative article in ComputerWorld that outlined some of the reasons why many organizations get inconsistent results from their Information Technology departments. Later, this article was made the source of discussion on a LinkedIn CIO group , where many different points of view were presented. As is common in such discussions, the views run the gamut from “it’s all IT’s fault” to “end users have no clue”, but the views at each extreme are less than...(read more)

What Software as a Service Really Provides

2009-12-09T05:27:36Z

Software as a Service, or SaaS , is seen and marketed as a way to remove or reduce the complexities and cost associated with local enterprise software deployments, especially where such software has a desktop installation facet to it. As is typical with all (relatively new) technologies – especially in recent years – there comes the inevitable media hype that insists that this will be the wave of the future , that all prior approaches are obsolete, and that any CIO not looking to convert all of his/her...(read more)

Why Businesses Standardize on Technology

2009-11-23T06:14:00Z

The role of an organization’s technologists are to protect the technology and information assets of the company, while facilitating productivity to move the business forward. This is always a balancing act, as no technology department that I am aware of today has anything resembling an unlimited budget. ...(read more)

Where Simplicity and Technology Really Intersect

2009-11-16T05:07:15Z

The prevailing wisdom says that technology is supposed to be getting simpler all the time. This belief appears to be pervasive with many corporate leaders who insist that there should be less of a need for expensive technology experts in an organization over time, since technology is becoming simpler and less error prone. I touched on this fallacy very briefly in a recent article about Information Security investments . While technology is easier to use in many ways, the fact is that...(read more)

Searching for Return on Security Investments

2009-10-30T20:45:00Z

There are several major challenges to the successful implementation of good information security in many organizations today. It is not because business owners do not think that security is important. No, the issues exist because they do not grasp the complexities that embody the Information Security profession, and thus make decisions that fail to account for the many nuances of a proper security posture in today’s business environment. Here are the major challenges to good InfoSec:...(read more)

My Resume Cloud

2009-10-27T01:04:54Z

Today, I came across a very interesting tool for generating a word cloud – basically, a visual representation of the frequency of words in a block of text, just as you might find in the tag cloud of a blog. I was first made aware of this tool from this LinkedIn Answers question , which then led me to the following blog post . It looked cool enough that I decided to map out own resume: It is actually very interesting to see which words are most frequently used. Although most of them...(read more)

More Technology Goodness Today

2009-10-23T02:11:12Z

There were some excellent technology releases today. The two I care about the most are Microsoft Windows 7 , and the latest update of XeeSM from Xeequa . I expect Windows 7 to be big, big, big in the next few months, and I’ll be dedicating a solid post before the end of the year to talk about the installations I have done. 32-bit and 64-bit. As for XeeSM , the folks at Xeequa keep on adding cool features, and they are very attentive and responsive to end-user commentary. I guess...(read more)