Chicagoing
Prepping for your first trip to another continent has a touch of surrealism about it. When you've only ever seen a place on television and said place is literally on the other side of the planet, your brain tends to file it under Places That Only Exist On Television, alongside Narnia and Sunnydale.
It's just how your brain works as a kid. Lord Of The Rings is set in Middle Earth, Batman is set in Gotham City and The Blues Brothers is set in Chicago. The upshot of this is that if you ever somehow come across the opportunity to visit one of these places as an adult, your inner child will perform kickflips.
There is slight fly in the ointment, however:
"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime, doubly so." - Ford Prefect
For someone who's average plane journey is a 45 minute hop from Melbourne to Sydney, this poses some challenges. When was the last time I spent that length of time sitting down? Have I pre-loaded enough podcasts on my phone? Should I order the white meat with the fluorescent orange chunks, or lash out and get the grey meat with the green cubes1?
The End Game for Passwords and Credential Theft? - Nelly Porter, Dustin Ingalls
I hate passwords. You hate passwords2. The helpdesk hates passwords. Passwords are like that strange friend from high school who never quite grew up: they've been hanging around for a while now, but you're starting to wonder if they're worth the effort. I'm really keen to find out what we're replacing them with3.
Microsoft's New Windows Server Containers - Nick Stinemates, Arno Mihm & Taylor Brown
Containers are a legitimately exciting big leap forward, bringing virtualisation of the Windows stack to the sysadmin. Instead of just abstracting the hardware layer out, now we'll be able to do the same for a Windows instance much like an onsite PaaS.
Detecting the Undetectable - Roger Grimes
As mentioned previously, I work for a hospital. Hospitals have all kinds of interesting challenges around securing large amounts of highly sensitive data such as medical records, billing information and the office footy tipping competition4.
How Microsoft IT Deploys Windows 10 - Robert Van Winkle
Without any doubt, our biggest project last year was upgrading our desktop fleet from Windows XP to Windows 7. Anything that can make the SOE upgrade process easier will be welcomed with open arms.
Cheers,
g-lock
1: I concede that a having a dig at airline food is a bit rich coming from someone who works in a hospital
2: a rather presumptuous statement for me to make, but I reckon the odds are good
3: the passwords, not the strange high school friend. That's still for you to sort out
4: once the office has lost faith in your ability to secure the tipping comp, you may as well update your resume