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As an enterprise software architect, there are many difficult problems that I face at work.  Most of the time, these problems require an elegantly architected solution that promises to be both maintainable and efficient at the same time.  This is always a difficult balance to achieve. 
The thing that surprises me most is that many [...]

WMIC – A Hidden Gem

Often times I find myself applying “developer-type” solutions to IT administrator problems.  Naturally I was excited as PowerShell a.k.a Monad a.k.a Poshwas gaining notoriety.  I had visions of a tool that would let me peek into services, filesystems, performance counters, etc. for all of my servers including database, application, web, etc.  Much to my dismay, [...]

TeamCity – A Better CCNet?

I have heard some buzz about a product from JetBrains called TeamCity.  Some very influential technologists such as Roy Osherove seem to like the capabilities, so it is definitely worth a look.  This looks like a good competitor to CruiseControl.NET, so I think I am going to give it a spin.  I’ll update the blog [...]

Microsoft IT Advisory Council

So I get a lot of email from Microsoft, which is mostly by my own doing since I like to get the download notifications, my company is a gold partner, etc. Recently I received an email inviting me to fill out an application to join the Microsoft IT Advisory Council.   A while later I [...]

VSS and CruiseControl.NET

Recently, a respected member of the .NET community asked for some “gotchas” when using SourceSafe with CruiseControl.NET. At first, I was thinking, “There really aren’t any. It is working fine for us” however when thinking back on the setup of the current infrastructure I recall there was some tweaking necessary to get things [...]

Houston, we have a TechFest!

The Houston .NET Users Group (HDNUG) is organizing a day of technological banter at the University of Houston next month. The event has been coined the Houston TechFest and it is going to be held on August 25th (a Saturday).
This knowledge sharing experience is of particular interest to me because it will be my [...]