So it's true. Senility had obviously settled in and my addled brain can no longer maintain even the simplest items of information such as a two-fingered keyboard combination. It seems that in future I'll be wandering aimlessly around my server room dribbling helplessly onto the network switches, muttering...

Does lateral thinking mean you need to look outside your own head instead of just accepting the most obvious solution? If so, I might as well plead guilty in terms of managing the backup power supply for my servers. Like a great many people I depend on APC UPSs to handle mains power fluctuations and...

In the days when I used to visit my Uncle Gerald, who was a keen gardener, he would often present me around this time of year with a large bundle of rhubarb and the instruction to "give these to your Mother and wish her a moving Easter". I suspect that the comment was somehow related to the laxative...

"Welcome back! You join us as Alex is trying to decide whether to act out his Star Wars fantasy with an R2 detour (D2-er, get it? Maybe not). With several hundreds of newly acquired gigs in the servers, will he risk upgrading from the so-last-decade Windows Server 2008 to the shiny new R2 edition? Especially...

Oh dear. Here in this desolate and forgotten outpost of the p&p empire it's pretend-to-be-a-sysadmin time all over again. Daily event viewer errors about the servers running out of disk space and shadow copies failing (mainly because I had to disable them due to lack of disk space) are gradually...

...that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the server cabinet to suffer the outrageous lack of valuable new functionality, or to take arms against the powerful improvements to the core Windows Server operating system. And by opposing, manage without them? To sleep (or hibernate): perchance to dream...

I read somewhere a while ago that the word "expert" comes from a combination of the two Latin words "ex" meaning "a has-been", and "spurt" meaning "a drip under pressure". I'm not sure I actually believe it, but is does seem a remarkably fortuitous match to my capabilities when it comes to the grudge...

There's some ethereal guy called "system" wandering around inside my servers stealing stuff. It's a bit like when you were a kid and your parents hid things from you. When my hamster died, my Dad told me it had gone to live on a farm. Of course, when I got a bit older and my Grandmother passed away I...

A quick note to Hyper-V users. When I installed Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2, it installed fine with no errors, but after a while I was getting NetBT errors in Event Log saying there was a duplicate name on the network, and other issues finding machines on the network. Turns out that the service...

I endured a severe culture shock this week. And that was without meeting new people from countries afar, or travelling to distant lands. And it didn't involve a trip to some foreign eatery (such as our local Indian restaurant or Greek fish 'n' chip shop) either. No, all I did was respond to a change...

First off, I need to apologize to all those people who have been reduced to reading my previous "Hyper-Ventilating" posts hoping to find some crumb of comfort to alleviate their crippling medical condition. It seems from the analysis of Web search requests for those posts that more people are ill than...

After approximately two weeks of intermittent network upgrades, I seem to still have a working network. I guess at least that's something to be thankful for. But it's still not fulfilled the original plan. And much hyper-ventilation has occurred during the process, particularly when watching those little...

Outside, the snow lies deep, crisp, and even. Inside, the continuing quest to achieve calm and serenity through the application of virtuality. Noticeably, without much sign of virtuosity. I know that a "Minister of the Church" is somebody who ministers to the poor and sick as well as the good and the...

I guess there are at least two people out there who may be interested in hearing about my latest upgrade experiences. One of them I know is just about to experience hyper-ventilation. Perhaps if I sprinkle it with some useful tips and pointers I can make it at least partly worth reading. And maybe mix...