I’m fascinated by the way people learn. I’m told there are several methods people use to understand new information, from reading to watching, from experiencing to exploring. Personally, I use multiple methods of learning when I encounter a new topic...

Windows Azure is part of the Microsoft "stack" - the suite of software and services we offer. Because we have so many products in almost every part of technology, it's hard to know everything about all parts of what we do - even for those of us who work...

This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here , and the entire list is here . The book I chose for April 2012 was: Applied Architecture Patterns on the...

We’ve all done it. We have a file we need to transfer to someone  - but it’s big. Really big. “Big”, in this case, is defined as “bigger than my corporate e-mail will let me send.” So of course we scout around, and find a free file share location...

If you want to be wise, watch the actions and outcomes of others. Emulate the successful actions, and avoid the actions that cause failure. That’s true in life in general - and in technology projects in specific.  I’ve worked with several clients...

<This is a non-technical post, at least mostly> Back in January I wrote a post on switching to a stand-up desk arrangement . Since then folks have asked me if I stuck with it, how it worked out, and will I go back to sitting down to work. I thought...

For reasons I don't completely understand, I'm not allowed to call the following advice "Best Practices" - apparently there is some liability or something there. So let's say these are "really good ideas" for developing applications...

Distributed Computing - and more importantly “-as-a-Service” models of computing have a different cost model. This is something that sounds obvious on the surface but it’s often forgotten during the design and coding phase of a project. In on-premises...

This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here , and the entire list is here . The book I chose for March 2012 was: The Information: A History, a Theory...

Windows Azure allows you to write code in languages within the .NET stack, you can use Java, C++, PHP, NodeJS and others. Code is code - other than keeping things stateless, using a Web or Worker Role in Azure is not all that different from working with...

Microsoft is working on a new Windows Azure service called “Trust Services”. Trust Services takes a certificate you upload and uses it to encrypt and decrypt sensitive data in the cloud. Of course, like any security service, there’s...

Windows Azure as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) means that there are various components you can use in it to solve a problem: Compute “Roles” - Computers running an OS and optionally IIS - you can have more than one "Instance" of a given...

Windows Azure is a Platform as a Service – a PaaS – that runs code you write. That code doesn’t just mean the languages on the .NET platform – you can run code from multiple languages, including Java. In fact, you can develop for...

(Many thanks to Peter Gvozdjak and Dan Benediktson here at Microsoft who worked with me on this issue and provided the bulk of information for this post) Recently I had a customer inquire about some performance tuning he wanted to do for SQL Azure, and...

This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here . The book I chose for Feruary 2012 was: Designing Data Visualizations by Noah Iliinsky and Julie Steele...

(As with all of these types of posts, check the date of the latest update I’ve made here. Anything older than 6 months is probably out of date, given the speed with which we release new features into Windows and SQL Azure) I don’t normally...

There are multiple ways to store data in a cloud provider, specifically around Windows and SQL Azure. As part of a “Data First” architecture design, one decision vector – assuming you’ve already done a data classification of the...

Developing in Windows Azure is at once not that much different from what you’re familiar with in on-premises systems, and different in significant ways. Because of these differences, developers often ask about the specific process to develop and deploy...

This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here . The book I chose for January 2012 was: The Elements of Persuasion by Richard Maxwell and Robert Dickman...

I recently joined a software development project that involves not only myself and other internal Microsoft employees, but a partner and a customer as well. We are building a hybrid solution that uses assets on premises as well as Windows Azure for processing...

I served in the U.S. Military for a while, and as part of my training we had to maintain a “Bug-Out Bag”, which was a large duffle-bag full of certain items that we could live on/fight with in an emergency. I’ve carried the spirit of that idea forward...

Recently I had an tweetversation with a couple of friends on some confusion around two of our products: SkyDrive and Live Mesh . Like most of our software, there’s no single way to do things. That can be a strength or it can cause that confusion. They...

When I was very young, I asked my uncle for career advice. He went silent, thinking for a bit, and then said: “People who work sitting down make more than people who work standing up.” I’m not certain how true that really is, but my career as a technology...

The new year has begun. It’s traditional to make “Resolutions” at this time, but as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t do that. I make goals instead. I like things to be measurable, and I hold myself accountable to those goals - some of which deal with my...

This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here . The book I chose for December 2011 was: Think Stats, by Allen B. Downey .  Why I chose this Book:...