I Stopped Applying, and Things Started Moving
I thought pausing my applications would leave me with more time. Instead, companies started reaching out.
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Practical notes on software, infrastructure, operations, identity, AI, and technology in production.
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You Cannot Review AI Work Line by Line
At 21.4 billion tokens in one week, I cannot inspect every AI output manually. Review has to be built into the workflow, with human judgment focused where it matters.
5 min readRestarting Mycelium
I finally have time to return to Mycelium, revisit the thinking behind the original idea, and rebuild its architecture model with more care.
4 min readTickety: An AI Sidekick for ITSM
An old friend asked for an AI sidekick for ITSM. A morning prototype turned into an open-source project, with a live demo now online.
6 min readTwo Years of AI-Assisted Infrastructure
What I've actually shipped with AI tooling since 2022. No futures, no predictions — just results.
4 min readTwenty Years of Servers: What Actually Matters
Looking back on two decades in IT infrastructure. The technology changed completely. The principles didn't.
4 min readWhat a Tenant Migration Actually Looks Like
Not the architecture slide. The part where the migration tool goes down at 11pm and you're alone, holding the AD cutover together with PowerShell and a checklist.
8 min readIn Defence of Cloud: A Response to the Repatriation Narrative
The 'cloud is too expensive' crowd has a point — if you lift-and-shift and walk away. Here's the other side.
4 min readMigrating to PowerShell 7 Was Painful and Worth It
PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell 7 can coexist, but that doesn't mean it's easy. Here's what broke and why we did it anyway.
3 min readMoving VMware to Azure Without Losing Your Mind
Practical notes from a real VMware-to-Azure migration. What the planning templates miss, and why the landing zone decision matters more than you think.
8 min readPost-Migration Cost Optimisation Is a Phase, Not an Afterthought
The migration is complete. The servers are in Azure. Nobody is celebrating, because the first bill just arrived.
3 min readM365 Governance Without the Consultant Speak
Teams sprawl, SharePoint chaos, and the group expiration policy that saved us from ourselves.
3 min readAzure AD in the Real World
Identity is the new perimeter, but most organisations still treat it like an afterthought. Practical Azure AD patterns from the trenches.
4 min readHow I Actually Use AI in Infrastructure Work
No frameworks, no 'harnesses,' no multi-agent architectures. Just a sysadmin using LLMs to get things done faster.
2 min readSecurity Baselines Are Boring and That's the Point
Good security isn't exciting. It's methodical. Baseline configuration, regular auditing, and the discipline to fix things that aren't broken yet.
3 min readInfrastructure in the Year Everyone Went Home
When 500 people suddenly need to work from home, 'VPN capacity' stops being a theoretical number.
3 min readThe Incident That Changed How I Think About Monitoring
Our monitoring dashboard was all green. Production was down. They were both true.
2 min readPowerShell Is Still the Best Tool Nobody Talks About
Bash gets the cool factor. Ansible gets the conference talks. But PowerShell has been quietly getting things done in Windows environments for 15 years.
4 min readExchange Online Migration: What the Documentation Won't Tell You
Migrating from on-prem Exchange to Exchange Online is well-documented. The parts between the documentation steps are where things go wrong.
2 min readWhy I Still Run Hyper-V in 2019
Everyone's talking about cloud, but on-prem virtualization isn't dead. Here's where Hyper-V still makes sense.
3 min readAzure Costs Don't Manage Themselves
The most common Azure mistake isn't architecture. It's assuming that cloud is cheaper without active cost management.
4 min readActive Directory Hygiene Is Not Optional
Years of accumulated AD cruft don't fix themselves. A practical guide to cleaning up before the auditors arrive.
4 min readBackup Is Not Disaster Recovery
Most organisations confuse backup with DR. They're different problems with different solutions. Here's how I think about both.
4 min readThe Server That Ran for Four Years Without Anyone Knowing
Every data centre has ghosts. Here's one I found.
4 min readArchive
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