I Have Not Fallen Off the Face of the Earth. Not Yet, Anyway.

Me, and My...Blog

As I've noted previously, I'm a terrible, terrible blogger. It's not that I don't have content for this blog, mind you. It's that I have a whole pile of it backed up, waiting to be polished and published. However, before I can post any of it, I have to do things like build virtual machines that I can use for demonstration purposes, take screenshots, polish text, dig up informational links, make sure that the things I suggest are properly vetted, do everything with appropriate (and usually multiple) versions of our operating systems and applications, etc., etc., ad nauseam. All of those things take a lot more time than I ever seem to have. However, I've now publicly mentioned this blog on multiple occasions, and I did so because it would force me to do something about the sad state of this little repository of mine.

A Little About Microsoft (Really Little), and a Little About One Small Piece of My Work this Year

Here at Microsoft, our fiscal year runs from July through June. At the beginning of each fiscal year, one of the things that we all do is to create our commitments. Commitments are descriptions of what we plan to do in a given year, how we plan to do it, and how we will define success of the endeavor. While we can modify our commitments as necessary throughout the year, I generally strive to establish my commitments with enough planning and foresight so that they're largely unchanged at the end of the year and all I have to do is to follow the roadmap that I set out at the beginning of the year (with a lot of organizational and managerial guidance, of course). One of the great things about creating effective commitments is that they allow us to not only state what we plan to do over the course of the year, but they also allow us to provide justification for allocation of appropriate time, resources, etc. that we need in order to complete the commitments.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, it's definitely not to divulge any secrets about Microsoft- this is not only public knowledge, we've actually published white papers about it. No secret stuff. I'm telling you all this because one of my commitments for this year is that I'm going to work to get some of that previously-mentioned "pile" polished and published. (How's that for alliteration? Did I ever mention my short attention span? Moving on...) Getting these posts published was actually part of another commitment last year, but I had defined different options for how to fulfill the commitment and this blog was one of them. I ended up delivering on the commitment via other mechanisms I'd listed as options, but this year, the commitment is actually going to specifically be about this blog, right here, with its five (about to be six) published posts in almost as many years. By publishing a post saying that I'm going to do this, I give myself some pretty strong incentive to finish what I started.

Getting to the Point

So if the "admin-free" posts have piqued your interest, only to disappoint you when their companions failed to appear, please stay tuned. Don't expect miracles- I'm simply not prolific enough to crank out a dozen posts in a month or two, but I do have some approaches in mind that should at least get me producing at a slightly faster pace than I have previously. And if you've never seen this blog and/or have no interest in the few posts that already exist in it, then I'm all the more impressed that you've read this far. Hopefully I can post something over the next year or so that DOES pique your interest.

I'm now receiving incoming Lync messages about a malfunctioning codec that is preventing me from completing some of the other work that's sitting on my plate right now, so I'll wrap this up. Watch this space, or maybe just come back in a year and read everything then.

Thanks for reading.

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Hi Gary, please trust me when I say that the reason for the delay has nothing to do with wanting go get companies to sign up for ADSAs. (Although they may well be advised to consider doing so.:-)) The reason that I've not been adding to this blog of late is because we've been working on something else that we hope will provide much of what you're seeking. I hope to be able to significantly flesh out this series quite soon; please stay tuned.

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Hi Gregory, You could try that "email blog author link" on this page, at least for now. :-) To answer your question, I was indeed talking about the white paper, but it's not intended to complete this series, per se. The whitepaper will actually be officially launched soon, and at that time, I will provide more information about it here, including what it is and is not intended to be.

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Thank  you, David, you just may get some of what you're seeking. Stay tuned.

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Hi Laura, I guess you were talking about "Best practices for securing active directory" new white paper in your last comment. I just finished reading it and I wonder if there is a way to give feedback on it. Regards, Gregory

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 27, 2012
  I've just run across your blog,  and am very interested in any follow-up articles to come in this series.  Don't give up!

• Anonymous
  December 17, 2012
  I'm sure many people are waiting for the follow up, we spoke for around an hour earlier this year and the call was not only very informative, but it gave me enough pointers to put together a Zero Admin policy at work (that should complete Q1 2013).. I looking forward to seeing how I could of done it better :o) Seriously though, security and risk are up there with stable operation, your blogs could save people everything (time, money, reputation, regulatory, etc...)... Unless they're teasers to get companies to sign up for ADSA's ;o) All appreciated!