Well, I'm Here
I’ve decided, under the influence of others and some random influence yesterday to get myself one of these blogs. So, firstly, I’m going to be conformant, and do what everybody else does when they get a blog on this site. On the agenda:
- Thank Scott W for the blog
- Introduce myself
So, without further ado – Scott W – thanks for the blog! I wouldn’t be here without your work. Furthermore, I can’t imagine not being able to read all sorts of exciting things on this site and learn all sorts of exciting new things everyday. So, I must thank you for making all that possible too!
To wrap up the agenda here, let me introduce myself. My name is Brian Desmond. I live on the North Side of Chicago. Therefore, I am a Cubs fan. My occupations include, but are not limited to ASP.Net/general .net programming, system administration (Windows (NT/2000), primarily), and being a studious student. I’m also a Microsoft MVP for the Windows Server product area. I’m an MCP for Windows 2000 – I might be an MCSE/MCSA for Windows 2003, or close to it, but due to the format in which I took the exams, I have not gotten results back yet.
My functions in the ASP.Net field include maintaining www.wpcp.org, writing custom in-house apps for my school (more on that later) which allow the students to select such things as their courses online, retrieve homework, and more. I also maintain the soon-to-be-released do-all app for the tech dept I work in. In the works is a full asset management system, help desk type thing, LDAP synchronization (syncs machine locations with the directory & student accounts), and several situation specific modules (more on that later, too). I prefer Visual Basic.Net simply because I had been working with VB6 prior to the advent of VB.Net. I can ramble along in C# just fine, thought not as quickly as in VB. Therefore, I do not take sides in the language wars as both the languages do everything I need them to do. My two major .Net projects are finishing my management tool for the tech staff at school, and getting my new CMS for www.wpcp.org written, tested, and deployed. Since this site focuses mainly on .Net, I’ll be writing mostly about .Net stuff.
In my function as a Network Administrator, which fills most of my day right now (this will change September 2nd); I am responsible for close to 1,000 computers and an equal number of users. I have just finished an Active Directory upgrade earlier this week, from an NT4 infrastructure. I’ve moved to Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition as the primary server operating system (although I will continue to run Windows 2000 Server and Advanced Server for some applications). The upgrade went great, and once the fire Exchange 5.5 started is put out, all will be good. My current projects on the IT end of my operation include finishing the Active Directory migration, figuring out how to deploy OS X to sixty Apple Titanium PowerBooks, getting the infrastructure in place to dole out nine hundred email accounts on Exchange, and finally, setting up as many as two hundred new Acer laptops and a new thirty workstation computer lab.
Finally in my function as a student, I’m a high school student (www.wpcp.org), currently aged fifteen years (sixteen in twelve days!). This means I’ll be entering my junior (third) year this September. During the school year, my IT related stuff quiets down quite a bit (until something breaks, usually), but I still have a gaggle of ASP.Net apps that have to be managed and upgraded at various points in the school year to keep everything and everyone running happily. Most people, after reading something to the tune of the above couple sentences, ask me where I learnt all this stuff. I don’t know – I’ve always liked playing with stuff, taking things apart, etc. With that in mind, I suspect all this stemmed from there.
Finally, you can find me online in a few places: www.asp.net/forums - I’m “bdesmond”, news://msnews.microsoft.com on any of the Microsoft.public.windows.server.*, Microsoft.public.windows2000.*, or Microsoft.public.windowsnt.* groups, www.aspalliance.com/bdesmond - I’ve got a couple new articles cooking right now as well as what’s posted there. I can also be found me via email, there’s a contact button thing up in the upper left corner of this page, and it should send things my way.
That’s all for now.