Getting ‘administrative events’ from a janky system

Recently, I was helping a co-worker with an issue noted where Win 2019 MCS clones going into a janky state intermittently. I’m a big fan of the windows event viewer for immediate troubleshooting, however, the system was so degraded, we were unable to use compmgmt.msc to remote to the system to open eventvwr.msc However, we

Arizona April 2022

My trip to Arizona April 7 to 14th, 2022 was a long-time coming. I’d originally wanted to go in Dec 2019. However, I decided to stay in Montreal for the holidays. 2 months later, covid-19 came in put in a wrench in any travel plans I might have had for the states for all of

Custom offline ISO Windows deployment method as a packer alternative

Background For 2022, it was time to start using the packer automation I learned / wrote about in 2022, however, when I first tried to use it with my first 2 clients, it failed, in each case, for a different reason. On a third attempt to use it, I didn’t have access to the client’s

Monkey biznuzz time mgmt startegy

🐵 If you’ve read my bio/current job/recent posts, you’ll know I do It consulting for a company in Quebec, Canada. 90% of my projects are 2 to 3 weeks long in scope, if we run out of time, two things will happen: -The project will be paused-The client will need to buy more hours Neither

Measuring the impact of ‘Direct workload connect’ on Citrix Cloud session brokering time with ControlUP / CQI

In this blog post, I’m going to talk about a Citrix cloud feature you might have heard of, but not implemented. It’s called Direct workload connect:https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-workspace/optimize-cvad/workspace-network-location.html In this post, I will review how to get it working, and most important of all , how to measure the impact of implementing the feature using numbers. I

Packer Part 3 – Windows 11 build

Intro Hot on the heels of the CUGC presentation I did 2 weeks back with my co-worker / friend Jonathan Pitre, I took some time this week to update my Packer config files for Windows 11. I have a client who wants to do a Citrix POC with Windows 11, so, let’s brain dump all

Windows build automation w Packer / Powershell 2022 redux

Last year, I wrote a long post about using Packer.IO to automate basic VMware shell creation and Win 10 / Win 2019 installation. At that time, I only ended up using the solution for re-builds on own home lab. This year, I’ve had the need to build golden images for multiple clients, each time, the

My 5 year quest for a good night’s sleep

UPDATED FOR MONDAY MARCH 28, 2022! I finally received my CPAP machine prescription, it’s now just a matter of waiting to get a machine, but, the hard part is over!This is my sleep story. It’s a work in progress Anyone who’s seen my eyes in-person or a video call from about Dec 2021 to now

Old school troubleshooting based on OSI model

Intro In college, the OSI model was drilled into me, as one of the IT admin courses I was taking included the full Cisco Certified Network Admin track. While I never did take up a job doing pure network stuff, what I learned about the OSI model is still useful to this day We have

Buying a used car after 10 years out of the game

Intro Update for Aug 2022 My search has ended!I found a car! I purchased a Subaru WRX 2011 dark gray, here are some pix: however, this entire blog post might be useful if you’re considering buying a used car. My OWeN car search has ended after 33 test drives over the past 11 months I