I’m currently reading The Network Migration Workbook: Zero Downtime Migration Strategies for Windows Networks as can be seen on my Goodreads shelf. So far it’s been very useful and there have already been lots of tips that would save our company time (and therefore) money in doing migrations. Even if we didn’t go down this particular route for migrations, the tips applied would be very beneficial for other types of migrations, especially when it comes to planning and quoting for the migration itself. The only hard bit is to get the customer to agree to the restrictions in the plan – it is vital to quote for *only* the migration – everything else results in another helpdesk ticket, project or work order.
I’ve been reading the book for a couple of hours straight through – I’ve resisted the lure of jumping to the checklists – and still have some way to go, which is why I’ve not posted a review of the book yet – but so far I’m definitely recommending it – but note that some significant time needs to be invested for each person in the migration project from the sales person, to the project manager to the team lead down to the tech doing the work. In some companies this could be one person – in our company it’s probably three people.
Anyway, the point of this blog post was to mention that the author is going to be at An Introduction to Zero Downtime Migrations – and More in Cincinnati tomorrow (Saturday) for an all day training event which I am attending. It was worth the cheap admission to get an in person overview of the book and also some tips and previews of the other books he has written – I’m particularly intrigued by the Network Documentation book as this is something that is typically hard/time consuming to do yet so valuable when troubleshooting customer networks (and is NEVER provided by the client). If you’re going to this training day, be sure to say Hi.
If you want to browse Karl’s store then you can click on my affiliate link or click through directly to the books from the links above (not affiliate linked). Currently the cheapest place to buy the book is either used from Amazon or new from the Good Little Books store. It did amuse me to see that someone has the Zero Downtime book listed for $1165 and a used version for $564 which is crazy when the book brand new is currently $250 (will be $300)
Goodreads.com looks like a good tracking site of what books have been read or you wish to read. You can create multiple shelves that books can be stored on, for example Sci-Fi, Reading and Read for a Terry Pratchett book. It looks books up pretty well by author or title but it had a couple of issues trying to match an ISBN number that I got from one of my books, but typing the title in worked fine (probably a different edition). It has a widget plugin for wordpress and an image or flash plugin for other blogging sites and a facebook application too. I’m using the image plugin to the left here as flash is annoying – especially if you use flashblock like me. By filling in more details about your location it will show you information about other groups in your area and also links to upcoming for book events – there is one author appearing in downtown Columbus soon.
There is an option to import books using a text file using ISBN numbers – I’m not sure how well that would integrate with a cuecat but I would imagine that people with a cuecat have already scanned their books into a database already.
Naturally RSS feeds abound for various types of book categories such as the books I am reading, that are on my shelves, authors etc.
If you give it a try, my username is Absoblogginlutely.
I just finished the free Electronic Discovery for Dummies booklet that Mike McBride blogged about. It didn’t take long to read as it was 42 pages but it was quite interesting. Like Mike’s review I found the book easy to read and a good start for IT Managers or someone who may need to talk to a CEO to explain implications of IT practises. In my case it will be useful to explain the implications of mail (and data) archiving policies. Several questions have arisen lately about archiving and deleting mail to reduce the load on the mail servers. Some of the reasons for doing this is cost, but then recovering all the data from all of the backup tapes could prove far more costly. However, having a short retention time for backups seems to be acceptable as long as the company has a strict policy for this and that it is adhered to.
I’m not sure what happens or if it is possible to have different retention schemes for different users (or management levels) but I do know that whatever solution is used, the ability to stop deleting things according to the policy must be possible in the case of an ediscovery request.
I passed the book along to one of our sales people as it is a good, quick primer and should really be required minimum reading for any tech dealing with backups, restoration and deletion of software.
Ages ago I wrote a feature on how to backup a cpanel account. Just recently one of my clients purchased a dedicated server that uses cpanel as the website hosting manager. I purchased cpanel
Aric’s cpanel userguide and tutorial book to assist with learning some of the more obscure features and functions and as I was reading through the book I got to page 93 – and my site is quoted as a way to backup the system – how cool is that!
Naturally I now have to go back and make sure that the script still works and make any changes necessary.
At last, I’ve found a good online app for tracking what books I own, have read, borrowed from the library, ordered from the library etc. My Library Thing shows the four books that I had down in the basement to test with and the great thing is that adding a book is really simple. Just swiping the barcode with the cuecat scanner and the book was looked up on amazon and ready to be entered. I just had to add the tags that I wanted to use. It would be great if it showed the tags already used ala flickr, but I suspect that won’t be long in coming. The service is free for 200 books and $10 for a lifetime membership after that which sounds pretty good to me.
The widget for recent books read appears below (which I am going to have to change the styling of)
I’ve requested that the library get a copy of The Dead Place by Stephen Booth as apparently its based around the police finding a geocache and contains some pretty realistic geocaching information.
Update Unfortunately I’ve just realised the book is only just out in the Uk and not out in the US for some time – next year 
I’ll have to get a copy when I go over to the UK sometime.
Chris has a very good article about Luna where you send them a word document and they produce it into a book. In Chris’s article, Pretty Pink Ponies Edition… » For those about to rawk, We publish you! – Part 1 he has screenshots of some web content he produced as a book and the quality looks really good. The prices are not bad either and luna only take 20% of any markup you make on the book. For 2p per page black and white, its cheaper than most photocopiers (but not as instant). I’m looking forward to his next couple of articles and I’m tempted to create a book for this website as a historical record but I’m not sure how much use a book containing hyperlinks is really…….
A while back I requested the library to obtain a copy of Firefox hacks instead they have purchased 3 copies of the book Firefox and Thunderbird garage which seems to have a lot of fluff in it and aimed at firefox newbies.
I might just put another request in for the original book or the new one Hacking Firefox
I think I may have solved my reading list problem I mentioned earlier. By downloading and installing Open Media Lending Database into my Uniform server installation I now have a mini library system which even allows me to check out items to friends etc.
Installation notes in the extended entry.
Read more »
Library elf is a good webpage that allows you to get email notifications and rss feeds of your books that you have borrowed/waiting to borrow from the library. Although the Columbus Metropolitan Library already has email notification, the good thing about this is that you can list all the items from all your family members in one place. That way you know who has what out (or if your wife has reserved something under your library card!)
I’m still looking for a book reading tracker app and haven’t found one yet. However, this might be a good application to get started with .net
