On July 19, 2024 an incident occurred where approximately 8.5 million Windows computers were taken offline due to a bad definition file being deployed to the CrowdStrike Falcon product. Due to the way that the definition file was formatted, the way that Windows does not allow bad drivers to be bypassed at boot time, and the way that Windows handles Antivirus products in general all contributed to the outage. It has been a year since this incident and I wanted to go over what has changed, and if it is still possible for this issue to occur in the future.

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There were several tasks that needed to be completed to successfully migrate away from Microsoft 365. I decided that I would test different solutions and make changes as needed, but the move away from Microsoft 365 would be a one-way trip. I had no intention of going back to that platform, and I was going to make whatever solution I ended up with work for me. At the end of this migration, I was able to have a proper email and groupware solution that did everything I needed it to do, and it was on a non-US provider.

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I have been stuck in a loop for a while using multiple services from different providers to get things done in my daily workflow. I have been looking for ways to consolidate and simplify those services as much as possible, as I am tired of dealing with multiple providers for everyday tasks. I have written about this several times on this website, and I have made a lot of efforts to reduce the number of services that I am using. Obviously, this is not a problem for a lot of people, and they have no issues switching back and forth between services, but I find it to be quite annoying and distracting. After going back and forth and tracking my usage, I decided that I no longer need Microsoft 365 at all, and it was time for it to go. The Microsoft 365 services that are offered can be provided elsewhere, and that was what I wanted to investigate.

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I wasn’t planning on making this change right now, but recent events have accelerated my schedule. I am retiring the mjcb.io domain and moving everything to the mjcb.ca domain for all of my online services. I wanted to make this change sooner rather than later, as it will take time for those changes to be propagated. Fortunately, I am not too concerned with a lot of the issues that arise from changing domains.

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Another year has come and gone. I wanted to take some time and go over what I worked on in 2024, and what my plans are for 2025. I got a lot of things done in 2024, but I ran out of time on some projects. Those projects are going to be completed in the first few months of 2025 as I really would like to move onto other things.

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The 8-Bit Guy recently posted a video about the history of the Atari 8-Bit computers, and the impact that they had on the industry. I was never the biggest fan of Atari consoles when I was a kid, mostly because more modern consoles were available by the time I was playing games. I was not aware of the extra capabilities of these computers, mostly because there was little documentation available in the pre-Internet era, and I was too young to know how to program.

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I have been following Raymond Chen’s blog, The Old New Thing, or several years and he recently posted about the process that Windows 95 used for installation. The installer was unusual since it booted into a limited MS-DOS environment, then a limited Windows 3.1 environment, and then finally into a Windows 95 environment. I had heard several reasons for this strange process for years, so it was nice to finally hear the reason from someone at Microsoft.

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Windows Server 2025 was released to manufacturing on November 1, 2024, after being in public preview for most of the year. This is a major release, and there are many changes to the core features of Windows Server. This is also the first version of Windows Server to be available on the ARM architecture, which will allow for some interesting deployment options for the operating system. Windows Server 2025 is a LTSC (Long-Term Servicing Channel) release and will be supported until October 10, 2034.

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