Friday, August 30, 2013

Shameless Plug and Teaser

Selected portions from the "Introduction" and "Overview" from my forthcoming book.  Please, tell me if this sounds like something you'd be interested in buying?

Introduction

If you've read any of my previous ebooks, and somehow averted the urge to stab yourself in the eyes with a fork, you're probably familiar with my usual, droll, drab, way of describing things.  For this ebook however, I decided it was finally time to take off the gloves and do a few rounds in the ring with my blogging side.  My skatterbrainz.blogspot.com blogging side, to be more specific.  I've been a slave to that blog for quite a few years now, but in a good way actually.  It's provided me with a means to vent stress, confusion, anxiety, happiness, sadness, and everything else you might normally experience on a Saturday morning in a typical Sam's Club.

I am taking a bit of risk in adopting this approach however.  I really have no idea of what percentage of my blog readers also purchase my ebooks, and vice-versa.  I also don't know how many people have purchased, and read, my ebooks, and survived the trauma of that.


I'm a "regular" guy in most respects.  Not regular as it pertains to bowel habits, but regular in the sense that I rely upon a "day job" to have money to support my family (wife and four children, oh yeah, and two dogs and a cat).  I drive a very old car, and work a very nice job, but I buy a lottery ticket on occasion.

Overview

If your job (or hobby) involves installing software applications, components, even Windows or application configuration changes, on multiple computers over a network, you've almost certainly encountered some challenges along the way.  Even if the installation goes well, you may often face challenges with users trying to open or use the applications.  Maybe you're in the midst of trying to migrate computers to Windows 7 or Windows 8, and keep running into applications and that just don't seem to work properly.  Maybe you don't have enough budget to purchase new licenses of all the "problematic" applications you need to do a complete migration.

Feeling stuck?  Feeling frustrated? Confused? Angry?

Don't start drinking just yet.  Wait until you finish this book first.  Then you can go back to drinking all you can drink.  Just don't drink and drive.

If you follow "best practices" guidelines, you have probably configured your environment such that most users are not members of any groups which allow them local "administrator" access to their computer devices.  Whether that's keeping them out of the local "Administrators", or "Power Users" groups, or keeping them out of certain Active Directory domain groups, the goal is usually to mitigate potential security holes in your environment.  However, a frighteningly large number of software product vendors, and developers, seem to expect all of their customers to have unlimited powers over their computer devices when installing as well as using their software.

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