Tech Talks – May 2018

Cortana

I had the honor of meeting (and in some cases, reconnecting) with a great group of people at Bradenton’s Station 2 Innovation. Spark Growth put on one of their many Tech Talks, inviting subject matter experts to share what new and useful in their fields of passion. Mine, of course, is Cortana.  😉

For the participants of my talk this morning: Thank you for enthusiasm and attendance! Here’s the slide deck that we (kind of) went through. Please feel free to contact me if you have questions regarding today’s content.

Tech Talks – May 2018

Microsoft’s Identity Management Framework (2015)

You know, I really love a LOT of the things that Microsoft is doing in just about every space that they operate in. However, one thing that consistently disappoints me is that the people writing most of their technical documentation have a VERY BAD habit of leaving crucial bits out of their “how-tos”. Once such victim is how to integrate the Identity Management Framework with SendGrid in Windows Azure.

Thankfully someone else has had to deal with this issue (I simply knew I couldn’t be the first person) and they wrote up a good tutorial on how to deal with this little diddy. Of course some things have changed since it was originally written on 9/28/2014… but it’s still about 95% accurate. Special thanks to Max Vasilyev for his hard work —  which saved my Saturday afternoon.

Cheers!

Microsoft’s Identity Management Framework (2015)

#Microsoft, thanks for being vigilant, but please don’t…

… have me running around like my head’s chopped off because I need to upgrade my Windows Azure OS to one of two specific versions, only to find out neither one is available to me. THEN, don’t make me use one of my 5 allotted support credits to ask you what you really mean because the option you told me I had to pick isn’t on the list. THEN, don’t have me use the only free, real-time support option only to find out the first-tier online chatters are not technically competent.

M’kay? That really sucks.

For those of you who don’t believe me, here’s what they said:

We are sending you explicit notification on this update to our platform because it addresses a publicly known vulnerability that presents risk to customers who have not updated their hosted services. Updates will be automatic for most customers, but certain customers will need to take prompt action. Please read further to determine if any action is required on your part. 

The Guest OS version which includes the security update is:

    • Windows Guest OS Family 1 -> WA-GUEST-OS-1.8_201109-03
    • Windows Guest OS Family 2 -> WA-GUEST-OS-2.8_201109-03

…and here’s what shows up as available for me:

The list of available OS options

I really want to be just as patched as the next guy, but i’m *not* going to “pay” you for the privilege of helping you figure out what you really meant in the first place.

So now I’m stuck hoping that my hosting instance was already set to “Automatic” and that I got the update when they rolled things out. =/

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#Microsoft, thanks for being vigilant, but please don’t…