Posts on Tim Schaeps

My GitHub Copilot Journey - Part 8: Building the Dashboard

Mon, 11 May 2026 16:00:00 +0200

What do you do when you've been documenting your AI journey in blog posts, and you realize you want to see the data, not just describe it?

You build a dashboard. Obviously. 😊

The itch

Throughout this series, I've been talking about phases, milestones, evolution. In Part 7 I even calculated ROI manually during a debugging session. But all of that was narrative. I kept thinking: what if I could just run a command and see my entire journey laid out in front of me?

My GitHub Copilot Journey - Part 7: Fixing a Big Issue (and What It Means)

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 18:30:00 +0200

Today I had a deployment that was working yesterday. Today it wasn't. What followed was one of those debugging sessions that perfectly illustrates both the power and the economics of working with GitHub Copilot.

If you've been following this series (starting with Part 1: The First Ask ), you know the progression: from quick questions, to deep conversations, to infrastructure automation, to multi-agent squads. This post is about what happens when that infrastructure fights back, and how the tool helps you win. (And then, in a beautifully meta moment, I asked the tool to calculate its own cost. More on that later. 😊)

My GitHub Copilot Journey - Part 6: The Squad

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 23:00:00 +0200

In Part 5 , I described the compound effect, what happens when trust, depth, breadth, and infrastructure all stack up. I thought that was the end of the story. It wasn't.

Somewhere around week seven, I stopped talking to one Copilot. I started assembling squads. (I realize that sounds dramatic, but bear with me, it'll make sense in a moment 😊.)

This is the part of the journey where GitHub Copilot stopped being a tool I used and became a system I orchestrated. Where I went from having one conversation at a time to coordinating multiple specialized agents working in parallel. And where I started thinking about how to bring this capability to an entire team, not just myself.

My GitHub Copilot Journey - Part 5: The Compound Effect

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 22:40:00 +0200

Two months ago, I asked an AI to explain an error message. Last week, I built a complete web application (frontend, backend, authentication, infrastructure, CI/CD pipeline, monitoring dashboards) in a single afternoon session of 122 exchanges.

This is the final part of the series (well, almost, more on that in a moment). Not because the journey is over, but because the foundation is set. In Part 1 I built the reflex. In Part 2 I went deep. In Part 3 I went wide. In Part 4 I started automating the systems around my work. Part 5 is about what happens when all of those layers compound. (And yes, there's a Part 6 because the story didn't end where I expected.)

My GitHub Copilot Journey - Part 4: The Infrastructure Leap

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 22:30:00 +0200

Eight weeks ago, I accidentally committed a secret to a public repository. Last week, I was designing authentication architectures with managed identities and federated credentials. Same person. Same tool. Completely different confidence level.

This post is about the most transformative phase of my journey: when I stopped using AI for code and content, and started using it for infrastructure, deployment, and DevOps. To me, this is where the productivity gains went from impressive to structural. (I won't pretend the learning curve was smooth. There were definitely some embarrassing moments along the way.)

My GitHub Copilot Journey - Part 3: Beyond Code

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 22:20:00 +0200

I hired a coding assistant. Then I realized it's not a coding assistant. It's a thinking assistant that happens to be really good at code.

In Part 1 I built the reflex. In Part 2 I learned to go deep. Part 3 is about going wide, and to me, this is where things got really interesting.

The category explosion

Looking back at my usage patterns, something happened around week 4. My sessions, which had been almost entirely about code, started fragmenting into wildly different categories (I honestly didn't plan this, it just sort of happened):

My GitHub Copilot Journey - Part 2: The Long Conversation

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 22:10:00 +0200

Most people use AI like a search engine: one question, one answer, done. To me, the real power unlocks when you keep going.

In Part 1 , I described the reflex shift, replacing Google with a direct question. That's stage one. Stage two is what happens when you stop leaving after the first answer. And honestly, I discovered this almost by accident.

The accidental deep dive

It started by accident. I needed to prepare a workshop on a topic I partially understood (I won't pretend I was an expert. I knew just enough to be dangerous). Usually that means: read five articles, outline on paper, restructure three times, fill in the gaps, and hope the narrative holds.

My GitHub Copilot Journey - Part 1: The First Ask

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 22:00:00 +0200

I spent 20 minutes googling an error message. Then I asked an AI, got the answer in 8 seconds, and spent the next 10 minutes wondering why I hadn't done that sooner.

It all started with a Microsoft internal session on GitHub Copilot, delivered by Scott Hanselman. Something about the way he demonstrated it sparked my curiosity in a way that dozens of "AI is the future" presentations hadn't. I walked out of that session thinking: I need to try this properly. What followed was a series of insightful moments that I want to document in this series. (Not because my journey is special, but because I think the pattern is recognizable for anyone making the same shift. 😊)

Studying for the Azure data engineer cert exam (DP-203)

Wed, 04 May 2022 08:55:40 +0000

Last week, I completed the certification exam for "Azure data engineer associate" (DP-203). Since I put in quite some effort and successfully completed the exam in one go, I wanted to share how I studied and which materials I studied .

First of al, my background is not in the data world. This means that I was missing a lot of the "foundational knowledge" that a typical "student" would have. Having said this, I really like what I have been learning. It really is as if a door opens to a world that I didn't knew that existed (and neither did I know about the door)...

Azure Bicep - where to get started

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 18:48:12 +0000

Last month, I have been using some of my spare time to read up Azure bicep . The goal was to learn about this (relatively) new technology/language. Because I want to help you find your way in to this domain of (Azure Specific) Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tech, I wrote something about it. I hope that it will help you to get started too!

What?

Bicep is a DSL (domain specific language) that allows you describe (in an easy fashion) how your Azure env look like and therefore you can use it to to automate an Azure infrastructure deployment. It provides a decent alternative to ARM templates which can get difficult to compose and to read.

Azure Charts: a hidden gem for architects and azure users alike

Sat, 06 Nov 2021 09:27:33 +0000

Last week I found a little gem that is too good to keep it for myself. For years, I have been using (and working with) Microsoft Azure and in all this time and it is only now that this cool website pops up! In order to better understand what I'm talking about, I need to go a little more in detail in the design process of (cloud) architectures. In Azure, a lot of the services have been designed as components that can put to work together in multiple scenarios. When these components are being put together, they result in a solution that is more than the sum of its parts. It is however important to look at these solutions from multiple angles and take into account concepts such as scalability, cost, availability (incl SLA's), etc.

What are profiles in Microsoft Edge and why should you use them

Sun, 03 Oct 2021 13:27:19 +0000

Today, I'm going to write about a lesser known feature that you can find in Microsoft Edge (but also in Google Chrome). Both are chromium based browsers and both have the well known and widely used "Guest mode". This mode allows you to work in Edge (or in chrome) without the (security) context that you have in your "primary browser". This context consists of logins into websites, cookies, extensions, etc... There are times that you need to be able to work in another context, without having to "abandon your primary context"...

Adding Git-Bash to Windows Terminal

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 19:00:31 +0000

This morning I saw a colleague working in Git-Bash and the good-old-fashioned "windows command line" and I thought to myself, why doesn't he "just" use Windows terminal? So, I showed him Windows Terminal and he was impressed. First thing he asked then, was if it would be possible to add Git-Bash as a tab. Wel yes, I thought... and I immediately showed him how this can be done via the settings of Windows terminal. At that moment, I didn't realize that this would result in a blogpost 😉. I discovered pretty quick that there was a catch and in this post, I want to show you what I did, why it didn't work and finally, how you need to approach this.

Copy-paste your stuff like a ninja

Fri, 13 Aug 2021 13:00:53 +0000

For years and years, we all have been copying an pasting stuff on our PC. Chances are real that you typically had to copy specific things over and over again and that this action cost you a lot of time. The so called "problem" was that there could be only one item stored in the clipboard and each time something was copied, the old "value" in the clipboard was overwritten. While this clipboard proved to be very useful and it saved us all a lot of time (not having to type the same stuff over and over again...), this way of working had (and still has) its inefficiencies.

How do I (try to) keep track of my time?

Mon, 12 Jul 2021 14:37:58 +0000

This post is one that I have been willing to write for a while and it has been sitting in in my drafts folder since march. It's a bit sad/funny having to say this as this post is about time management and/or time keeping. All I know is that, as is the case for the most of you, I don't have enough time and that I want/need to keep track of it. Time is the only concept that we can only spend once and when we do, we really need to be conscious about it! That is why I wrote this post about getting insights on your (personal) time!

The subscription is not registered to use namespace Microsoft.AzureActiveDirectory

Mon, 12 Jul 2021 05:08:50 +0000

This morning, I tried setting up an Azure Active Directory B2C tenant and link it to a newly created Azure subscription. Everything seemed to be OK until I clicked on the "create button". Almost immediately, I got an error stating the following:

I thought it was related to the fact that it was a "new" subscription and waited for a bit before trying again and experiencing the same issue...

What you should think about when running Azure Pipelines with Git and submodules

Sat, 26 Jun 2021 16:39:45 +0000

When you work with Azure (DevOps) Pipelines and use Azure Repos (Git) in combination with Git submodules, then there are a few things that you need to take into account if you want to use those submodules in your build pipeline(s) an if you want those pipelines to successfully 😉

I'm writing this here because we have had a few cases where a build would fail due to one or more missing files, but without any sort of indication that this due to the fact that a submodule was not explicitly loaded in the build context.

Working with VSCode (even) when you cannot install it for some reason

Tue, 22 Jun 2021 12:22:28 +0000

Over the past few years, A lot of you all have been adopting Visual Studio Code as your primary "Code editor/workspace".

One of the biggest issues that I have, is that I really love working with VSCode and here is why that is an issue for me: For the last few weeks/months, I've had to work on (remote) environments that didn't have VS Code installed, but merely a stripped down (and old) text editor such as notepad or notepad++.

Migrating your Visual Studio license management to AD groups

Thu, 27 May 2021 10:50:20 +0000

If you are in an enterprise context where you work with .net development teams, the chances are real that they use a "Visual studio license" and that this license is managed in what is called an "Enterprise Agreement". This agreement allows organizations to buy "Visual Studio Licenses" from Microsoft. Subsequently, these license can then be assigned to the individual users in the development teams, based on their roles.

This "license management" can be done (if you have the correct permissions) on the the following visual studio management portal: https://manage.visualstudio.com On the "Manage subscribers" tab, you can select your enterprise agreement (if you have multiple) and then you get an overview of the subscribers, with their assigned licenses:

Considerations when setting up a build (migration) strategy

Tue, 18 May 2021 13:34:39 +0000

In previous posts, I wrote about migrating builds to TeamCity and after that back to Azure DevOps . Next to that, I talked about "setting up an Enterprise Cake build framework" and getting Cake to work in Azure DevOps (artifacts) to make those migrations easier in an enterprise context, where a lot of build pipelines need to be managed by you and the development teams that you support. In those posts, I mostly talked about the "HOW", but I did not really focus on 2 very important elements:

Running a build in Azure DevOps with Cake and Azure Artifacts

Sat, 08 May 2021 12:39:24 +0000

My last few posts have been about Cake build and Azure DevOps and in this post I will again talk about those 2. This time I will talk about running Cake in an Azure Pipeline and having it work with Azure Artifacts .

What?

Azure Artifacts

Azure Artifacts can be seen as a private repository for your reusable assets (Nuget, NPM, Python, but also universal packages). The cool thing is thus that you can set up one (or more) private enterprise package feeds/repositories that facilitate you and your development teams in their daily work. The big benefit is that you do not (anymore) have to host a private artefact (such as proget or Nuget gallery) repo for yourself and that you are free from hosting and storage questions in that regard.

Automatically migrating your builds to Azure DevOps

Sun, 02 May 2021 15:44:43 +0000

A few weeks ago, I wrote how we migrated our build system towards TeamCity (this migration was a few years ago). If you want to know more on how we did this, then I gladly refer you to this post

Today, I'm writing about the migration back to Azure DevOps. I'll explain the reasoning behind why we move back and what we use to leverage this migration.

Extending build.cake with your (enterprise) functionality

Fri, 30 Apr 2021 13:33:12 +0000

For a few years now, I have been willing to write about this and I never really took the time. I spoke about it in a session during Visug XL 2019 and at that time, we were only getting started with Cake. Today, 1.5 years later, we have a set up a stable (unit test supported) build process that supports multiple development teams. In this blogpost, I want to share with you what we learned along the way and how you can accomplish this in your company too.

Windows shortcuts that I use a lot

Sun, 25 Apr 2021 18:47:46 +0000

This weeks post is one with a lot less text! I really dislike having to click around in the UI of an OS/application to get things done and I love it whenever that I can take a shortcut to shave off a few seconds of the time that I would need otherwise! It happens regularly that I see other people working and see them struggle with the manual actions, which can get really time consuming from time to time.

Dealing with error TF401019 when using submodules in Azure Pipelines

Tue, 13 Apr 2021 17:07:57 +0000

I'm in the process om migrating a whole bunch of builds from TeamCity to Azure DevOps and the entire process is automated. (I'm writing a blogpost on this, stay tuned if you are interested in this). Today, one of the builds that I'm migrating, gave me an error when I did a test. It struck me a bit as "a strange situation" as the error occurred when checking out. This can be seen below:

FindTime: Easier planning of meetings (even between companies)

Tue, 06 Apr 2021 19:30:57 +0000

In some organizations, finding a moment to discuss something with the right stakeholders, is such a painful undertaking that you have to plan weeks in advance (only to get cancellations just before "the big moment" arrives). This is a real issue that a lot of people have to deal with on a (very) frequent basis. If you then add the complexity of having to add people from outside of your organization, then it really becomes fun. If you have been in such a situation, then you can most likely agree that it is a process that takes a lot of time and effort and it even gets harder when the group of "invitees" gets bigger or when the amount of organizations, that are involved grows.

Migrating your builds to TeamCity

Fri, 02 Apr 2021 14:38:02 +0000

A few years ago, we migrated all our builds out of practical considerations from (at the time) TFS to JetBrains TeamCity. The main reason for us was that the support for XAML based builds in TFS was about to end... The main advantage for us, when using those XAML templates was the (rather) extensive templating support. It allowed you to specify a set of build steps, combined with some logic (if/else- & looping logic), that would execute based on a set of properties which could be set at design time of the "build definition" or when launching the build itself. I'm writing this post to give you more context for another post that I'm about to write.

Migrating from Team Foundation Version Control to Git (and preferably at scale)

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 14:40:48 +0000

I've been wanting to write this post for a while (a few years) now and I never took the time. At some point I just thought that it wasn't relevant anymore, but since I'm working on a project in a similar context and I feel that the need still does exist, I could not refrain myself and write this thing down.

If you don't mind about the "What/Why", then I encourage you to scroll down to the "How" 😃

Using the 'tf.exe' command to clean up old TFVC workspaces

Tue, 16 Mar 2021 16:16:35 +0000

Today, a colleague contacted me with an issue that he encountered during one of his builds:

The problem lies with something legacy that we try not to use anymore wherever possible, but in this case, there seems to be an exception. In Azure DevOps, the default for version control was once (actually not that long ago) "Team Foundation Version Control" (TFVC) and to be able to get your code locally, you needed to set up a so called "workspace". That workspace took care of the mapping of the files in version control and the files on the local computer. You could do all kinds of cool stuff with it (and sometimes they went out out of control). These workspaces were also needed in the context of the build. at the start of the build, a workspace was created and the required mapping was put in place in order for the build to be able to work. After the build was done, the files (and the workspace) were removed. This worked fine, except when builds failed: In this case, the cleanup (did not always) happen and the result was that sometimes the build server tried to "create" a workspace with a name that was already in use. (This is an issue as duplicates workspace names are not allowed in TFVC). This means that from time to time, some kind of cleanup needed to be done and typically we used tools like TFS Sidekicks for this. Because the support of this thing stopped with Visual studio 2015, I tried to do it differently:

Certified as Azure Solutions Architect

Wed, 10 Mar 2021 21:21:00 +0000

Last week I wrote about studying for the "Azure Solutions Architect exams" and in that article I mentioned that I completed the first requirement for this certification, namely the Microsoft exam: Exam AZ-303: Microsoft Azure Architect Technologies . Today, just one week later, I'm happy to announce that I also successfully completed the "next in line", which is: (Exam AZ-304: Microsoft Azure Architect Design ).

This means that with these 2 "achievements", I can now call myself a Microsoft Certified Azure Solutions Architect! (in the certification context this can be seen as an "expert" certification).

Studying for the Azure Solutions Architect exams

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 13:09:09 +0000

Yesterday I did something I haven't done for a few (4-5) years: I completed an "official" exam! (In this case it was a Microsoft exam)

What/Why

I started studying for the exam in December and because of work (and life) it took a bit longer than expected. (Initially, I was really optimistic and my thought was that I could take the exam in December 2020) I really wanted to take my time for the studying part since I really want to be able to "retain the knowledge after the exam" and to be able to do something with it. I have always done it like that and it has proven to be useful over and over again!

Do Not Call Me (marketers)

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 10:45:21 +0000

Important: This is mostly for the Belgians among you

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a colleague via Teams and at some point he was interrupted by a phone call. He took the call (I told him that I would wait as it seemed "to do something with him") and I heard him speak to the person that called him. It was a really polite discussion, but I could clearly hear the tension in the voice of my colleague. At the end of the discussion, he asked to stop calling since this was the fortieth time that he was called by a telemarketer on this given week. After we hung up, he excused himself to me and we talked a bit about it. Apparently, it was really bothering him since this had been going on for weeks... You can understand how he was suffering from this and how his (personal) productivity was impacted!

There is a (hidden) world clock in windows

Sun, 28 Feb 2021 19:18:22 +0000

Every so now and then, you might have to set up meetings with people from somewhere else on our little planet. It is already complex most of the times if you have to do this within a single time zone, but it gets even more complex when you have step outside one time zone. In the beginning, I counted the difference to my local time zone and figured out a moment that potentially suited everyone involved in their own local situation (not too late, nor too early in the day).

Sleepy tabs in MS Edge

Sun, 21 Feb 2021 16:20:08 +0000

If you are like me and have always a huge amount of tabs open in your active browser(s), then you might like the introduction of sleepy tabs in Microsoft Edge (the new one based on Chromium)!

It was introduced a few weeks ago, but at the time I only managed to take a screenshot of it (the introduction) back then...

The idea is that all browsers that have been inactive for an configured amount of time, will "go to sleep". The advantage is that they will stop using resources so that these resources can be used in other parts of your system. I typically have 4-5 edge profiles open and all of them are loaded with tabs (yes I know, I'm a terrible housekeeper on that point), so this will help me a lot!

Adding security to an Azure Static Web App

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:31:57 +0000

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Azure Static Web Apps and what you can do with them . Since I started using the service, I have been very happy with what it has to offer and in that is why I have decided to also start using it for other things than my personal blog. One thing that you can use it for is an easy to use, developer friendly and secured (company) knowledge base where you can manage knowledge (almost) free of charge without having to set up an entire infrastructure! On this topic, I'll write another post soon! But first we need to put in place the authorization part.

Become more efficient by changing the title of VSCode

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 15:14:17 +0000

Do you know the feeling when you have a lot of VS Code editors open, each pointing to its own folder, where you need to do a lot of context switching? There are several ways to find the correct VSCode window:

Alt-Tab
Hovering over the VS code icon in the windows taskbar
...

In both cases, you have to 'hope' that you find the correct window soon as it is rather hard to find the correct window based on the window title. The way that VSCode is configured by default, is that the window title has a pattern that starts with the name of the currently active file. To me, this is very time consuming and this doesn't make sense as I don't know the names of all the files in a given directory. That is why looked for a better way of working and now that I have found it, I do want to share it with you:

Mass copy files in windows without windows explorer

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 06:05:56 +0000

Last summer I had a situation where I needed to migrate files away from a server that was at the end of it's life. The raid controller was about to give up and time was of the essence. As I had only given myself one night for the migration from the old system to the new, I wanted to make sure that I could succeed. As I was not certain that the restore of the backup would help me in time, I worked out an alternative solution which is what I want to discuss here. The idea was that betting on 2 horses is always better than one. In my case, this second horse really made my day and that is why I want to discuss it here. (for my future reference and in case it can help you!)

A (Bing) desktop background a day

Sun, 24 Jan 2021 19:20:50 +0000

I have always loved the images that are shown on the windows lock screen! They show you places that you most likely have never heard of and point you in the right direction if you want to find out more. Especially in times like these where COVID-19 determines a lot what we can and cannot do, this offers a view on the "outside world" that has moved further away as travel is not that evident anymore...

Account for breaks between meetings in outlook when planning

Fri, 22 Jan 2021 11:08:07 +0000

Chances are real that you have been working from home for a while now and that (like it is the case with me) your days are filled with online meetings. Those meetings are typically planned back to back, leaving no room for a little break. Those little breaks were typically inherent to switches between meeting rooms or even a little run to the bathroom.

The last few months, I found myself more and more in a situation where I had all day meetings without any sort of break in between to get me a coffee or to recharge mentally. In that context, I'm certainly not alone. I was thus not surprised to see that MicroSoft recently announced a new policy stating that 1h meetings will default to 55 minutes,

Running your personal website on Azure Static Web Apps with Hugo

Wed, 13 Jan 2021 14:23:56 +0000

Hello,

for the last 10 years, I have been writing on and of about my experiences on a personal site (like this one) and in that time, I have moved from platform to platform in search of the one that really fitted my needs. I must admit, the research involved and the work to getting it all up and running has been most of the fun (again and again!)...

To give an idea, my site has seen the following platforms/solutions:

Open Link as in Microsoft Edge when using profiles

Thu, 07 Jan 2021 10:00:00 +0000

I have been working with the new Microsoft Edge for a few months now. This browser is (just like Chrome) based on chromium and offers quite some features. You can thus compare it to google chrome with the difference that Microsoft and Google each have their own approach to quite some elements. Microsoft has published a list of reasons on why you should choose (and work with) the new Microsoft Edge. That overview can be found here

List existing sessions in windows with PowerShell

Wed, 02 Dec 2020 10:18:06 +0000

Have you ever had to to find out it there was someone connected to a given server (either directly or either through a remote connection)? I had it yesterday and it created the idea that I should be able to check this regularly (or it should be automated) to find a moment where the server can be restarted when no one is actively using it...

The first thing I thought was that there would be a PowerShell script, but unfortunately there isn't. Because of that, I started looking around and found the quser command which returns a csv that can be converted to a PowerShell table.

Being inclusive in office365 meetings

Thu, 10 Sep 2020 16:21:00 +0000

Microsoft added a cool feature in exchange online (office365) where they allow you to automatically add an "online meeting" to any new meeting that you organize. This is a huge improvement as it solves the issue that you send out a meeting to some people and then forget to add the option to join the meeting digitally.

All you have to do to get set this up is to go to your settings in outlook web access (outlook.com/'<your tenantname>'). Then click

Offering remote assistance on Windows

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 18:40:00 +0000

Apparently (& in some cases), screen sharing in Microsoft Teams/Skype4Business is not working as it should when you need to control your counterparts pc and in that case, you can resort to an alternative called "Windows remote assistant" (MSRA) which is installed by default on all windows machines... you can start it by running the following from the command line (cmd) or from the "run window" (Win+ r): msra /offerra <computername>
The other person will have to accept this request and after that, you will need to ask for remote control. When that request is approved, all you need to do is control the other his/her machine

Keyboard shortcuts in MS Teams

Tue, 21 Apr 2020 20:00:00 +0000

If you are as keen on (keyboard) shortcuts as I am, then, you will really appreciate this one! Teams offers a bunch of them, but they are not really visible... To solve this, you can type alt + / and a nice cheat sheet will appear!

Enjoy!

Harsh times, the way forward

Tue, 21 Apr 2020 18:10:00 +0000

Everything that we know is changing drastically these days... It is a given that needs no introduction. This drastic change has been increasingly defining how we have to live and work these last few weeks and/or months... Things that were considered as a default (like commuting everyday back and forth to work, including the impact on the environment and on others) have now changed very drastically and very fast. In order to survive, we need to adapt to this fast changing new reality.

Getting an overview of local admin privileges in a domain

Wed, 08 Apr 2020 17:57:00 +0000

From time to time you want to find out who has local admin permissions in your domain... As it is typically a bad practice to give too much permissions, you really want to be able to find out easily. In that context, I created a small PowerShell script that allows me to retrieve this info relatively easy...

It produces a file output.txt that gives the overview. Computers that are not reachable, are marked as "offline"

Start using Unsplash!

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 15:30:00 +0000

For ages, I've been searching the internet for beautiful pictures that can be used freely in presentations, blogposts, websites, etc in order to make the visualizations in them more attractable and to make them more interesting. It was always very hard to find out whether or not the image I found was copyrighted and whether or not I could use it freely in my presentation or the thing I wanted to present about. Additionally, one of the hardest things, was to find images with a decent resolution as they have to be used typically on a big screen and in such a case, resolution does matter!

Running rabbitmq in docker on windows

Wed, 04 Dec 2019 17:11:00 +0000

For those what it means to install RabbitMQ for local development, it typically means that you have to go through the pain of installing erlang and RabbitMQ , only to discover that something is wrong with your setup. (To given an example: the RabbitMQ management plugin is not installed by default, requiring you to do additional steps to get started. If it are your first steps in the world of RabbitMQ (and even messaging), then you probably do not want to go through the hassle of setting up the product and figuring out all the "ins" and "outs"...

Taking ownership of sqlserver (or sql express)

Mon, 15 Jul 2019 06:40:48 +0000

From time to time it happens that you install a sql server (or SQL express) and that you forget to assign local admin permissions. When this happens, you can choose to do a reinstallation... or you can try to assign the permissions after all through a backdoor. I chose the latter!

Open a cmd prompt (as admin) {% highlight batchfile lineos %} net stop mssqlserver {% endhighlight %} Now, in this command prompt, navigate to where SQL server is installed. The directory is typically something like this (where MSSQL13.SQLEXPRESS is replaced with the version and instance type that was installed) {% highlight batchfile lineos %} C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL13.SQLEXPRESS\MSSQL\Binn {% endhighlight %} Now, in the same window, run the following command to start SQL Server in single user mode. As SQLCMD is being specified, only one SQLCMD connection can be made (from another command prompt window).

Unable to link unit test to test case - login error in visual studio

Fri, 03 May 2019 11:04:00 +0000

In visual studio, it is possible to link unit tests (working with MSTEST V1) to test cases in Azure Devops so that test results of unit tests, executed during a build, can be reported directly to test cases in Azure Devops.

The idea is that you can "right click" a unit test in the unit test explorer in visual studio and then associate a test case in the context menu.

Emoticons in windows

Thu, 04 Apr 2019 11:08:07 +0000

I must admit, it was hidden very well... but apparently there is an emoticon picker that is available in windows. It allows you choose from a wide range of emoticons and lets you insert those in the text in an application that you are working in...

You might it is stupid, but I like it. I tend to forget the key combo's for emoticons that I never use and this allows you to deal with this.

Moving outlook signatures from one computer to the other

Mon, 25 Feb 2019 16:01:58 +0000

From time to time, it happens that you get/buy a new computer and that you have to set up everything from scratch. All your software gets installed either by hand or by some sort of automated process (pushed to you by your organization or something that has been set up by you) and you get to do your work pretty fast (if all goes well!)...

When you install outlook (or office by extension) and when you use signatures, you'll be quick to figure out that they are not set-up automatically with your email account. I do not understand the reason behind this, but it is just like that. I have had this question many times over the last years and most of the time, it was just for the "migration" of only one signature... In those cases, I always said that it was easier to create the signature again on the new computer...

Opening a calendar of an Office365 shared mailbox in IOS

Wed, 06 Feb 2019 16:53:09 +0000

For some time, I've been struggling with this, but we are using Microsoft Office365 with shared (free) mailboxes and from time to time, someone wants to have a calendar of such a shared mailbox on his iOS device.

The idea of such shared mailboxes (and why they are free) is that they do not represent real users, but that they are used for generic interaction points of an organization (internal of external). Examples of such interaction points can be "billing", "planning" or "administration".

Upgrading windows 7 (for free) to windows 10

Fri, 25 Jan 2019 10:27:11 +0000

A few years ago, Microsoft announced that you could upgrade your (official) windows 7 (or 8) installation to windows 10 and that this could be done for free! The reasons for this move are outside of this post, but the idea is that this offer was only limited in time and the free upgrade supposedly ended in July of 2016...

And this is what happened, the advertised way of doing the upgrade was disabled and apparently it was not possible anymore to do the upgrade (for free). The alternative, if you wanted to upgrade, was to buy a windows license and to use that to do the upgrade. This implied a cost that you had to cover if you wanted the new bits without having to buy a new computer.

Overcoming the error TF30063 (not authorized)in MTM

Wed, 12 Dec 2018 04:00:15 +0000

MTM (of Microsoft Test Manager) is an application that allows for the management of test cases and that is linked to TFS VSTS "Azure Devops".

On a depricated page, I found the following explanation:

Use Microsoft Test Manager (MTM) to help you test the application you built. MTM stores your test plans and results on Team Foundation Server (TFS).

It is important to understand that MTM has been depricated (from what I undertand) and Microsoft encourages everyone to work with the web based alternative that is hosted in Azure Devops. The idea is that it is easier to use and you can get you started faster.