Most enterprise companies now days have multiple layers of security protecting their network. One of those layers is SSL/TLS interception. SSL/TLS interception is performed by software on proxies located in between the client and HTTPS website at the enterprises perimeter. SSL/TLS interception relies on the client having previously installed a root certificate onto their operating … Continue reading How to Import an Enterprise Certificate into a Windows Container

Introduction While at Microsoft Ignite in September I started playing around with some of the Azure cloud offerings such as Function Apps, Event Hub, and Cosmos DB. I was able to quickly connect the resources together to create a sample solution and wanted to document the process. The sample solution will consist of a Xamarin … Continue reading Getting Started with Microsoft Azure

I have numerous Windows devices that I am responsible for setting up and maintaining. I have 4 personal Windows devices including my laptop, my wife's laptop, my children's computer, and my home desktop which also serves as our family media server. I then have 2 work Windows devices that I am responsible for a desktop … Continue reading Automated Setup of a Windows Environment Using Boxstarter and PowerShell

At the company I work for we have developed a Visual Studio extension that adds a variety of different project templates that incorporate our standards for authentication, authorization, logging, configuration, etc. We have templates for ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET MVC with Angular, .NET Console, and others. We make that extension available through our own custom extension … Continue reading How to Add a Private Extension Gallery in Visual Studio 2017

I just got back from Microsoft Ignite in Orlando, Florida. Ignite is Microsoft's IT Pro focused conference with a lot of sessions around Azure, Artificial Intelligence(AI) and Machine Learning (ML), Windows Server, SQL Server, Office 365, Dynamics and more. It was Microsoft's third conference in 3 weeks. First there was the Edge Web Summit on … Continue reading Ignite 2017

I am creating this list of software and services mainly for myself so that I can refer back to it when I need it. This list of software and services is what I am currently using at the time this article was last updated. There are several other great lists available online including Scott Hanselman's … Continue reading Software and Services

Docker commands for a SQL Server container Basic command to start SQL Server container -p 1433:1433 Publish a containers port(s) to the host --name sqlserver_persondb Assign a name to the container -e sa_password= Set the system administrator (userid = 'sa') password used to connect to SQL Server once the container is running. The password must … Continue reading Lessons Learned While Working with Databases in Docker

When developing with ASP.NET Core or .NET Core if you need to generate a SOAP service reference you have a few options. You can use ServiceModel Metadata Utility Tool (Svcutil.exe) to generate the reference code in a console window. I use this method quite often because when I begin interacting with a SOAP service I … Continue reading Calling a SOAP Service from ASP.NET Core or .NET Core

I assisted a co-worker today with an issue where the Package Manager Console would not start in Visual Studio 2015 or Visual Studio 2017. These are the errors that were being display on the console: It was a brand new Windows 10 machine running build 10.0.14393 version 1607. There are known bugs with Visual Studio … Continue reading Visual Studio Package Manager Console Fails to Start

I added a Nuget package to an application recently and when I tried to run the app I got the following error message. “Unhandled exception: System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly ‘application name, version=4.0.0.0, culture=neutral, publickeytoken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a’ or one of its dependencies. Strong name validation failed.” It turns out the Nuget package was not strong-named. … Continue reading How to Assign a Strong Name to Unsigned 3rd-party Assemblies During the Build Process