The Tech Blog of Dan Usher

Author: Dan

  • Ring Solar Pathlight Batteries

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    If you happened to have bought a Ring Solar Pathlight over the past couple of years since they were released, you’ve probably gotten to a point where the original Ring batteries no longer charge. They’re not your every day AA rechargeable, but rather 18650 Lithium Ion batteries. If you reached out to support like I…

  • Time

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    The continual movement of time is like a pendulum, swinging gently back and forth, marking time at equal intervals. From some angles, the pendulum seems to stop as it hangs and then speeds up nearly, but it continues to move constantly. The passage of time is effervescent as the perspective changes as we move forward…

  • Now featuring… mobility…

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    Admit it, you get excited when you read a post or a tweet that says a certain capability is coming to an app that you make use of on your mobile device. That capability is something that you think will make your life better by enhancing your workflow or give you the ability to not…

  • Learning to Cloud…

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    It’s hard to believe that 15 years ago, I was working on a SharePoint 2007 deployment and embracing the service provider model, which seemed so new and different. I learned through friends in the SharePoint community by reading blogs and chatting over IM. I would share what I learned with others as we helped fill…

  • Are you an Insider?

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    A decade ago we found ourselves craving new features from Microsoft for the Office platform. We found ourselves getting a Service Pack every 12-18 months that was comprised of hotfixes and perhaps one or two new major features. Release cycles were long and innovation came in fits and spurts. Testing new features was something that…

  • Microsoft Learn

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    If you find yourself here because you searched on “Microsoft Learn” because you heard about it at a conference or on a podcast or somewhere, you’re in the right place. Microsoft Learn is a site that Microsoft has been slowly but surely growing over the past few years, putting together technical documentation to help you…

  • The year that made us blind…

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    In the year 2020, a lot of individuals stayed home a bit more. For remote workers, we all stared at screens a lot more. For many, going to a doctor’s office instilled fear and concern. I’m willing to doubt that everyone had seen an optometrist or opthamalgist immediately before or during what many have termed…

  • We’re getting the band back together…

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    It’s been a long time coming, but with the normal of “COVID” and how we operate tech communities, we’re re-launching the Reston SharePoint Users Group as the Northern Virginia 365 and Azure Cloud Group. In July I reached out to the greater Twitter community to see who was interested in participating as a speaker and…

  • Sticky Notes

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    If you’ve been using OneNote for a while you’ve probably found the ability to review tour notes on mobile as something helpful. Caveat, you probably don’t leave OneNote open at all times… and sometimes maybe you don’t need a whole notebook, just a Sticky Note. In Windows 10 you may have noticed an app on…

  • Reviving a User Group…

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    The year was 2019. We had just wrapped up Cloud Saturday DC in Reston, VA at the Microsoft offices. We were pumped. The community had shown up in a fairly large capacity. Finally it was go time to restart the Reston SharePoint User Group… then the fall hit and school started, and priorities shifted. January…