Subject: Hello from Baghdad
From: SSG Troy Blanchard

[ Editor's note: The following email was originally sent to Robbie Allen, author of Active Directory Cookbook. We appreciate the sensitivity of the situation in Iraq, but we'd like to share this letter about technology in action, and hope you'll enjoy hearing from a colleague working in extreme circumstances. ]

Mr. Allen,

My name is Staff Sergeant Troy Blanchard. I'm an Army Reservist who has been called to active duty in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In my civilian life, I'm a systems engineer and a MCSE with my experience going back to the Banyan Vines days. I have purchased and used your DNS book [DNS on Windows Server 2003] in the past.

One of my tasks while deployed is to migrate Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan to Active Directory from NT4. It promises to be one of the most challenging AD migrations ever. Not too many SAs ever get shot at or mortared during a migration. Replication across tactical networks will also be new territory.

I wanted to let you know that I have been using your Active Directory Cookbook and find it very useful. Even when you think you know it all, there are always more things you can learn from a book. Yours definitely had some tidbits I put to good use.

O'Reilly books occupy a big space on our bookshelf. Please keep up the good work. Perhaps someday I'll even write a book for O'Reilly, outlining a migration in a combat zone. . . .

Sincerely,
Troy Blanchard

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• Always proud to see our armed forces personnel
  2004-04-27 08:53:23  nycsean [Reply | View]
  
  
  
  Hi,
  While I don't believe Bush's war on Iraq has anything to do with terrorism (except worsen the situation by creating a hostile populace), I am always proud of the personnel in our armed forces, for their perserverance, intelligence and high morale.
  
  I have worked with a lot of men and women from the military, who reflected a full range of political opinions and views, while being great technologists.
  
  Certainly, I have never setup a Network or server farm under mortar fire, so I am damn impressed, and would buy his book in a minute.