Category
Engineering Practice
15 stories
What Native Boot-to-VHD Taught Me About Building Portable AI Environments
Short answer: the technique that mattered wasn't the VHD file format -- it was the idea of a fully self-contained, portable environment you could run identically on different hardware without reinstalling anything. That...
2026-08-26Why Your AI Agent's Environment Runs Out of Disk Space (And How to Fix It Live)
Short answer: yes, you can almost always grow the volume without tearing anything down -- and the discipline for doing it safely hasn't changed since I first wrote this up for a Windows Server 2003 virtual machine back...
2026-08-26How Do You Enable Your Hardware for Local AI Before You Install Anything?
Short answer: check your hardware settings before you install any software at all. In 2012 that meant going into the BIOS to enable virtualization extensions before Hyper-V would even let you turn on the role. In 2026...
2026-08-25How to Build a Free AI Lab Using Tools You Already Have
Back in 2011 a friend and colleague, Chris Avis, wrote up a detailed walkthrough of how to build a free private cloud using nothing but Microsoft's free eval bits: Hyper-V, SQL Server, System Center Virtual Machine...
2026-08-25What Is a CI Gate and Why Does It Block Bad Code From Merging?
I am the CI gate. In one sentence: I stand between a proposed change and the branch everyone depends on, and I refuse to let that change land until a defined set of checks -- tests, builds, reviews, scans -- all come...
2026-08-25What Is a Message Queue and How Do Agents Coordinate Without Talking Directly?
I am a message queue. In one sentence: I let two systems -- or two agents -- coordinate without ever needing to be online, ready, and listening at the exact same moment. One side drops a message addressed to a...
2026-08-25What Is a Job Scheduler and How Does It Keep Automated Work Running?
I am a job scheduler. In one sentence: I run things on a clock instead of on a request, so recurring work happens whether or not a human remembers to ask for it. Give me an interval or a cron expression and a task, and...
2026-08-25What Is a Schema Lock and Why Does It Block Database Changes?
I am the schema lock. In one sentence: I am the recorded approval that has to exist, in a durable place, before a schema, data contract, or shared-interface change is allowed to proceed -- and until that record exists,...
2026-08-25What Is a Git Worktree and Why Does Each Agent Need Its Own?
I am the worktree. In one sentence: I am a separate, isolated working directory checked out from the same repository, on my own branch, so more than one contributor or agent can build, edit, and test code from that...
2026-08-25What Is a Webhook and How Does It Let Systems Talk Without Polling?
I am a webhook. In one sentence: instead of you asking me "did anything happen yet?" over and over, I call you the instant something actually does. I'm a callback -- a URL you register in advance, and a promise that...
2026-08-25Why Did a Lifelong Windows Expert Switch to a Mac for AI Work?
I got promoted off DOS by Windows 3.0. That's not a metaphor -- I mean it literally: before Windows 3.0 I was running everything from a DOS prompt, and the day a GUI with real multitasking arrived, it felt like a...
2026-08-25The database that writes its own history
A production API needed a small schema change -- one column, low risk. The engineer who picked it up was new to the codebase and did what most of us would do: opened the migrations folder to see how the last change was...
2026-08-25The test that refuses to lie
A technician opens the app mid-repair, asks for a diagnosis, and gets a confident, well-formatted, completely wrong answer. Nothing crashed. No error banner. The screen looked exactly like it does when the answer is...
2026-08-25Why Can't My AI Agent Reach Its Tools? (The Same Fix I've Used for 25 Years)
Short answer: it's almost certainly DNS, or the modern equivalent of it -- a name, endpoint, or hostname your agent can't resolve or reach. I've been in this industry since 1988, and in the last twenty-five years or so,...
2026-08-25Why your AI can't be down when the engine is open
A technician has an engine open, hands full, and a question that needs an answer right now: is this reading normal, or is it the reason the equipment is about to fail. They ask out loud, because their hands are not free...
2026-08-25