Devin L. Ganger: Writing Samples
Non-Fiction and Technical
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Windows IT Pro Apr 2006, Fight Spam for Free (2006)
This article isn't anything new or revolutionary, but it is a concise overview of the native anti-spam capabilities you get in Exchange 2003, including the updates included
in SP2. It covers the three layers or stages of spam filtering: connection filtering, sender filtering, and recipient filtering. It includes a quick introduction to the
Intelligent Message Filter (IMF) and Sender ID.
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Windows Server 2003 Security Guide (2005)
Threats and Countermeasures: Security Settings in Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP (2005)
These guides are comprehensive security references for the latest versions of the Windows operating system. Paul and I worked with Microsoft to update these guides to account
for the sweeping security changes introduced by Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1. I did most of my work on the Windows 2003 guide, which included updating the previous
version to include the new capabilities of the Security Configuration Wizard (SCW) -- but I got to updated the combined services listing and other juicy bits in the T&C.
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Email Discovery and Compliance (2005)
I'm writing this ebook for Windows IT Pro and tackling a critical issue in today's
business environment: email discovery, compliance, archival, and retention (DCAR). Each chapter is
posted separately, but when they are all done (there are six) they'll be collected together. I don't
talk about any specific vendor solution, but it is written for the Exchange market. This book has been
a challenge and a stretch of my abilities (mainly my time-management skills!) but I am enjoying it.
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The Exchange Server Cookbook (2005)
I co-wrote this book with Paul Robichaux and
Missy Koslosky (both
Exchange MVPs) and found it to be an incredible learning experience.
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Solution
Accelerator for Exchange Consolidation and Migration (2004)
A lot of work, but a really good experience. 3Sharp wrote the Planning Guide and the
Implementation Guide. Since I was the only team member in Redmond, I interfaced with
the developers and testers at Microsoft and racked up many hours in the lab. I ended up writing
nearly the entire Implementation Guide from the notes the developer left, and the testers
and I worked through every bit of the solution. I'm particularly proud of the final process for
consolidation the European organization; I suggested the strategy for knocking out Exchange 5.5
first and relying on the fact that native-mode Exchange organizations can have routing groups
made up of member servers that are in two separate administrative groups. It make the London
migration and consolidaton much easier than we'd first planned.
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Windows
NT 4.0 and Windows 98 Threat Mitigation Guide (2004)
A fun and challenging security-related project. The simple answer is "stop using those operating
systems" but the business reality for many organizations is that they have mission-critical
applications that are not certified to run on a more current version of Windows. What do these
folks do? This guide attempts to answer that question. Printed versions
are available from the Microsoft web site.
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Solution
Accelerator for MSA Enterprise Messaging (2004)
My first large-scale writing project. 3Sharp wrote the Planning Guide.
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TCP/IP Lesson 1
TCP/IP Lesson 2
The TCP/IP lessons are early examples of my technical writing. They
were written while I was Chief Systems Administrator for
Premier1 Internet Services, as the beginnings of a class to
teach networking fundamentals to our technical support
personnel. We also welcomed managers, sales folks, family of
the staff members, and anyone else who was interested. It was
over too quickly, but the students actually managed to learn
how to calculate IP subnets in their first lesson. Like all
fun projects, this one died due to lack of time.
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Solaris NSCD Configuration
The Solaris NSCD Configuration is a short work I produced to
document a quick and often necessary fix for Solaris systems.
The NSCD, Name Service Caching Daemon, is a component of the
name server switch libraries and can have a dramatic impact on
system performance and stability if left in the default
configuration. Introduced as part of the NIS+ subsystem during
Sun's move to push away from NIS, the caching functions it
provides are only useful in an NIS+ environment, and its
negative caching can cause active harm in networks that rely on
NIS and DNS.
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Postfix SMTP AUTH
documentation
The Postfix SMTP AUTH documentation was a HOWTO to fill
a hole in the documentation for one of my favorite Open Source projects, the
Postfix mail transport.
This document is now out-of-date as of the release of Postfix version 2.0.
Fiction and Roleplaying Games
To date, all of my published fiction work (counting my reviews, which are
technically not fiction) have been for
Pyramid magazine, a weekly on-line publication for the roleplaying
industry published by Steve Jackson Games.
Last I knew, they had about 3,000 subscribers.
Note: the following links require a valid user account for
Pyramid. If you don't have
one, they're only $20 per year. If you have a valid need to evaluate my fiction
and review writing, then please contact me via email at
devin@thecabal.org and we can work something out. Please include the reasons
why you need to see the article, though.
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"Pyramid Pick: Dragon Fist"
— a review of the Dragon Fist
roleplaying game from Wizards of the Coast.
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"Genesis, Take 2" —
a technique for generating characters on-the-fly through full-immersion in the roleplaying
world, rather than through the traditional technique of creating characters before gameplay.
This article also offers an early glimpse of the post-cyberpunk near-space campaign world of
TerraGov (here called "EarthGov") that I'm
still developing.
Additionally, I have the following credits in the roleplaying industry:
You can see my entry in the Pen & Paper RPG Database here:
Ganger, Devin L.
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