Discover how I balanced the Kellogg Modern Marketing program with my full-time job and Executive MBA by adopting a strategic, time-optimized study routine. I share my experience of earning 2311 points out of 2356, highlighting effective time-management tactics like early morning study sessions and 1.5x speed watching that helped me meet all deadlines. This post offers practical insights into navigating a rigorous six-week online course while maintaining a demanding professional and academic schedule.

I share why I deactivated Facebook two years ago to reclaim my mental clarity and focus, discovering that the platform no longer served my need to stay connected with friends. While I kept Messenger for specific contacts and resisted the urge to check back, I’ve found that letting go of these digital distractions has allowed me to prioritize reading, studies, and other meaningful commitments.

Join me as I reflect on the first year of the Ctrl+Alt+Azure podcast, revealing how our initial ambitious plans had to evolve into a more flexible workflow due to life’s unpredictability. I share key lessons learned, such as the importance of maintaining creativity through simplicity and keeping the recording process fun amidst the challenges of balancing family life and professional commitments.

If you are curious about how accessible modern machine learning has become, this post shares my hands-on experience building an image classification model using Microsoft’s visual tool, Lobe. I walk through the process of labeling and training a model to distinguish gym weight plates, highlighting both the software’s intuitive interface and the practical challenges I encountered when dealing with ambiguous data and unexpected crashes.

Frustrated by frequent power outages caused by building maintenance that repeatedly forced me to rebuild my NAS RAID array, I decided to upgrade my home office with a dedicated uninterruptible power supply. This post explains what a UPS is, the different types available, and how I calculated the necessary capacity to protect my servers and data from unexpected electrical issues.

If you are looking for a faster way to verify download speeds without relying on browser-based tools, this post details how I built a custom command-line utility using Microsoft Azure. I explain the process of provisioning a Storage Account with pre-sized test files and using .NET’s HttpClient to automate speed measurements with real-time progress tracking.