Everything here is written to be quick, usable reference material – something to reach for under time pressure, when you’re trying to remember exactly how something worked.
Nothing is theoretical. Every procedure here was executed, diagnosed, and re-executed on real hardware before it was written down.
1 · IT Field Manual
The single reference. Networking and security fundamentals, Windows, Active Directory, Group Policy, file services, hybrid identity, Intune, Microsoft 365, Exchange Online, public DNS and mail flow, SharePoint sharing, Purview, Copilot administration, Azure, PowerShell, and the standard operating procedures that tie them together – about 104,000 words across 36 sections.
Every block carries a search tag in brackets, like [GPO-TRIAGE] or
[AD-LOCKOUT], so you search the tag rather than the prose and the reference
survives being reorganized. Section 18 is an error → cause → fix index: paste in
the error message you are actually looking at and start there.
The tag prefixes are split on purpose. [NET] is the commands you run;
[NETF] is the protocol reasoning underneath them. Same for [SEC] and
[SECF]. When something is broken you want the first one; when a client asks
you why, you want the second.
It is a living document. New sections get added as I hit new problems.
| Current version | 1.4 – September 2026 |
| Sections | 36 (§00 – §35), ~104,000 words, 74 logged corrections in [APX-C] |
| Read online | /reference/field-manual/ |
| Download | Raw Markdown – opens in VS Code, Obsidian, or any text editor |
| Changelog | End of the manual – every version, what changed, and where it came from |
2 · Playbooks and runbooks
Long-form procedures for work that takes hours rather than minutes: building a hybrid environment from bare metal, administering one day to day, assessing a network you have just inherited, and tearing an environment down without stranding anything.
Four are published – the Hybrid Microsoft Network Build & Troubleshooting Playbook (48 pp.), the Microsoft 365 Administration Playbook (70 pp.), the Proxmox VE Greenfield Cluster Build & Troubleshooting Guide (19 pp.), and the Entra Join, Autopilot & Intune Playbook (33 pp.). The first covers standing a Microsoft environment up, the second covers running it, the third covers the virtualization layer underneath a lab, and the fourth covers provisioning a cloud-native Windows laptop for a client.
These are checklists you follow top to bottom, with the reasoning attached – the kind of document you would want in your hands the first time you do the job alone.
3 · Script template repository
PowerShell scripts published from real builds, plus a parameterized toolkit
pattern – configuration data separated from logic, CSV input, dry-run support –
that the rest are being converted to. Two scripts are live (a logged app-removal
script and a read-only laptop inspection script); the toolkit is in progress. The
pattern is documented in the Field Manual under [TOOLKIT-01] through
[TOOLKIT-07].
4 · Home lab project case studies
The builds the documentation above came out of, written up in full – including what went wrong, how it was diagnosed, and what it cost in time.
If you only read one thing here, read a case study. The manual tells you what to do; the case studies show what actually happens when you do it.