About

I'm Ryan Bertram. By day I run IT for a mid-size city in Michigan, which in a small shop means I am the help desk, the sysadmin, the security team, the developer, and the person who explains to a department head why the thing they want will take longer than they hoped.

This blog is where I write down what I learn doing that job. Not the polished, vendor-approved version, but the real one: the script that broke in a way the documentation never mentioned, the automation that saved a day a week, the security decision I had to make with imperfect information and a budget that did not care about my preferences.

What you'll find here

Practical, reusable material for people who run lean IT operations. Most posts are generalized from real work: PowerShell and Python automation, Microsoft 365 and Active Directory administration, small internal web apps, and civic technology. If you have ever been the entire IT department, you are the person I am writing for.

Why generalized, and why the caution

I work in the public sector, so I am careful. Every post is written so it helps you without exposing anything specific about the systems, data, or residents of any organization I work for. The patterns are real; the deployments are never named. That discipline is not an afterthought here, it is a rule I run every draft through before it publishes.

The fine print

Everything here is my own opinion and my own personal project. It does not represent the views of any employer, and nothing on this site describes the specific infrastructure or data of any organization I work for. If something here helps you do your job better, that is the whole point.