TechProsaic

This program is in closed beta right now, but I’ve been given permission to start sharing some info with you all…

Stay tuned for more!

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I meant to post this earlier but life just got ahead of me.  Anyway, I’d like to announce that I’m now co-hosting the PowerScripting podcast with Jonathan Walz.  Our show, now in episode 8, is the only podcast dedicated to discussion about Microsoft’s PowerShell scripting language.  Jonathan and I recorded our first joint show the weekend before last, and the podcast was released this past Tuesday.

It’s actually funny how we met.  I had just found and started listening to the podcast when I heard Jonathan say something about the Atlanta weather.  I sent him an email right then asking him where did he really live as Atlanta has a huge footprint.  I was sure he’d be on the other side of the city from me, 50 miles away or somesuch.  After all, what are the odds of me finding a random guy online who happens to live close by?  (Er, not that I go trolling for guys online.)  Well it turned out that Jonathan in fact lives in the same suburb of Atlanta as I do, and he lives at most about three miles away!  Talk about small world.

Anyway, I hope to be able to contribute to the show and help make it better.

About the show:

The PowerScripting podcast features the following:

• Discussion of PowerShell-related news items
• Segments on problem-solving and “gotchas” we’ve encountered.  We go through the fixes too, so hopefully you’ll not make the same mistakes. 
• A Cmdlet-of-the-Week segment, where we start basic (reading an extract from the help file), then dig deeper into some examples where the cmdlet may come in handy.  Code samples will be referenced in the show notes.
• Interviews!  We haven’t done any yet, but this is in the works–stay tuned for that.
• Resources for the new scripter and the pros alike.  We’ll be sure to include evaluations of commercial products as well as pointers to the best freeware out there.  We’ll also share with you the best blogs, books, and other cool stuff.
• We scour the net for the best PowerShell tips too.  We’ll break them down into easy-to-digest chunks so you can get the most out of it.  We’ll also get into conceptual stuff that may be light on code but heavy on process, workflow, and best practices.
• Last but not least, sometimes you need a big complex script to solve a problem, but sometimes your work can be simplified with a single one-liner.  When you can fit everything that needs doing in one line, you know you’ve got a keeper.

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Saw this mentioned on microsoft.public.windows.powershell:

TechNet Webcast: Automating Internet Information Services 7.0 (Level 300)
Thursday, October 25, 2007 9:30 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7415083

Event Overview

Tired of spending long nights doing the same tasks over and over? Join this webcast to learn how you can save time and get your life back though automation. We take a look at all the new ways you can automate tasks within Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) version 7.0 by using Windows Powershell, our revamped Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) provider, the appcmd.exe command-line tool, and the new managed code administration API, all from the command line! We demonstrate how to use the command line by automating common tasks to complex configurations. Attend this session to see how to complete unattended installations of IIS 7.0, set up thousands of sites in a matter of minutes, and manage installations of IIS on Server Core. This is a must-see webcast for any administrator!

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Quick and dirty one here…

73# $dcObj = [adsi]”LDAP://OU=domain controllers,dc=domain,dc=local”
74# $dcs = $dcObj.PSBase.Children | % { $_.name }
75# $dcs
ATLDOMSRVP05
ATLDOMSRVP06
ATLDOMSRVP07
ATLDOMSRVP08
BRUDOMSRVP02
KASDOMSRVP02
SOUDOMSRVP01
TOKDOMSRVP01

Of course now that you have a list like this, you can pipe it to another cmdlet to do useful things!

$dcs | % { Get-WmiObject win32_service -Filter “startmode = ‘disabled’” -computer $_ }

And as some will know, “%” is shorthand for the “Foreach-Object” cmdlet.

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You can now find on VMware’s site the slideset for a presentation given at this year’s VMworld show (now in progress) titled “Managing VMware Infrastructure with Windows PowerShell” [PDF].  Also, be sure to bookmark VMware’s new VI Powershell Blog.

I think this is just great, another well-known company which “gets it” with regards to PowerShell’s future.  It’s kinda like Reece’s peanut butter cups.  Two great technologies taste great together.

(Thanks to the presenter, Antonio from VMware, for leaving a comment on my blog pointing this out.)

Update: hehe, look what I found on slide 6!  :)  That is too funny!

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I knew this was going to happen.  This means I need to turn on the heat and get my VMWare Powershell scripting toolkit out the door. 

Man, I miss not being at VMWorld this year.  Last year’s show was great.  Anyway, here’s the news:

FullArmor, the leader in enterprise policy management, today announced that CTO Danny Kim will be demonstrating how Workflow Studio automates and provisions VMWare?s virtual servers Wednesday, September 12 at VMWorld Session (ID#: IO30) ?Managing VMWare Infrastructure 3 with Windows PowerShell?

Not a lot of detail to the announcement.  We’ll just have to watch this space.

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Hons on the #Powershell IRC channel (@irc.freenode.net) asked this:

“how do I create an array of a specific size? Like in VBScript: ”dim array  20)”, so that I can immediately index into the array”

He went on to explain that he knows a for loop (see below) would work, but he was looking for the quick way.

$array = @(0), for (x=0 to 19) { $array += 0 }

Here is what I came up with:

$array = ,0 * 20

Pro:  It’s quick

Con:  Sure looks funny…

A bit more tweaking came up with this:

$arr = @(0) * 20

I think we’ll call this the “final answer”. 

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(Disclaimer: I’m still running Notes 8 beta M2 or M3, forget which.  Not final bits, so the below may no longer be an issue.)

Here’s a new memo and all I’m doing here is right-clicking in the body to get the context menu:

Check out Exhibit B here where I am right-clicking on the cells I pasted from Excel (which was converted by default into a picture, I believe):

Where was Paste Special when I really needed it?  And what happened to the accelerators (ctrl-X and so on)?

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Some random web loser had nasty things to say about my web design skills (which I never purported to be all that), so I went out and snagged a new Wordpress template. I do like this one a lot better. It’s called Tiga by Shamsul Azhar. It’s a lot less busy on the eyeballs. Please bear with me whilst I tune it. I’m definitely going to work on the header a bit.

Also this made me realize that my original site sub-title is now (and has been for some time), pretty meaningless. I don’t really talk about web design anymore. That’s kinda an older hobby of mine that others do better at anyhow.

If anyone’s got a better tagline for my site, please offer it up!

Last thoughts:

• Latest Harry Potter book–liked it a lot. It was much better than ‘Cats’.
• Lotus Notes–still can’t stand it, but I’ve kinda sorta come to terms with it. I could seriously write a book about how awful this transition has been (and continues to be), but I don’t think I will. Instead, I’m going to see just how well the Notes User Experience team will listen to some random guy in Atlanta.
• Powershell and VMWare–that’s where my next scripting effort lies. I’m considering making a VMWare Server toolkit of sorts, then will follow it up with one for ESX Server. More to come on that soon(-ish).

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