The Lonely Administrator

I was looking at my current Mr. Roboto column “Polish Your Shell” on learning PowerShell by starting with 3 basic commands and noticed a lengthy and serious comment. I’ve always felt PowerShell is easy to use and learn, which was the point of my column. However, the comments paint a different story and one that I feel is more pervasive.

I’m afraid the comment is representative of how PowerShell is perceived by many IT admins. They don’t have time to learn anything new or their hair is constantly on fire (to borrow a favorite Jeffrey Snover phrase). Even though the concepts of cmdlets, parameters and a pipeline seem easy and practically self-apparent, they are not. Especially for an administrator who has never had to open a command window before. Granted GUI-based admin tools might have been cumbersome, but at least you could make some educated guesses about how to use it. A command line is very different.

I know I haven’t posted much this month.  I’m trying to get a new blog setup where I can offer more value and especially an easy way for you to download script and code samples.  In the mean time you can find me on “InterTubes” at Mr. Roboto, Prof. PowerShell and The Lonely AD Administrator. [...]

This month’s Mr. Roboto column offers a script you can use with PowerShell to build a domain password report. There were few issues that came up which have since been resolved. You can download the latest version, currently 1.2 at www.jdhitsolutions.com/scripts in the Mr. Roboto section.

My September Mr. Roboto column covers a PowerShell script you can use to create a domain password report. I also demo’d the script at the NYC Techmentor conference this past week. Since then I realized a mistake in the way that I laid out the script. I had nested a function within another function which [...]

The registration deadline for the first Techmentor conference of the year is almost upon us. I’ll be doing sessions on using Powershell to manage Active Directory, PowerShell and WMI, Logon Scripts and more. Plus, I’m always happy to hang out and chat. I always have a great time. Hope to see you there.
If you [...]

A few of my recent Mr. Roboto columns have been about group auditing. I first published an HTA that would report on group membership last December. Astute reader Matt V. found a bug with the way nested group memberships were being reported. Or in this case, not being reported. It turns out that [...]

I finished up my slide decks last week for the first Techmentor conference of the year in San Francisco (March 30 -April 3). If you’ve never been to a Techmentor conference you’re missing a great opportunity to hear and see your favorite IT speakers. Plus it’s a lot of fun to meet your peers, swap [...]