Subscribe via RSSDuring the most recent PowerShell Scripting Games, I was fortunate enough to be one of the judges. Now that the games have concluded I thought I’d share my reflections on the entries. Naturally these are merely my opinions but they are drawn from years of experience with PowerShell and almost 25 years as an IT…
There’s Sum-thing Happening Here
I am one of those IT Pros who keeps close tabs on system resources. I like to know what is being used and by what. As you might imagine, a cmdlet like Get-Process, is pretty useful to me. One of the things I’m always checking is how much memory Google Chrome is taking. I don’t…
Friday Fun: The Measure of a Folder
Last week, I demonstrated how to measure a file with PowerShell. This week let’s go a step further and measure a folder. I’m going to continue to use Measure-Object although this time I will need to use it to measure numeric property values. Here’s the complete function after which I’ll point out a few key…
Add Logon As Service Right with PowerShell
I saw a comment on Twitter today about a limitation in PowerShell. Specifically the ability to grant the logon as a service right to a user account. Manually, if you use the Services management console and specify the user, Windows will automatically grant that right. But if you are trying to do this from a…
The Ultrabook Quest Continues
I’ve been continuing my research and deliberations over a new laptop, and am still leaning towards the ultrabook form factor. As to be expected there is no perfect, no-brainer solution, at least for me. What I have been able to do is prioritize the features I need. Since my primary need is for a presentation…
My Ultrabook Quest
Working for myself, I try to keep major expenses to a minimum. Computer equipment falls into that category. But the time has come to refresh my laptop. And since many of you buy and support hardware I thought I’d turn to you for suggestions. I have some requirements and something of a short list but…
Another PowerShell Valentine
I’ve been sharing some Valentine’s Day themed fun on Twitter today. This one is a bit too long to fit into a tweet. $text = “Happy$([char]3)Valentine’s$([char]3)Day” $text.ToCharArray() | foreach -begin { $colors = “Cyan”,”Magenta”,”Yellow”,”White”,”Red”,”DarkRed”,”Green” } -process { write-host $_ -NoNewline -ForegroundColor ($colors| Get-Random)} -end {“`n”} To get the full effect you need to run in…
Friday Fun: The Measure of a File
I’ve been working with PowerShell since the days of Monad and have written a lot of PowerShell scripts. Out of idle curiosity, and the need for a Friday Fun topic, I decided to see how many lines of PowerShell I have written. Or at least that are in my Scripts folder. Turns out I have…
Get PowerShell Parameter Aliases
During a recent PowerShell training class we naturally covered aliases. An alias is simply an alternate name, often something that is shorter to type, or maybe even more meaningful. There are aliases for commands, properties and parameters. Discovering aliases for commands is pretty easy with Get-Alias. Property aliases are discoverable using Get-Member. But, discovering parameter…
Convert Text to Object with PowerShell and Regular Expressions
A few weeks ago I was getting more familiar with named captures in regular expressions. With a named capture, you can give your matches meaningful names which makes it easier to access specific captures. The capture is done by prefixing your regular expression pattern with a name. PS C:\> “UNC is \\server01\public” -match “\\\\(?<servername>\w+)\\(?<sharename>\w+)” True…
Friday Fun: Messagebox Writer
For today’s fun I’m revisiting a topic I’m sure I’ve written about in the past and that is creating a graphical message box in PowerShell. There are a few ways you can do this from using the Visual Basic classes, the old standard WScript.Shell object from VBScript or using WinForms. They all basically work the…
PowerShell Essentials Webinar
Tomorrow I will be presenting a day of PowerShell training via a series of webinars for Windows IT Pro magazine. I will be presenting 3 webinars, each about 1 hour in length. The first webinar is on the PowerShell syntax and shell. Basically, how to survive in the shell if you are beginner. The second…
Creating CIM Scripts without Scripting
When Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 came out, along with PowerShell 3.0, we got our hands on some terrific technology in the form of the CIM cmdlets. Actually, we got much more than people realize. One of the reasons there was a big bump in the number of shipping modules and cmdlets was CDXML….
Your Future in PowerShell
I recently wrote an article that I hope will get you thinking about how PowerShell will affect your career, how it will be used and where you on the PowerShell career pipeline. Thanks in advance for taking a few minutes to read my article on the 4Sysops site and let me know what you think….
Friday Fun with REST, Regex and Replacements
I just love using the web cmdlets that were introduced in PowerShell 3.0. One of the cmdlets I use the most is Invoke-RESTMethod. This isn’t because I’m dealing with sites that offer REST-ful services, but rather I like that the cmdlet does all the heavy lifting for me when I point it to an RSS…