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Jonathan Walz

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Jonathan Walz

586 articles published

• 1 min read

Get-Directory Function

In the olden days (i.e. when I used CMD.EXE), I often did “dir *.” to quickly get a list of the directories in the current path. PowerShell doesn’t work this way (which is good because it would be unexpected), so I had to make a replacement.

function Get-Directory { ls $Args | ? { $_.PSIsContainer } } The alias which makes most sense to me for this function is “lsd”. What, that acronym is already in use? 🙂

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• 3 min read

Episode 21 – One-half of Jeffrey Snover

A Podcast about Windows PowerShell.
Listen:

In This Episode

This week, our Intrepid Heroes talk about News in the PowerShell world, bring you fresh Resources from the wild Internet, and share their experiences in the Tips section, with you, the Listener. Oh–and we also interview JEFFREY SNOVER! In case you don’t know who he is, he’s basically like the Thomas Edison of scripting.

Interview with Jeffrey Snover

And now a word from our sponsor:

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• 1 min read

Episode 21 coming soon.

I just wanted to let you know that the new podcast should be posted by Tuesday morning. We had a great interview with Jeffery Snover that you don’t want to miss!

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• 1 min read

One-Liner: Countdown Timer in PowerShell

Here’s a quick one for ya. Perfect kitchen timer. Who doesn’t have a laptop with PowerShell on it in their kitchen? 🙂

start-sleep (60*9); write-host ("a"*4)</pre> Start-Sleep works in seconds, so you see where I've done some quick math to get nine minutes. Not sure if the ()'s were required, but they don't hurt. I didn't know the precedence of parameter parsing versus multiplication off the top of my head. Next is Write-Host with some more multiplication. This one uses "a" which is the special character

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• 1 min read

One-liner: Pop up a message box

You could paste this into a scheduled task or something if you want an annoying reminder to pop up on your screen.  :)  Now if only schtasks.exe was as easy to use as PowerShell…

PowerShell -NoProfile -NonInteractive -Command [reflection.assembly]::loadwithpartialname('system.windows.forms'); [system.Windows.Forms.MessageBox]::show('reminder: buy milk')

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• 2 min read

Episode 20 – Jeffrey Snover is coming

A Podcast about Windows PowerShell.
Listen:

Please visit our sponsors!

  [ShellTools Software](http://powershell.com) - makers of PowerShell Plus and PowerShell Analyzer

  [SDM Software ](http://sdmsoftware.com/powerscripting.php)- "Windows Group Policy Management Simplified." Featuring the GPExpert Scripting toolkit for PowerShell

News

  • Don Jones gives us a peek at his PowerShell column in the March Technet Magazine:
    • “March is Progress Reporting - a definitive look at when, why, and how to use Write-Progress to produce
      scripts that run for a long time, but don’t look hung.”
  • Sapien will be announcing their PowerShell training plans very soon.  Watch their blog{#xlqg}.  They are also seeking input on a possible PowerShell developer class, you can fill out the survey here{#iu8z}.
  • Jeffery Snover will be joining us on a future podcast so send in your questions

Resources

• 2 min read

Episode 19 – The Scripting Games are on

A Podcast about Windows PowerShell.
Listen:

News

  • Scripting Games now open by the time you hear us!
  • Citrix Workflow Studio “Workflow Studio, a member of the Citrix Delivery Center product family, is an IT process automation solution that enables you to compose, integrate and orchestrate rule-based workflows across your application delivery infrastructure. Workflow Studio acts as the glue across the IT infrastructure allowing administrators to easily tie technology components together via workflows that enable the system to truly operate as a dynamic delivery platform.”
  • Jeff’s Scripting Blog and More: Practical PowerShell Jeff Hicks is writing a new monthly column for a new eJournal from RealTime Publishers. “The column, Practical PowerShell, will be a regular feature in Windows Administration in Realtime. The eJournal is a free PDF although I think you have to give up an email address.”
  • Windows PowerShell : The Semantic Gap There are 2 worlds: 1. The world as we think about it. 2. The world as we can manipulate it. The difference between these two is what is called the semantic gap.

Resources

  • New Video Podcast: PowerShell-Basics.com This is created by Steve from the A Couple of Admins Podcast.  He wanted to create a screencast-only video podcast.  His first show should be out by the time you hear this.

Cmdlets

  [

Export-Clixml ](http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/msh/cmdlets/export-clixml.mspx)

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• 3 min read

Episode 18 – Win Fabulous Prizes!

A Podcast about Windows PowerShell.
Listen:

In This Episode
  • Lots of news and tips
  • We missed Jonathan
  • Our first contest–with actual prizes!
News
  • The PowerShell team blog brings us the news that “PowerShell continues to win awards with Redmond Magazine”â„¢s 2008 Editor"â„¢s “Slickest Time Saving Tool” co-winner to go along with PS"â„¢s Best of Tech-Ed Attendees award and Best of Tech-Ed Client awards."
  • Kirk Munro covers PowerGUI on DNR.tv .NET Rocks! and RunAsRadio.
  • Karl Prosser (admin frameworks MVP and PowerShell Analyzer architect) was interviewed on the “A Couple of Admins” podcast Episode 35. The interview lasts for almost an hour and I really enjoyed it.
  • Shay@Isreal (The $cript Fanatic blog) put together a cool PowerShell toolbar
  • Admin Frameworks MVP Brandon Shell was interviewed on the CS Techcast podcast. Hal listened to it on the way home the other day and he thought it was a really good interview.
  • VMware’s VI-Toolkit open beta is expected in March
    • Over 70 new cmdlets
    • This example would create a snapshot of every VM:
      get-vm | new-snapshot
  • Dale Lane, author of the IBM Websphere MQ PowerShell snapin is considering writing another tool, this time a PowerShell library for the IBM DB/2 RDBMS.  He is seeking feedback, so if you or someone you know might be interested, please visit this blog post and leave feedback.
  • New Video Podcast: PowerShell-Basics.com
    • This is created by Steve from the A Couple of Admins Podcast.  He wanted to create a screencast-only video podcast.  His first show should be out by the time you hear this.
Tips

There’s a ton of Scripting Guys stuff we meant to cover in the interview show last time that we never got around to:

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