John Mello gave a brief overview of the history of the Scripting Games and an overview of the beginner events from the 2013 Winter Scripting Camp. A copy of his presentation and 2013 Winter Scripting Camp submissions can be found here.
Lido Paglia gave an overview of the advanced events from the 2013 Winter Scripting Camp in addition to doing an in-depth review of Don Jones"™ Winter Scripting Camp Post Mortem. A copy of his 2013 Winter Scripting Camp submissions can be found here.
Various other information worth mentioning:
Group member Greg Martin presented a problem he ran into creating a COM object in PowerShell to hold an instance of Internet Explorer which he would then use to open a page. Stepping through the script worked fine, but running the script failed. The issue was that the object would more often than not be blank when he tried to reference it. The group offered some suggestions and ideas to work around the issue which later helped Greg find the root cause. A breakdown of the problem and final solution can be found on Greg"™s Blog
I know, this took forever. Mea culpa. I’ve been working my shell off, and finally got around to pulling the info.
Beginner Track
Wouter Beens (4.667)
Laurel Raven (4.5)
Chris Davis (4.5)
Advanced Track
Alexander Kuzin (4.5)
Lido Paglia (4.5)
(anonymous) (4)
Those are the average scores from those entries, and in case of a tie we broke it by submission timestamp. Things will be working a bit differently in the actual Games, coming your way in April, so stay tuned. In fact, you can subscribe to a specific topic for Scripting Games announcements, if you like.
This is a PowerShell-based WMI Explorer tool created by Marc van Orsouw (aka //\O//). His Web site has been down for ages, but Thomas Lee was helpful enough to post a copy of this, and we’re hosting it here as a backup against further unavailability. Download WMI Explorer
In an effort to keep folks as fully informed as possible, I’ll periodically share information about the Summit for next year. In this update, I want to explain how we’re hoping to address some of the issues (all good ones, actually) that we’ve experienced with the 2013 event.
First, the 2013 event sold out fast. We have a fire code limit of about 100 people and we hit it quickly - and our wait list ballooned to almost as many people. The moral of that story is that (a) we need more space and (b) people gotta sign up quicker if they want a spot! This is like grabbing those U2 tickets - camp out overnight and snap ’em up. So we’re hoping to be in the Microsoft Conference Center (MSCC) on campus, which should allow us around 250 attendees in 2014. We can’t book that space until about a year out, we’re told, but once we can start booking we will announce it here. Our 2013 alumni will get first dibs, and we’ll have about 25 early bird tickets to sell. We expect pricing to be about $700 for those, and about $850 for full-price tickets, plus about $40-$50 in ticketing fees (which covers credit card merchant fees and the ticketing company fee). Second, we will offer tickets as soon as we can do so. That may include an “I’m Feeling Lucky” ticket even before we know our dates (we’re still aiming for April 2014). However, due to changing regulations, we can only offer refunds for 30 days after you make your purchase, or (due to logistics) until February 1st, whichever comes first. That’s something you’ll have to take into account. Third, we’re going to make the waitlist process a bit more automated, and give you the ability to use the waitlist to sell your ticket to someone else if you change your mind about attending. People will be able to waitlist on PowerShell.org, and prospective ticket-sellers will be able to offer tickets to that list. You’re on your own for completing the transaction (we suggest PayPal), and you simply notify us of the transfer once it’s complete. Fourth, in case the question of recording the sessions comes up again, here’s the deal. It’s expensive. We’ve looked into it, and we’ll need about $8,000 in equipment, which is a one-time expense that will let us record sessions with a minimum of on-site labor. So we’re going to launch an IndieGoGo campaign in late 2013 to try and raise that money. Contributors will receive (depending on the amount they contribute) access to all future Summit recordings, a discount on Summit recordings for 2014, or full access to the 2014 recordings. If we don’t meet our goal, we won’t record, and everyone gets their money back. If we do meet our goal, only contributors will get access to the 2014 videos. However, in subsequent years we will sell (for a nominal fee) access to the videos to the public - that’ll happen after the Summit is over. In years where the Summit sells out, we’ll put the videos online for free (unless we need to recoup labor costs, in which case there might still be a nominal fee). This is the fair-est approach we could come up with that balances our need to have a successful on-site event (without the paying attendees, we can’t do this thing at all) and to accommodate the needs of folks who can’t possibly attend. Fifth, we still have no word on any events outside the US, and probably will not. We are simply not pursuing it at this time. It gets very complicated when a US business starts doing events in other countries, and we don’t have the manpower or resources to tackle that right now. Several folks have expressed an interest in spearheading various non-US versions of the Summit, and most of those are going nowhere. One problem is that, in Europe, nobody appears interested in a “Euro Summit;” they all want one in their own country, which makes the whole endeavor financially risky and exponentially more complicated. There’s a huge concern that if we do one in (say) Barcelona, nobody from outside that area will even come. Another problem is that the Summit involves an insane amount of work - personally, I’ve spent hundreds of hours on this and I know Kirk has as well, along with Jason, Jeff, and Richard, the Scripting Wife, and a few more volunteers. It’s a lot of work, and thus far we haven’t seen anyone outside the US willing to take it on. Keep in mind that we all still need to have our full-time jobs to pay for silly things like groceries and electricity; we can’t afford to take out much more volunteer time. Sixth, the 2014 Summit will look much like the 2013 Summit in terms of content: about three dozen sessions in one-hour blocks, with about 45 minutes per session (including Q&A time). We’ll feed you breakfast and lunch. We are going to book out a block of rooms at a nearby hotel, and will run a shuttle bus to and from that hotel (only!) and the Summit venue. That should help lower travel costs by reducing the need for a rental car. We are not going to be able to hold enough rooms for all 200-250 attendees (when you hold a room, you pay for it whether it gets used or not, so the financial risk there is huge). We are hoping to block about 60 rooms - so it’ll become important to book early. Once that block is sold, you’re on your own - although the same hotel may well have rooms at their normal rate, which is what we’re hoping will happen. Seventh, communications with registered attendees has been a huge PITA, mainly because some providers - like ForeFront Online Protection (FOLP) have a global block against EventBrite, our ticket company. Yeah, awesome. So for 2014 we’re going to use THIS blog category and our [Twitter feed][2] to “push” communications. We’ll still attempt to use email, but it’s just not reliable in this age of ultra-spam-blocking. So if you register, it will be your responsibility to check for updated information. After all, you’re supposed to be the big, smart IT professional, so you should be able to figure out how to do that . I’ll continue posting updates as information is available, and we hope you’ll start talking to the boss about the 2014 show. The 2013 show is sold out. As of right now, we are no longer to able process refunds for existing attendees, so we’re no longer processing the 2013 wait list. That means it’s time to start looking at the 2014 show. Any questions, drop ’em in the comments! Thanks! Don
The WMI classes Win32_NetworkAdapter and Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration have seen a lot of use over the years. They can be a bit fiddly to use which is why the NetAdapter module in Windows 8/2012 is a so welcome.
Lets start by looking at basic information gathering
PS> Get-NetAdapter | ft -a
Name InterfaceDescription ifIndex Status MacAddress LinkSpeed
—- ——————– ——- —— ———- ———
Ethernet NVIDIA nForce 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet 13 Up 00-1F-16-63-F5-DF 100 Mbps
WiFi Qualcomm Atheros AR5007 802.11b/g WiFi Adapter 12 Up 00-24-2B-2F-9C-A5 54 Mbps
Amazon have released an update for the Windows 8 Kindle app that appears to have resolved the corrupted display issue that occurred after every few pages of reading.
I would recommend updating the app immediately. The app now seems to be usable.
Many of the Microsoft AD cmdlets have a ““Filter and an ““LDAPFilter parameter. So what”™s the difference?
PS> Get-Help Get-ADUser -Parameter *Filter*
-Filter Specifies a query string that retrieves Active Directory objects. This string uses the PowerShell Expression Language syntax. The PowerShell Expression Language syntax provides rich type-conversion support for value types received by the Filter parameter. The syntax uses an in-order representation, which means that the operator is placed between the operand and the value. For more information about the Filter parameter, see about_ActiveDirectory_Filter.
Folks often ask for some advice on what to do, and what not to do, in the forums. Here are some suggestions.
Don’t apologize for being a “noob” or “newbie” or “n00b.” There’s just no need - nobody will think you’re stupid, and the forums are all about asking questions. Just ask.
Try to avoid using obscure or punctuation aliases (like ? and %) - use command names instead. It makes your post easier for everyone, including n00bs, to follow.
Use the CODE or POWERSHELL buttons in the forums editor to format PowerShell and other code.
If your problem is solved, find the little green checkmark button along the top of your message (or one of the replies; it’s near the Twitter and Facebook and other buttons), and click it. That helps indicate to everyone else that you found a solution.
Don’t post massive scripts. We’re all volunteers, and we don’t have time to read all that, nor will we copy, paste, and run it. Post an excerpt, and clearly state what you’re having problems with.
Post error messages, as appropriate. They help.
Don’t ask folks to provide you with a complete script, or to rewrite your script. Again, we’re all volunteers - respect that we’re taking time to help you, and help us minimize that time.
Try to ask just one question at a time. Posts with ten questions are a lot harder to help with.
DO post what you’ve tried, what errors you got, and what didn’t work. It’s a lot easier, sometimes, to correct what you’ve already done than to try and write something from scratch.
If you’ve been given a working solution, SAY THANK YOU! Then make sure you know WHY it works… and ask for an explanation if you don’t!
Take the time to educate yourself. Pick up a book, or a training video, or take a class, or attend a conference. Yes, those take time - but it’s time well-spent. If you’re continually asking other people to spend time answering questions that are already answered in every book, video, course, etc…. well, that’s kinda wasting their time, right? Folks on the forums can help you more effectively if you have a base education first.
Have your own etiquette suggestions? Drop ’em in the comments!
