While I’ve enjoyed working with WSUS and Group Policy, I’m excited to announce that – starting today – I am the Programmer/Writer responsible for the PowerShell SDK! In that capacity, I’ll be writing example code and conceptual topics for MSDN. This includes explaining how to code PowerShell cmdlets, providers, host applications, and much more. Therefore, the most logical place to start my blogging about my new responsibilities would be to explain what PowerShell is.

The canonical definition is that Windows PowerShell is a command-line shell built on top of the .NET framework designed to provide an extensible environment to automate administrative tasks on local and remote Windows systems using cmdlets (pronounced “command-lets”) which are simple, single-function command-line tools built into the shell. However, there’s much more to it than that. Windows PowerShell is also the runtime behind the shell. The shell is simply a “host application” that interfaces to the Windows PowerShell runtime. As a result of this design, you could very well write your own host application that enables your users to leverage PowerShell’s scripting language! Designing and coding cmdlets and hosting applications as well as providers and using the scripting language itself are just a few of the topic that I’ll be covering in this space. Hopefully by doing so, I’ll help others to shorten their own learning curves as they master this incredibly robust environment.

For those of you new to Windows PowerShell, here are some great topics/links to get you started:

• Windows PowerShell Team blog
• Windows PowerShell Getting Started Guide
• Scripting with Windows PowerShell

Much to my surprise, what I found instead was a real treat. Not only was the band top-notch, but Kim’s vocals and harmonica play far exceeded anything I could have expected. In fact, I later read that the Seattle Times wrote of Kim’s play, “The finest blues harmonica player in the Northwest”. From Option Magazine, “Some of the smoothest harmonica work you will ever hear”. After hearing Kim and his band play, I have to say that these reviewers were spot on. Not only is he a great frontman in terms of talent, but he also has a wonderful on-stage presence and easily jokes with the members of the audience. One moment I remember in particular was a heart-warming Frank Sinatra cover that he dedicated to his parents who were in attendance.

All in all, it was a memorable evening of rhythm and blues. I highly recommend that you take the opportunity to see Kim Field and the Mighty Titans of Tone play live if you have the opportunity. You will not be disappointed. Until then, here are some songs that I captured with my FlipVideo. Enjoy and don’t forget to visit the band’s calendar to see where they’re playing next!

• Heavy Breathing
• Dis Pas Ca
• Blue Smoke

So what am I documenting? I’m responsible for Group Policy and Windows Server Update Services. Specifically, I’ll be writing the example code and documetation for the Group Policy Powershell cmdlets! Very cool stuff indeed

One example of this is the NBA Houston Rockets who won 22 consecutive games during the 2007/2008 season.  Once the second longest winning streak in the history of the NBA was finally stopped by the Boston Celtics, the Rockets then lost to the New Orleans Hornets. While hardly a major upset considering that the Hornets ended the campaign as the second seeded Western Conference team, what’s noteworthy is that after a month of incredible play, the Rockets played terribly in the second loss. The Rockets then went back to their winning ways by capturing 3 out of their next 4 games.

The 2008/2009 NBA season offers us another example where the Boston Celtics made their pitch for immortality in a pursuit of the almost inconceivable 33-game winning streak of the 1971/1972 Los Angeles Lakers. The men in green ran their streak to 19 games before bowing to the Los Angeles Lakers on Christmas Day 2008. They then served up a real turkey of a game in losing to one of the league’s doormats – the Golden State Warriors, who had won all of 8 games over the first third of the season.

As is often the case, what got me to thinking about this was my own personal experience. I had won 13 straight APA (American Pool Association) 8-ball matches before playing the man who is arguably the best 8-ball player in our league. I played well – not great – and lost by a single shot. The following week, I played someone – who while being very talented – I had defeated all 5 times I had played him previous. As you can probably guess, I played very poorly (relative to how I had been playing for the previous several months) and lost a close match. Once those two losses were out of the way, I played well again and have won my last two matches.

While my situation is on a much less global scale than an NBA team, my experience is an example of what I believe I’ve noticed most of my life as a both a competitor and sports fan. However, all of this is very anecdotal and far from scientific. Therefore, I’m going to write a little code to parse the schedules and results of several major sports in order to determine if this phenomenon actually exists. Once I do that, I’ll post a follow-up article!

(If you have any information on this or pointers to research already being done, please email me – tom.archer@hotmail.com !)

Tom Archer

“To get the most out of ‘Access Basics’, try to clear your mind of your immediate needs and focus, instead, on generalities… otherwise you may skim over essentials that you see no immediate application for…

Print it out and read it once a week. As you read, use a highlighter for things you want to emphasize. Put ‘?’ in the margins of paragraphs that you skip or don’t make sense with a pencil. Each time you read it, erase the pencil marks as you understand.

Also, copy the chapter files to your hard drive and follow each one of the links — to familiarize yourself with other available resources.“

It is this sort of activity that makes Crystal such a valuable resource in the Access technical community and one of many reasons that we’re proud to count her as an MVP.

With this virus, unwitting victims receive an email from the “UPS Packet Service” along with an alleged packet number.

The mail will claim to be from UPS and will explain that UPS was unable to deliver a package to you. You are requested to print the attached invoice.

DO NOT OPEN OR PRINT THE ATTACHMENT!

Opening or attempting to print the attachment will launch the virus.

Please inform anyone in your social/work circle about this virus as it has already caused millions of dollars in damage.

Note that this has been verified via the Snopes Web site

On the losers side, she ran into dear friend and very good 8-ball player (SL5) Randi Sue Andrews. Once again, Krista took the first game and was immediately on the hill. However, Randi Sue is a veteran player with many years of tournament experience under her belt so she wasn’t fazed and took the match 1-5.

All in all, a great showing for Krista as she has less than a year of pool experience and had a couple of nice 4 ball runs. Great job, Krista!! You can see many of the photos I took on my Facebook.

So I was especially pleased to see on MSNBC tonight that the transcripts of the grand jury testimony of Ethel Rosenberg and Ruth Greenglass were released today by the National Archives – as a result of a lawsuit filed by the National Security Archive.

Julius and Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg were alleged American communists who were executed in 1953 after having been found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage. The charges were in relation to the passing of information about the American atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. (Ruth Greenglass was Ethel’s sister-in-law and provided key testimony against Ethel)

The guilt of the Rosenbergs and the appropriateness of their sentence have been the subject of perennial debate and from the little I already know about from reading these documents, they are only going to add fuel to that controversy.

Sadly, U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein decided to make public the grand jury testimony of 36 of the 46 witnesses but not that of David Greenglass (Ethel’s brother). Citing the objections of David Greenglass and two other living witnesses, the judge claimed that their privacy rights “overrides the public’s need to know.” How many lives has the government and media destroyed (Can you say “Richard Jewell“?) while supposedly serving the “public’s right to know” and now we’re supposed to believe that the privacy of a witness to a crime committed over 50 years ago is more important than the rights of citizens to see for themselves if a miscarriage of justice occurred? Is it me or does our government have less respect for our collective intelligence each passing year?

That little diatribe aside, I’m definitely looking forward to carving out some time to read through the documents that marked a critical time and issue in our country’s history.

1. List of Witnesses Interviewed (including interview, pages numbers and page counts)
2. Downloadable options for reading transcripts