What is rest really?

 Words  No Responses »
Apr 202011
 

UPDATE: I have been meaning to press publish on this for over a year. Not sure where I was (physical or mentally) when I wrote this, but I know I did it on my cell phone….

 

I have spent most of my professional career trying to find this mystical thing called “work life balance”. Only recently did I figure out I did not know what that ever really means. No one that I know wants to be working all the time, even the self proclaimed work-a-holics like myself can not do it all the time with serious consequences in our lives. Relationships are damaged; scars are made; and the ones you are close to (or at least pretend to be) are hurt.

Last night while doing some leisure reading (which I never to do ), I happened upon a book of short stories by J. D. Salinger: Nine Stories. ( I have been caring this book with me for about a year now). The story “A Perfect Day for Banana Fish” basically tells the story of a super depressed and mis-understood guy who comes to an untimely and unfortunate end. When I finished this story the first time, I could only think: “wow I must be missing something, but I really don’t want to be this guy.”

The answer I found: Make time for what really matters. Everything else comes second. Make the list of things or people or experiences you can not live with out and make sure you are prioritizing them in your life.  No one else can do this for you. Rest is taking the time to live life on your terms no matter what it takes.

 Posted by at 6:24 pm

Tips for the transition

 General  No Responses »
Jan 242010
 

Changing jobs, willingly or unwillingly, is always an interesting. The best part for me is the huge amount of advice I received on how to make the transition; particularly everyone’s view on what not to do. Here is a few of the best of them including a few of my own:

1. Its ok to leave angry, but not to leave in anger…

I have personally never been a fan of the “Rage Quit”, but for one reason or the other I have contemplated it as we all do from time to time. The question you always have to ask yourself is: “Who are you really hurting?” 9 out of 10 even if the financial repercussions are not a factor you are still hurting your reputation. In IT community that is all you really have when searching for employment. All of the certification, degrees, and experience means nothing if your work reputation is poor. A good reputation can take a long time to build, but a moment to destroy.

2. Give notice

This is a common sense standard practice that holds weight in almost any industry and goes hand in hand with Tip #1. If you are ready for a new job or angry at your current position the two week notice can be the cool down period you need patch the bridge (your current position) before leaving.  If you are not interested in patching the bridge, at least you can fake it. Its better to appear less angry while making the transition in the short term, because that anger will be the last thing managers or HR remember you by, which is usually not a good thing. Not giving notice to spit an employer is like shooting yourself in the foot to get back at your shoe; the sock always pays the price.

3. If possible allow 10 days between jobs.

Now this gem was new to me, but the idea is you give yourself plenty of time to finish any “hanging chads” from the previous job and time to prep and spin up for the new position. 10 days may be to much for you, but allowing at least a weekend or a full business week between transitions should give you time to reset and re-energize. Personally I have never been in a situation where I could take that large of a break, but it must be nice…

4. Observe Everything…

The worst thing you can do is not open your eyes to everything when you start a new position. Observing your co- workers and management with the blinders off will allow you to get a full perspective on the corporate culture objectively. Typically you will find some of the critical preconceptions you may have had about the position and the environment. Additionally your observations of any gaps in process, procedure, or just common sense from an outsider’s perspective can be refreshing for management.

The most important part about any employment transition is to enjoy the ride.

 Posted by at 9:26 pm

Yet another year rolls around…

 General  1 Response »
Jan 232010
 

So with yet another year rolling through I have to take a look at the poor set of choices I made for last years resolutions. One obvious one that I missed is “I am going to post once a week.” Well I have implemented this awesome plan on how to make this happen: I am going to post one every two weeks!. Procrastination always makes it better in the short term.

Wish me luck!

 Posted by at 5:38 pm

Powershell and EWS Preview

 PowerShell  No Responses »
Apr 192009
 

With the release of the Exchange 2010 Beta last week the lid is finally off on some of the fun Powershell functionality in new version of EMS. I am parsing through all of my notes to find the the best of the new stuff and I will be sharing some of those post this week.

 Posted by at 10:18 pm

And We’re Back

 General  No Responses »
Apr 122009
 

IRUNDIS is back up and more Powershell is on the way!

 Posted by at 8:21 pm

A New Year With More PowerShell Fun On The Way…

 General  No Responses »
Jan 182009
 

Wuff. Another project done, but I still can’t seem to dent my list. We are almost 3 weeks into the new year I have have not stopped moving to Day 1. I am in love with CTP3 right now. I have been following the Windows Powersehll Blog intensely to see what magic they come up next. There are more awesome features in PowerShell v2 than you can shake a stick at and RTM is going to be my own nerd holiday. I have a post of PowerShell modules coming up and I will finally get around to adding those Snippets.

~Bishop

 Posted by at 12:17 pm

Powershell v2 Features To Look Foward To…

 PowerShell  No Responses »
Dec 302008
 

For about a week I have been using the PowerShell v2 CTP3. The PowerShell ISE  is a pretty useful PowerShell scripting environment(and yes I get the redundancy of this statement). Like its predecessors in the CTP line it allows for the creation of multiple run spaces and PSSessions (Going to take a whole post to explain this one), and finally adds context menus and break point creation.  Besides all of the awesome remote execution features there are several subtle features that will save time.

Embedded Help

I did a post a few weeks ago on how to generate a help message when “-?”, “?”, or “-help” is entered when executing a script in PowerShell. I’ve found this method pretty useful unless your try to use it with a param keyword. CTP 3 to the rescue! With PowerShell v2 you can add fully detailed help to any script just like fully functional cmdlets. Here is example:

Code:

    #.Synopsis
    #   Use this to provide a quick description of the script.
    #.Description
    #   Provide a fully detailed description of the script.
    #   Provide a background on how to use the script with its key parameters
    #  
    #.Parameter Parameter 1
    #   Describe this parameter and how it should be used.
    #.Parameter Parameter 2
    #   Describe this parameter and how it should be used.
    #.Example
    #   Provide your usage description.
    #   Provide a full example of the script and how it should be used

Add this snippet and replace the fields with information that is relevant to your script.

Results:

Results of the Get-Help

Out-GridView

Considering that I have spent about 100% of my powershell scripting over the past coupleof weeks creating reports for various Exchange related stats, I can say I hate looking at CSV files. Once again PowerShell v2 to the rescue! The Out-GridView cmdlet produces a sortable filterable table output for object. As with all of the other “Out-” cmdlets you can supply the objects through the pipe or direct to the cmdlet through the “-input” parameter. The GUI table that is produced allows you to apply additional filters to the ouput which provides for even more control.  Here is quick example:

Code:

PS C:\> Get-Process | Out-GridView

Results:

Out-GridView Example

I am slowly working through the list of new commands in PowerShell v2, so there will be much more to come.

~Bishop

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Tagged with: , ,

Random Outburts for 2008-12-29

 General  No Responses »
Dec 292008
 
  • Listening to 20′s yazz flute with my wife #
  • Struggling with a “throw”. I won’t have to deal with this in Powershell v2 goes rtm, but until then…. #
  • Reading a powershell manual #
 Posted by at 11:59 pm  Tagged with:

Random Outburst

 General  No Responses »
Dec 242008
 
  • Its my one pop indulgence outside of the occasional mid eighties power ballads: http://tinyurl.com/a4radx #
  • Driving through the Seattle snow/rain/mush is so fun… #
 Posted by at 11:59 pm  Tagged with:

CTP 3 is OUT

 PowerShell  No Responses »
Dec 232008
 

Microsoft released Powershell v2 CTP3 today. I just got it installed but I let you know how much fun it is after a few hours.

Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c913aeab-d7b4-4bb1-a958-ee6d7fe307bc&displaylang=en

 Posted by at 1:37 pm  Tagged with: ,
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