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[Keith] Welcome to the Mind Of Root. I'm Keith Albright

[Rich] and I'm Rich Niemeier.

[Steve] and I'm Steve Murawski and this is Episode 94 streaming live on Ustream.tv on Wednesday April 8th, 2009. Today's show is sponsored by Quest Software; Helping you rule your domain. We are also sponsored by Sapien Technologies; the makers of PrimalScript?.

Chit-Chat - What's going on with you?

[Steve]

[Rich]

[Keith]

  • Busy at work. All menial tasks, so it is kind of frustrating.

Housekeeping Items

[Rich]

[Steve]

  • Congrats are in order - Two Guys Tech podcast has just passed the 1 year mark (their anniversary show was their 50th show). Also, my friend Doug Finke was one of three new PowerShell MVPs? announced on April 1st. Congratulations to Mike and Art and Doug!

[Keith]

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For awesome PowerShell scripting, nothing matches the might of Quest’s PowerGUI?. Versatile and easy to use, PowerGUI? helps you build commanding scripts that leverage PowerShell’s strength across the enterprise. Now, ruling your domain is easier than ever.

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-PowerShell is a great enabler. I've been working on some data conversion at work, and after spending a weekend hand crafting some SQL statements to move data put the data into the new application.
-Then I found the stored procedures.. I don't know why I didn't check for them in the first place. The company whose software it is didn't really make mention of it and the other major application I support has all the SQL in the application itself, but I still should have checked.
-Any way, I am pulling data from one application, using PowerShell to process it, and then I need to pass it to the stored procedures on the second database. I could have found all the stored procs I would be using and wrap each one with the necessary PowerShell to call them, but that would have taken a good bit of time, and if I had to change something, I would have been updating over 100 functions. So, I wrote a function to read the stored procedures and create PowerShell functions with parameters of the type that they are looking for.
-PowerShell can really be effective at metaprogramming, which is programs about programs. This is applicable to things other than SQL, including PowerShell itself. I know, your brain can start to hurt (mine sure does when I read about this type of stuff), but it is really useful and can you can save yourself a lot of re-work.
-Link: http://poshcode.org/1007 Script
-Link: http://blog.usepowershell.com/2009/04/turn-your-stored-procedures-into-powershell-functions-metaprogramming-with-powershell/
-Link: http://www.tellingmachine.com/post/2008/11/Meta-Programming-with-PowerShell-and-Regular-Expressions.aspx Another Example
  • X-Windows Problem [KEITH]
-One user from back-office subnet to production control network can't access management console via X-Windows. It was working and works for others, but stopped.
-User blames a patch applied via WSUS or MS Project 2007 install....only things that have changed.

[STEVE] I blame Project.. no particular reason, but I do.

-Funny you should say that.
-Link: http://
  • Mac Forensics - Did he roll back the clock? [STEVE]
-George Starcher posted recently about an interesting approach to verifying if a file was "back dated". There was an allegation of the computer clock being set back and the file time was artificially created.
-George created a quick tool to check the file times and compare them to the creation time of the inode for the file (inodes are metadata about files). Since inodes are created sequentially, you can compare to the files with inodes before and after that and see if the file times match up.
-Link: https://www.georgestarcher.com/?p=242
-Impressed so far....except one thing
-Bought some new TV's to help stimulate the economy and was told a QAM tuner would recieve all the channels without a box....WRONG!
-I hate getting caught in a standards war and this is one of them. I didn't even realize it. I still like my TV's, but why do companies/engineers do stuff like this?
-Link: http://
  • WMI Team has a blog [STEVE]
-Windows Management Infrastructure (more than just Instrumentation)
-This site was pointed out to me earlier by my friend Aleksandar and was also mentioned on the PowerShell Team blog.
-Covers not only WMI, but PowerShell, WinRM? and Bits
-Link: http://blogs.msdn.com/wmi/
  • Bill would give president authority to shut down networks [KEITH]
-Cybersecurity clause that would allow executive order to shut down public and private networks.
-I'm curious how far this reaches. If it is delienated at the provider, fine. But if it encroaches into the private network, I'm against it.
-Like Clear and Present Danger from Tom Clancy. Except with Google instead of Columbia.
-Link: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/040209-obama-cybersecurity-bill.html
  • Getting Spammed on Twitter [RICH]
-I was recently followed by http://twitter.com/weaponmasters
-I am thinking I don't see why someone interested in weapons follows me.

[STEVE] I like weapons and I am following you..

-Link: http://

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Listener Feedback

From listener....Jon in the UK

Think the following websites are worth a look and certainly think Steve would be able to do all kinds of stuff with the flexibility of the first one since it uses T-SQL to pull out any kind of info that you may find useful

http://www.lansweeper.com LanSweeper? is a free app that sits within your network and connects to PCs? as they login, pulling a wealth of info via WMI (i.e. no local agents). It is very scalable since it seems to use a queuing system to connect back from the central server and it gives you a extendible web front end to all of the information. Starting to look at it myself although be keen on your view of it, not sure if any of you have seen it before. I would image a fairly seemless web based information system could be created using this alongside something like polymon since you can create urls to link to the relevant computer names etc pretty easily.

http://www.diskmonitor.com/nev/Event-Log-Monitor.aspx Think you were after a tool to consolidate all of you event logs a couple of shows ago. This app does not need any agent installs and the central database is documented which should make it easier to report on etc. Seems quite powerful for the price. Alternatively, a product called EventSentry? seems to get good writeups and is not too expensive although this is based on a local agent which I gather you were trying to avoid.

Hope the above is off some use, will look towards sending a few more if it is helpful.

Thanks

Website Picks

Rich - http://

Steve - http://

Keith - http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/040209-obama-cybersecurity-bill.html Epcot like vision of a future world.

Last Call

Anyone....Anyone....Buehler.....Buehler....

Closing Test- I'd like to thank everyone in the chat on UStream?.tv we always enjoy the additional comments and interaction. everyone should remember that there are numerous ways one can interact with the show. For listener feedback post comments on the main show site, or email us at feedback[at] MindofRoot?.com.

It's always fun to see where our listeners live, put a pin on our frappr map there is a link to this on the main show site.

To become even more involved you can leave suggestions for future shows on the topics request wiki. Again a link to the wiki can be found on the main show site.

There is a link to the wiki on the main show site. If you would like to participate in the show; either through an interview, a segment contribution, or any other way, please let us know. We are also a member of the Techpodcast network. Check out some other great shows by going to Techpodcast.com.

test end-

All right, well that is it for the show. For listener feedback; you can email us at Feedback [at] mindofroot.com or post a comment on the main site at mindofroot.com. If you use iTunes, you could write a review. If you just want to show us your listening, drop a pin on the Frappr map...there's a link on the show site.

Lastly, you can drop any show ideas or topic requests on the wiki. There is a link to the wiki on the main show site. If you would like to participate in the show; either through an interview, a segment contribution, or any other way, please let us know. We are also a member of the Techpodcast network. Check out some other great shows by going to Techpodcast.com.