Thursday, August 31, 2006

Unix Style Background Jobs in Powershell

Ripping from the original source...
PS> new-job { get-date; start-sleep 5; get-date }
Job 0 Started
#
PS>
Job 0 Completed
PS> jobs 0
JobId Status Command Results
----- ------ ------- -------
5 Completed get-date; start-sleep 5; ... 8/30/2006 4:47:32 PM
PS> (jobs 0).results
Wednesday, August 30, 2006 4:47:32 PM
Wednesday, August 30, 2006 4:47:37 PM
Looks very cool to me. Now to find some uses for this! :)

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Wake on Lan in System Center Configuration Manager 2007

Great info on the upcomming Wake On Lan (WOL) features in SMS v4 System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (SCCM 2k7) from the SMS Team.

I really like the feature where it will not turn it off and will let the power policy handle that.

The Configuration Manager 2007 WOL solution will not turn off machines after they have been woken up. This allows other processes that may have been triggered after the machine started up to complete whatever it is they need to do without the system shutting down on them. The Configuration Manager 2007 WOL process will register as a busy service when it wakes up a system and then unregister itself once the process is completed allowing existing power management processes and templates to shut the machine down. Group policy can be leveraged to configure power management options for your systems in accordance with your own WOL needs.

I think this will give administrators the features they need without over complicating things. Set a power policy in Group Policy and forget about it. Less power consumed and an increased mean time between failure on workstations. Not to mention the benefits of rebooting XP machines on a regular basis. Sounds like a "Good Thing™" all around to me!

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Bravo Zulu!

The men and women that volunteer to put on the uniforms and serve our county, to serve us, deserve our respect, admiration and thanks.

This is a short video about 2 Navy fighter pilots.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Tropical Storm Chris heads for the Gulf


Tropical Storm Chris is poised to enter the Gulf of Mexico in the next 5 days and is expected to reach Hurricane strength by 08:00 EST on the 3rd.

Anyone in the Gulf Coast region should start paying close attention to this storm as once it enters the Gulf it will be a crap shoot as far as where it strikes. Now is the time to finalize your preparations for a storm.

Hams in the Houston area should be advised that if there is an event, information about the Ham response and various other relevant information will be given out via information net on 147.000 (+offset 103.5Hz PL) at a minimum of 4 times per day (09:00, 12:00, 15:00, 18:00).

Image courtesy of http://www.wunderground.com/

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

SSH Tunnels made easy

SSH tunnels are great happy things and MyEntunnel makes them even easier by starting them up and maintaining them via PLink. Putty made even easier.. it doesn't get much better than that!

*EDIT: Corrected the software name