I've been using Mac OS X for a while now, but upgraded to a 13-inch Macbook Pro Retina about a year ago.  I love having access to the command line and I just RDP when I need to do anything on a Windows machine at work.  I often find myself needing to access my NAS and networking is one of the only features of OS X to …

Need your External IP address? Just use the following in PowerShell 3 and above

$ip = (Invoke-WebRequest https://ipinfo.io/ip).Content.Trim()

As a bonus, you can also get additional IP information using ipinfo.io's JSON web service.

$jsonip = Invoke-WebRequest https://ipinfo.io/json $ipinfo = Convertfrom-JSON …

Note: This article assumes you know how to setup Lync 2013 already and just need to know the intricacies of changing the default ports.

Ever since I was exposed to Lync in 2011, I've been a huge proponent of using chat to communicate at work. Years ago, I recall corporate chat being a hard sell, but now it seems …

Recently I was tasked with migrating all SQL 2008 R1 and prior databases to SQL 2008 R2 and SQL 2012.  One of my qualifying applications was Lync 2010.  We were under the impression that SQL 2012 would be fine for the Lync 2010 installation.  After migrating the database and updating the connections, Lync would not …

Unfortunately, there are no native PowerShell Failover Cluster cmdlets which will give you the volume information for disks in a cluster. I've seen some bloggers use Get-ClusterSharedVolume but a Cluster Shared Volume or CSV is different from volumes used within a SQL cluster.

The script below, which was written with …

Recently, I was asked to help automate a friend's super boring daily duty of logging repetitive activities to a SharePoint Task list. Even though I'm no longer regularly working with SharePoint (yay!), I accepted the challenge.

Below is the script I created, which can be scheduled (and mixed up, even using $a = …

I'm currently reading VMware vSphere Design and found a super useful tip: you can find a centralized list of config and log files for ESX. This page, located at https://youresxhost/host, shows a whole lot of stuff, from your license keys, to your SSL certs to log files and more. Note that it does require …

In my previous post, I outlined how to use PowerShell v2 to keep a CookieJar and POST to a Web Form that Prohibits XSS. The code was 35 lines long. Upon seeing my post, Lee Holmes suggested using PowerShell v3's Invoke-WebRequest instead to get my code down to 1/5th of its original size.

I'm astounded at how easy …

After speaking with a colleague today, I expect this list will grow as I work more with the vSphere suite. But until then, here is a consolidated list of posts and scripts that I've written to ease the replacement of SSL certificates on Windows-based vSphere related products using PowerShell and a Windows Domain …

I recently had a project that required I log into a site and submit a form. Initially, I had a Start-Process that launched iexplore but then I decided it would be best to.. …