ITtoolbox Blogs

ITtoolbox Blogs
Ok, this is kind of funny. I took a look at my own blog, and in the adsense link at the top, there was a linkt o IT Toolbox blogs. It looked interesting, so I followed it.

I just recently gutted my bloglines subscriptions so that I could start adding ones that I read, and it has been kind of hard to find some good IT related blogs. I don't have a whole lot of time to scour the internet looking for blogs.

If I find any really useful or interesting blogs on this site, I will let you know. I will warn you though, don't think that if I haven't posted anything about ITtoolbox Blogs by next week that I don't think there is anything interesting, it may just be that I haven't had a chance to read anything.

Remove a Service with the Command Prompt

Sorry for the inconvenience, but there is a new and improved version of this post on my new blog.

The Specialist vs. the Generalist

For some reason, I woke up this morning thinking about some of the advantages of getting to specialize in one aspect of technology. Specifically, being the "Exchange Admin" for a company, or the IIS guy, or anything along those lines, being able to learn a product or technology inside and out. You see, I am a Network Manager / Admin for a small company, about 60 employees. I have worked here since it was less than 20 employees, and basically whenever there is a problem, I am the one who gets called.

Don't get me wrong, there are some really neat things about working for a company of this size. Primarily, I get to do a little of everything, I run Server 2003, SQL, IIS, DNS, WINS, AD, SharePoint, and basically fix anything in the building that runs on electricity. Yesterday I was writing scripts to pull values from our "insert company name here" accounting system, and dump them into excel, today I was installing a demo copy of SharePoint portal server, and tomorrow I will be installing a couple of Windows machines, and loading Oracle on them.

I started thinking about specialization because the last few days have been a little rough. I basically was given more work than I can possibly do, and the method of delivery was a series of meeting which ate up half my already overbooked day. Of course, everything needs to be done ASAP, and I already have a “to do” list a mile long.

To me, this is the biggest disadvantage of working for a small company. There really isn’t anyone else to do all of the jobs. I was finally able to get the company to hire someone that I can dump most of the smaller stuff, like desktop support, etc. He is overloaded with work too, so it is a case of the amount of work expanding to consume all available manpower.

Generally I don’t sweat this too much, I mean, I am only human. I make sure that I spend plenty of time with my family, even if I have to get back on my machine after the kids go to bed. Thank goodness for remote desktop, and the power of scripting. I don’t have any idea how I would keep up, or at least as close to “up” as I am, without them.

Really, I just wanted a chance to vent a little bit, so if you are still with me, and can sympathize with my pain, post a comment and let me know. On the flip side of that, if you get to specialize, and want to list off all of the downfalls there, let me know.

One of my new favorite internet authors has this post about being a generalist. It is a good read, and may I suggest checking his blog daily, as well as his terrific project, DIY Planner.

The Joy of Scripting

Way back in the early 90’s, I found myself in the Marine Corps Computer Science School where I was being trained to be a computer operator. Evidently the Marine Corps thought I would be good at this computer thing. Their definition of a computer operator was the guy who maintained the print queues, watched and fixed production jobs, and mounted tapes on a mainframe.

There was this big debate at the time about who was better, operators or programmers. The programmers were the ones who wrote the code which did all the nice things, and the operators were the one who made sure that those jobs ran correctly, and fixed everything when they didn’t work.

When I thought about programming, I just didn’t think that it was for me. As I matured, I took some programming courses in college, and it was interesting, but it still didn’t seem like something that I wanted to do for a living.

About a year ago, I started dabbling with some scripting. This was really lucky timing for me, since Microsoft really started putting some man power into educating the public about their scripting technologies. I found the “Hey, Scripting Guy!” column, and I realized that with what I had already learned with Visual Basic, and looking at my text book (whew, I sure am glad that I didn’t sell that one), I could really do some cool stuff.

The thing that really makes me enjoy scripting is that the programs aren’t being used by everyone in the world, so I don’t have to validate everything that is entered. If I use a command line argument, I don’t need to make sure that it is only so many characters, or that it is a numeric value. I write the scripts for myself, or for a very limited audience, and if I don’t know what to expect from it, then I guess I shouldn’t be using it. Don’t think that I don’t check and double check the results of my scripts, because I do need them to be accurate.

The beauty of a script is that if you do something over and over, a script can probably do it for you, faster, sometimes better, and all you have to do is double click on it, or better yet, schedule it to run periodically. If it takes you four hours to write a script to do a task which usually takes you 10 minutes to do manually, then it will pay for itself after being used 24 times. I wrote a script called “tap” that will ping the computer I specify 1 time. It took me probably 10 minutes to write it, but now instead of typing “ping computer –n 1” I just type “tap computer”. I know that might seem a little silly, unless you ping computers 20 times a day, then you may think it is pretty useful. Heck, I have a batch file called “x” that just types “exit”, it saves me 3 keystrokes, but I use a command prompt about 100 times a day.

I write all of my scripts for Windows based computers, and you can write scripts in all sorts of languages, but I use Visual Basic Script. Visual Basic is not the same as Visual Basic Script, but it is close.

Now the bad part about being a novice is that sometimes, I really have to bang my head on stuff before I figure it out. The other side of that is every time that I really bang my head on stuff, I learn something, and I get better.

As far as actually writing the scripts, I know that the hard core scripting guys will say that all you need is a text editor like notepad, and yes, that is all you need. I have heard the same thing over and over about writing HTML. I still see a great benefit in using a nice editor. I know that there are some really nice editors out there with great features, but I don’t much like spending money on stuff if I don’t have to. The editor I use is Crimson Editor, it’s free, and I like it. If you happen to know of a better one that is free, post a comment.

Now I don’t want you to think that I am some scripting Guru, I don’t do this to make a living, I do this to make my job easier, and I thought it might be useful to make this available to others. Also, when you are looking at my scripts, I would not use them as a reference on how to write code. Let me repeat this one more time, I am not a programmer.

The first place that I would like to point you to is the Microsoft Script Center. This is one place where you will find some really good scripting resources. I love to take scripts out of the Script Center Repository, and modify them just a little tiny bit, or better yet, use them as a sub routine in another script. Another favorite thing to do is to get a wrapper template, for an example, a script that grabs all of the computers in my domain, then throw in another script, that checks them all for a particular version of office. So in just a few minutes, I can check all of the computers on my network for office.

Another terrific thing about scripting is that I will create a script for one purpose, and then the next script I write I figure out that I can use the first script again. The next thing you know, I am using that script as a sub routine in a whole slew of other scripts.

OK, I already gave you a few links, so let me pile on some more. The “Hey, Scripting Guy!” column is a great place to find solutions for problems that you didn’t even think about solving with a script yet. The Microsoft Developer Network has a bunch of resources, especially if you want to start modifying scripts or even creating your own. The Scripting section of MSDN has a huge amount of Resources, including the VBSCRIPT Language Reference and User Guide, a reference for Windows Scripting Host (WSH), The Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Reference, and of course the Active Directory Service Interfaces Reference.

That should be enough to get you started. Good luck.

Find Scripts:

- “Hey, Scripting Guy!” – Terrific Column at Microsoft Technet.

- Script Center Repository – Lots of great Scripts from Microsoft.

- ScriptingAnswers.com – Lots of good scripts.

- W32Scripting – Many more good Scripts.

Scripting Resources

- Scripting Section of MSDN

- Microsoft Script Center - Lots of Resources, and tons of tutorials and columns.

- VBSCRIPT Language Reference and User Guide

- Windows Scripting Host (WSH) Reference

- Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Reference

- Active Directory Service Interfaces Reference

What a great site: Microsoft TechNet

Well, I figured that I would just mention how impressed I am with the changes that Microsoft has been making to Microsoft TechNet. They seem to be putting more and more information into Technet that is Valuable.

I know that all of the Linux folks and the anti-Microsoft crowd would give me a ear full, if any of them happened upon this post, but I think that MS is really making an effort to get some good information to the people who need it.

Also, if you have any idea on how to script, or would like to learn how to, then you have to check out the Script Center on Microsoft's Technet site. I am not a big programmer, but after a little bit of reading, I was able to paste together scripts to do all sorts of neat things.