Scripting All the Way

I've come to the point in Systems Administration where doing point-and-click operations for 50 or so servers is wasting more and more of my time. Starting today, I'm going to force myself to find and build scripts for almost everything I do. That way, I can begin automating the mindless tasks that need to be done every day and for the things that require widespread implementation, I can can affect more servers at one time rather than having to manually login to each machine.

Looking into VBscript with WMI and ADSI objects. Sounds impressive huh?

This Week's Purpose

This week, my Number One priority is to prepare for a 2 day/2 night campout with my oldest son at a Boy Scout ranch in Runaway Bay, Texas. Many of us City Slickers might prouounce it "n-o-w-h-e-r-e", but it's really a charming place "where the buffalo roam" and all that.

Happy Easter!

I hope you had a good day celebrating Jesus' resurrection. Our family was blessed to sit in the Overflow Venue which meant that at least one of the four services was packed to capacity.  The boys had a blast at both sets of grandparents' planned festivities and Lisa and I just enjoyed seeing our family celebrate Easter another year.

Hello, I'm a Mac User

Two weeks ago, I powered down my life as a PC user and got a MacBook Pro. I've used a PC for my entire computing existence and I work in the Windows world. Whenever I've tried to use or give support for a Mac, it always felt as if I'd never used a computer before - it seemed that different - and so I resisted.

Not long after the Intel Macs hit the scene, my business partner bought a MacBook and showed me how well Windows ran with BootCamp and Parallels. That day, I admitted that the Mac could well be the most perfect computing device because of its ability to run both operating systems. Still, I saw no need to switch.

Since working remotely from home, we've been looking for a decent video chat system, but everything we'd tested for the PC seemed to come up short. Recently, we added another member to the team who is a full-on Mac user and when we saw iChat do video, all of us were astounded. It just worked and worked good.

Off to the neighborhood Apple Store we went and I joined a growing subculture of "Windows Professionals who use a MacIntosh". After two weeks, I love my MacBook Pro. It operates so smoothly and even runs on my 30" Dell monitor at full resolution from the built-in DVI connector. People said that I would only be able to run the external monitor at full with resolution with the MacBook closed, but that's not true - I run both the screens at the same time. Too Cool!!!

Microsoft's beta of Remote Desktop Connection 2.0 for Mac allows me to flawlessly connect to all my Windows servers without missing a beat. VMware Fusion lets me virtualize Windows Vista whenever I need to use it. There's so much to like about the Mac. Trying not to sound like a zealot, I don't think I will ever go back to PC hardware.

I'm currently writing this post using Windows Live Writer on Windows Vista running in Unity mode through VMware Fusion on a MacBook Pro Dual Core with 4GB of RAM. Mail, iChat, and iTunes are all running on the Mac side. How twisted is that? AWESOME!