Oh Dear, I am not sure what I am getting myself into…and you may be wondering that yourself. Assuming that I do a 1 part blog post per chapter of the book, that is a 28 part blog post. Being a blogger that has <1 year at blogging, that atleast to me seems like quite the endeavor. So I am going to level with you….

This is not going to be a 28 part blog post. I am going to go through all the Chapters of the book and I am going to blog about them, or more importantly my personal and learning experience with them. I am also going to do all the exercises listed in the books and the videos. Practice makes perfect as they say. However in my blog posts I am going to try to include 2-3 chapters in a blog post, so A. I don’t have a 28 part blog post and B. I really don’t want to have a 28 part blog post(it is a very scary concept to me). So at the most it will be 14 parts, but I will probably try to keep it under that.

So who am I and why am I doing this? I have been working with powershell for around a year now, so although I may be just out of a “noob” status with it, I am definitely nowhere near guru/expert/master jedi. And after reading the first chapter, and watching the first video, I fully expect there will be things I can take away and learn in every chapter. I want to reiterate that point, because I am not in my first week or even month of powershell. I am trying to get across if you even think you can learn from this book, there is a good chance you will. Only having read the first chapter so far, I have that much faith in the book. This book is also setup in such a way that I believe sharing my experiences in each chapter could be relevant and worth writing about. Granted most may not care, but as long as a few do then that works for me.

Also as a full disclaimer, I purchased this book during @concetrateddon ‘s week long special between this past Christmas and New Year. During this special I was able to get the book Powershell in a month of lunches, the accompanying DVD, and the Windows Powershell: Scripting and Toolmaking. Also because it was a special, they all came signed(be jealous). I say this because I may reference a video in this series of blog posts that came on my dvd, but you may have to acquire on the author’s website.

With all of that being out there, on to the first chapter…

This first chapter is pretty much the intro to the book, and why Don decided to write it. Which is great because it is always fun to know a bit of back story on the author.

It goes through the loose “requirements” of the book and exercises, which is Windows Server 2008 R2 promoted as its own and sole domain controller. For some I am sure this might be a steep requirement, Don acknowledges this as well and states that a majority of the chapters can be done on a Win 7 64-bit box, however a few of the chapters really are meant for the Server2008R2/AD Controller install.

Personally I have my own Server2008 R2 box as a sandbox which will work out great. It isn’t a Domain Controller, and I haven’t decided yet if I will make it one. I will probably decide on that once I get to the relevant chapters.  I do however have access to AD at work, so I believe I should be able to run the commands(probably “Get'”s only) there. Again though we will see.

This first chapter also went through a couple of steps in just personalizing the powershell console to your liking and what you should be aware of while personlizing it. In the video he talked briefly about customizing the Powershell ISE, which was cool for me, just because I have literally never even bothered to try and launch the ISE before.

Also please sound off and let me know if you like hearing/seeing/knowing about this, or if you think me doing this is just silly.


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