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Module Monday January 2, 2023

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Happy New Year! Welcome to the first Module Monday of 2023. This is also the first official Module Monday posted on here. I’ve put most of last years posts on there for easier searching. I’ll be adding other content and longer content on here, so be sure to keep checking back. I’m still updating the site, but wanted to get the blog up so I can help more people sooner. It’s not that helpful if I just store it for myself, right?

With that said, our first module for Monday Monday is ImagePlayground by Przemyslaw Klys who I have featured here before. This is a cool module where it can help you can create and read QR Codes, read/remove EXIF data, add watermarks, create/read barcodes, and so much more.

I’m so glad I found this module so soon, and can’t wait to play with it more. I see many cases that this module will be useful. A few ideas are for formatting images for documentation and/or blog posts so they are all the same, adding watermarks to each, and converting a bunch of images files to fit certain criteria depending on the site I need to upload to.

How do you see using it?

PowerShell Gallery:
ImagePlayground/0.0.4

GitHub:
ImagePlayground

Read-Only Friday December 30, 2022

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Last Read-Only Friday of the year! I’m hoping you have enjoyed these, One Liner Wednesday, and Module Monday this year. I’ve enjoyed creating them and hearing how helpful they have been for you this year. Don’t worry they will be coming back for 2023. I may be making some changes a bit, but only for the better. Are there any topics, concepts, and/or modules you’d like me to cover in 2023? I’ve already started a list, but would love your input on things you’d like to see, as I know it would help others as well.

And for today’s Read-Only Friday?? If you don’t have any deadlines you need to get done by today… just relax. Look over some documentation, check on all your systems, ensure everything is working. If everything is… take screen shots and take photos where necessary so you have a last known working configuration of each. These can save you hours of time if someone bumps a wire by accident or if a vendor moves something they shouldn’t have, you can match up to these photos/screenshots/configs and see what has changed. Other than that, enjoy your day and have a great and safe weekend!

One-Liner Wednesday December 28, 2022

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Today’s one-liner Wednesday will be great for system admins that need to see when and which updates were installed on a single server or multiple servers. It’s a quick and dirty way to do it, and I’m going to look around and see if there is a one with better formatting, but this gets the job done for now.

If you only need updates on one computer for the month of September 2022, this is all you need to do.

Export-InstalledPatchTOPDF -ComputerName localhost -month 9 -Year 2022

If you need multiple computers and want for a whole year, you would write this.

Export-InstalledPatchTOPDF -ComputerName localhost, server01, server02, server03 -Year 2022

And that’s it. As mentioned the output formatting could be a little better, but the functionality is great, and will reach out to him to see if he will be fixing it. If not, I’ll definitely be looking for another option.

PowerShell Gallery:
ExportInstalledPatchToPDFUpdated

Blog:
Prakash78

One-Liner Wednesday December 21, 2022

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It’s Wednesday, so you know what that means? A new one liner that I’m hoping is useful for you as it has been useful for me. I’ve talked about date and time before, but that was for selecting dates. What about if you wanted to figure out how many days till the end of the year, or how many seconds from current time to 3 months and 5 days from now is? Or when the last time a file was modified?

New-TimeSpan is your answer. Want to know how many days and seconds it is till the end of the year?

New-Timespan -end 12/31/2022

You can use the -Start parameter but isn’t needed unless you want to use a different start date.

What about if you only need the days because you will be putting it into a variable to use later on?

New-TimeSpan -end 12/31/2022 | select days

The final one I’ll leave you with is:

Get-ChildItem $PSHOME\onelinerwednesday.ps1 | New-TimeSpan

This will tell you the last time the file was updated. This can be great if you have scheduled tasks that run or if you need to find files that were edited in the last 3 hours or 3 years. This can also be used on any command that uses the -LastWriteTime property.

Let me know if you have used this before or what you intend to try it out on.

Module Monday December 19, 2022

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Today’s Module Monday may be targeted towards a certain vendor, but I know there are comparable modules out there for other vendors. I’ll admit I haven’t used this one, but it looks like a great module to use and if you find any issues to let the creator know on their GitHub. Always make sure to open issues on GitHub, no matter how small. The creator probably doesn’t even know there is an issue and will be thankful for you bringing it up and even more if you can tell them how to fix it.

With all that said, I guess you want to know the module? The module is LSUClient. What it does is it allows you automate driver, BIOS/UEFI, firmware and utility software updates for Lenovo computers. Best part is it can be done silently and unattended to remote computers with only the files they need. If you have a bunch of non internet computers, you can save them to a repository on your network that they can reach or even USB drive.

Think the next time you have to update drivers how much easier it will be to grab and push them. You can even run this in SCCM, MDT, PDQ, or any other remote deployment software. Let PowerShell do the heavy lifting of these kind of tasks to give you more time in the day to work on more important projects.

PowerShell Gallery:
LSUClient/1.5.0

GitHub:
LSUClient

Read-Only Friday December 16, 2022

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Today’s Read-Only Friday is a little different, but feel it’s a very important topic to talk about. Do you have co-worker, vendor, or client that you really appreciate? Shoot, not even business wise, what about a family member, friend, or maybe a retail employee that always goes the extra mile? Let them know. I know you may feel that it won’t do anything or feel awkward letting them know, but you don’t know how much that person could need to hear it. Doesn’t matter if they seem like the happiest person in the world and have the best life, let them know you appreciate them or how they have positively impacted your life. Those few words could make there day or even more. Especially this time of year when times can be a lot tougher with the holidays.

That’s all I ask, let at least one person today know that you appreciate them.