https://someshinyobject.com/ Recent content on Some Shiny Object Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us &copy; 2017 | Powered by <a href="http://gohugo.io">Hugo</a> and lots of motivation. Sat, 11 Aug 2018 21:00:00 +0900 https://someshinyobject.com/posts/talk-to-a-duck/ Sat, 11 Aug 2018 21:00:00 +0900 https://someshinyobject.com/posts/talk-to-a-duck/ Rubber ducks have been classically used to assist programmers debug code they are stuck on. Whether it be tackling a new algorithm, determining the best way to route data in an application, or wrestling with a huge bug that has come up in code, it often helps to discuss the issues out loud, with someone to provide feedback and direction. In the absence of someone like that, a rubber duck or any inanimate object can be used. https://someshinyobject.com/posts/windows-10-uac-prompt-yes-button-missing/ Wed, 27 Dec 2017 17:07:31 +0900 https://someshinyobject.com/posts/windows-10-uac-prompt-yes-button-missing/ I just ran into a really frustrating issue with the Windows 10 UAC prompt. I just bought a new MSI laptop since it was time to upgrade. In my quest to get it set up, I added it to the domain that I use at home. After thinking for a bit, I decided that I didn&rsquo;t want this machine on the domain, so I removed it. I received the usual prompt of &ldquo;Are you sure? https://someshinyobject.com/posts/powershells-new-webserviceproxy-with-client-certificates/ Sun, 17 Sep 2017 19:16:16 +0900 https://someshinyobject.com/posts/powershells-new-webserviceproxy-with-client-certificates/ I was doing some work in PowerShell a couple of months ago and found myself needing to use Web Services (SOAP Calls) of an enterprise system set in place. I had planned on using PowerShell&rsquo;s New-WebServiceProxy CmdLet but found myself running into issues due to the server requiring client certificates for authentication. I had resolved to write the XML programmatically and use the Invoke-WebRequest CmdLet but as the script grew this became problematic for scaling. https://someshinyobject.com/posts/converting-from-drupal-to-hugo/ Sat, 01 Jul 2017 11:03:16 +0900 https://someshinyobject.com/posts/converting-from-drupal-to-hugo/ I intend for this article to be a somewhat thorough overview. It won&rsquo;t be short but I&rsquo;ll also cut fluff. Keep the following things in mind: If you&rsquo;re looking for a simple script to solve your issue, this isn&rsquo;t the article that will give it to you. This is intended for some very basic content pulled from Drupal. It doesn&rsquo;t cover every possible aspect. It&rsquo;s written by a primarily Windows user. https://someshinyobject.com/privpolicy/ Mon, 19 Jun 2017 18:37:54 +0900 https://someshinyobject.com/privpolicy/ This Privacy Policy governs the manner in which SomeShinyObject.com collects, uses, maintains and discloses information collected from users (each, a &quot;User&quot;) of the http://www.SomeShinyObject.com website (&quot;Site&quot;). This privacy policy applies to the Site and all products and services offered by SomeShinyObject.com. Personal identification information We may collect personal identification information from Users in a variety of ways, including, but not limited to, when Users visit our site, register on the site, subscribe to the newsletter, respond to a survey, and in connection with other activities, services, features or resources we make available on our Site. https://someshinyobject.com/about/ Mon, 19 Jun 2017 18:37:42 +0900 https://someshinyobject.com/about/ For some reason people decide that once they meet someone named Christopher, they can simply start calling them &ldquo;Chris&rdquo;. That is not the case; or at least in my case that&rsquo;s not the case. The name Chris, as I learned often in my school days, easily attracts unwanted nicknames such as &ldquo;Chrissy&rdquo;, or &ldquo;Christina&rdquo;, or, my personal favorite, &ldquo;Chrissy-Poo-Poo&rdquo;. Rather than reliving that, I would just rather correct people when first introducing myself. https://someshinyobject.com/posts/setup-is-unable-to-proceed-due-to-the-following-errors-this-product-requires-microsoft-net/ Sun, 13 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://someshinyobject.com/posts/setup-is-unable-to-proceed-due-to-the-following-errors-this-product-requires-microsoft-net/ I again bring to you another error that may occur during the deployment of SharePoint 2013. I was configuring a farm recently with SharePoint 2013 SP1 on a farm of Server 2012 R2 servers that had been updated to the latest available patches via the onsite Windows Update server. The servers did not have internet access and thus required the prerequisites to be downloaded beforehand. After gathering the prerequisites and having a (mostly) successful prerequisite install run, I was ready to install the SharePoint bits. https://someshinyobject.com/posts/quit-copying-and-pasting-your-scripts/ Sat, 13 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://someshinyobject.com/posts/quit-copying-and-pasting-your-scripts/ And other PowerShell no-nos in my book Though the majority of my time is spent writing scripts for various automation purposes, I am also frequently asked to review scripts. I harp on many things when returning my assessments but one of the biggest factors I tend to dwell on is reuse. As I review, one thing I notice is the method people choose to write their code. I begin to notice patterns of the people I have reviewed previously. https://someshinyobject.com/posts/hung-up-on-hungarian-naming/ Sat, 16 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://someshinyobject.com/posts/hung-up-on-hungarian-naming/ And other PowerShell no-nos in my book Yuck! That&rsquo;s what I have to say about hungarian variable naming otherwise known as hungarian notation. I will briefly explain what it is without going to far &ldquo;down the rabbit hole&rdquo; (consult the linked WikiPedia article). Hungarian notation is when a developer creates a new variable in any scope, they reference the type the variable will be inside the variable name. For example, say we are going to declare a string variable that will hold someone&rsquo;s first name. https://someshinyobject.com/posts/dont-use-powershell-one-liners-in-some-cases/ Sat, 14 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://someshinyobject.com/posts/dont-use-powershell-one-liners-in-some-cases/ And other PowerShell no-nos in my book &ldquo;They&rdquo; say that our biggest critic is ourselves and this applies to all crafts that we partake in; to include scripting, programming, and administering technology. I am typically highly critical of my own work and I scrutinize till I believe it is perfect (more so when I know others will read it). I also carry over that intense scrutiny when I critique other&rsquo;s work. https://someshinyobject.com/posts/resize-an-image-in-windows-881-with-powershell/ Thu, 08 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://someshinyobject.com/posts/resize-an-image-in-windows-881-with-powershell/ Clarification: This works with any deployment of Windows that has PowerShell (3.0 and above). A couple of days ago I had an image that was too big for the context I wanted to use it in. I needed to shrink it down to about 50% of its size. Typically I have access to Windows Picture Manager but unfortunately it was removed from the Office 2013 suite. The options I received online were either use Paint, download a Windows App from the Windows Store, or download a third-party tool on the Internet. https://someshinyobject.com/posts/server-2012-r2-and-sharepoint-2013-the-tool-was-unable-to-install-application-server-role-web/ Wed, 03 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://someshinyobject.com/posts/server-2012-r2-and-sharepoint-2013-the-tool-was-unable-to-install-application-server-role-web/ Seriously&hellip;WTF. I spent two days trying to figure out this issue and finally I went digging into %WINDIR% to find my answer. I was trying to run the Prerequisite Installer for SharePoint 2013 on Server 2012 R2 but I kept getting the error in the title line The tool was unable to install Application Server Role, Web Server (IIS) Role. google_ad_client = "ca-pub-6778756869505323"; google_ad_slot = "2765338695"; google_ad_width = 300; google_ad_height = 250; After beating my head against the wall for about 2 days straight, I finally read the log file and the answer was staring at me the entire time. https://someshinyobject.com/posts/finding-the-hyper-v-vm-configuration-file/ Mon, 04 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://someshinyobject.com/posts/finding-the-hyper-v-vm-configuration-file/ Today I found that in my haste to set up my Hyper-V virtual machines, I didn&rsquo;t properly account for the XML files it creates to use as configuration files for the VMs. I had haphazardly chosen random places accidentally, not realizing the full extent of what I was doing. Chalk it up to inexperience. I went searching for ways to find my haphazardly placed VM config files. I wasn&rsquo;t getting to far so I figured I&rsquo;d open up PowerShell and see what I could do with the Get-VM CmdLet provided in the Hyper-V module. https://someshinyobject.com/posts/faithful-in-the-little-things/ Wed, 28 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000 https://someshinyobject.com/posts/faithful-in-the-little-things/ Apologies Apologies about not writing content for your blog are cliché. Mostly because no one reads this except for maybe some stalker I have in New Zealand (arbitrary selection). So screw the apologies, I ain&rsquo;t doin&rsquo; &lsquo;em. Next! I will however provide an excuse, a valid one I think, for not posting as consistently as I said I was. There is quite a shift going on in both my personal and professional life right now. https://someshinyobject.com/posts/supposedly-personal/ Sun, 11 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000 https://someshinyobject.com/posts/supposedly-personal/ Preface I have a text tattoo on my right rib cage that says &ldquo;No Regrets&rdquo;. While I have held true to this for the most part, there is one aspect of my life that I do regret. I was going to write about something else for the final post of this week, but I will put that off to discuss something that I am quite passionate about. This will be relatively short for two reasons. https://someshinyobject.com/posts/analogy-time-client-side-vs-server-side/ Thu, 08 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000 https://someshinyobject.com/posts/analogy-time-client-side-vs-server-side/ The Injustice Most technical books do an injustice to beginning developers by not elaborating on certain aspects of making scalable, server-side applications. One of the biggest injustices is the graph of client-side verses server-side processing. While desktop applications may interact with a server somewhere, this is more common when it comes to web applications over HTTP. We&rsquo;ve all seen a diagram that looks about like the following: If I received a dollar for every time I have seen one of these diagrams being presented in an article or book about programming, I&rsquo;d be a rich man. https://someshinyobject.com/posts/fahrenheit-451-status-cancelled/ Tue, 06 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000 https://someshinyobject.com/posts/fahrenheit-451-status-cancelled/ Preface Fahrenheit 451 is a book authored back in 1953 about modern lifestyle and the constant craving for entertainment. The gist is that books were considered dangerous and that new forms of immediate entertainment (large TVs) were better suited to keep control of the population by making them ignorant. The word &ldquo;firemen&rdquo; takes on a different meaning in that instead of fighting fires, calls come in to fire stations for houses reported to have books in them. https://someshinyobject.com/posts/big-arguments/ Sat, 03 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000 https://someshinyobject.com/posts/big-arguments/ I don&rsquo;t like fights But we&rsquo;re not going to discuss fights today. We are going to discuss arguments, and more specifically, JavaScript function arguments. Now we all know that functions CAN take arguments (and we also know that they don&rsquo;t necessarily need to). The cool thing about JavaScript functions is that while they are functions, they are also objects. This is a very significant misunderstanding of the language. In fact, besides functions, everything else that has a type in JavaScript is an object. https://someshinyobject.com/posts/explaining-the-header/ Wed, 31 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000 https://someshinyobject.com/posts/explaining-the-header/ Code Just in case the header changes and for historical reasons, the code in question is this: var adjectives = ["shiny", "outstanding", "marvelous", "extraordinary"]; var some = function (str) { for (var i = 0; i The programming language used in my header picture or the above code block is JavaScript. JavaScript is by far my favorite and most proficient language. I have been using it since around 2002. JavaScript has a pretty long (and interesting) history in terms of its perception in the development community. https://someshinyobject.com/posts/the-name/ Wed, 31 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000 https://someshinyobject.com/posts/the-name/ Preface I&rsquo;ve been asked before why I named my site SomeShinyObject.com. I always thought it was well understood but hopefully this will clear it up. Personally Choosing a name for my site wasn&rsquo;t too hard. It was done in 2010 when I began to redevelop an interest in programming and web development. It seemed that every time I wanted to get started on a project, I would always lose focus and start pursuing something else.