Transcript
PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit Edition. Think of it as PowerShell after dark, the bar sessions, a behind the scenes look at the PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit after dark. Now, here's your host, Andrew Pla. Ziggy, Zack, Daboo, Fortress coming to you. Fortress, welcome to the PowerShell podcast. Hold on, hold on. Recut. All right, you intro it. Intro it, hit it off. Who are you? Let's go. Intro it. It's fresh cut. Boom, it starts. Go ahead. Welcome to the PowerShell podcast. My name is Josh Deering, also known as Fortress. Awesome. And what do you do? Who are you? Why are you here? Assistant system man for Bagley College of Engineering at Mississippi State University here to learn just some new techniques, new technologies around PowerShell and I'm hoping to take something back and improve some of our processes within the college. Oh, okay. First PowerShell Summit. So you haven't like published any modules, have you? I have published two modules. Go on. I've got a two-week module based off of Sean Larry's PowerShell Spectre console called Module Explorer. It's kind of geared towards beginners, but you know, anybody can use it. It's kind of fun. So basically just to glorify, get help. And then I've got my most recent release is RT Shell. Very few people will probably ever use this and that's okay. It's more for me, but it's, there's a ticketing software called Request Tracker. So it's just a way of interfacing with the API for Request Tracker using PowerShell. Well, there's so many things I want to talk to this guy about, but is this your first API module that you've written? Uh, technically no, but I'm going to say yes. When I was first dabbling, I worked on a module. I never published through anything like that. Just dealing with NASA's image, live images and going through that way. So I didn't publish that, but I kind of tinkered around and it was just some experience, but yeah, RT Shell was probably my first more robust one dealing with APIs. Any notable contributors to this project? I know they're open source, but. Not any that I can think of. Oh, I'm just kidding. Notable? No, no, Mr. Andrew Plot, I'm not sure if you met him, but yeah, he contributed to Module Explorer, yeah. Did I? Yeah, yeah. Was that me? Yeah, we actually did it on live stream together. So that was late at night where it was really challenging, but hey, it worked out in the end. It was fun. I don't even remember what I added. Something simple. It was the high grouped modules. Oh, that's right. You had all the ASCII modules and you were like, no, I can't see this. I'm not. Because you're exploring modules, right? Yeah. Maybe you have 30. That's cool. You scroll just a little bit. We have some history, man. What is, do you remember our origin story? Ooh, that's the time we met online over PowerShell. Oh, I'm trying to think back. I'm not really sure. I'm going to say it's probably something to do with the PDQ Discord. Do you remember? It had to do PDQ Discord. You probably started talking about PowerShell. Usually here's how it goes. Just going to give you some sauce. If you're listening this late into the podcast, shout out to you. You're a real one. The way it goes for me and maybe for other people, I see somebody putting themselves out there, sharing things, acting eager about PowerShell. I pretty much always reach out to them or, you know, just cool. Why would I not want to share my time with someone who will take advantage of it? That's what I'd like to do. So usually people who are eager and showing some interest, it's a lot more likely that you're going to get some support. So that's probably what it was. And you got like into it. You were into PowerShell. I'll say I didn't keep up the pace as much as I wanted early on. But, you know, I think Summit's been a great time to get reinvigorated and get excited about what's out there. And I'm hoping to keep that momentum going whenever I get back. Dude, I knew you when you were a wee one, you know. I'm older than you, buddy. I mean, in the PowerShell community, all right. Oh, Mr. One month older. It's so interesting how many people are my age now here. It's like, cool. It's like, whoa, a lot of people. Exactly me, just me. I got into IT so young, I was like not used to it. I was always, you saw my picture today. Like I was a baby for a while. So it's very cool to be like, hey, we know the same stuff. I don't have to explain certain jokes. It's awesome to have. Same taste, emo music, you know. Oh, I had a lot of embarrassing moments shown today. A lot of silly things. So I'm just like cringing and reeling from that, to be honest. Yeah, that's good. That's good though. You're opened up. That has been kind of the theme. We're on day two right now, but people are just open, honest. They'll tell you how it is. And they'll be unashamedly themselves. And that's what we love about it. It's a very nice community. Fortress. What role has PowerShell played in your career? I think it's helped a lot. You know, automation is kind of one of the big things that helps propel your career. I started out in, you know, computer repair and things like that. Showed my hands with just some batch scripts before PowerShell. Now, not before PowerShell existed, before I discovered PowerShell. And then started translating those to some PowerShell and, you know, automating some processes that had been manual. There's still a lot ahead of me, but I think that's helped when I'm trying to move up in positions. And a lot of it, I think, you know, to PowerShell. So it's been great for my career and there's so much more that it can do for me. And I'm eager to see how that goes. And it's been just, I love seeing PowerShell's journey with people. And I got to see it pretty close and just such an enjoyable process. I'm so happy for you. And I'm so glad that I got to, I mean, really, I got so many happy chemicals seeing what I sort of experienced too, of like PowerShell helping you get to a new place and discovering cool stuff and learning how to code. And I saw this stuff you're up to this week with his dashboard for decrypting some protocol. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a fun challenge. I'm excited. It's, you know, it's broken right now for me. I'm not doing so hot. Oh no. Well, listen, you did a dashboard. We celebrate the highs, we forget the lows around here. Tonight, at least. I mean, after dark, PowerShell podcast. What has surprised you about this week? Like, has everything just been sort of, oh, I expected the best. Andrew said such great things. Or is it like, some things are a little bit different? So, I knew from talking with people that it's a pretty social conference. We're in what, hour like 16 of the day of, okay, so we're into the next day now. And there's still so much going on and everybody is just so happy to see each other. I knew the community was good. I've interacted with a lot of these people online, but seeing them in person and seeing how much love and care they have for each other is a little surreal. It's been great. This community is, you just have to be a part of it. Everyone's welcome. Hey, pretty sweet. What's it been like meeting everybody from, because it's, for me, it's sweet. So we have the PDK Discord you were talking about earlier. Yeah. It's awesome. And a lot of people from the Discord are here. Yeah. That's been kind of awesome for me because we chat a lot on the Discord. We do. Some of our top users are out here, including you. What's it been like for you to sort of put names to faces for these people who, we don't always talk about PowerShell, you know, we'll joke around here and there, but what's it like for you to put names and faces to those people? It's been really fun. You know, like we've talked a lot and just getting to see, I guess, their humor in person, their personality. There's only so much that's conveyed through text and getting to experience that in person has been great. And I'm really glad I came and I'm really glad they came. So we're getting a nice little community here. It's awesome. Yep. Oh man, I see you doing your thing too. It's awesome when somebody has that little bit of success and I see them start to head forward and I'm watching you. I'm watching you. It's cool to see, man. It's awesome. I'm trying, I'm trying. It's just, dude, it's the best thing. I love it. That's what the community is all about. It's easy to geek out about PowerShell. It's easy to geek out about that here at PowerShell Summit. So what happened at dinner last night? I heard there was celebration, there was tears, there was fire at dinner. Like what happened? I don't know. Someone told the waitstaff that it was my birthday. Oh no. It was discreet though, right? Yeah, very discreet. Didn't know it was coming. Not even close. My feelings are kind of hurt. So I thought these people understood me and knew me. Sorry about that. I thought they knew me, but they get my birthday off by a few months and I got to eat some free ice cream, so that's nice. Yeah, it was amazing. What, it wasn't free? No, it was free. Oh, okay, okay. I was just saying, I'm not upset with the individual. Oh. Alleged individual. Oh, you know. Alleged individual. I don't know. It was interesting. I'm a prankster. I'm a subtle prankster and I usually do like, I don't want to hurt anybody, for sure. But if I see a subtle prank, I might be hitting it up with a party of 20 in a restaurant, you know. Welcome to Bellevue, my friends. It's been fun. So yeah, we got still what, two full days ahead of us and it's going to be interesting to see how that goes. How was dinner tonight? It was really good. Hitting up the seafood place down the road. We had another group of 20 or so. Got to meet some people. I got to meet Mike with Smart Deploy, right? Oh yeah, from PDQ, yeah. Yeah, got to talk with him a little bit about it. And then I got to talk with some other people but I hadn't had an opportunity. I've tried to sit down with different people each day for meals and I've been pretty successful with that and getting to know some of the others. I guess there are some familiar faces and that's always nice, but it's been good to get to know everybody. Agreed, man, agreed. What's one thing you want to walk away from this conference with? I think we're already getting it. It's just that push, that push to do more, that push to try more. You know, a lot of the speakers have gone through and talked about some of the processes and how some of it was another failure at first but how they moved from it. And it's really easy to be scared of failure so you never try. And sometimes I feel like I'm guilty of that. But seeing these people that are awesome, they know so much, they run into the same problems. So I think getting over the fear of failure, pushing through, trying new things and just improving. And also, you know, contributing to the community. Gilbert talked about Gilbert Sanchez, senior assistant man, or hey, it's Gilbert, talking about open source organization advantages and building a community. And I don't know, one of the things that when looking at PowerShell, that has been kind of a struggle for, I guess, investment on something. So some of these modules that people have made, they're amazing. And they were amazing five years ago, six years ago when they were written. And now there's like little tweaks but maybe the primary maintainer took a step back. And so I think it would be really interesting to see the community take over some of those modules and give them a fresh breath that, you know, and I think it would be a great opportunity for the community to contribute to an already existing amazing project. So I kind of want to help on that, you know, that sounds fun. What did surprise you? I told you I'm pretty involved in that and I was just about to make an announcement tomorrow. Oh, wow. Yeah, so I'm very happy to hear you say that. So that's good. Yeah, so we're going to get a little bit of a charge behind it because we need to get a little bit of momentum. So we'll probably announce something tomorrow or Thursday about, you know, getting some people who want to get interacted, connecting with some other maintainers and sort of, I think we're going to use the PowerShell org organization for a lot of those. It already does like a few other modules. Yeah. New version came out recently, right? Yeah, I think that'll be good. I mean, there's a strong community here. You don't have to do these things alone. You don't have to be a solo maintainer for a project. I mean, if you have people interested in using your modules, I'm sure that you're going to be able to find people that are interested in helping maintain it or helping contribute it. And hey, if you need to take a step back for some reason, that's fine. You know, we all have different struggles in life and sometimes we just need to take a step back and that's okay. So I think that would be a really good thing. Absolutely, man. Definitely, it's okay. There's sometimes life's working for us. We got the extra energy, extra cycles and we can go. There are times we step back and that is just the nature of life. Jefferson over said, there's like sometimes in your career, bad days, bad weeks, bad years, it happens. So having a community makes it a little bit easier to ride those waves. Exciting. I'm going to connect you with, maybe we'll do a group pod with Gilbert about open source. Yeah. And that's exciting. And it's great for your resume to have open source contributions. Not that we need that, but you know, just establishes trust really. It's like, oh, clearly they can write code. They've been done hundreds of pull requests that are publicly visible. And I think especially, you know, coming from a higher ed background, I think that is a space that can marry really well with the open source initiatives. So it'll be exciting to see. it will be exciting to see. Yeah. So, dude, I don't pick favorites. You're one of my favorite Yeah. So dude, I don't pick favorites. PDQ customers, man. You are. There's a lot of people who are here. You know, if I get to hang out with you in person, how could you not be, you know? Not to take anything away. We've played Rocket League together, okay? You know, we go back. We go back, okay? But, yeah, man, it's been awesome. I love it. I'm so glad we have such cool customers. I love our community that we have. I'm lucky that I get to hang out and grow together with people. And what's your long-term goal? Let's kick out five, ten years. What's Mr. Deering doing? What does Deering do? That's a great question. You know, this past year, I was promoted into a more system administration-focused role. I want to spend more time in that. I still have a good and healthy dose of help desk, and I enjoy it. I love working with people, you know? I work with quite a few students that they always are gracious and nice and appreciative, and they communicate those things, and that makes my day. And, you know, I would hate to lose that, but I also want to see myself grow. And, you know, infrastructure as code is becoming a big thing. Well, it has been a big thing, but, you know, transitioning to more maintainable design philosophies and architectures, and just more automation in general. No one likes to solve the same problem twice, so anything where I can just improve those processes and make life easier for myself and for everybody around me. So you've had some success with sort of your journey, putting yourself out there, with trying new things, with going from one place and each in another place and adding new habits to your life and things like that. What advice do you have for people out there that sort of want to replicate some of what they want to have what you're having, you know? I'll have what he's having. I'm struggling with imposter syndrome, so it feels weird to get a compliment like that, so I appreciate it. It's nice to hear. More of an observation, but yes, it is a compliment too. Just get out there. Get outside of your comfort zone. Meet new people. You're going to find a lot of people in the same situation as you, and when you start banding together with a group like that, you'll just elevate each other. And just don't be scared of failure, and just keep pushing on. Have you heard of the PowerShell Scanner releasing on PDK Connect? I'm quite familiar. I enrolled in early access for it, and so I got to test it, and I got to contribute some feedback, and I'm super excited about it. I think it'll be really good. It's been one of the main features I've been waiting for, and I'm so glad it's here. There's going to be a lot of great things that people can do with it. I'm already getting pings and seeing all the things that people are already doing, and that's what's really great. The community is coming together. No one wants to solve the same problem twice, and when we can share the work amongst the community, a lot of us are solving the same problems, so when we share, it makes everybody's life a lot easier. I've loved PowerShell Scanners. I had a hard time not linking it to people like you beforehand, whenever I started using it. When we first had it, I was like, I don't know, how about an alpha for internal? It's on that roadmap, man. It's pretty cool. Basically, you output an object, and it's stored alongside the device. You can create automations based on the output of scripts. It really can do anything, whatever. Event logs. What's your favorite use case? Where I'm at, our network team is separated. Sometimes, pulling that information is a little bit difficult. We communicate with them really well, but it's an extra layer that we have to contact them, and if we can provide information up front, it makes their job easier. It makes our job easier. I've got a PowerShell Scanner that does a packet capture, and it catches and sees what switch it is, so you get the switch, the port information. I can send that off to our network team, and it really helps diagnose some issues, and whenever we're communicating with them, it makes it easy. That was nice. The PDP team, I actually had some early feedback on that about the scan length to get those packet captures, and they were able to respond and adjust the timing on that, so it made it even better. It made it better for me, and it's going to make it better for every other customer, so that's really nice. Yeah. As a long-time consumer of technology, and PDP customer even, it's very interesting to see a team that's driven by feedback from the inside, because I really never thought any... Anytime any product ever would ask for feedback, I would never fill it out. I just assumed it would never go anywhere, but it's cool to not see that be the case. Also, oh, it's hard to be associated with a company that would do that, so I'm glad that we don't, and we're rocking it, so let's go. Joshua Deering, appreciate that. Am I over-hyped at thinking that Chromium extensions are kind of a good thing to know about? Chromium extensions? Yeah, so like one of the browser extensions you have? Yeah, because there's some insane ones that you can have. Yeah, wouldn't it be nice to have that easily possible using one of the scanners we have? Yeah, I don't know. I feel like that's a really good one. You know, when I release my one that has hearse that can, you know, move around yours, it's going to be nice to know who has it installed, you know? What are we talking about? Tell them what, the hearse, the what? They don't know. Do we talk about hearse in the PDP space? Do we let people know about hearse? This is an after dark session. It's an after dark. I guess so. I mean, hey, whatever. If you're this deep, honestly, they're friends. Literally, if you're this, if you're 23 minutes into this talk, which might be after another, you are a friend of the podcast, and you're probably on a similar wavelength. So don't be afraid to reach out. So yeah, hearse. I feel weird talking about it because I'm not even describe what hearse is. Hearse is a something. Hearse is an adorable, we'll use the word adorable. He's an adorable something. So I made a little Firefox extension where I have a nice little hearse that just comes and joins me on my web browsing sessions. And, you know, hey doodles, wear some shades sometimes. And, you know, it's kind of fun. Awesome. I heard a guy has a, some Tui he wants to show off. No, I don't. I don't have a, for the lightning doodles? I have a, yeah. It's called Module Explorer. I briefly mentioned it earlier. It's just a Tui on PowerShell Spectre console, which shows you your installed modules. You can flip through them, check out their, the examples, the detailed view, the parameters. It's just a fun way to navigate it. Nice. So yeah, it'll be interesting to, I guess lightning demos in front of everybody, right? Is that the play? So that'll be interesting to see. Hopefully get some good feedback. I hope so too. Ears crossed. Kudos to you for stepping up, man. That's your lead people. People are watching. Like there's people at all different stages. And no matter where you on your journey, someone is watching you, right? Someone is trying to see, oh, is it going to work out for him? Is he taking a chance? And is it going to work out? Well, hey, thanks for taking those chances and showing people that, hey, it will work out. You know, you're inspiring people. Whether or not you see it in overtime, it's only going to compound if you keep putting yourself out there. So be like Josh. Thanks, Josh. Great chatting with you. And final question. Who's better at Rocket with you or me? Be honest. Be honest. Don't, don't be nice. Don't be mean. Just be honest. I'm way better than you. Is it way better? I was going to say a little bit. Dude, it's way better than you. You're laughing. The way you're looking at me. Don't. Okay. No, Brock can wax the floor with both of us. Dude, I just miss sometimes, man. Sometimes. I got it. I got it. No, no, no, no. It's the intention that counts. It is the intention. You put yourself out there and out of position. And, you know, we respect that sometimes. The side look and the laugh. It wasn't even close. Oh, man, that, that hurts. You want to try again? Who's better at hopscotch? You or me? What? Hopscotch? I don't know. Winner by default. Younger knees, man. So I'll give it to you. I haven't, you know, hopscotch, um, nor cornhole, but you know what I have done? Had a good time at PowerShell Summit. Thank you all. This is the PowerShell Podcast. The Bar Sessions. Can I buy you a drink? Welcome back. Who am I joined with today on the Bar Sessions PowerShell Podcast? After dark? It is dark, but it's apparently really bright. They don't believe in dimming the lighting. That's okay. You see me. I see you. Who are you? I am Jeff. Where are you from? Ithaca, New York. Oh, that's a powerful place. Northern New York, right? It's a strong name. Upstate New York. Up, down, all around. Yeah. Up from New York City. How's your week been? Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. What are you up to? You, you go on a normal sessions, you went on-ramp. What do you want to do? Just normal sessions. Yeah. Yeah. Any that come to mind? Uh, a strange one that's sticking in my head is Adil's session on, uh, supply chain security and provenance. Really, really, really heady. Somewhat not applicable to me as a consumer of modules and blah, blah, blah, but still extremely interesting. And interestingly enough, my CTO actually just sent an email last week about exact that same, exactly the same thing. So it's like, wow. So learn from someone else's mistakes. Yeah. So it was, it was, it was, it was intense. You know, that's awesome. So that was pretty heady. Um, Snover's AI thing was like pretty heady. Yeah. Can I just say a weird aside, the two flights I took to get here, uh, a guy, uh, data dog evangelist was on my first flight. Oh wow. Had an amazing AI setup. Like I'm like using cloud code and I'm just like, okay, I've got to get on that. And then the second guy I sat next to on the flight to Seattle was, uh, AI engineer who's developing guidelines, guardrails for his company. So it's neat. And I'm like, okay, it's time for me. And then Snover's presentation, I'm like, it's time for me to get on board. Yeah, man. I've been going hard on the, on the cloud. Cloud has been very cool, man. Some fun stuff there. I love the connectors. My pro tip. Is it a pro tip? I'm sure somebody said this many times, but whenever you're doing things, if you can use an MCP connector to something like notion, use that as a database backend or whatever you're doing. Okay. Just an alternative to kind of have something you can interact with outside of AI, right? Like a Kanban board or whatever task. It's a database backend, right? With a nice little front end, very user friendly. Okay. I've been enjoying it anyways. What did you do last night? How was dinner? You know, I didn't go to the seafood. I went to a tacos. Oh, that's right. You were with my group and you went to the seafood tonight. Last night we went to that Thai. Okay. That was good. Was it good? It was good. Was it busy? Was it very big, huge group, huge group. It was really fun. And some, some really great conversation about I am tooling and, and how to do it right and how to do it wrong. Like, I mean, it was that guy, Steven was sitting across from me and like, yeah, exactly. I mean, I had a lot to say. It was really good stuff. No, he's very smart. It's been cool. I saw him his first year. I remember it's just love meeting people and getting to see them over the years, getting more and more comfortable. Year one, he was not doing much PowerShot whenever I first met him. And now he's like, what hasn't he done? He's coming up with full start to finish solutions for huge business problem. I mean, you remember the conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Can I also say first year in person? So I did do the summit, the pandemic summit that was global. Yep. That was cool. First, this is my first year. I was able to walk up to you on Sunday night and say, Hey, big fan, open arms, dude. So that was awesome. Like, like you are literally as friendly in person as you are on the podcast. So that was really kind of like settled all my nerves and like, calm down all my inner freakiness about dealing with people. So thank you. Wow. Thank you. That means a lot. That's I could go down that road. Let's quickly say, you know, as I started doing this more public stuff early on as part of my PowerShell journey, I realized, holy crap, it's scary. It's scary out there. Yeah. To be yourself and or to just put yourself out there. And what I found is to do publicly, consistently, you have to just be yourself all the time. Because if not, you'll burn out, you know, whatever. It just yeah. Too much energy. Right. You have to just be yourself all the time. And for me, that meant like years of therapy and just be like, really, you know, come in turn go shit. But unfortunately, I made enough money thanks to PowerShell that I was able to finally do that and get some time to like, develop these higher level skills that to me, those are the skills that earned me the most money in my career. Yeah, that PowerShell, but like, being able to conduct myself in a way that's true to myself and true to my interests at times, I was like, definitely a flawed person. But yeah, so anyways, I really appreciate that because I treat life like a little bit of an experiment. And it's when I get the little positive feedback that it's going right, because that it's going right because it doesn't always go right. Yeah, man, it is an experiment. It absolutely is and I appreciate you coming up. It's been really cool to meet the listeners. It's helpful for me to put like a face to a listener. If I get enough, I kind of feel like I know the audience. It's been so, I didn't realize I needed that so bad, but man, it's been so great. Yeah, that feedback, right? Oh, so great, so great. Feedback from non-anonymous sources, right? Yes, I like that. I can see them and I can see how impressive they are at PowerShell. I'm like, whoa, some people I kind of mentored from earlier on, which I might talk to you later, to see, you're showing me stuff that they're working on. I'm like, whoa, dude, I thought you were still in the, come on, you're like doing really, really impressive stuff, creating dashboards and all kinds of stuff. It's awesome to see, man. What is it? Obviously, two heads are better than one, but there's some other phrase about how a bunch of people, good, that's what we have here. We're better together. Yeah, better together. That's the Power Pump Depot? Maybe. Just part of the zeitgeist at this point. Jeff, man, so how'd you hear about Summit? I don't know, I've always known about it. Yeah, yeah. Like seriously, since probably the first one. Yeah, you've been using PowerShell for a long time. Yeah, not since one, but definitely since two. Yeah, yeah. And always wanted to go, finally was able to because of the pandemic was just kind of a crappy reason, but, and then it was able to finally go this year and it's like, I can't tell you, dream come true, fanboying all over the place. Like when I walked in and run to use outside and I'm just like, oh my God, you know, and being able to interact with Jeffrey Snover and Jason Helmick and Gilbert Sanchez, like, and, oh, and I don't even know his real name, Romero126. Oh, Juan. Okay, he's around, he's a Seattle native, but he's like helped me on Discord and be able to, I just pinged him on Discord tonight. I'm like, hey, are you actually around? He's like, yeah, I'm not going to the Summit, but I'll be around. And I'm like, dude, I would love to put a face to a name. And that's just so cool, so cool. And these people have helped me so much on Discord, right? Like, it's like, I owe them such a debt of gratitude, you know, like put me on the, like, you're wrong. And like, totally, not just saying that, but then saying, this is how we do it here. And that's been amazing. The perspective that you get from talking to other people who have already gone through what you're trying to do, it's, hey, it's in your business's best interest to prevent you from making bad technical decisions that are ill-informed because your employees are not connected to the best and the brightest, dare I say? Amen, amen. Because a lot of places, I mean, it's part of my journey, getting access to really top-tier tech professionals that I could learn from changed it. No, absolutely. Many workplaces do not have that. And they might think that they do, but they don't have the outside perspective. Like, your city might have a philatelical and you've accepted really bad practices. Yeah, exactly. And you need that, you need those fresh ideas and that fresh blood, right? Like, it's like, oh, you don't have to do it that way. There's this other way that's a lot easier and better. One example that comes to mind when it comes to having that outside perspective and support is getting users to put in tickets versus just drive-bys. If you're just accepting that things are awful, you don't have an outside friend, it's like, dude, just start to set boundaries and work on it. Start telling them the reasons why. Like, I've gone through it a bunch of times. It happened literally on Thursday of last week that a developer was in an IT Ops chat and said, hey, we're having issues, blah, blah, blah. And my immediate response is, please put in a ticket. Put all this, just copy and paste all the stuff you just did. Put in a ticket and we'll deal with it. Done. Yep. Yeah, tickets. So many issues in the world are just communication problems. One way or another, miscommunication, misinterpreting, whatever it is, including that kind of stuff. Like, there's a different way to communicate that. Like you did, set some boundaries and at least work towards it, right? Yeah, and it's nudging people, right? It's not like, I wasn't like, you're an idiot for not putting in a ticket, right? Like, I'm just like, hey, just put in a ticket and we'll be able to get your issue resolved. Yep, yep. And honestly, it serves the business best to have it operate like that. And it's your job to do that. It's your job. You have to do what's best for the business. So take care of that ticket queue and get your numbers. Up those numbers. You're already doing the work. I mean, come on, that's a free win. Yeah, absolutely. Just start plugging tickets and tell your boss, I've closed 33% more tickets this month, sir. Yeah, only because I've automated the ticket creation and automatic closing it. Yeah. Oh, I've never done that. I've never done that. I've never done that either. No, but I have. I have done like where I keep track of time. Whenever I first got into PowerShell, they're like, it would take like a 13. Yes. I would always just run up to 15 minutes every time. Right, you know, it might take a minute to run, but we're a little generous. Yeah, this is gonna take me eight days. Yeah, it's like how long would I click if I was having a bad day? And I'm automated at that speed. Okay, wow, it took you an hour to fill this website and click next? Yeah, it did, actually. I got distracted. Yeah, no, and honestly, that is the truth right there. Right, like I'm trying to do this. And if I've got a website that I've got to fill out and somebody pings me, I'm like, I'm not gonna get back to that for three hours. Yep. So yes, it did take me four hours to hit submit. Sorry, that's the nature of the business at this point. It really is, man. And if I had been able to automate it, it wouldn't have just come down. Absolutely. Yeah, I enjoy the times when I get a lot of work done when I'm not available on the internet. Like it's a lot easier when you don't have that distraction. Yeah, the world of distraction is what we live in, man. A lot of high urgency, oh, this is going on. You know, different people in your org might be putting pressure on you and it's hard to not get caught up in that speed and that, well, and it's, there's a dopamine hit from each, like, oh, hey, they're reaching out to me for whatever, like, and it feels good. And so you respond and then you're not doing the important stuff. Nope. You're doing the urgent stuff, not the important stuff. I love that. And I like how you talked about it feels good to be in that position, because I'm a big believer in that. I was talking about it earlier, like, you can be an average intelligence person and just learn over time and do amazing things, as I feel like so many people in this PowerShell community have proven. Joke there, most people think they're above average. Yeah, that is true. I don't think, I'm not thinking I'm above average. Oh, I don't, no. I mean, maybe, that'd be cool, but to do what I want to do, you don't have to be, right? You just need to put in effort and maybe you're a fast learner at this kind of thing. Maybe you're a slow learner. Doesn't really matter unless you can't pay your bills. Enjoy the journey and you'll get to a great place if you can maintain that consistency, which isn't always. And the other piece to that also is that even in the same knowledge domain, like, there have been times when, like, I'm working on some script or module and I'm banging my head against the wall, banging my head against the wall. And then two days later, I go back to that same problem. Like, oh, that's my problem. Right, like, so it's sometimes I'm stupid and sometimes I'm smart. Yep. Right, like, it's all part of it, right? Yep, I am so, occasionally I have good moments. Occasionally I share it. Yeah. A lot of times I have dumb moments and everyone does what an end user does. You could have done that too, probably not, but. Everybody's stupid sometimes. That is true. That's just the way it is, right? Yep. You miss something and you're just like, and then you look it back and the next day or somebody else points it out to you and like, ah, yeah, yeah, I missed that, sorry. Yep. Jeff, how was the Jeffrey Snover interview? That was awesome. For the PowerShell podcast, was it? What'd you think? Like, give me a little bit more feedback. So, one, there's at least three or four points here. One, just the fact that he's like, mingling with us mortals. Like, that is so amazing, right? Like, that is so amazing. Like, I just started talking up and asking the question and he's like, he responded, right? Like, which is part of the point of that thing, but still, it's like, how many realms in my life where somebody's like the originator of something that I'm working on and I'm able to like, interact with them directly like that. That's incredible. Two, the point that he made is like, nobody has paid a dollar ever for PowerShell and the impact it's had on like, all of our lives. Like, that's just incredible. Say, what else? You mentioned it up in another podcast about the handle count thing. Oh yeah. That's gonna be an inside joke, I think. You gotta know, you gotta know. We can't, I don't know what, it's in the past. You have to look it up. But yeah, it was just, and it was really neat, just. Actually, for me, tying back to your interview with Don Jones, right? The fact that Jeffrey Snover was a college dropout, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I felt like there was some pain there on his part, right, like there is some like, uh, in there. And how far he's come. And then part of the Don Jones interview, he mentioned how like, sysadmin as a whole is really a blue collar activity kind of thing. Like, that kind of mapped like, that, you know, it's about a bunch of people, smart people, just solving problems, but not necessarily with all the education that, you know, it's not a, it's still not a formalized environment, right? Like, it's still just, well, what do I need? You know, and Snover mentioned this, like, it's like in IT operations, it's like, you're like, okay, here's the stuff. Please make it work. And the downside is we do, right? And like, it's that mental attitude where it's like, okay, I, it's like, I don't have a choice to not make it work. So I'm just gonna make it work. And like, you know. I wanna share something that I think is important to me. This is selfish. I know this is PowerShell, but I wanna talk to you about it because I'm getting some wisdom from you. I think you've thought about some of this stuff before. And, you know, this is gonna be a hot day. Well, it's gonna sound bad, but there's a little more context to it. But I don't think Jeffrey Snover is necessarily nice. Not that he's mean. His impact on the world is for sure nice. His actions are nice. That's the result. But I think that while we want to ascribe that to him just being this amazing person, just built different, what I think is the truth is it's the way he sees the world. It's from the wisdom that he has that he conducts himself this way. Because doing that, it's obviously, he's in a fantastic place in so many ways. He has so much happiness from helping people like us with our PowerShell careers by inventing it. And, you know, he's retired now. He's Harvard fellow. Well, he's doing well. Had a good career, I'd say. Very high up there at Microsoft, you know. Had some fun and had a, made a really positive impact along the way. So it has served him incredibly well, right? And so, yeah, it's, I'm sure he's nice, right? But you don't have to be wired that way. You can be wired in a way that's informed by just like, hey, conducting yourself, this is probably the best way. And people who are super successful, some are gonna be like a little bit smart. Most just have a system that brought them there. They have some kind of way to keep doing the thing. It brings them fun. It's the hobby they choose. It's things like that. It's not an overnight thing. To get where he's gotten, it has taken a long time, right? And it's all, the never giving up. He had all these deep experiences in different verticals. And not just never giving up, the sacrifices he made. Yeah. He literally took a demotion. Yeah. And was, in his words, a pariah at Microsoft when he was doing the PowerShell stuff. In my words, he stood on business. Yeah. He said, all right. I mean, that's really impressive to believe in your mission that much, to follow it. I really, it's cool that we get to see that and feel that and learn from that. Because in our lives, in different ways, that may present itself. Yeah. And we have a choice to make and we've seen it made one way and it seems to work out pretty well. So, going back to your, it may not be nice. Yeah, yeah. Let's hear it. That might be true. I'm sure he is, by the way. I'm just saying, for argument's sake. I would say, though, he's probably gotten to a point where he's just direct. And there is a sense of, and especially some of the things he said about being part of that executive team at Microsoft. Yep. Like, that directness is being nice. Even if it, right? Like, it's- Thank you. Right? Like, it's not nice in the moment, but it's nice in the reality. It is nice in the moment if everyone is aware that your identity as a person is not being attacked. And what we're trying to do is come to the conclusion. We're not trying to hate people or assuming good intent, that kind of thing. We're working together. But, yeah, if you don't, it could be a little bit challenging. Yes. And he even brought up a little bit of a thing about how he got there. And I think he says something about like, I interpret it as, and this is not what he said, but like that strong opinions weakly held. Yes, absolutely. That's a side of intelligence, yep. Yeah, yeah. Being able to change your mind when the data changes. Being able to change your mind when the data changes. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's, I've talked about, well, this is my take. I'm not saying I'm on the same wavelength, but it's just really reaffirming for me to hear this kind of stuff. Because I've long thought that like, I am paid for my perspective. I told this people on the pod, you're paid for your perspective. Yep. Your perspective is not always gonna be right. Yep. But if you see something that's bass-ackwards, it's your job to say something. Yes. It's not your job to say the person who did it's an idiot. You can ask it as a question. There's ways to phrase this with AI. You can get some assistance to push on it. I mean, seriously. Yeah, oh, absolutely. I say this in a way that's not making it aggressive. Yeah. And honestly, it's a cultural thing, too. Some different cultures, it'll be a little bit more normalized. But if you develop relationships with people, invest early and often. Develop that trust. And there's that. And the rapport, and yeah. You can have that. You can have that. Not everyone's ready. You gotta kind of be self-aware and stuff like that. But I think at the executive level, yeah. Because I've seen a lot of times in different places, there's a lot of people who won't say anything. Yes. There's confrontation. That does nobody a service. It does everyone a disservice because it prevents you from actually connecting in a certain way. Like, there's this weird kind of dishonesty. And it's just, it's just icky. It's a bad pattern. To your point, we're being paid for our perspective. It's your job to the business. Yeah, and I, you know, one of the, a couple jobs ago, I was asked by my boss to join a group that was evaluating a new product. And the thing he said to me was, I need somebody who's gonna be there who's willing to talk. Yeah. Right, like, I'm like, oh. Because there was already somebody from my team there. But he's like, yeah, you gotta be able to like, say stupid stuff. Be wrong and be confident. And being wrong is not being bad or, it's not an immoral thing. It's just like, oh, I didn't realize that piece. Okay, new information. Yep, better perspective, better decision. More different perspectives you involve, you usually have a more well-informed decision, more data, better decision making. I think it's definitely a sign of intelligence to be willing to be flexible in that way. Yeah, absolutely. I know I talked about it on a pod a while ago, but it's something that was in my mind for quite a while. They're like, people that I wanna hang out with on a level, they don't always think they're right. Like, you know, there's some people that are like just telling you how it is for everything. They are so committed to their point of view. The truth is, human thing, you will always be wrong about something that you do not see coming. It's just whether you think it's now, whether you think it's later. You're also gonna click on a fishing link here and there. Eventually, right? I've never done that. You haven't, but you know, give it enough time, give it enough, you know, maybe you're not targeted yet. Maybe, oh, they're listening. But it could be anybody. So mistakes happen, recuperate and keep pushing. Yeah, absolutely. It was kind of vibes. That was kind of sick, man. That was great. It was awesome. Great to catch up with you this week. For the first time. For the first time. First time. We'll catch up with you. I guess you, I mean, I don't know. It's weird, because like you hear me at, I sort of heard you and I feel like I've written it in. You know, maybe we're talking back and forth just a little bit and sort of, right? It's kind of the weird thing about this. Well, yeah. And going back to like, one of the things I love about this particular conference, this is my tribe. These people are all me, right? We're problem solvers. We love the tool. It's afforded us, you know, even like I said during the interview, like I started off like just managing Windows and then just managing VMware. And now I'm like doing API requests and pulling data from multiple sources and writing the reports and doing the things. And it's like, and that's what everybody here is doing, which is awesome. I wanted to add one thing to what I said earlier. So I'm more like, sign of intelligence to push back. All right. Sign of intelligence to be flexible in your perspective. Okay. If you have a place of influence where if you say something and people might not say anything or there's that kind of dynamic where there's not trust established, guess what you can do? You can proactively ask it. You can proactively say, is there anything I might not, you can give them so many outs to give you feedback. And guess what? You also, when other people have a thing, you can show them by doing it, how to probe at something in a respectful way that would work for others. And then you do it enough times, like, okay, you can actually change culture. You just gotta try things a little bit, get out there. And if you're in a position, I think of leadership, I think it's your responsibility also to pull those opinions out of the people who are not comfortable talking. Yep, exactly. Like, because those people often are, they're quiet because they're thinking. Like some people think internally and some people think out loud. And I tend to think internally, but I know, and so for me, it's like, I'm quiet while meetings are happening. And then at the end of the meeting, after everybody's wrapped up, I'm like, okay, this is what we should do. And so I've tried to do that in my arena where it's like, where people are quiet, I'm like, okay, before the meeting wraps up, like, hey, what are your thoughts on this? Because those are the people who are thinking the deep thoughts and can bring some point of view that nobody else at the table because they're too busy talking can bring. Yeah, I was talking to Roy in the car about it, so important to have that honesty. Like, to me, I have a hard time if people are close to me and they're not honest. You know, if they see something, they don't say it to be whatever kind of way. Oh, by the way, you got this thing on your. Do I actually? No. Shoot, dude, I'm known for that. My wife's watching. I'm just giving you some honesty. I don't know. No, but I mean, that's the kind of thing, like you want to have, I can't trust someone if they won't do that, right? And I want to be able to have trusting relationships. Absolutely. I could make a mistake just like anybody else would. And I would hope that. Have, oh, boy, okay. Whoop-dee! Can you get a beat? No, I've never made any critical errors, but. I've never brought down an entire data center. Oh, no. Oh, man. Well, Jeff, I hope we keep in touch. Are we on LinkedIn? We're buddies? Yeah, we are now. Yeah, we are now. And on Discord. Awesome. Hey, if anybody else out there, I guess you could follow me, too, on LinkedIn. That's at andrewplawtech. Actually, I'm on all socials. Wow, that's wild, including the website andrewplaw.tech. Are you on X? I'm on everywhere, buddy. Wow, sick. You can find me. Not TikTok yet. My wife's telling me. I'll get back on in a bit. Also, I'll just say, yeah, if anybody out there's into TikTok videos or making short form, you know what, cut this. I'm not asking for a TikTok or anything. Thanks, Jeff. Thank you. That's awesome. Thanks for listening to the PowerShell Podcast, PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit Edition, PowerShell After Dark. The PowerShell Podcast is a production of PDQ.com.
