This past weekend I made the journey to Cleveland, OH (Westlake, actually) for SQL Saturday #241. I’ve attended two local SQL Saturdays in the past (helping organize/run one), but seeing the list of speakers and knowing a few of the local chapter members, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to visit.

Friday

I packed my bags and hit the road. It’s about a 300 mile trip so I gassed up, settled in with my backlog of podcasts and set the cruise control. The drive was almost zen-like. The sky was clear and the sun shining (almost painfully bright) and I don’t recall the last time I took a road trip solo. It was a very relaxing drive.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a Windows Update go bad - until this week.

I recently upgraded to Office 2013 and late Monday afternoon, decided to check in with Windows Update prior to our company’s normal monthly patching to see how bad the damage would be. Nearly 1 GB of updates, thanks to my fresh Office install. But there were also a couple optional updates, including a .NET Framework update. So I figured I may as well go ahead and do everything while I was at it. This way I could control the reboot instead of being forced into one in the middle of important tasks.

Recently, I’ve been getting very annoyed by the length of the default PowerShell prompt. Most of my work starts in my Documents folder, so with the default prompt, I’m working with C:\Users\username\Documents. But more often, it’s closer to C:\Users\username\Documents\_Projects\Project\Section\ and with some projects, even longer. Before you know it, you’re line-wrapping for anything more than running a cmdlet with no parameters.

Sure, it’s better than C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents (props to Microsoft for cleaning that up in post-XP releases), but sometimes it’s still not enough.

My first official entry for T-SQL Tuesday (my first was a guest post hosted by Kendal Van Dyke (blog|twitter), so I’m not really counting it) is brought to you by PowerShell, or PoSH. Ever since I discovered PoSH and really dove into learning it a couple years ago, my co-workers have gotten a bit annoyed by my insistence upon using it for everything. It is my favorite hammer, and around me I see nothing but acres and acres of nails.