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A number of mid-level network monitoring products, like What’s Up Gold & Intellipool for instance, have recently implemented distributed monitoring features. Mid-level network monitoring products are now implementing distributed monitoring so it is affordable by a lot more companies.

Single Poller Monitoring

With regular network monitoring you have a single poller measuring network and server performance from a single location on your network.

Looks like I’m not the only one to have problems with friends and family wanting help with their computers. I’ve talked about this before and, whilst my own problem has been much reduced, plainly a lot of people in IT have problems associated with people expecting unreasonable amounts of help with their home electrical equipment.

In many ways the problem isn’t close friends and family, it’s when friends and family start farming you out to their friends and acquaintances.

Whilst Google Code is a very good open source repository service, it does have a few wrinkles. Take the image below:

Unless I’ve been missing something these last few years, there are only 24 hours in a day!

The chances are that the vast majority of the people reading this post are professional IT people in some capacity or another.

As professionals we are prone to burn out unless we take specific precautions to prevent it. Bashing your head against the IT firewall everyday can leave you feeling a bit empty and burnt out.

From my own perspective I have certainly been burnt out on this blog for at least a couple of months. I’ve had big problems coming up with topics to talk about, a sure sign of blogger burnout.

Excellent post on the Pushing Pixels blog about surviving a hobby open source project. Well worth a read if you are involved in a single person open source project.

One of the interesting things about Lisp is the ability to use macros to effectively create your own language. Instead of using Lisp to solve your problem, write a language in which your problem can be solved and then solve it using your own mini-language.

When I heard of the new features in Powershell v2, the one that stood out for me was the ease with which you can create cmdlets using the Powershell scripting language rather than being forced to use C# or VB.NET.

So that’s where I’ve been going wrong all of these years… if only I’d known this earlier I’d currently be sunning myself on a beach in the Bahamas.

I am currently in the process of broadening my knowledge of Windows Powershell and I thought I’d post some of the excellent resources I’ve found. Many are available for free online, some you’ll have to shell out money for. The book, Windows Powershell in Action, is well worth buying if you want to gain an understanding of how Powershell works.

Tutorials

• PowerShell Pro Tutorial
• Arstechnica Tutorial – created prior to the rename to Powershell but still worth your time
• The DFO Show – introducing Windows PowerShell [video]
• Computer Performance Powershell Tutorial

Community

• powershellcommunity.org – powershell oriented blogs, forums & cmdlet directory

Books

• Windows Powershell in Action – the book from one of the founders of the Windows Powershell team

Blogs

• PowerShell team blog – the blog by the people who are writing Powershell
• The Powershell Guy
• Get-Powershell blog
• Dmitry’s PowerBlog – Dmitry Sotnikov’s view on PowerShell, PowerGUI and much else