What I did for the week ending 2018/05/26

I am slowly going through all of the PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2018 talks that I find interesting.

I took advantage of the following learning opportunities:

• Whip Your Scripts into Shape: Optimizing PowerShell for Speed by Joshua King on YouTube
• Application Provisioning with DSC and Octopus Deploy by Josh Duffney on YouTube
• PlatyPS: PowerShell Help meets Markdown by Sergei Vorobev on YouTube
• Defending against PowerShell Attacks-In theory and in practice by Lee Holmes on YouTube

Certified, as opposed to merely Certifiable

I passed the 70-767 Implementing a Data Warehouse exam this week.

I first read Kimball's Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit and The Data Warehouse Toolkit over fifteen years ago, so it's about time. I still have those books, although many other books have hit the recycling bin. A lot of the underlying technology has changed in the data warehousing area, but a grounding the basics of facts and dimensions is still important.

I passed the exams for Querying Microsoft Server 2012/2014 and Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2012/2014 Databases, a while back. My Microsoft Learning dashboard points tout that this third success qualifies me as a "Microsoft Certified Professional". The last time I was Microsoft-certified in anything was in 1998, when I had a certification in Windows 98 desktop support, or some such thing. I don't think I ever did anything with that.

Co-incidentally, I used the last of my last business cards while attending a talk on Machine Learning at Jacquette Consulting on Wednesday. It must be time for new cards.

What I did for the week ending 2018/05/19

Here are the learning opportunities that I took advantage of last week:

• The Build Release Pipeline Model for Mere Mortals by Ryan Coates on YouTube
• PowerShell Team: Inventory Your Server Environment and Detect Change at Scale by Jenny Hunter on YouTube

What I did for the week ending 2018/05/12

Here are the learning opportunities that I took advantage of last week.

Due to my interest in and use of DbaChecks, I need to get a better handle on PowerBI:

• Introduction to Power BI Desktop with Dustin Ryan on YouTube

PowerBI seems to be the only reasonable way to visualize the results of the tens of thousands of tests I'm running.

I could not resist watching a several things from the PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2018. The following are all from the Global Summit:

• Beyond Syntax: Pester Testing with Dave Wyatt on YouTube
• Keynote: State of the Community with Don Jones on YouTube
• PowerShell 2018: State of the Art with Jeffrey Snover on YouTube
• A Historical Architectural Tour of PowerShell with Bruce Payette on YouTube
• Become a PowerShell Debugging Ninja with Kirk Munro on YouTube

I don't usually listen to things like keynotes, but I find that Don Jones and Jeff Snover always have something valuable to share.

I am surprised with the renaming of PowerShell Core to PowerShell. I am sure that won't be confusing to casual scripters. /s

If you'd like to keep tabs on what I am watching more closely, you can head over to the official Ashdar Partners twitter feed. I am not big on chitchat. It's mainly YouTube sharing what I watch and (what I hope are mostly) quality retweets.

What I did for the week ending 2018/05/05

I took advantage of these learning opportunities:

• Building Your T-SQL Tool Kit: Window Function Fundamentals with Christina E. Leo on YouTube
• SQL Server Query Plan Analysis: The 5 Culprits That Cause 95% of Your Performance Headaches with Adam Machanic on YouTube
•  Beyond Pester 101: Applying testing principles to PowerShell by Glenn Sarti on YouTube.

The PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit has released their 2018 videos (62 in all!) and all I want to do is watch PowerShell videos all day. Life intervenes, however...