To PowerShell or not to PowerShell

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For the most part, I’ve found it very hard to care about PowerShell. But as time goes on, I mostly look at it with the thought, “Wish I had more use for that”.

Things that I do that require some scripting, and that run on more than unix systems, usually resort to creating .cmd or .bat files to handle the Windows systems. There’s mostly two reasons for that: execution policies and portability.

I don’t really like scripting cmd.exe. As an interactive shell, it’s barely livable but gets the job done. The focus on interactive mode, and the nature of DOS, show through in what can be done in cmd.exe. NT’s modern extensions and so on make it a lot better than COMMAND.COM but cmd.exe is not a good scripting environment, nor a great interactive shell: it just sucks less than its predecessors.

PowerShell on the other hand took some good ideas and largely addressed much of the suck. Exposing .NET even offers the opportunity to solve problems that would call for writing a solution in something beyond bash/ksh, or finding dedicated utilities for. It is really neat the amount of shit you can do in a PowerShell script.

But in the end, the default execution policy is what really keeps me away. Open sourcing and cross platformyness stuff in Core 6.x resolved most of my negative feelings for PowerShell, but it doesn’t suit my scripting needs.

By default: client systems reject running PowerShell scripts, and so monkeying with execution policy is needed. Either to unrestrict it for the current  session or my user. Which makes using it for projects less useful than using the older comspec. Because while cmd.exe is very meh, it doesn’t require any extra monkeying after I’ve git cloned my repo. Yet another thing to do when setting up a system, or document about a code base, that I don’t need.

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Forgot a all about the ground beef I had planned to make with the sauce, but still had a delicious meal, and probably ate about three people‘a worth going by the brick sitting in my gut.

Willow and company were very interested in this cheesy, ravioli fueled goodness.

Hungry minions also got another round of their Christmas presents, this time the chicken and turkey with gravy packet.

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Passing thought: not sure I should be sad about how much I actually use cmd.exe when I’m using a Windows machine, or just glad that %compspec% isn’t an antique version of command.com.

Probably should just be glad that most of my relationship with windows these days, is driven by D3D video games far more than anything else.

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On the human side: slab of baked tuna, rice, beans, veggies, and much yummy.
Meanwhile the doggos get another round of their food topped with chunky meat and gravy, that Willow was upset about having to wait for, lol.
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In the real world: I would call hacking away at stone with a sword, a waste of a sword.

In The Witcher: I’d say going Darth Vader on a golem is damned exhausting. Properly positioned up and buffed, using a mixture of sword strikes and signs took forever to fight The Sentry.

Actually, if I had known the pylons would remain interactible during the battle, I probably would have tried the lightening trick the wiki mentions.

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For some reason, parsing Wikipedia’s article on CRT shadow masks, I am reminded that by the time old age kills me, more than a few pieces of technology will have changed. When I was a kid, I thought it was pretty damned cool that colour television was everywhere and most folks had VCRs.

Technology changes faster than people does. Or at least, I’d kinda like to not die that soon. It’s still my theory that my generation will make either a really interesting, or a really sad bunch at the old folks home, if we live long enough.

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Not exactly elegant but effective. Bowl of rice with green onions, black beans, mushrooms, and tuna; plus a thing of frozen dumplings for a side.

Willow’s deepest woe is that I come first in the pecking order. That is to say, she despises having to wait her turn.

This year’s Christmas presents are meet and gravy “Toppers”, because they love that and Wellness CORE mini meals were something like buy 6 get 2 free when I bo7htheir last bag of food.

Needless to say: they enjoyed the head start on yumnums.

TIL: The Three Sisters

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In looking up about how much effort goes into growing beans, I came across a reference to something called The Three Sisters: a notion of squash, corn, and beans being grown together. Wikipedia’s article on beans, describes it thusly:

In the New World, many tribes would grow beans together with maize (corn), and squash. The corn would not be planted in rows as is done by European agriculture, but in a checkerboard/hex fashion across a field, in separate patches of one to six stalks each.
Beans would be planted around the base of the developing stalks, and would vine their way up as the stalks grew. All American beans at that time were vine plants, “bush beans” having been bred only more recently. The cornstalks would work as a trellis for the beans, and the beans would provide much-needed nitrogen for the corn.
Squash would be planted in the spaces between the patches of corn in the field. They would be provided slight shelter from the sun by the corn, would shade the soil and reduce evaporation, and would deter many animals from attacking the corn and beans because their coarse, hairy vines and broad, stiff leaves are difficult or uncomfortable for animals such as deer and raccoons to walk through, crows to land on, etc.

I can’t help but think, that this is both a very clever idea, and rather like communities of people. Clever because while it might not be at the scale of modern industrial agriculture, it’s kind of genius to try such an experiment and see if it really works. Like communities of people because we’re likely stronger when we grow together  rather than gutting anyone who disagrees.

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If I was doing the Bart Simpson writing on a black board thing, I’m pretty sure there would be references to never eating so many beans again without a box fan and a gas mask.

Two helpings of beans and I’m pretty sure the world is in danger of being blown away……lol