Hidden escape character in SETX

Shamelessly stolen but very useful

I recently discovered that set and setx behave completely different when it comes to escape characters.

Example:
set bob="C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe"
setx bobx "C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe"

right? Seems correct, but one will work, while the other wont.
Executing %bob% will launch notepad while %bobx% will error out.

why? Well, apparently
setx bobx "C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe" equates to using set with no quotes - like so:
set bob=C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe

What we find, is that setx has it's own wonky magic, and if we wanted to escape a character, we use  \ ... which doesn't come up in documentation. Awesome, yea?

setx bobx "\"C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe"\" which would equate to 
..set bob="C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe"

now %bobx% will start notepad++



free plug for one of the 10^10 blogs that caught it - http://batcheero.blogspot.com/2008/03/setx-escape-character.html

Downloading SVN without SVN client (aka - how to get wordpress themes)

My friend asked me to migrate her Wordpress.com blog to a private Wordpress.org site.

Wordpress.org setup takes 5 minutes and is not worth writing about. However after migration, the theme was missing.

Apparently, the themes do not migrate, but they are available via SVN here:
https://wpcom-themes.svn.automattic.com/ideation-and-intent (and others)

But... I do NOT want to install SVN, and I could get them with WGET.
off topic, but neat write up on wget here: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/downloading-entire-web-site-wget

But I did find a way to download any SVN repository as a ZIP file w.o any installs :

http://svndownload.eu5.org/

BOOM!!

Netscalers are no laughing matter

Found this conversation I had with an Expedia* network engineer about a year back. Made me shed a tear of laughter and sadness ...

-----

2:54 PM

once upon a time a boss was told that he was responsible for anything bad that happens on all 130 netscalers at expedia

said boss then immediately changed all passwords on all netscalers and asked his network team to manage these appliances

said network team had no clue how to manage said appliances so the tickets backed up

and up

and as the tickeets backed up...

network engineers got fired for messing up the netscalers

and then so did the boss

until there was no one left to manage the appliances

so then .. the natives got restless

.. as teams started to build vips and have issues with vips... the network team was told to fix vips and all vip issues

but buried under piles of tickets the network team still wasn't able to fix the vips

because they couoldn't reach their keyboards

however, it was said by the powers that be that teams would then once again be able to build vips in the realm as long as the network team peer review all changes

yesh, and eli and them can pretty much just ping the brave knight Tajon to peer them and all is well

while the poor, poor (literally broke) network team continue to flail about under piles of tickets

the end

*He was so proud of having worked there, it's not even on his linked in profile. 

Short and sweet!!

Shortest post ever - lots of good info here.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/15/powershell_third_party_guis/