Jul 30, 2013

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


Jul 21, 2013

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 :



BOOM!!

Jul 19, 2013

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.