Scripting Wife's Comments on Event 1 of the 2011 Scripting Games

ScriptingGuy1

April 8th, 20110 0

Hello Scripters,SSSH! Don’t tell Scripting Guy Ed Wilson that I have hijacked his wireless keyboard to write to you. He is working beside me on his laptop judging entries for the 2011 Scripting Games, and I honestly think I could put a firecracker under his chair and he would not know it.What a mess! First let me apologize for not getting this written earlier. Massive storms knocked out our electricity Monday night, and it was Wednesday before the electricity came back on. Since then I have been busy trying to get the house back in order while the Scripting Guy gets back up to speed on the Scripting Games. He is behind on grading…I am behind on nearly everything else. In fact, I have not even uploaded my answer to Event 2 yet. That is how far I am behind.The good thing is that Event 1 is not due until 12:01 A.M. Pacific Time (-7 UTC according to the Scripting Guy ) on Monday, April 11, 2011. So basically that means you need to get it done by sometime towards the end of Sunday night depending on where you live.So what is the deal with this event anyway? I had to ask the Scripting Guy what a “private build” is. He told me that a private build is something that most people will never have. In fact, most companies will never get a private build of any software either. However, if you get one, you need to keep track of it to make sure it does not get overwritten by a service pack, hotfix, or some other update. A company may get a private build of a piece of software if they have a contract with a software company and have a special need that would not apply to other customers. When the software is compiled (packaged, put together something like that), it can be marked as a private build.

So there! That was basically the hardest thing. How did I find the private build information using Windows PowerShell? I do not want to spoil your surprise, but what I did was a search on MSDN for private build. From there I found a .NET Framework class that gave me the information. I then was able to chase things back to Windows PowerShell. The event took me a bit of time to complete, but it is not too bad.

ScriptingGuy1