Prevent NuGet package vulnerabilities from breaking the build
TL;DR: If you enable “Treat warnings as errors” in your .NET projects, NuGet audit warnings for security vulnerabilities may break your build, but there are ...
Posts by Year
2024
Tech podcasts I enjoy
I started listening to podcasts in the summer of 2023, and have been enjoying them while walking my dogs or exercising ever since. I have found them to be a ...
Updating from System.Data.SqlClient to Microsoft.Data.SqlClient
Over the past couple days I’ve been updating a .NET 8 solution from using System.Data.SqlClient to Microsoft.Data.SqlClient. The reason for this, besides the...
Type less by using PowerShell type accelerators
I had heard the PowerShell term “type accelerators” a few times, but never really knew what that meant. I finally decided to check out the about_Type_Acceler...
Visual Studio has a built-in EditorConfig editor
Somehow I missed it, but for years Visual Studio has had a built-in EditorConfig editor. I would typically edit my .editorconfig file in VS Code using just t...
A PowerShell function to easily retry any code
Performing retries to make your code more resilient is a common pattern. By leveraging a PowerShell ScriptBlock, we can create a function to avoid constantly...
Common Run commands to access various Windows settings and apps
There are a lot of different windows for configuring various settings in Windows. Unfortunately, finding the right window is not always easy. The Windows Set...
Why I switched to OTBS for PowerShell brace styling
Code formatting can be a very personal choice. Some languages are very strict and enforce specific indentation and brace styles, while many others allow for ...
A simple PowerShell script template I use when creating new scripts
I spin up new PowerShell scripts all the time, whether just for quickly experimenting and testing things out, or for projects that I know will be around for ...
PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2024 reflections
I’m sitting in the airport waiting for my return flight after what has been an awesome week at the PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2024, North American edi...
Easily format all files in your VS Code workspace
I recently discovered the awesome Format Files VS Code extension that allows you to format all files in your workspace. Typically you would need to open each...
Find your Azure resources nearing end-of-life with the Service Retirement Workbook
The Azure portal has a Service Retirement Workbook that shows all of the services you are using which are being retired within the next few years. This could...
Several ways to explore your Azure resources
Here I present a few ways to explore your Azure resources, for when the portal’s search and filter functionality is not enough.
I was the guest for the 100th episode of The PowerShell Podcast!
I was recently invited to be a guest on The PowerShell Podcast (Podbean) (YouTube playlist) (Apple Podcasts). I had a great time talking with Andrew Pla, and...
Multiple ways to setup your CI/CD pipelines in GitHub Actions
In this post I’ll show different approaches to setting up your build and deployment workflows with GitHub Actions, as well as some pros and cons of each.
2023
First, Single, and SingleOrDefault in .NET are harmful
I’ve wasted countless hours troubleshooting exceptions thrown by the .NET First, Single, and SingleOrDefault methods. In this post we’ll look at why these me...
Resolve PowerShell paths that do not exist
In this post we’ll see how to resolve a file or directory path, even if it does not exist.
PowerShell class definition pros, cons, and performance comparison
There are 3 different approaches that can be used to define classes and enums in PowerShell. This article will compare the pros, cons, and performance of eac...
Get PowerShell tips automatically in your terminal with the tiPS module
There are a lot of great PowerShell tips out there, but we often don’t proactively look for them. It’s hard to know what you don’t know, and easy to miss out...
Easily profile your PowerShell code with the Profiler module
Premature optimization may be the root of all evil, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t optimize your code where it matters. Rather than guessing which code ...
Automatically create new sessions to improve PowerShell development with classes in VS Code
Developing PowerShell scripts and modules that reference classes and binary modules can be a bit painful, as in order to load a new version of the class or m...
How and where to properly define classes and enums in your PowerShell modules
I recently created a PowerShell script module that defines classes and enums. Everything worked fine locally, but broke when I tested the module on a build s...
Inherit and extend a Blazor component, add UI elements, and hijack its parameters
In this post we see how to extend a Blazor component to show additional UI elements around it, how to override some of the default property settings, and how...
Update your terminal prompt and font in Windows Terminal, VS Code, and Visual Studio
I use Oh My Posh to improve my PowerShell terminal’s prompt appearance and show additional helpful information. There are many themes to choose from, and I h...
Increase system fault tolerance with the Stale Cache pattern
Caching is used to improve the performance of an application. When applied properly, caches can also help increase an application’s fault tolerance, helping ...
Use Carnac to show key presses on-screen
Carnac is a free, open source, small utility that displays the keys you press on the screen. This is great for demos, presentations, and screen recordings wh...
Change these VS Code default settings to make it even more awesome
This post is a collection of Visual Studio Code settings that I think are worth changing from their default values. This only includes native VS Code setting...
Prevent Admin apps from blocking AutoHotkey by always using UI Access
When an app running as Admin has focus, you may not be able to trigger your AutoHotkey (AHK) scripts, hotkeys, and hotstrings. This is a security feature of ...
Change the default AutoHotkey script editor
The Windows context menu provides an Edit Script option for AutoHotkey .ahk files. Unfortunately, it defaults to opening in Notepad, which is not a great edi...
2022
Run PowerShell as another user
I was looking for a way to run a PowerShell script as another user in our deployment pipeline. There are many reasons you might want to do this; for me I nee...
Ensure Windows power settings are not slowing your CPU
My computer was sometimes very slow and unresponsive. It turned out the Windows power settings were throttling my processor speed.
Use WinGet to install and update your Windows apps
I installed all my Windows apps on my new computer with one line using WinGet.
Communicate intent more effectively with Conventional Commit and Comment messages
Conventional Commits and Conventional Comments can save you and your team time and prevent miscommunications by expressing intent more clearly. Let’s look at...
2021
Get IIS events from Event Viewer using PowerShell
Sometimes services hosted in IIS don’t behave as we expect and we need to dig into what’s happening. If the problem lies in your application’s code, you may ...
Find which Windows process has file in use
When a file or directory is in use by a process (application), you will not be able to delete or modify the file / directory. Unfortunately it’s not always o...
Master the Windows copy-paste clipboard
Copying and pasting is a common task that pretty much everyone does. Becoming more efficient with it is a great way to improve your productivity.
Reasons to use both a local and global editorconfig file
What is EditorConfig
2020
Customize Git config based on the repository path
Like many people, I use my laptop for both personal and work projects. One thing I noticed a while back was that the commits to my work Git repos were using ...
PowerShell intellisense on the command line
If you use PowerShell then this tip is for you; if you don’t already know it, it’s game changer!
Close those superfluous Zoom windows automatically
So many Zoom windows to close every day
Get up and running with AutoHotkey
AutoHotkey (AHK) is an amazing programming language for automating tasks and keystrokes in Windows. In this post we’ll look at how you can get your first AHK...
Git alias to reset local tags
I’ve noticed that VS Code sometimes detects conflicts between my local Git tags and remote ones. This results in a Git error when hitting the small Git sync ...
Watch videos faster and reclaim your time
Your time is valuable, and limited. Many videos we watch, whether they’re conference sessions, DIY instructions, movies, or silly cat videos, can easily be u...
Bring up the Windows Terminal in a keystroke
I decided to try out the new Windows Terminal to see how it compared to ConEmu, which is my usual console. The recommended way to get the Windows Terminal is...
Fixing SQL72023 Containment error when deploying SQL SSDT database project from a dacpac
We setup a new Visual Studio Database Project using SSDT (SQL Server Data Tools) and built it, which generates a .dapac file that can be used for deployments...
Custom version numbers in Azure DevOps yaml pipelines
I’m a fan of semantic versioning, especially for software meant to be consumed by other developers, such as NuGet packages. If you want to use semantic versi...
2019
Awesome Azure DevOps resources
I’m a huge fan of Microsoft’s Azure DevOps. As a developer, it’s a single place that allows me to do everything. It stores my code, tracks my project ideas a...
Ignite 2019 mass session download script
The Microsoft Ignite 2019 conference has ended, and you know what that means. Time to mass download all the sessions you missed!
Great Xamarin.Forms workshop from Ignite 2019
I’m lucky enough to attend the Microsoft Ignite 2019 conference this year, and do a pre-conference workshop. The workshop I chose to do was Build your first ...
You don’t scale, so don’t be a hero
I’ve been writing code since 1999; professionally since 2009. For many years I put in 60+ hours a week at my job. I was young. I was committed. And most impo...
Examples of setting up Serilog in .Net Core 3 Console apps and ASP .Net Core 3
It had been a while since I created a new console app from scratch, and all of my previous ones had been .Net Framework console apps, so when I needed to mak...
Create and test PowerShell Core cmdlets in C#
Creating PowerShell Core cmdlets in C# is actually quite easy, especially when you have a great blog post like this one to reference. There is also some offi...
Catch and display unhandled exceptions in your WPF app
When creating a WPF application, one of the best things you can do upfront is add some code to catch any unhandled exceptions. There are numerous ways unhand...
A better way to do TestCases when unit testing with Pester
Note: Pester v5 was released which made breaking changes. The code shown here works with Pester v4 and previous, but not v5. I’m hoping to update this pos...
Order Outlook Deleted Items folder by date deleted
If you’ve ever deleted an email by accident and had to hunt it down in your Outlook Deleted Items folder to recover it, this tip is for you! You can have Out...
Migrating my blog from WordPress to Jekyll and GitHub Pages
You may have noticed my blog has a very different look now! It used to look like this.
2017
PowerShell Log Levels Included In TFS 2017 and VSTS Build and Release Logs
We use quite a few custom PowerShell scripts in some of our builds and releases. This led me to ask the question, which PowerShell log levels actually get wr...
Strongly sign your Visual Studio extension’s 3rd party assemblies to avoid assembly-loading errors at runtime
When trying to create a Visual Studio 2017 version of my Diff All Files Visual Studio extension, I was encountering a runtime error indicating that a module ...
Continuously Deploy Your ClickOnce Application From Your Build Server
ClickOnce applications are a great and easy way to distribute your applications to many users, and have the advantage of offering automatic application updat...
2016
Creating A .PFX Certificate And Applying It On The Build Server At Build Time
There are many project types that require a .pfx file in order to build and/or publish successfully, such as ClickOnce and UWP (Universal Windows Platform) a...
Limit The Number Of C# Tasks That Run In Parallel
Why I needed to throttle the number of Tasks running simultaneously
Fix MSBuild 2015 Compile Taking A Very Long Time
I created the Invoke-MsBuild PowerShell Module (also available in the PowerShell Gallery), and recently added support to use the Visual Studio 2015 version o...
2015
Module to Synchronously Zip and Unzip using PowerShell 2.0
If you search for ways to zip and unzip files using PowerShell, you will find that there a lot of different methods. Some people invoke .Net 4.5 assembly met...
2014
Tell Microsoft To Fix The Sql Server Management Studio “Connect to Server” Dialog Position
If you use Sql Server Management Studio (SSMS) with multiple monitors, you likely run into the issue where the “Connect to Server” dialog window opens up eit...
Find Largest (Or Smallest) Files In A Directory Or Drive With PowerShell
One of our SQL servers was running low on disk space and I needed to quickly find the largest files on the drive to know what was eating up all of the disk s...
Keep PowerShell Console Window Open After Script Finishes Running
I originally included this as a small bonus section at the end of my other post about fixing the issue of not being able to run a PowerShell script whose pat...
Adding a WPF Settings Page To The Tools Options Dialog Window For Your Visual Studio Extension
I recently created my first Visual Studio extension, Diff All Files, which allows you to quickly compare the changes to all files in a TFS changeset, shelves...
Template Solution For Deploying TFS Checkin Policies To Multiple Versions Of Visual Studio And Having Them Automatically Work From “TF.exe Checkin” Too
Get the source code
Saving And Loading A C# Object’s Data To An Xml, Json, Or Binary File
I love creating tools, particularly ones for myself and other developers to use. A common situation that I run into is needing to save the user’s settings to...
“Agent lost communication with Team Foundation Server” TFS Build Server Error
We had recently started getting lots of error messages similar to the following on our TFS Build Servers:
If You Like Using Macros or AutoHotkey, You Might Want To Try The Enterpad AHK Keyboard
If you follow my blog then you already know I’m a huge fan of AutoHotkey (AHK), and that I created the AHK Command Picker to allow me to have a limitless num...
2013
Don’t Write WPF Converters; Write C# Inline In Your XAML Instead Using QuickConverter
If you’ve used binding at all in WPF then you more then likely have also written a converter. There are lots of tutorials on creating converters, so I’m not ...
Get AutoHotkey To Interact With Admin Windows Without Running AHK Script As Admin
March 2023 Update: I’ve found another solution that I prefer over this one. See this post for details.
Provide A Batch File To Run Your PowerShell Script From; Your Users Will Love You For It
Aside - This post has received many tangential questions in the comments. Your best bet at getting an answer to those questions is to check Stack Overflow an...
Problems Caused By Installing Windows 8.1 Update
Myself and a few co-workers have updated from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 and have run into some weird problems. After a bit of Googling I have found that we ar...
Always Explicitly Set Your Parameter Set Variables For PowerShell v2.0 Compatibility
What are parameter sets anyways?
PowerShell Code To Ensure Client Is Using At Least The Minimum Required PowerShell Version
Here’s some simple code that will throw an exception if the client running your script is not using the version of PowerShell (or greater) that is required; ...
PowerShell Script To Get Path Lengths
A while ago I created a Path Length Checker tool in C# that has a “nice” GUI, and put it up on CodePlex. One of the users reported that he was trying to use ...
PowerShell Functions To Convert, Remove, and Delete IIS Web Applications
I recently refactored some of our PowerShell scripts that we use to publish and remove IIS 7 web applications, creating some general functions that can be us...
PowerShell 2.0 vs. 3.0 Syntax Differences And More
I’m fortunate enough to work for a great company that tries to stay ahead of the curve and use newer technologies. This means that when I’m writing my PowerS...
Creating Strongly Typed Objects In PowerShell, Rather Than Using An Array Or PSCustomObject
I recently read a great article that explained how to create hashtables, dictionaries, and PowerShell objects. I already knew a bit about these, but this art...
PowerShell Functions To Delete Old Files And Empty Directories
I thought I’d share some PowerShell (PS) functions that I wrote for some clean-up scripts at work. I use these functions to delete files older than a certain...
Windows Live Writer Post Fails With Error “The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a receive.”
When trying to upload my last blog post from Windows Live Writer (WLW) to WordPress (WP) I received the following error:
Launch Visual Studio Checkin Window With A Keystroke
A few weeks ago I blogged about how you can get custom TFS checkin policies to work when committing from the command line. In that post, I had a quick aside ...
PowerShell Needs A Centralized Package Management Solution
TL;DR - PowerShell needs centralized package management. Please go up-vote this request to have it added to PowerShell.
Getting Custom TFS Checkin Policies To Work When Committing From The Command Line (i.e. tf checkin)
Update: I show how to have your checkin policies automatically update the registry keys shown in this blog post on this newer blog post. If you are not the p...
Add ability to add tabs to the end of a line in Windows PowerShell ISE
In the preamble of an earlier post I mentioned that one of the little things that bugs me about Windows PowerShell ISE is that you can add tabs to the start ...
Automatically Create Your Project’s NuGet Package Every Time It Builds, Via NuGet
So you’ve got a super awesome library/assembly that you want to share with others, but you’re too lazy to actually use NuGet to package it up and upload it t...
PowerShell ISE: Multi-line Comment and Uncomment Done Right, and other ISE GUI must haves
I’ve written some code that you can add to your ISE profile that adds keyboard shortcuts to quickly comment and uncomment lines in PowerShell ISE. So you can...
Free Xbox 360 Games If You Have Xbox Live Gold Subscription
I know this isn’t programming related (and thus doesn’t quite go with the theme of my blog), but I thought I’d share an Pass this along to anybody you know t...
Create and publish your NuGet package in one click with the New-NuGetPackage PowerShell script
I’ve spent a good chunk of time investigating how NuGet.exe works and creating a PowerShell script called New-NuGetPackage to make it dirt simple to pack and...
Fix Problem Where Windows PowerShell Cannot Run Script Whose Path Contains Spaces
Most people will likely find the “Run script path with spaces from File Explorer” (to be able to double click a PS script whose path contains spaces to run i...
Why I Chose WordPress Over Geeks With Blogs, And Moving From WordPress.com To A GoDaddy Hosted Solution
A while back I wrote about some reasons why I didn’t like GWB (Geeks With Blogs) and was attracted to WordPress. 6 months later and I am confident that I mad...
Powershell functions to get an xml node, and get and set an xml element’s value, even when the element does not already exist
I’m new to working with Xml through PowerShell and was so impressed when I discovered how easy it was to read an xml element’s value. I’m working with readin...
PowerShell function to create a password protected zip file
There are a few different ways to create zip files in powershell, but not many that allow you to create one that is password protected. I found this post tha...
PowerShell Multi-Line Input Box Dialog, Open File Dialog, Folder Browser Dialog, Input Box, and Message Box
I love PowerShell, and when prompting users for input I often prefer to use GUI controls rather than have them enter everything into the console, as some thi...
Invoke-MsBuild Powershell Module
Update: I’ve moved this project to it’s own new home at https://invokemsbuild.codeplex.com. All updates will be made there.
Using MSBuild to publish a VS 2012 SSDT .sqlproj database project the same way as a VS 2010 .dbproj database project (using command line arguments to specify the database to publish to)
We recently upgraded from VS (Visual Studio) 2010 to VS 2012, and with it had to upgrade our .dbproj database project to a .sqlproj. When making the switch I...
Force your ClickOnce app to update without prompting user – Now on NuGet!
A while ago I blogged about a powershell script I made that would automatically update your ClickOnce project file’s Minimum Required Version to the latest v...
Too Many AutoHotkey Shortcuts To Remember? There’s An App For That!
I love AutoHotkey (AHK). Ever since I discovered it a little over a year ago I am constantly surprised and pleased with what I am able to accomplish with it....
2012
Making document storage in Sharepoint a breeze (leave the Web UI behind)
Hey everyone, I know many of us regularly use Sharepoint for document storage in order to make documents available to several people, have it version control...
Have Windows Automatically Login Without Entering Your Password
If you are like me and don’t want to have to enter your password each time Windows loads, you can have Windows start up without prompting you to enter a user...
Migrating My GWB Blog Over To WordPress
Geeks With Blogs has been good to me, but there are too many tempting things about Word Press for me to stay with GWB. Particularly their statistics features...
Get AutoHotkey Script To Run As Admin At Startup
Update: Before you go running your script as an admin, see if this less obtrusive fix will solve your problems.
Stop YOUR emails from starting those company-wide Reply All email threads
You know you’ve seen it before; somebody sends out a company-wide email (or email to a large diverse audience), and a couple people or small group of people ...
Get the Windows 7 Start Menu Back in Windows 8 with Classic Shell
I just thought I’d give readers a heads up that you can use Classic Shell to get the old Windows 7 style of start menu back instead of using the new crappy W...
Adding and accessing custom sections in your C# App.config
Update (Feb 10, 2016): I found a NuGet package called simple-config that allows you to dynamically bind a section in your web/app.config file to a strongly t...
SQL Server script commands to check if object exists and drop it
Over the past couple years I’ve been keeping track of common SQL Server script commands that I use so I don’t have to constantly Google them. Most of them ar...
AutoHotkey cannot interact with Windows 8…or can it!
Update: Before you go running your script as an admin, see if this less obtrusive fix will solve your problems.
XNA BasicEffect takes ~1 second to initialize, AlphaTestEffect ~0.1
This is a general message for all XNA developers that in XNA 4 it takes typically 1 - 1.5 seconds to create a new BasicEffect object, while only about 100 mi...
Force ClickOnce applications to automatically update without prompting user - Automatically update MinimumRequiredVersion using PowerShell
Today I was thinking about using a ClickOnce application in my build process. The problem is, when using an installed ClickOnce application (as opposed to a...
VS 11 Beta merge tool is awesome, except for resolving conflicts
If you’ve downloaded the new VS 11 Beta and done any merging, then you’ve probably seen the new diff and merge tools built into VS 11. They are awesome, and ...
Parallel MSBuild FTW - Build faster in parallel
Hey everyone, I just discovered this great post yesterday that shows how to have msbuild build projects in parallel :-).
Path Too Long for Team Foundation Database Project Build
Arrggghhhh TFS and builds! Such a love-hate relationship! So we have our TFS builds setup to both compile our C# projects as well as compile and deploy our T...
2011
Awesome Visual Studio Videos
I watched an awesome Channel 9 Visual Studio Tips And Tricks video, so I thought I’d share. Some great VS gems in there. Even a few Windows 7 ones, like usin...
Sweet C# Gems
James Michael Hare has a lot of awesome C# and .Net related posts, so this is just a little shout out to him (and my own little way of bookmarking his blogs ...
Using TFS Programmatically
I recently discovered this post which shows how you can programmatically update queries in TFS, which is great for when you make a WIT (Work Item Template) c...
TFS Power Tools Features And How To Run Them From Visual Studio
There are a few great features in the TFS Power Tools that I wasn’t aware of, such as TreeDiff which let’s you compare folders (or even entire branches) to s...
Visual Studio Tips and Tricks
Just found a few websites that show some Visual Studio tips that I haven’t seen before, so I thought I’d share:
Making solutions with lots of projects load and build faster in Visual Studio
I came across this great article which talks about simply unloading projects from a solution to make the solution load and build faster in Visual Studio. Thi...
Setting up keyboard shortcuts to build solutions in MSBuild
One of the greatest benefits of building your solution flies in MSBuild (vs in Visual Studio directly) is that it doesn’t lock up the Visual Studio UI, which...
Automatically deploying TFS Checkin Policies to the entire team
I stumbled across this great post showing how you can use the TFS Power Tools to automatically deploy your custom TFS check-in policies to everyone on your t...
Awesome VS 2010 extensions I can’t live without
With the ability to extend Visual Studio 2010, lots of great extensions have popped up. These not only increase productivity, but make the whole coding exper...
Friendly Visual Studio solution names for working with multiple branches
If you have the latest version of the Visual Studio 2010 extension VSCommands you can give your solutions friendly names that display in the window’s title b...
TFS GoToWorkItem VS command and keyboard shortcut
The button to jump directly to a work item by specifying its ID looks to be on the Work Item Tracking toolbar by default in VS / TFS 2010. This button is not...
Solution won’t build on TFS Build Server
If you are able to build (compile) the solution on your local machine, but it won’t build on the TFS build server and you are getting an error message simila...
Adding ValueChanged events to Dependency Objects in WPF
You may be wondering which is the best way to hookup a DependencyProperty’s Callback event handler to handle Value Changed events. The two methods to conside...
My WPF Binding won’t work. WTF!
At one point or another I’m sure we’ve all been confused as to why our binding won’t work. Here’s a couple things to keep in mind:
Setting focus to an element in WPF
So if you are trying to set focus to a WPF element, but are unable to. Here is a quick checklist to go through:
Some Visual Studio 2010 Shortcuts and C# 4.0 Cool Stuff
A list of some shortcuts and new features to VS 2010 and C# 4.0: