Update: There was an update to this post on June 6, 2018. See below.

I had kind of hoped my 300th post here at tommymaynard.com would have lined up with June 2018, but that isn’t going to happen. Instead, welcome to post 287. We’re just 13 posts away from reaching post 300.

There’s just too much else going on right now to had gotten these two feats to align. I do want to mention, however, that this month marks the fourth consecutive year of me, blogging on my site. That’s what important about June. It was this month in 2014 that I set out to learn more about PowerShell though experimentation and sharing and teaching. It’s been a successful run, and I’m still interested in watching PowerShell continue to make our lives easier. If someone told me where PowerShell would be now, back in 2014, I would’ve laughed. On Linux? On Mac? But why!? I get it now, and I’ll forever be grateful that I set out to learn it and know it as well as I do. I don’t trust I know everything, but I’ve come along way.

Maybe you don’t know the story. It was early 2007 and I was doing some FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) in order that I could hang out at home with my newborn son. That was near to when PowerShell 1.0 had been released, so I installed Windows Management Framework (that’s how we got PowerShell back then), and did some mild experimentation. Sadly, just as quickly as I picked it up, I put it down. I was in love with Visual Basic Script (VBS), which is mostly embarrassing to say these days.

For a few years, I continued to write my solutions using VBS with little to no interest in PowerShell. Then one day, I happened across one of those top 10 things to do for your career articles. Learn PowerShell was listed at number 10. Another year passes and somehow — because I didn’t go looking for it myself this time either — I ran into another top 10 things to do for your career article. PowerShell was number 1.

It was then, that I decided my next scripting project would be in PowerShell and that I’d force myself to put down VBS, and step away. Well I did just that. I needed a way to copy a Sophos file out to 200+ computers. I wasn’t in a self management setup at that time, and so I used PowerShell to copy out the file to each machine, recording data about whether the copy was successful or not. When Sophos went to update the next time — as this file indicated the update servers — it hit the newer servers, upgraded the version of Sophos, and then continued to use those servers for hourly updates. I was hooked.

And, I never looked back.

In closing, here’s the math on 287 posts over 4 consecutive years. Across 48 months, I’m averaging 5.979 posts per month, and I’ve never missed a month. Not bad. Maybe I can break the six posts per month threshold as some point this year, or next.

Update: As of today, I’ve renewed my ownership of tommymaynard.com for an additional three years. I’m not done here.