Introducing Engineer Exams, Using the POSH-SYSLOG PowerShell module for logging
+Gaining Confidence with Az CLI and Az PowerShell: Introducing What if & Export Bicep
Hello everyone! I hope for those of you in the US, that you had a fantastic Thanksgiving. Here in Southwest Michigan, we’re getting slammed by lake effect snow, and there are a handful of school closures.
I feel like basically all the practice test market is lacking. When I was prepping for certs earlier this year, I was making my own training tools. Which lead to me building a platform for everyone called Engineer Exams.
Most of what’s out there, like, memorization dumps or low quality AI generated content, don’t prepare you for how the real exam actually tests you. This is a tool I plan to use as continue to work on my pursuit of Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert (AZ-400). (Also, low key, I built Engineer Exams in Azure to work on practicing for that exam - like to use for test prep and I built the whole site in Azure which has been an awesome experience.)
A huge part of why the other providers stink is because of price. Engineer Exams has scenario-based practice exams that actually prepare you for the real test experience. Real business scenarios. Domain-specific performance insights so you know exactly where to focus your study time. Not “What is Azure Storage?” garbage.
🎯 19,080+ practice questions
🎯 318 practice exams
🎯 39 certifications (Microsoft Azure, AWS, CompTIA, Google Cloud)
I’m giving a Black Friday/Cyber Monday Special: $5/month (normally $10) that is locked in forever. I’m not trying to charge an arm and a leg (but a good tool like this does have hosting costs). There are test prep people charging like $60 for a single exam. Side note to that, I think most course markets and “labs” are over blown - there is plenty of great free content out there. Also, I think just diving into the tools themselves has way more value.
Anyway, Don’t take my word for it. Try a free exam right now, no credit card required: https://engineerexams.com/certifications
You can lock the $5/month in here: https://engineerexams.com/black-friday
AI Ages Like Fresh Fish: The Brutal Economics of Technological Deflation
Jeffrey Snover has a compelling post on the rapid depreciation of AI investments, arguing that because models and hardware lose value so quickly—much like fresh fish—the current “winner take all” spending spree is actually a trap. He suggests that the true economic winners won’t be the labs burning billions to build the “God Model,” but rather the application layer companies that use this cheap, commoditized intelligence to solve unglamorous, real-world business problems.
Using PowerShell 7 with Entra External ID (EEID) to handle “Profile Edit”
Rory Braybrook has a practical post on bridging the feature gap in Entra External ID’s user management. Since EEID currently lacks a built-in “Profile Edit” user flow, Rory demonstrates how to bypass this limitation by using the PowerShell 7 Microsoft.Entra module to directly update user attributes like names and display names.
Pair Programming a PowerShell Platformer Live
Andrew Pla and Greg Martin have an entertaining video on pair programming improvements to a PowerShell-based platformer game. They spend the session getting familiar with the existing codebase and live-coding new features and fixes.
Using the POSH-SYSLOG PowerShell module for logging
Harm Veenstra has a practical guide on centralized logging for PowerShell. He details how to install and utilize the POSH-SYSLOG module to send events from your scripts directly to a Syslog server, allowing for easier filtering and correlation of network and script activities.
https://powershellisfun.com/2025/11/28/using-the-posh-syslog-powershell-module-for-logging/
Gaining Confidence with Az CLI and Az PowerShell: Introducing What if & Export Bicep
Steven Bucher has an informative post introducing “What If” and “Export Bicep” features for Azure CLI and PowerShell, designed to help developers validate operations before execution. He explains how these tools allow users to preview potential changes and automatically generate infrastructure-as-code templates, significantly reducing the risk of accidental resource deletions or misconfigurations.
November 2025 PowerShell Potluck
Jeff Hicks has a jam-packed issue featuring the release of Adam Driscoll’s console-based editor PSEdit 1.0 and a guide on using CMS cmdlets for secure secret storage. He also shares his own custom functions for managing directory attributes and rendering colorful Write-Host output using PSReadline tokens, wrapping up with thoughts on why PowerShell’s function design patterns differ from traditional programming languages.
https://buttondown.com/behind-the-powershell-pipeline/archive/november-2025-powershell-potluck/
Niels Kok has a helpful post detailing the latest updates to the PSCloudPc PowerShell module he maintains with Stefan Dingemanse. They have introduced new commands for easily publishing and unpublishing Windows 365 Cloud Apps and updated the provisioning policy cmdlets to align with recent changes in Microsoft Graph.
https://www.nielskok.tech/windows-365/update-to-pscloudpc/
Rogue techie pleads guilty in $862K employer attack
Connor Jones has a cautionary report on the dangers of insider threats, detailing how a fired IT contractor caused nearly $1 million in damages by resetting thousands of employee passwords. He explains that the attacker used a simple PowerShell script and impersonated a colleague to lock out users across the US, highlighting the critical need for immediate and thorough access revocation during offboarding.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/20/it_contractor_sabotage/
PowerShell Conference Europe 2026: Call for Speakers
The PSConfEU Team has an exciting call for speakers for their upcoming 2026 conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. They are seeking unique session proposals ranging from standard 45-minute talks to 90-minute deep dives, promising selected speakers free admission and hotel accommodation for the event running June 1-4, 2026.
Excellent assembly of resources for IT professionals. The emphasis on scenario-based testing rather than memorization really stands out—most certification prep platforms just feed mindless drills, which is why students often fail despite high "practice" scores. Your insight about domain-level performance insights resonates particularly well with how organizations actually need these professionals to perform: not knowing trivia, but understanding how systems behave under real-world conditions. One nuance worth expanding on: the POSH-SYSLOG logging integration you mention is powerful for organizations already invested in syslog infrastructure, but I'd be curious whether you've explored how this plays with modern observability tools like ELK stacks or cloud-native logging, particuarly for teams transitioning to hybrid environments. What's your sense of adoption barriers there?