Running the script below requires the RSAT (Remote Server Administration Tools) be installed on the system you are running it from. The account used must have enough permissions to read from Active Directory and the selected server’s registries.
The script will read the machine accounts of AD joined servers looking for those with the word “server” in the operating system attribute. It will prompt the user to select any of those servers to scan. It will also prompt the user for a DNS name to search the certificates for.
The script will attempt to test connectivity to RPC (TCP 135) for each of the selected servers. It will then open the registry and search the computer account’s personal certificate store for the entered domain name. A report will be generated that shows pertinent details for each certificate that is found.
$Servers = Get-ADComputer -Filter 'Operatingsystem -Like "*server*"' -Properties dnshostname|
Select-Object dnshostname -ExpandProperty dnshostname|
Out-GridView -Title "Select Servers To Scan for Certificates. CTRL+A to Select All" -PassThru
$CertificateDomain = Read-Host "Enter public DNS host name of certificate to check; example: mydoamin.com"
$ServersOnline = @()
Foreach ($Server in $Servers) {
If ((Test-NetConnection -WarningAction SilentlyContinue -ComputerName $Server -Port 135).tcptestsucceeded){$Serversonline += $Server}
}
ForEach ($System in $ServersOnline){
Try {
Invoke-Command -ComputerName $System -ErrorAction Stop {
Get-ChildItem Cert:\LocalMachine\My|Select-Object DnsNameList, Subject, Issuer, NotAfter|Where-Object {$_.DnsNameList -like "*$CertificateDomain*"}}|
Format-List PSComputerName, DnsNameList, Subject, Issuer, @{N="Expires"; E={$_.NotAfter}}
}
Catch {Write-Host "No Public CA issued certificate for $CertificateDomain detected on $System"}
}
It took me around one hundred and fifteen hours to finish the game. When I considered myself done, I had technically completed just over 90% of the challenges. My rank was 37. I had finished all the main and side quests. My clothing was comprised of legendary and fully upgraded items. My broom was fully upgraded, and my room of requirement was fully populated with every type of plant, potion, station, and animal.
At my character’s level 37, I could two-shot most Trolls if the first hit was Petrificus Totalus. I fully upgraded the binding spell along with the stealth Disillusionment charm as fast as the game would allow. The sneak attack that is possible when the two spells are used in conjunction was invaluable throughout the entire game. I used the combo for clearing bandit camps, spider’s nests, and troll lairs galore. The strategy works best once you are able to run while under Disillusionment.
Overall Hogwarts Legacy was a fantastic adventure game. If you are a Harry Potter fan in general, then roaming the castle in all its 4K glory on a high-end PC or console is an epic experience all on its own. Even if you don’t play the rest of the game, it is worth the cost to be able to dig into every nook and cranny of the famous castle and its grounds.
Taken as a whole, the game’s main story was interesting and easy to follow. The plot twists weren’t unexpected, but at least they made sense in the story’s context. The characters were fairly well developed. There were lots of enemy form factors to master, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
I was surprised by the number of mini games like broom racing, bowling with a magical twist, puzzles (Merlin Trials), shape matching, some simple math problems. The list goes on and on. The game is also a collector’s paradise, clothing, wands, brooms, animals and plants, potions, money, upgrades, and more are found all over the place.
The story lines in most of the side-quests aligned with the main branch in the end. There weren’t any major plot holes or open-ended story lines left dangling once I’d finished all the quests. If you are considering playing the game all the way though, you should be aware that the difficulty increases significantly once you travel to the southern portion of the map.
The scenery was beautiful. The mountains, streams, towns, buildings and various environments were all well-crafted, kept in decent scale to each other, and the color palette was realistic. The NPCs had varying snippets and there were enough of them to make the world feel populated.
The shops and shopkeepers were interesting. The currency system was easy to understand, and it didn’t take much effort to earn enough to be successful. A tip for those just getting started, capturing and selling animals to Brood and Peck in Hogsmeade is one of the fastest ways I found to amass a fortune.
The broom racing was fun, easy to do as a form of transportation, but difficult to master for racing. The combat was well designed. It offered a lot of strategic options once I got used to the complicated control scheme. There are some great power moves that feel exhilarating to pull off in a fight. The difficulty settings can be changed on the fly and affect more than just the number of enemies.
Anytime you spend more than a hundred hours with a game there are bound to be some gripes. Hogwarts Legacy had relatively few from my point of view. Most of them were minor things like quest glitches that eventually got fixed. There are a few quality-of-life issues. My biggest complaints are against the lock picking and load-out controls. Neither was a big enough problem to “break” the game.
Opening locked rooms and chests was boring, I tried not to sigh every time I had to do it. The process seemed like something that got added during a committee meeting rather than being carefully planned. More of a “RPGs always have lock picking.” rather than, “How do locks work in the magic world we are making?” situation. I cast a spell to open the lock. Then I have to manually open it? If I have to align the lock’s mechanisms, then what did the spell do? I think they should have added a skill tree item to allow skipping the mini game.
The load-out management for controlling which spells are equipped can be irritating. There aren’t enough slots to create a build for each type of mission you encounter. This means that you are stuck constantly breaking immersion to enter the menu system and change out the spells for a given task. If they would have added a shift button to the system and given you four more groups for spells, it would have been almost perfect in my opinion.
In the early days, the game was a mess as far as performance was concerned. I was experiencing tearing, dropped frames, and general poor performance trying to run 1080P/120/High on a 3080Ti and Ryzen 7. Patches to video drivers, the game itself, and Windows 11 eventually got everything running reliably and smooth with top notch visuals.
I used NVIDIA’s hardware scaling to get the best balance between FPS and appearance on the desktop and laptop gaming systems. On the Steam Deck and Ally, i let the respective devices configure themselves except for mapping a few buttons. Speaking of mapping, putting Revelio and dodging on the back paddles saved my hands from a lot of wear and tear.
I played most of the game on that PC with a 3080 Ti, 32 GB RAM, and a liquid cooled AMD Ryzen 7 5800X. I have also played the game on a higher-end PC with a 4090 and Intel i-7 12700k, an i-7 3070 laptop, as well as, on a Steam Deck, and ASUS ROG Ally Z1 Extreme. No matter the hardware, I was able to tune the game to look and play fantastically after the first round of patches had dropped.
As for control options I tried a keyboard and mouse, the Steam Deck and Ally’s built-in controllers, and a Gen 2 Xbox Elite controller. I preferred controllers to the keyboard and mouse for this title. The combat’s lock-on targeting, and the flight controls felt better on the sticks than they did on the WASD keys.
I had a good time playing the game and stuck with it all the way to the end. You don’t have to be a Harry Potter fan to enjoy Hogwarts Legacy, but it probably helps if you are. You don’t have to be an accomplished RPG gamer to play either, but it probably helps if you are. I’ve recommended it to friends and family and the feedback from those that have played has been positive for the most part. I think Portkey Games deserves the accolades and awards it has received from the industry for this title.
I picked up my Surface Go and opened WordPress while I thought about what to work on next. I flipped through the app’s menu options until I landed on statistics. That is when I noticed the total number of posts on Techbloggingfool was sitting at 299. Wow, had I really written that much?
I started this blog out of curiosity more than anything else. I remember wanting to learn more about how public websites worked. I thought about how much I have learned from other people’s technical writings. I wanted to continue the tradition and add what I have learned to the mix. Thus, Techbloggingfool.com was born.
I had expected to write a handful of posts and to spend enough time with WordPress to figure it out. I thought if I made it a year, I would be doing pretty well. I figured if a hundred people visited, it would be enough to claim success. That would be enough to learn how web analytics worked.
Six years later, I’ve got more than 350,000 views from a quarter of a million people. According to IP GEO location, someone from every country on Earth has visited the site. While those stats aren’t even a tiny blip compared to most tech blogs, it is far more attention than I had ever intended to attract.
Now that I find myself writing the ubiquitous “How I got this far” post. it’s surprisingly difficult to define why I keep writing well after my original goals were accomplished. I occasionally refer to some of my own articles from time to time, almost like a notebook of sorts. I also point at the blog during job interviews as proof that I can deliver on the promise of “good documentation.” I don’t think either of those are the real motivation though.
I have to say that my favorite effect from writing the blog happens when I find out that I helped someone. Getting feedback that my instructions or the way I set something up helped a reader accomplish their goals is just one of the best feelings.
All tech is a complicated web of simple ideas layered on and linked to each other. Figuring out how the stack works can be difficult for all of us sometimes. I know how relieved I feel when I find the post or video that helps me move forward. It is fantastic to know I have helped others get that relief, too.
If you are considering starting your own blog, the best advice I can give is to stop thinking and start writing. Using a host like WordPress, Square Space, or GoDaddy is a real labor-saver. They take care of the servers, software, IP and DNS info, certificates, patching, backups, and everything else that goes into hosting public websites. They also give you the framework and tools that make creating your blog as easy as writing a Word document.
There are lots of resources for aspiring bloggers online. The KnowledgeBase section of your hosting provider’s site is a good place to start. I know that WordPress runs a blog about blogging, check it out https://wordpress.com/create-blog/. For the most part, though, I winged it. It shows, especially in my early posts.
I have always tried to post a minimum of one article per week. I don’t worry about original topics like some pros advise. You can find dozens of articles that explain almost any technical subject. The originality in my writings comes from my experiences, personality, prose, and my take on the subject at hand. Often, I write about solutions that I came up with when searching the Internet didn’t provide a satisfactory answer.
The most difficult part of blogging for me is the media creation. Text only blogs do exist, but they aren’t very engaging in my opinion. Making pictures and videos to help visualize complicated instructions is time consuming no matter what software you use. I enjoy flexing my creative muscle but there are six posts in my queue behind this one that are finished except for the visuals.
As I sit here and finish the three hundredth post, I’ve thought of an idea of what to write about next. Who knows how long I’ll keep it going for? Thanks for reading. Subscribe in the WordPress App to get notified about new articles. Leave a comment or a like if something I wrote helped you out.
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