Learning to create custom scripts for various administrative tasks is one area that I find to be an invaluable part of daily life. If you count administration among your duties, and you aren’t doing at least some work with scripting, you’re either working too hard with GUI tools, or not working hard enough because you’re using GUI tools.

This week (July 19-23), Microsoft is running a series of webcasts centered on the topic of scripting. They promise to take you from “neophyte to bona fide scripter” in a mere five sessions. I’m not sure I’d go quite that far, but I’m sure you’ll come away with a much different outlook on daily life if you haven’t plunged into scripts thus far. True, I am allergic to code, but scripting isn’t really programming or development of applications. It’s close, but easy and useful enough for me to get my head around while still allowing me to maintain a proper level of sanity. [Furo]