Category: Tech

This category contains all of the non-rants. And some tech-related rants, I guess. It’s difficult to categorize your content, you know?

Variable reference is not valid. ':' was not followed by a valid variable name character. Consider using ${} to delimit the name

How to fix Azure DevOps “Variable reference is not valid. ‘:’ was not followed by a valid variable name character. Consider using ${} to delimit the name”

This article explains one possible reason why you might run into an error like “Variable reference is not valid. ‘:’ was not followed by a valid variable name character. Consider using ${} to delimit the name” when using a PowerShell task in an Azure DevOps pipeline. But hey – at…Continue reading How to fix Azure DevOps “Variable reference is not valid. ‘:’ was not followed by a valid variable name character. Consider using ${} to delimit the name”

Hacktoberfest 2022

… And that’s a wrap! This year I had the chance, and the privilege to once again participate in the month-long celebration of open-source, Hacktoberfest. And unlike last year, I took the time to write about the experience again! And for someone like me, who doesn’t really do much open-source…Continue reading Hacktoberfest 2022

bash - it's even more of a mystery than PowerShell

Azure DevOps fails with “The path [path-to-your-repo] does not exist” even though the repository is there for sure?

Eh, this was a weird one. This article explains how to get around an issue where your build tools fail due to weird “path does not exist” errors when you’re using bash to execute a restore to your project. The build would probably succeed nicely, but it fails due to…Continue reading Azure DevOps fails with “The path [path-to-your-repo] does not exist” even though the repository is there for sure?

Microsoft Graph g-raph (giraffe) - the spirit animal of Microsoft Graph

One way to fix “Unsupported or invalid query filter clause specified for property” for your Microsoft Graph API queries

This article explains one possible fix to an annoyingly generic exception thrown by the Microsoft Graph API (namely, “Unsupported or invalid query filter clause specified for property”) or an even more generic exception thrown by PnP PowerShell (“Exception of type ‘PnP.PowerShell.Commands.Model.Graph.GraphException’ was thrown.”) when you’re trying to query Graph API…Continue reading One way to fix “Unsupported or invalid query filter clause specified for property” for your Microsoft Graph API queries

Powershell is hell

Why do you get a “Missing closing ‘)’ in expression.” error when piping a collection to a for loop in PowerShell?

Today, I’m writing about a stupid error. Yeah, I do make those every now and then. After adding a for loop to my PowerShell script, I started to get annoying ParserErrors about my for loop missing a closing bracket. But it was NOT missing one – what gives? Problem So,…Continue reading Why do you get a “Missing closing ‘)’ in expression.” error when piping a collection to a for loop in PowerShell?