AD Containers not Showing

I've run into this one a few times, so you busy creating a new connection to AD and everything is going smoothly until you try to expand the AD tree to select your containers. You have double checked that the account you are using to access AD is setup correctly, but still the tree won't expand. 
In my case is was the  Local Policy setting that needed to be changed.

Go to Local Policies, Security Options. Select "network security: LDAP client signing requirements", change the value  from “negotiate signing “  to "None". 

Once that is done I had to restart the server, I also opened up a new browser window and created the connection again, this time the AD container tree expanded as expected.

SharePoint 2013 - Central Admin Theme Change

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Good to know when you are working on multiple farms.

Just add _layouts/themeweb.aspx  to the end of  your CA URL.

SharePoint 2013 - CA Change Suite Link Bar

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Great way of knowing which CA site you are currently working on. 

$ca = Get-SPWebApplication -IncludeCentralAdministration | ?{$_.IsAdministrationWebApplication -eq $true}

$ca.SuiteBarBrandingElementHtml = "<div class='ms-core-brandingText'>Central Admin: FarmA Production</div>"

$ca.Update()

Deleting users from the User Information List in SharePoint using Powershell

This Powershell script deletes user in the User Information List (UIL), but doesn't delete any users that you specify in the csv file.

Remove the WhatIf switch when you are happy with the results.