Year Winding Down

We’re about two weeks out, and at 36″+,  just a little under eight inches shy on precipitation compared to annual normal. Of course, the tree abutting the deck has put on some bulk in the last couple of years, and it’s entirely possible that the current siting of my rain gauge is in tree shadow part of the time. I’m thinking of re-siting it (or even getting a more comprehensive weather thing) in the next year. But that’s a project for another day (month?).

But this year certainly has flown by.

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If you saw what I was working on last week, you’ll be pleased to know that I got the sump pit monitor (incorporating a Raspberry Pi, an HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Sensor, and code courtesy of Al Audet) functioning and in place yesterday. The most recent output: “21:06:05,8.0” – That’s eight centimeters of water above pit low. Eventually I’ll graph some of the data, but right now I’m just happy that it’ll send me a text if the water gets too high. There ware a couple of gotchas in the distributed code that I’ll want to document and get back into the public code base – mostly just comments that need to be in the raspisump.conf file to ensure that configuration items are done properly so that people don’t make the same mistakes I made.

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I also got some coffee roasted, applied polish and elbow grease to my dress shoes, had a couple of good days on the elliptical, and finished up the monthly patch cycle of a batch of $FIRM systems (late Saturday night and early Sunday morning). What am I forgetting: that doesn’t seem like enough stuff to fill a weekend. Hmmm, oh, yeah: Shopping. Sending some ZFS filesystem snapshots from a production host to a copy of said host for testing purposes. Email read and responded to. Tickets reviewed, commented upon, and resolved, as appropriate.

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Recent Reading: I’ve been re-reading Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon on the phone in dribs and drabs. I use the phone as dead-time reading because I don’t carry the Kindle or any dead trees with me much anymore. At the bedside is Aspirin & Nye’s Myth Alliances, which I’ve apparently had on the shelf for a good long time, and somehow never managed to pick up before. And on the Kindle (also bedside reading) is Joseph Lallo’s Unstable Prototypes. Plus I’ve got a stack of IEEE, ACM, USENIX ;login:, and woodworking magazines to get through one of these days.

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Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

  • Sgt. 1st Class Ramon S. Morris, 37, of New York, New York, died Dec. 12, in Parwan Province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when the enemy attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device.
  • Spc. Wyatt J. Martin, 22, of Mesa, Arizona, died Dec. 12, in Parwan Province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when the enemy attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device.

 

Progress Elliptical

Elliptical progress

Elliptical progress

That’s the highest single-session stride count I’ve done to date. That plus 96 sit-ups, 48 push-ups, and assorted stretches filled up my late afternoon between arriving home and feeding the dog. Not too shabby.

A Good Day

Work was work. But the workout was good.

After a bit of stretch, I put in 60 sit ups, 21 push ups, and this:

Elliptical Fun!

Elliptical Fun!

My UP app (from Jawbone, same as the UP24 I wear) tells me I’ve done a million monitored steps since I first put on the device on 31 May. A significant percentage, more than half I’d guess, was done on the elliptical. Go me!

Back in the Groove

After several weeks of very intermittent exercise, and some backsliding on the dietary controls, I’m back in the groove, I think …

Good exercise days

Good exercise days

Good exercise days – two days running at almost precisely the same pace. Excellent!

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I use OpenSSH for nearly all of my computing platform access, except for that OS from Redmond. Secure access to commandline environments meets about  90% (a made up number, gut check says “true”) of my requirements. It’d be more, but I access a lot of monitoring services via a browser. But close to 100% of actual work is done via commandline remotely over SSH.

Every time I set up a new server, I’ve been logging into the new box and setting up the first user account with the appropriate public key. First I’d copy the key up to the new system, then I’d log in on the new box and run commands like these:

[user@box] ~# mkdir .ssh && chmod 700 $_ && touch $_/authorized_keys && chmod 600 $_
[user@box] ~# cat id_dsa.pub >> $_

How was I to know that in the intervening years, some one of the smart contributors to the OpenSSH project added the ssh-copy-id program. All I need to do from the client system is type something like this:

[user@client] ~# ssh-copy-id -i .ssh/id_dsa.pub user@box

It prompts me for my password, and the work is done. All of the directory and file work, correct permissions included (replacing those chmod commands), all done in one swell foop. Very handy.

Ciao!

A Lovely Day for an Anniversary

Yep. Sixteen wonderful years I’ve been married to Marcia. To celebrate, she worked on a t-shirt quilt for a customer, while I … went to work. But this evening, on the way home …

Got my gal some roses

Got my gal some roses

She seems to like them. She also got a sewing thing accessory as a pressie, while I’ve got a set of E. E. “Doc” Smith paperbacks headed my way. We’re so romantical. We’ll go out to supper to complete our celebration one of these days.

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Marcia got a FitBit thing a while back, and she likes it very much. It helps her keep track of a lot of the things she needs to. Since I’ve been trying to do better on that front, like this (this evening):

Burned a kilocalorie

Burned a kilocalorie

I could also do better at keeping track of such things, as well as managing my portion control through better records keeping. But I chose a different bit of gear: a Jawbone UP24. I executed the purchase through Amazon, which saved a few bucks, and I have had very few problems puzzling out how to make the App interface operate. I’ll report further on the product, the app, and how/if it’s helping me with any of my goals at some ill-defined later date.

I ain’t Rocky…

Stallone’s director made getting in shape look like a snap in the Rocky movies. Me, I’m doing well with the elliptical, and for a moment over the weekend I was below 230. I’ve not been that weight in better than a decade. Today:

A good run

A good run

A good run (for me) – 6000 strides in under 50 minutes. Ciao!