Category Archives: Beware of Leopard

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Pro Puppet, Second Edition, Grumble.

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Well. I’m now plowing through Pro Puppet, Second Edition, in a continuing effort to be useful in integrating configuration management into my environments at work and here at home. But the publisher website doesn’t have features promised by the book, the publisher website doesn’t seem to accept and post the errata I’ve discovered, and now the Puppet Labs blog post about the book has marked my comment on their post as “Spam”. Um, really? Here’s the comment I tried to post to the blog:

Bought the book. Quite useful, about a quarter of the way through, but…
There are still some serious editing issues, code inconsistencies, and outright errors and oversights. While I’m learning *more* than I expected by fixing problems in the examples in the book, I’m sad that the examples appear not to have actually been tested (or copied from known working configurations).

Hint 2 – ALWAYS say what file the code snippet goes into. Very frustrating.

Hint 3 – The book says that all of the code from the book is available on the Apress site. Not yet, it isn’t. Can someone get Apress on the ball about this, please?

Hint 4 – I’ve put in two or three errata entries on the Apress site so far, battling the bloody captcha. None have been reposted, and I’m tired of doing so when I must manually transcribe (I can’t copy out of the Kindle browser reader directly). No feedback, not posted … not sure why I should continue trying.

Like I said, good book, seems to be good coverage, but ragged in places and not as well supported by the publisher as I’d expect, given the amount of money I shelled out.

Best,

Brian

That doesn’t seem too spammy to me. But then, I wrote it. Oh, well.

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Oh, yeah. Home today: I had some stuff to do with Marcia this morning, and I took the rest of the day off … because I can. Ciao!

After the Fall

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We ended up with about 5″ of snow here. Better than those north of us… Boston, for example. Here’s what things looked like after shoveling off the driveway, as I was ready to depart for work around 0730 (about an hour late):

Front Yard Snow

Front Yard Snow

Oh, yeah. And we’re due for low single digit temps tonight, huzzah! Happy Friday.

Let it Snow!

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Snowfall 1/2/14

Snowfall 1/2/14

As of noon, we were due for maybe an inch of snow, if that, according to forecast. But looking at the radar even then, it was clear that the cold line was further south than predicted. We’re at about three-four inches on the deck, maybe two in the street, and I’m guessing another inch or so before it’s all done. Um, yay?

T’was the night b’fnord

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That is arguably one of my favorite blooper scenes from the Carol Burnett Show. No Harvey in this one, but Vicki as Mama kicks butt. At least as much fun as Christmas, eh? Speaking of the holiday, we’re having a quiet one, at home. No travel, etc. Keeping expenses way down, since we might want to get Marcia a new hip this year…

Missed my post two nights ago. I was confused on Sunday – it was so bloody warm. Two nights ago it was mid-60’s after Lexi’s supper – shorts and t-shirt. Tonight, thirty and snow flurries. Weird.

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

  • Petty Officer 1st Class James L. Smith, 38, of Huffman, Texas, died Dec. 11, in Landstuhl, Germany, from a non-combat related incident.
  • Chief Warrant Officer 2 Randy L. Billings, 34, of Heavener, Oklahoma, died Dec. 17, in Now Bahar, Afghanistan, of injuries suffered as a result of a helicopter crash.
  • Chief Warrant Officer 2 Joshua B. Silverman, 35, of Scottsdale, Arizona, died Dec. 17, in Now Bahar, Afghanistan, of injuries suffered as a result of a helicopter crash.
  • Sgt. Peter C. Bohler, 29, of Willow Spring, North Carolina, died Dec. 17, in Now Bahar, Afghanistan, of injuries suffered as a result of a helicopter crash.
  • Sgt. 1st Class Omar W. Forde, 28, of Marietta, Georgia, died Dec. 17, in Now Bahar, Afghanistan, of injuries suffered as a result of a helicopter crash.
  • Staff Sgt. Jesse L. Williams, 30, of Elkhart, Indiana, died Dec. 17, in Now Bahar, Afghanistan, of injuries suffered as a result of a helicopter crash.
  • Spc. Terry K. D. Gordon, 22, of Shubuta, Mississippi, died Dec. 17, in Now Bahar, Afghanistan, of injuries suffered as a result of a helicopter crash.
  • Sgt. Daniel M. Vasselian, 27, of Abington, Massachusetts, died Dec. 23, while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.

X < 50

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… where X is the temperature outside when I get up in the morning. Today was the first day for that event, post-summer. But only just, 49 degrees fahrenheit at 0800 this morning. This is my leading indicator of the imminent arrival of the Fall season. There’s also the calendar, which tells me the Autumnal Equinox is 6 days and 20 hours or so in my personal future. But the temps are the big deal for Fall as far as I’m concerned, not the calendar. It was a cold summer, all things being equal. I’m waiting to see what Fall brings us.

Yesterday was a chore day. I shaved the brown lawns front and back, and did a bit of weeding in the sad gardens (where weeds are now the big product, and the veg is mostly dead – a lot of August travel on my part had a big effect on garden maintenance). In the afternoon, I vacuumed the house, did a bit of bathroom cleaning, and cut my hair. Dog walks were interspersed throughout. Today was not as ambitious. Shopping, coffee roasting, and a bit of computer work rounded out my Sunday.

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Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of this fallen warrior:

  • Staff Sgt. Robert E. Thomas Jr., 24, of Fontana, California, died Sept. 13, at Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, of wounds suffered during a non-combat related incident on April 21, 2013, in Maiwand, Afghanistan.

Launch weekend

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Well, it was a launch for NASA’s LADEE mission, a lunar orbiter (full name Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer”), from Wallops Island in Virginia. I headed up by the tennis courts to get a better south east view, further from the trees. Using binoculars, I was able to clearly see the ascent from about 10 seconds post-launch, through first stage separation and second stage firing, and on into the distance for a long while. Very cool. Usually the Wallops launches aren’t so spectacular, and I’m usually clouded in and can’t see them anyway from this distance.

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In other news, I stripped Scientific Linux (a Red Hat respin distro) off of Serenity, the home Linux box, and refettled the hardware with the latest Kubuntu. For a home box, I wanted a bit more versatility and package selection than SL had on offer. Start to finish about 24 hours. Lots of stuff to copy off the old box, then rebuild RAID and boot stuff, copy backups on again, and configure services so that all the assorted jobs and services that depend on this system work again. All good now, far as I can tell.

Also over the weekend, I started re-finishing the small table I had in my office – that’ll be an occasional table in the guest bedroom once I’ve got enough coats of poly on it.

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Our condolences to the families, friends, and unit of this fallen warrior:

  • Staff Sgt. Todd J. Lobraico Jr., 22, of New Fairfield, Connecticut, died Sept. 5, 2013, from wounds sustained when enemy forces attacked his unit with small arms fire near Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan.

Summer daze

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Shedloads of yardwork and housework yesterday, leading up to Linda Rose and Mike over for supper and a couple rounds of Ticket to Ride. Much fun had by all, good food, exhausting. I overslept this morning, so was shopping late, then working remotely on some patching late, and so on. I never really caught up.

Oh, hey, one bit of yummy: we had freshly killed zucchini from the garden with supper last night. Sliced, steamed, then sprinkled with Parmesan cheese: superb!

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

  • Lance Cpl. Jared W. Brown, 20, of Youngstown, Florida, died June 16 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
  • Sgt. Justin R. Johnson, 25, of Hobe Sound, Florida, died June 18, in Bagram, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with indirect fire.
  • Spc. Ember M. Alt, 21, of Beech Island, South Carolina, died June 18, in Bagram, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked her unit with indirect fire.
  • Spc. Robert W. Ellis, 21, of Kennewick, Washington, died June 18, in Bagram, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with indirect fire.
  • Spc. William R. Moody, 30, of Burleson, Texas, died June 18, in Bagram, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with indirect fire.

Powerful storms … crap predictions

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The news leading into Thursday was designed to instill fear … only 10 times in the last 30 years (or was it 5 times in the last 10, but whatever) had the mid-Atlantic states had such a powerful storm prediction laid on in advance. I noted at the time that the article had neglected to mention the success rate of those prior predictions. I, however, predict that based on the overall low impact of these current storms on our area, the prior prediction success rate was also low. I indict the MSM as a messenger that tries to instill terror in our population.

Thursday I was in the District at a VMUG conference. I bailed out a bit early and got home in time to fire up the generator when the power went out – a tree had taken out a power line nearby. Two hours later, the power was back on. There had been a tornado, an EF0 that had been on the ground for a fair stretch, and damaged a few houses and cars by knocking trees over on them. Last year’s derecho was much, much worse than what we had this week. Oh, yeah, another tree fell in about the same place today, and we were power-out again for another two hours.

I got some more herbs installed this weekend in the garden, did a fair bit of weeding, and got the face frames and backs fabricated and installed on the last two cabinets, down in the woodshop.

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

  • Lt. Col. Todd J. Clark, 40, of Evans Mills, New York, died June 8, in Sharana, Afghanistan, of injuries suffered from small arms fire received at Zarghun Shahr, Afghanistan.
  • Maj. Jaimie E. Leonard, 39, of Warrick, New York, died June 8, in Sharana, Afghanistan, of injuries suffered from small arms fire received at Zarghun Shahr, Afghanistan.
  • Staff Sgt. Jesse L. Thomas Jr., 31, of Pensacola, Florida, died June 10, in Helmand, Afghanistan.

Spring is exhausting…

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Last weekend, spring cleaning. This weekend, yardwork, all weekend long. The front is all pruned up, and first mowing of the year done. Looks pretty good (but the front fence needs a full redo). Today, I spent as much energy as I had (several hours worth) weeding out and tilling the garden beds in preparation for spring planting. In the evenings this week, I’ll get the rest of the back yard cleaned up, too. At least then I’ll have a starting point for the rest of the spring work.

Upcoming: This is going to be an expensive week, since a rock thrown a considerable distance by a truck cracked my windshield beyond the trivial repair stage. I’ve also got router bits to purchase for the cabinet work, and a bit more maple, too. Have to keep going on the office redo, or I’ll still be “working on it” months from now.

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

Staff Sgt. Christopher M. Ward, 24, of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, died April 6 in Kandahar, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit in Zabul, Afghanistan with a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.

Spc. Wilbel A. Robles-Santa, 25, of Juncos, Puerto Rico, died April 6 in Kandahar, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit in Zabul, Afghanistan with a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.

Spc. Delfin M. Santos Jr., 24, of San Jose, California, died April 6 in Kandahar, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit in Zabul, Afghanistan with a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.