Category Archives: Lexi

20 April 2020

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Fun with WordPress

Note – this is a discussion and solution for a technical problem for a WordPress instance that uses an SSL certificate signed by a non-public CA. If you don’t care about this sort of thing, please move your eyes down to the next section.

The error text that I saw in the new-to-me Site Health page following upgrading to WordPress 5.4:

cURL error 60: SSL certificate problem: unable to get local issuer certificate

The error above was generated because WordPress/PHP couldn’t verify the site certificate. When this is broken, the impact can be significant on a WordPress instance. Some features just don’t work quite right. Auto updating can fail, and so on.

The context here is that for a variety of internal and external sites, I use site-specific SSL certificates that are signed by our internal CA. That’s a good thing, because prior to Let’s Encrypt, it was easy to spend a bunch of money on SSL certificates from a reputable source. We won’t discuss the non-reputable sources. Since I’m using an external resource for caching and web app firewalling, I am able to use the internally signed certificate for several external sites as well.

With the most recent update adding Site Health as a core feature, this error surfaced for me on a couple of sites. It took a couple of hours and some false starts before I found this solution.

In the WordPress file tree, there’s a file at wp-includes/certificates/ca-bundle.crt (using UNIX-style slashes). This is the file of CA certificates that WordPress and the PHP functions use to verify a certificate is valid. Tryijg to get WordPress and PHP to use the system CA certs file (which has my Root Certificate added as a trust source) was a non-starter, although I tried. So I copied the text of my Internal Root Certificate into thewp-includes/certificates/ca-bundle.crt file. Boom! Problem solved … for now.

The downside of this solution is that any given WordPress update in the future may (will?) overwrite that file with newer info, and will once again exclude my Internal Root Certificate. So I created a text file that contained an identifying header string and the Internal Root Certificate. I then wrote a shell script to check thewp-includes/certificates/ca-bundle.crt for that header string, and if not found, adds the content of the text file to the ca-bundle.crt file. That shell script runs once a day in the wee hours of the morning.

Now, anytime there’s a WordPress update that overwrites ca-bundle.crt, by the next morning, the Internal Root CA certificate will be back in place, and things will continue humming along nicely.

Staying at Home

We continue to stay at home, which is a good thing.

I’ll ask you to determine for yourself if it’s a good thing that some people who, for reasons of politics, mistrust etc., continue to gather in groups, putting themselves and their loved ones at heightened risk of severe illness and death. I personally would rather that people be sane and safe. But bailing any water at all from the deeply stupid side of the gene pool can only be for the good of humanity, in the long term.

I didn’t do any yardwork this weekend. We did a number of other inside chores, including re-loading shelves and such after dealing with a multi-phased ant invasion.

Additionally, on the yardwork front, I will point out that planting veggies HAS brought the usual effects on to our region: We had two overnight frosts in the last week, and we’re due for one more on Tuesday night. I’ve been tarping the veggie beds for those events, and so far haven’t lost plants to them.

Happy Dog

While I was dealing with a training event late last week, I ran across the first picture we took of Lexi on her gotcha date in March 27, 2010:

Our first picture of Lexi the chipuggle mutt, taken on March 27, 2010.
Lexi’s First Photo Op

Winding Down

Nothing particular to report here. Be well, okay?

April 13, 2020

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Health and Safety

We’re continuing on the bored, stir-crazy, and physically healthy trend here. We hope that all is well with you and yours.

Yard Work

Aside from working from home, and some indoor chores, most of my “spare” time has been given over to further yard work. During the week, I took half a day off. The first hour of that was conveying the dog to her second round of annual shots at the veterinary clinic. The rest involved picking up some veggies and a tray of flowers, then getting the veggies into the raised beds.

I started by removing last year’s landscape fabric and preparing the beds for tilling:

Two garden beds ready for tilling

Turning over the soil in those two beds, with a bit of amendment in the form of sterilized manure, was a matter of barely 15 minutes. That was followed by raking out and leveling the beds, and getting the plants installed.

Veggies installed in garden beds.

I haven’t yet setup the watering – it really isn’t needed at this time of year. And from today’s vantage, several of those tomato seedlings (in the near box) are already failing. I’ll have to pick up some more robust ones soon.

On the weekend, I continued working on the front yard. My primary focus was making that bed where the extracted tree once lived nice again. So on Saturday, I used the pick axe to turn over the soil in large chunks, and remove as many of the roots as I might. Then I used the tiller to turn the soil over and make it manageable. I raked and shaped the bed, then covered the back section with landscape fabric to keep the weeds down. Finally I mulched the whole bed. I continued with a few more bedding sections, with the eventual goal of getting the front yard in shape. I’m about half done. But here’s how that mound came out:

Mound, made pretty

Winding Down

DoD announced no new casualties in the last week.

Side note – I was up for a few hours during the night, comforting a dog terrified by the intermittent thunder. She’d just start to settle down, then another boom would wind her up again. Now, of course, I’ve got to work, and she’s curled up in a ball beside my chair, asleep and snoring. Sigh.

30 March 2020

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Healthy and Cooped Up

As such things go these days, that’s not a bad combination. I’m one of about three people going into my office for a few hours one day a week, to manage one part of our “essential” business that requires physical presence. I’m trying to keep the grocery runs to once every two weeks if I can manage it. Just about the time the weather gets nice enough that Marcia could consider going fishing, at least, the stay home order drops. A pretty good thing, frankly, but it’s hard for her, I know.

The extended family is, to the best of our knowledge, also healthy and cooped up. That’s a happiness, too.

Be safe as reasonable, my friends. Lexi will keep guard…

Lexi on guard duty

15 March 2020

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Ides of March

Happy Birthday, Alex!

What’s new?

The good news is that we already practice social distancing a lot. Hope y’all can manage that, too! Wash your hands a lot, keep the people around you healthy by keeping yourself as isolated as is reasonable and possible.

We’re both healthy at this time, and we’ll do our best to keep it that way!

I did get the shopping done today, which took a while, since there were lines. I also roasted coffee.

Lexi

Relaxing:

Lexi the mutt relaxing on her back, on the sofa.
Lexi relaxing…

Winding Down

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

  • Gunnery Sgt. Diego D. Pongo, 34, of Simi Valley, California died on March 8, 2020 while supporting Iraqi Security Forces in north central Iraq.
  • Capt. Moises A. Navas, 34, of Germantown, Maryland died on March 8, 2020 while supporting Iraqi Security Forces in north central Iraq.
  • Army Spc. Juan Miguel Mendez Covarrubias, 27, of Hanford, California died March 11, 2020, when his unit was engaged by enemy indirect fire at Camp Taji, Iraq.
  • Air Force Staff Sgt. Marshal D. Roberts, 28, of Owasso, Oklahoma, when his unit was engaged by enemy indirect fire at Camp Taji, Iraq.

3 March 2020

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Super Tuesday

Enough said.

Eyeballs

Marcia’s cataract surgery went off without a hitch, and she is really happy with both her current improved vision and the progress she’s making. It’s frustrating that she has to sleep with a pirate patch each night, and endure a month of eyedrops, but all realize that compared to progressively worsening functional blindness in one eye, she’s a winner.

Entertainment

We got out and about this weekend, heading over to Ram’s Head On Stage, over in Annapolis, for a lovely matinee show with Zoë Keating.

Zoë Keating playing her cello at Ram’s Head

Zoë’s music is a joy! We saw her last at the same venue a few years ago. She’s had a rough road dealing with the illness and death of her husband in the interim. Her fans (Marcia and I among them) supported her as best we could, as Zoë would allow. I’m selfishly glad she’s back to composing and performing her own music.

Zoë did note and “appreciate” the “Vermont spring weather” that greeted her – it had only climbed up to freezing by noon on Saturday!

Dog

Lexi, being weird

Winding Down

No other significant news to report from this end of the world. After the weekend chill, we’re back to unseasonably warm weather. Did I mention daffodils? Yeah, in bloom for a week or more already. Sigh.

27 January 2020

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Tick Tock

Yes, yes, yes. It’s been many days since Friday the Thirteenth fell on a Monday this month. I’ve been busy, but that’s all, just busy. All is otherwise well. Roasting coffee. Chores. Dinner guests. Work. Sleep. And the clock, it keeps ticking. So, thank you for your patience. Your reward is a winterized Lexi photo:

Lexi in Winter Relaxation mode

Not much else to report. Be well.

22 December 2019

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Beginnings and Endings

We find ourselves a day into Winter, thus Beginnings. We’ve had mornings in the teens (Fahrenheit) fairly often for the last couple of weeks, so sliding formally into Winter seems the merest formality. More fun, we had guests up from Atlanta, and, well, it’s properly cold here, for them. But they’re driving further north, more power to them. It was a joy to have some time with Jen and Chris, though. And Lexi got lots of attention from them, too. Linda was over for supper, too. We enjoyed a properly garlic-y chicken supper, a holiday film from Mel Brooks, and some pressies were exchanged to much fun and excitement.

On the other side of the scale, the decade is about done. Sometimes Endings are good. I’ve always said that the problem is politicians, of whatever stripe. But I think we’ve had a properly shitty few years, and maybe it’s because the root cause isn’t really a politician, after all (not this time). One hopes for hope in the coming year, we’ll see how that works out. Personally, as awful as some things have been, we’ve had a pretty decent 10 years. It’ll be interesting to see how things pan out, going forward.

Work has been work, and I’ve been really, really busy. Tired, frankly, and that’s not looking to end, as a trend, for the next short while, but we have plans to remediate that soon. Marcia finished up a collection of memorial quilts which have made their way out into the world, so she’s looking forward to doing some of her own quilt projects that have gotten backed up.

Winding Down

DoD announced no new casualties in the last couple of weeks. That’s good.

Be good to each other, enjoy your families and your holidays, however you celebrate. Merry Whatever!

24 November 2019

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Pizza Night

After shopping and cleaning house today, we had wonderful home-made pizza AND watched Chicken Run. Now, instead of being able to concentrate on the world-shaking revelations that were to appear in this space, all I can do is type sentences that run on and on without any appearance of termination in sight, if indeed such sentences as typed could be said to have visual acuity of any sort at all.

Disturbing

Nearly every damn political story I read. Disturbing. Politest word I can think of in the circumstances. I’ve got nothing else to say on the subject at this time.

2020 Race

Warren.

A Cute Dog

This is the cute Lexi dog we all need right now:

Lexi the chipuggle mutt, lap adjacent, getting belly scritches.
Lexi getting belly scritches

Winding Down

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

  • Chief Warrant Officer 2 David C. Knadle, 33, from Tarrant, Texas.
  • Chief Warrant Officer 2 Kirk T. Fuchigami Jr., 25, from Keaau, Hawaii.

Both soldiers died on Nov. 20, 2019, in Logar Province, Afghanistan, when their helicopter crashed while providing security for troops on the ground.

11 November 2019

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Honor to Our Veterans

The women and men who put themselves in harm’s way on our behalf get precious little of the respect and care that we should give them each day. Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.

Change Is

Some things change slowly, some so fast one hardly notices the thing itself as the blur as it goes by. A person I work with is moving on, after a lunatic number of years (by today’s standards), and I’m going to miss them a lot. No blur here, but a lot of individual moments that together are a big part of the most recent third of my working life.

Lexi Fix

Lexi the mutt managed to wind herself into Marcia's sweatshirt on the bed, and I'm getting a look when I catch her at it with the camera.
Lexi in a sweatshirt cave

In case you’d forgotten that we share our lives with this funny little rescue mutt, here’s another of her cold days tricks – climbing under a sweatshirt on the bed.

Winding Down

DoD reported no casualties in the last week, in a rare spot of good news these days.

9 September 2019

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Goodbye, Mikey

Our friend Michael Lindsay, husband to Linda Rose Payne, father to Dylan and Kiera, died on August 31, 2019. He was a talented voice actor, and a seriously funny and fun dude, even when in massive pain, which he was, a lot. I’m gonna miss him.

Mainly in Maine

Yes, again. With some lovely weather, visits with usually distant family members, and some moderately successful fishing.

Brian captured a small mouth bass on Cobbosseecontee Lake in Maine. Caught, weighed and released.
Brian captured a small mouth bass

We ended up with 6 or 7 bass between us, all weighed less than two pounds, all released back into the lake after getting weighed and measured. Eleven hours on the drive up (traffic problems), ten hours back home on Saturday. Lexi did really well this trip, and she went for a short swim in the lake, from and to shore. No jumping off of boats for that little dog anymore. Mostly, though, her job was to stand and watch, then run and bark, at the squirrels and chipmunks that frolicked tauntingly in front of her the whole time!

Lexi watching for squirrels and chipmunks out the windows and doors of the camp on Cobbosseecontee Lake in Maine.
Lexi watching for squirrels and chipmunks

Now back in the DC groove, and trying to get caught up. It’s amazing how much chaos an unmonitored week can generate.

Winding Down

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

  • Sgt. 1st Class Dustin B. Ard, 31, from Hyde Park, Utah, died on Aug. 29, 2019, as a result of wounds sustained while engaged in combat operations in Zabul Province, Afghanistan.
  • Sgt. 1st Class Elis A. Barreto Ortiz, 34, from Morovis, Puerto Rico, was killed in action on Sept. 5, 2019, when a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle in Kabul, Afghanistan.