The journey continues...

Brian Bilbrey January 26, 2014

Cold Sunday

Still haven't got above freezing, snow and ice everywhere around yet. Other than that, and a nice supper in with neighbors last night, nothing too exciting going on. Unwound today playing Bioshock. Fun. Oh, yeah. We watched Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing this week. Loved. It. Loved it! You should watch it, too. * * * Our condolences to the family and friends of Chief Warrant Officer Edward Balli, 42, of Monterey, California. He died on Jan. 20, in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, of wounds from small arms fire when he was attacked by insurgents.

Brian Bilbrey January 19, 2014

Not as much fun...

The second week of the year, sadly, was not so much fun (though overall successful and much more eventful). I flew out to Columbus on business last Sunday night, and concluded the work in time to be home on Tuesday evening. Wednesday morning, I got out of bed and spontaneously "decided" that emptying my stomach was going to be the previously unplanned activity of the day. Although that was a solo event, the aches, fever, and general lack of ability to focus lasted pretty much through yesterday. So I lost a week to Ohio, and to the flu. But all…

Brian Bilbrey January 12, 2014

Back in the Groove

First full week of 2014 put to bed, although I took Tuesday off to ferry Marcia to an appointment. All is well. Chores all weekend, and obligations tonight, so I'm posting a bit early today. I didn't have any more time for Puppet this week, but someone recommended I try ALL of the CM products out there before settling on one. Lovely. I'll just order an "Extra 24 Hours in Each Day" subscription from Amazon. That'll do the trick. Y'all have a good week! * * * DoD has reported no deaths in the last week, which is better than…

Brian Bilbrey January 7, 2014

Pro Puppet, Second Edition, Grumble.

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: Hint 2 - ALWAYS say what file the code snippet goes into. Very frustrating. Hint 3…

Brian Bilbrey January 5, 2014

Pre-cooling

While the West is unseasonably warm and horribly dry, we're hovering around normal on precipitation here in this back yard - .28" measured for 2014 to date. But the temps we've got coming are something else again. Today was a summer-ish 38° F, with some rain to knock down most of the snow, more's the pity. It was pretty outside, but not so much, now. Day after tomorrow, we should be around 0-2° F over night, with a high around 12° or so. That's cold, baby! And dicey driving on roads slick with snow-melt that stopped melting. After that, oddly,…