Computers ⁽¹²⁸⁾

Brian Bilbrey August 20, 2014

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 - two days running at almost precisely the same pace. Excellent! * * * 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…

Brian Bilbrey June 16, 2014

Lay-Flat toaster

I just picked up a lay-flat USB3 SATA docking station from Plugable Tech. Works like a champ in my cabinet configuration. See ... This let me move my in-system SATA front-load slot over to the other system for whole-disk backups of the Windows system, and to play with other OS loads in a less impactful way. I like it a lot, and it works just fine.

Brian Bilbrey May 30, 2014

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 ... 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. * * * Marcia got a FitBit thing a while back, and she likes it very much. It helps her keep…

Brian Bilbrey May 10, 2014

Trip Report: LOPSA East 2014

As promised, if a few days later than expected, here is my trip report for LOPSA East 2014. For those who don't know, LOPSA is the acronym for the League of Professional System Administrators. LOPSA is the entity that emerged from an attempt by SAGE to gain independence from USENIX back in 2005. You can get more of the back story on the LOPSA history page (https://lopsa.org/about_history). Four years ago, PICC (the Professional IT Community Conference) was first held in New Jersey; it was organized by William Bilancio and Tom Limoncelli. I missed that one, but have attended ever since.

Brian Bilbrey March 2, 2014

OMG Moar Wintar!!

There's a bit of rain on the ground ... about a tenth of an inch since noon. The temperatures are in the mid-to-high 30's (F). So of course OPM has already called it for tomorrow: CLOSED. Now, depending on how reliable you regard our weather forecasting establishment to be, that might be a good move. Others believe, too: BJs was crowded early this morning, when I was there for the weekly shopping. Evidently, for some folks, a winter storm is actually Ragnarok. I did a lot of small projects this weekend, and I've spent some time diving into Ansible as…