The September meeting of the Bluegrass Linux User Group will be this Saturday, 17 Sep. We’ll be meeting at Collexion’s facilities in Lexington at 2:30p. I will be presenting on data center automation, specifically on HP’s Server Automation platform (the tool I use on my day job). Some [limited] history of HPSA is available on the Opsware …
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Category:personal
reading again
Wow. It’s been several months since I last posted a book review. I have been reading in the mean time – just haven’t gotten around to posting any of them hereon. In the intervening months I’ve read {{1434}} by {{Gavin Menzies}} (follow-on to 1421) and {{The Lost City of Z}} by {{David Grann}}. I’m currently reading …
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debugging authorized_keys and ssh
I saw an interesting question this morning on ServerFault, entitled “SSH Prompts for password even though private keys are available, presented to server and known to it”. when my user is not already connected to the server (first ssh connexion), it prompts for password even though privates keys are availiable (PuTTY + Pagent). After that …
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new connexions collection available
I have been working on my Connexions submissions again recently, and have a collection ready for use (it will be growing as time goes on): “Debugging and Supporting Software Systems” I realize there are some small typos in the current text, but I will be addressing that in a upcoming revision 🙂 I’d love to …
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light shows
I’ve recently had some travel for work that had put me up in Indianapolis. Tuesday evening I watched the best light show ever: a miles-high, miles-wide thunderhead flashing nearly constantly for over 30 minutes. It was a little east of where I was staying in Fishers, but man was it pretty! For the record, God’s …
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4-h judging
My wife and I are participating as judges in the state finals for the Kentucky 4-H presentations at UK’s campus Saturday. We’ve both gotten tagged to judge speeches. This’ll be my first time ever involved with 4-H, whereas my wife has been doing something with them every year for about 15 years 🙂
visiting the Creation Museum
For several years, I have wanted to visit the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky, built and sponsored by Answers in Genesis – a group I have yet to find issues with (from theological, scientific, or other points of view). On the 4th, my wife and I headed up the ~90 minutes to get to the …
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family reunion and a new trip
A couple weeks ago, my wife and I flew up to NJ for my family reunion (held near South Bound Brook every last Saturday in June). I’ve missed the last few due to other things getting in the way (like living in Singapore and getting married ;)) – so it was great to be able …
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melting pot – but better-er :)
Earlier this week my wife decided to surprise me with a dinner she thought-of more-or-less on-the-spot. We are both big fans of The Melting Pot. Tuesday she popped out to Kroger and bought a small package of potatoes, some various broths, and an absolutely AMAZING meat rub spice mix. Also she found some strawberries (on sale – …
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digital lostness
As with many others, I suppose, I have various email address come and go: perhaps via job changes, or graduating/changing schools, deciding to sell a domain, or any of a host of other reasons. There’s a problem with that, though: when those changes happen, sometimes access to other digital resources becomes…difficult. For example, I have …
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1 year
Sunday marked the my first anniversary with my lovely wife, Christina. We spent the last week in Virginia, utilizing the one-year passes we bought on our honeymoon 🙂 Our flights into Norfolk were smooth, and since it was so nice, we just decided to head straight to the beach from the airport. The weather was …
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memorial day
I have been fortunate to both know and know of many folks in the US military over the past 70 years. In approximate historical order, thank you for your service: Roger M Ralph M Ken C Joe M Ken C Warren M EJ N June N (C) Donald C Jeremy F Joe D Ben W …
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haiku talk
This past Saturday, I gave a presentation/talk on Haiku for the BGLUG in Lexington KY. For those unfamiliar with Haiku, it is an open-source reimplementation of my favorite OS of all time, BeOS. Instead of having a formal slide deck for the event (as initially planned), I kept it informal with an oral history of …
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square foot gardening by mel bartholomew
Years ago, my mom and I would routinely try to catch episodes of {{Square Foot Gardening}} (SFG) on PBS. Hosted by {{Mel Bartholomew}}, a retired civil engineer, SFG was a program whose aim was to enable gardening by the masses in confined spaces (though, naturally, if can be implemented in larger settings as well). Mr Bartholomew’s …
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bglug presentation – haiku fun
On 21 May I am presenting at the BGLUG meeting. The topic will be Haiku. I was an ardent BeOS fan/user for a while during their early Developer and Release days, and was among the saddest* to see them disappear as a company, and then even more saddened when Palm totally blew their chance to …
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applied cryptography, 2d ed by bruce schneier
As recently promised, here is my review of {{Bruce Schneier}}’s seminal work, {{Applied Cryptography}} (2d edition). I received my now-signed copy of Applied Cryptography (2d ed) for my 16th birthday – about a year after it was published. Of all the “odd” books I asked-for when I was younger, this single volume had to take …
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pascal’s pensées
{{Blaise Pascal}}, the famous mathematician, philosopher, and part-time theologian, is a fascinating member of history to me. Several years ago I borrowed a copy of his “{{Pensées}}” from a friend, and skimmed it. At the time, I was impressed more with the randomness of the collection than with anything specific he wrote. A few days ago, …
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the codebreakers by david kahn
My interest in cryptography has extended, now, for more than 15 years. The first book I read on the topic was {{David Kahn}}’s seminal work, {{The Codebreakers}}. Several years later, I received a copy of the book for Christmas, which I promptly reread. Kahn’s writing style is eminently inviting, sucking the reader into an extensive …
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folding@home – ewok cabaret
For several months (I guess, more accurately, “years” now) I have been contributing to Stanford’s folding@home project. That’s my team I just linked-to (88135). If you’re interested in donating your spare CPU cycles to a pretty worthy cause, I’d invite you to join my team 🙂
new job
Today I started a new job, which will hopefully involve a bit less travel than my last one did. I enjoyed working with my team at my last employer, and wish them the best in their future ventures. Now off to find out where my first customer will be 🙂
firsts – programming
I realized earlier this week that it’s been 19 years since I first started programming. Not my first exposure to computing, which was in about 1986 on my aunt’s Mac 512 .. but still a long time ago 🙂 My aunt gave me a Tandy 102 laptop that had a whole walloping 21446 bytes of …
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jeopardy tryouts
Jeopardy! has been a favorite of mine for years: it’s the reason I eat fast. I’ve tried-out a couple times in the past – once in person at Southpoint Mall in Durham NC and once online. Tonight I did again – so here’s hoping I did well enough 🙂
moving – what a pain!
I hadn’t paid attention to all the things that have to be setup when you move in such a short period of time before: electric, gas, water, change of addresses… what a pain! But it’s worth it since we’ll have more privacy, more space, and less-close neighbors 🙂 I have the electric set to switch …
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new residence
Though it’s not the ideal we have of owning our own home, my wife and I will be one step closer in a few days as we will be signing a lease on a rental home here in Lexington and moving out of the apartment complex we’ve been in since we got married. I think …
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upgrades
I fly quite frequently – last year I re-met Delta‘s Gold Medallion status, and made it all the way to Platinum (go me!). One of the perks is that I frequently get upgraded from the coach tickets I book to First/Business seats instead – for free (and free == better). I was about 23k miles …
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