Category: Lifestream

Events created in social apps

On Being Busy

Published by NiteMayr on May 17, 2011

It’s been too long; I’ve been so busy. I guess I’ll recap what I’ve done in these two years plus.

Fixed over 100 incorrectly configured linux boxes so that they would actually send their admin the output of the logwatch command.
Reconfigured the same to use ClamAV correctly and with consistent settings instead of the hodge-podge that they were.
Built a custom monitor for a series of servers that allowed non-techs to determine if the servers in question were up or down. I’d come back to this
Built a scripted installer for a 21 server farm, taking a 10-20 minute process down to a single command line. I’d come back to this too.
Fixed the log backup system that had been in place for months. It’s still there now, but it needs to change.
Got really into replacing complex manual functions with Bash scripts.
Built the data import system for a whole client. SUPER complex and modular, didn’t use most of the code anywhere else save for the functions method.
Got to know cron really well.
Got to know ssh -t “command” really well
Got lost in the weeds of random apps for random functions, the environment was becoming to large and entrenched to be managed remotely via a central console.
Built an extensible console for managing the environment in part.
Build Cache flushing tools
Learned how to compile bash apps at the command line using shc http://www.datsi.fi.upm.es/~frosal/sources/shc.html
This gave birth to a number of cool tools, remote fail-over tools that interacted with Cisco devices for example.
The Web Console built earlier evolved and got better and better.
Built automated localized monitors that could restart hung applications before remote monitors could catch the outage.
Built automated localized monitors that could restart hung applications and NOT cause two systems to restart simultaneously.
Installed DD-WRT a few times, lots of fun.
Gave up some weekends
Gave up some sleep
Gave up Family Time
Gave up Long Weekends
Built a custom log handler for Apache logs, produced delightful daily csv from an environment, imported this into MySQL and created views to deal with that.
Tried to hit the gym
Got too busy for the gym.
Trained up a replacement.
Left things running okay.

How driving past a Chick-fil-A got me back into Comics

Published by NiteMayr on January 31, 2011

Notorious Homophobes and Christian Values expounders Chick-fil-A were an unknown quantity to me when I first visited Virginia in 1999. I had never seen their “Eet mor Chikin” signs nor even ventured inside one of them; and I may never ever if things continue on path. I’ll remember Virginia for it’s temperate November, it’s hard to find liquor store and sinking me back into the morass of comics that I had abandoned not 2 years earlier.

Housecleaning and Housecleaning and housecleaning

Published by NiteMayr on July 6, 2010

Ah bloggy; it’s been a dog’s age.

When I’m doing nothing at home I think I’m wasting my time; and when I think I have spare time I waste it on podcasts and video games. I’ve passed up inspiration a couple of times recently simply because I didn’t feel like committing more time to putting pen to pad (as it were).

Yesterday I moved my photography work off of www.nitemayr.com and over to photography.nitemayr.com hosted on my rack here in London; rather than leaving it in Virginia. That way my images stay on my hard drives; I should be doing a daily mirror of my site over to here too … hmm. Maybe I’ll set that up today.

As for housekeeping on the for reals; I still have to move a proper doorknob onto the Spawn’s door (she has one but it doesn’t close correctly and I have a “spare” knob in the basement that locks like a bathroom door which should give her the privacy a teenager deserves (when she IS a teen in a few months) and the ability to keep the dog out of her room which she needs.

Our plants are really out of control too. I cut a bunch of them back but I think I’ll spend some of the coming weekend just cutting more and more of them back as they are blocking the AC and so on. This will be unpopular; c’est la vie. I had to cut down a bunch of roses this Saturday to make our front porch habitable; so I don’t see any problem with just cutting back some greenery; it’s not like there will be a shortage. I’ll size it up this Saturday morning and get it done before noon I guess. Hmm, I need a better sprinkler too; I had better keep that in mind this week.

I think, save for a couple of patches where drainage is an issue; I have the back yard taking shape. There is grass on about 98% of it now; as opposed to about 95% at the beginning of the year when we had a massive bald mud patch under the big tree (where the squirrel house used to be, but no longer is). It took two runs with seed and coverings to get the grass to really take in the patch; especially with how shady it is. The front lawn however is dying, for lack of watering and just from being weak. I think I’ll need to put way more into it in the spring. I’ll seed it and cover it with straw before the first frost this fall and maybe I’ll get lucky in the spring.

Who knows; maybe I’ll finally get my hands on a ladder and get my damn eaves trough cleaned out before august?

Taking Care of the house

Published by NiteMayr on June 7, 2010

It was a good weekend to get out and see London and the surroundings, which is why I spent the weekend poking around the house and looking where I could fix things and so on.

I didn’t really get much done, what with spending Friday and Saturday fretting over a customer and the Sunday wondering if my basement was filling with gas after I *finally* managed to find the controls for the gas fireplace. I get light-headed with worry when I think about it; gas flooding my basement and killing us all. That thing is a hazard I just want rid of. I’ll keep the one in the living room upstairs; but the basement one has to go.

Hung a few photos, realized that I have to dig out more of them to hang.

Our Yellow Roses have come and are going, fuchsia ones are growing along the path and Champagne and White are on the way.

On the other hand; it was a nice weekend for the sun. I had to pass on a lawn mower, 75 bucks for a toro is fine, but I couldn’t swing it. Maybe some other time.

When the mercury was hitting 80 I was in the yard

Published by NiteMayr on May 31, 2010

Spent a good deal of this weekend enjoying having a yard.

Watered and patched the front lawn a bit on Saturday; put down a ton of “shady blend” grass seed and covered it up with soil in hope that in about 2 weeks those bald patches will be covered in soft grass. Watered it all down and enjoyed the cool spray; it was already 75 in the shade by 10 AM Saturday and Sunday!

The back yard took a bit more, as the gardener (Jen) wouldn’t leave her basement lair in the morning, so she ended up toiling in her dirt corner in the hot sun. I spent some of this time tearing down the squirrel house from the big tree out back. I’ve been spoiling to take it down since the day I noticed the squirrels in it; they alternated between it and our roof all winter and I’m tired of the the pitter patter of little feet, truth be told. So I pulled it down and found it full of three things; dirt, fur and BEES. GOD-DAMNED BEES!!! A whole colony of BEES!!! RUN AUGH! AHHH! BUZZZZ.

Yeah, I found a bee’s nest in the thing as I tore it down and spent about 30 minutes trying to coax them into abandoning the furry confines they had built into. After poking and hoping failed, water and drowning appears to have won out. As they (thumb sized, no joke) bumble bees left the pile of fur and dirt for me to spread them over my new grass seeds on the south (shady) side of the yard.

Every time I go back there I see more crap that needs to be taken out of the yard and I get depressed at the sheer volume of stuff that needs to leave; the former owners left us with a literal ton of garbage and random bullcrap to clean up, not to mention a couple hundred dollars worth of basic repairs and painting to take on when we moved in.

Look; I love that when I wake up and look out my window I’m looking at my yard; but all the repairs (we still don’t have a stove due to the broken glass there) and the garbage cut the sweetness pretty hard.

Yellow roses and fresh cherries aside.

Sunday was nice, more watering more relishing the spray. More beers in the heat of the evening. Pad Thai for supper.

Still…

The house, the yard and stuff

The house, the yard and stuff

Published by NiteMayr on May 17, 2010

Yesterday was one of those “get things in shape” days.

In short order Jen, Elizabeth and I

Removed half of the boxes from the master bedroom that had been “hanging on” opening up another 15% of the floor space in there and making it look cleaner.
Hung some pictures and set the stage for more to go up in the living room area at the front of the house
Cleaned out the storm drains at the end of the yard
Cleaned up the damn pine cones all over the yard
Spiked a bunch of weeds
Coiled the old holey Garden hose for tossing out… might take it back and bury it in the garden instead as an under-ground watering system… bears more thought really.
Finally packed away the dining room table. We don’t eat at it and we have a nice breakfast counter to eat at anyway. This opened up a ton of space in the livingroom/kitchen area too.

In terms of stuff to do I checked out Kijiji and Craigslist and found a bunch of lawn mowers for sale. I’ll have to check on them but we should be able to get a simple gas powered one for under 60 bucks as opposed for 90 bucks for an electrical one. Our grass is too long for an underpowered one…..

We have crab grass where I laid the new seed. Was the new seed full of crab grass? Hmmm.

The new seed didn’t really take universally so we still have a kind of patchy lawn. The back yard has really become this lush jungle of weeds though. We need a weed whacker.

I need to repair at least one plug and then get an electrician in to fix the spare bathroom’s lights and power.

Paint needs touching up in places, but I bet a nice rub with a cloth will fix some of them instead.

Still no oven, coming up with 300 bucks for a repair seems less likely as the months come on.

Some outstanding bills to deal with too.

Perhaps it is time to sell off the comic collection if only to get some of this stuff done.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks

Published by NiteMayr on October 6, 2009

I haven’t written or created anything of worth (for the blog) in ages. I’ve been busting out code at work like it’s nobodies business but my own, some great some not so much. I think I’ve finally gotten the first major importer I wrote into shape (it displays things correctly and isn’t susceptible to bad client behavior).

However, my latest test code has proven to be very difficult to deal with, an automated PGP decrypter with file management and file history. Without going into detail… oh why descend into deep nerd land here? Essentially the problem I’m having is that the script puts up text on the screen and I don’t want it to. This annoys me. That’s about it.

It’s been so busy around here that even playing games on the new spiffy computer hasn’t really been on the cards (even though I’ve dropped about 100 bucks on cut price games from steam and direct2drive to fill it with couldnt-run-this-with-all-the bells-on before goodies. The only game I’ve played through on it was Saint’s Row 2 (bueno) so I could see how it all came down.

I’ve watched a few movies here and there, but I’m so busy… you know what it’s like. I get to the PC at night and I’m sick of the screen and can’t be arsed.

I’m re-reading Transmetropolitan again, I can’t get enough of Spider Jerusalem I guess.

YAAAA

Mel, ignorance is not a virtue

Published by NiteMayr on September 23, 2009

Yikes! I’m blocked now by the way, so I cannot respond directly. The Comment in question (one of around 4 I have ever left on Melanie’s photos) was something along the lines of:

“Wow, this is awesome, I’m so jealous. Can you feel my jealousy falling on you, it’s like grease paint and jealously coming from a crying clown a tall crying clown”

The picture in question appears to have been removed in some form of manic deletion spree. Truly, it was a jealously worthy image of a bridge in Prague(?). I’m not sure that my comment warranted this swipe (especially over 3 months later….what)

This was her response at the time:

So; sinceI cannot reply privately; I respond in public:

Melanie, I have a fairly evolved sense of humor and can accept that even the humorless have cameras. Your pictures are nice; I enjoy them and vicariously celebrate your world tour (I envy your freedom to travel). I was unaware that part and parcel with that freedom came the license to insult people who you have no real relationship with. It’s one thing to go on a manic tear and delete comments and even block me from commenting once in a while on your photos. It’s another thing altogether to go out and insult my family. I await your apology.

In the mean time, enjoy any new friends you make via this blog post.

The Funny thing is that this isn’t the first time this has happened; about 2 years ago after Melanie broke up with my best bud in Eugene, 007Ben, she did the same thing. Deleting all my comments (2 of them) and blocking me. She left my family out of it that time.

Girl, I hope you’ve got lots of money at the DOG PARK, DOG PARK, DOG PARK!

Published by NiteMayr on August 31, 2009

Lucy iz Fasts

We’ve had a dog for about 9 days now; Lucy the “Jug” or “Puggle” or “Jack Russel Mutant” something. She’s about four months old and just getting the hang of asking to go out and not chewing on our hands for comfort. She’s small enough to pick up and carry around, but large enough to not look a toy dog when she is out for a walk. Which brings us to the weekend, when we took her to the off-leash dog park off of Hamilton Road.

It’s a nice park; lots of trees and open spaces. There’s a small dog area, where (on Saturday) Lucy got a taste of real open freedom in the city, running around like crazy and chasing sticks. There’s a a no toys rule in the park to avoid fights (smart) and a poop-scoop rule (smart, but a number of the dog owners seem to ignore it, more on this) the small dog area was deserted, so after a bit we took Lucy to the regular area so she could see other dogs. Good news, she behaves off of the leash in the large area, bad news every male dog that saw her wanted to hump her into a hole in the ground. It was cute when the tiny little black pug mutt wanted to, it stopped being funny when 5 or six dogs were trying.

So I picked her up, walked away and we took an off-leash walk through the woods and then out of the park, leashed up of course when we left.

The next day we skipped milling around with the other people and just went for a walk through the trees and grass. Lucy was great, walking with us and then coming when she lagged to sniff the plants. What a good dog.

We took her into the small dog area where some other small dogs were playing, but they just ended up chasing her around and trying to hump her. Oh well. We leashed her and walked her out to the big dog area where the largest dog at the park decided to try an arial full-speed mounting, repeatedly. The monster’s owner didn’t make any real attempt to stop “Kirby” from repeatedly making my little dog yelp in pain when his monster tried to run down and mount a puppy, it should come as no surprise that he had just let his dog drop a massive load in the trails just 10 minutes earlier while I watched. No scoop, not so much as a look over his shoulder.

Assholes come in all stripes.

I picked Lucy up and walked her away from the fracas and then let her down to walk out of the park.

She’s none the worse for wear, but I’ll keep her out of there until she is fixed and has had more time with other dogs in the small dog area.

Counting Calories the Easy Way

Published by NiteMayr on April 7, 2009

I’m on a diet along with going to the gym; but keeping to my meal plans is expensive and time consuming. I know weight loss isn’t easy; but I needed a way to track myself better.

Check this out for today:

caloriecounting — Counting Calories with Gyminee

This actually covers a meal I haven’t had yet; so I’m WAY behind on my actual calories.

Updated: I went back and added three things I had forgotten and ended up GOING OVER my calorie count for the day. Damn! Gotta be more careful where I get those Calories.