Fencing, continued.

Yesterday, I got all of the left side front fencing replaced. Today, I executed the decorative arches on those sections:

Arching the fence sections.

I set a horizontal string line across the sections, and measured down, sinking a screw at each bottom end of each arch. I then used a quarter-inch thick, 7′ long cutoff from a piece of cherry, braced against the screws and pressed upwards in the middle to describe each parabolic arch. A quick swipe with a pencil marked each arch. I cut them with the circular saw, first plunging in the middle, then working along the curve to each end. The final bits I completed with a jig saw. That side of the fence now awaits stain/sealer.

I’ll also pressure-wash the gate and posts on this side, and the posts on the other side, to get a better match with the stain/sealer when that’s applied.

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Today’s Solaris patching went off without any hitches. The best answer for the task is Martin Paul’s Patch Check Advanced. I can audit my systems for needed patches, apply them to snapshots of the root filesystem (these are called Boot Environments, and I can patch the copy while the system is still running, yay), and then make the patched copy the next Boot target. This makes Solaris patching a much less impactful event, compared to the days when a patch set was downloaded and staged, then the system was brought down to single user mode (no services running) for the entirety of the patch cycle. Much better service uptime this way.

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Also this week, I picked up an Edimax EW-7811Un USB wireless adapter from Amazon, for use with the Raspberry Pi. An excellent, miniscule little product, works like a champ for my purpose. It’s also worth noting that setting up wireless on Linux distros these days is shed-loads easier than it used to be. I added two lines configuring the WPA settings to the /etc/network/interfaces file, and on reboot the network came right up. It makes the Raspberry Pi a much easier thing to work with, since I don’t have to tether it to a wired LAN connection.

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

• Staff Sgt. Patrick H. Quinn, 26, of Quarryville, Pennsylvania, died Oct. 13, in Paktika Province, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when the enemy attacked his base with small arms fire.
• Sgt. Lyle D. Turnbull, 31, of Norfolk, Virginia, died Oct. 18, in Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, from a medical emergency.