Cold Sunday

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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.

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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.

Not as much fun…

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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 is good now.

I see from the news that I won’t have to watch the StupidBowl this year. Sad for Tom and his team, but I get an entire Sunday back in my life.

Tomorrow is a holiday for my ${FIRM}, so I’m going to be doing some house cleaning and a bit of project work down in the woodshop.

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

  • Sgt. Daniel T. Lee, 28, of Crossville, Tennessee, died Jan. 15, in Parwan Province, Afghanistan, from wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with small arms fire during combat operations.
  • Chief Warrant Officer Andrew L. McAdams, 27, of Cheyenne, Wyoming, died Jan. 10, at Bagram Airfield, in Parwan Province, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when the aircraft he was aboard crashed.
  • Sgt. Drew M. Scobie, 25, of Kailua, Hawaii, died Jan. 10, at Bagram Airfield, in Parwan Province, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when the aircraft he was aboard crashed.
  • Spc. Andrew H. Sipple, 22, of Cary, North Carolina, died Jan. 17, in Kandahar City, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, from a non-combat related incident.

Back in the Groove

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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!

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DoD has reported no deaths in the last week, which is better than I expected.

 

Pro Puppet, Second Edition, Grumble.

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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:

Bought the book. Quite useful, about a quarter of the way through, but…
There are still some serious editing issues, code inconsistencies, and outright errors and oversights. While I’m learning *more* than I expected by fixing problems in the examples in the book, I’m sad that the examples appear not to have actually been tested (or copied from known working configurations).

Hint 2 – ALWAYS say what file the code snippet goes into. Very frustrating.

Hint 3 – The book says that all of the code from the book is available on the Apress site. Not yet, it isn’t. Can someone get Apress on the ball about this, please?

Hint 4 – I’ve put in two or three errata entries on the Apress site so far, battling the bloody captcha. None have been reposted, and I’m tired of doing so when I must manually transcribe (I can’t copy out of the Kindle browser reader directly). No feedback, not posted … not sure why I should continue trying.

Like I said, good book, seems to be good coverage, but ragged in places and not as well supported by the publisher as I’d expect, given the amount of money I shelled out.

Best,

Brian

That doesn’t seem too spammy to me. But then, I wrote it. Oh, well.

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Oh, yeah. Home today: I had some stuff to do with Marcia this morning, and I took the rest of the day off … because I can. Ciao!

Pre-cooling

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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, we’ll be back up into the 40’s for a few days.

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I’ve been working on a small project. Here’s a piece of it in progress:

Working with wood

Working with wood

It’s nothing to do with a Buffy remake, if that’s what you’re thinking.

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Coffee – For these two weeks, we’re drinking a Guatemala Huehuetenango – Tono Sanchez. It’s roasted to City+, about halfway between first and second crack. Delicious!

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

  • Sgt. Jacob M. Hess, 22, of Spokane, Washington, died on Jan. 1, 2014, while supporting combat operations in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
  • Sgt. First Class William K. Lacey, 38, of Laurel, Florida, died on Jan. 4, 2014, in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when the enemy attacked his unit with rocket propelled grenades.

After the Fall

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We ended up with about 5″ of snow here. Better than those north of us… Boston, for example. Here’s what things looked like after shoveling off the driveway, as I was ready to depart for work around 0730 (about an hour late):

Front Yard Snow

Front Yard Snow

Oh, yeah. And we’re due for low single digit temps tonight, huzzah! Happy Friday.

Let it Snow!

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Snowfall 1/2/14

Snowfall 1/2/14

As of noon, we were due for maybe an inch of snow, if that, according to forecast. But looking at the radar even then, it was clear that the cold line was further south than predicted. We’re at about three-four inches on the deck, maybe two in the street, and I’m guessing another inch or so before it’s all done. Um, yay?

Trapped Between Holidays

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Two Wednesday holidays back to back makes for broken work weeks and broken routines. I like routines – a well-ordered life makes me happy. That said, we had a nice, quiet Christmas day at home. We called relatives here, there, and everywhere. For supper, we enjoyed more turkey.

The next evening we watched the Doctor Who stuff that we’d picked up on the DVR on Christmas night. I enjoyed that immensely.

I got some work done over the weekend – not as much as I’d hoped, but that’s the joy of doing things that need to be done off hours. This afternoon, I broke from that and we attended a surprise birthday party for a neighbor. That was fun!

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Our condolences to the family and friends of Capt. David I. Lyon, 28, of Sandpoint, Idaho, who died on Dec. 27, 2013, from wounds suffered when his vehicle was attacked with an improvised explosive device in Kabul, Afghanistan.

T’was the night b’fnord

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That is arguably one of my favorite blooper scenes from the Carol Burnett Show. No Harvey in this one, but Vicki as Mama kicks butt. At least as much fun as Christmas, eh? Speaking of the holiday, we’re having a quiet one, at home. No travel, etc. Keeping expenses way down, since we might want to get Marcia a new hip this year…

Missed my post two nights ago. I was confused on Sunday – it was so bloody warm. Two nights ago it was mid-60’s after Lexi’s supper – shorts and t-shirt. Tonight, thirty and snow flurries. Weird.

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

  • Petty Officer 1st Class James L. Smith, 38, of Huffman, Texas, died Dec. 11, in Landstuhl, Germany, from a non-combat related incident.
  • Chief Warrant Officer 2 Randy L. Billings, 34, of Heavener, Oklahoma, died Dec. 17, in Now Bahar, Afghanistan, of injuries suffered as a result of a helicopter crash.
  • Chief Warrant Officer 2 Joshua B. Silverman, 35, of Scottsdale, Arizona, died Dec. 17, in Now Bahar, Afghanistan, of injuries suffered as a result of a helicopter crash.
  • Sgt. Peter C. Bohler, 29, of Willow Spring, North Carolina, died Dec. 17, in Now Bahar, Afghanistan, of injuries suffered as a result of a helicopter crash.
  • Sgt. 1st Class Omar W. Forde, 28, of Marietta, Georgia, died Dec. 17, in Now Bahar, Afghanistan, of injuries suffered as a result of a helicopter crash.
  • Staff Sgt. Jesse L. Williams, 30, of Elkhart, Indiana, died Dec. 17, in Now Bahar, Afghanistan, of injuries suffered as a result of a helicopter crash.
  • Spc. Terry K. D. Gordon, 22, of Shubuta, Mississippi, died Dec. 17, in Now Bahar, Afghanistan, of injuries suffered as a result of a helicopter crash.
  • Sgt. Daniel M. Vasselian, 27, of Abington, Massachusetts, died Dec. 23, while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.

She’s a little dog

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Lexi is a little dog, but that doesn’t mean she can’t deal with toys. I think that she actually dislocates her jaw in order to deal with some of them, but Lexi is our first dog that actively seeks out and plays with her toys.

Tennis ball under Lexi's control

Tennis ball under Lexi’s control

What stuns me is that she manages to bark with that in her mouth!

For Marcia and I, this was a fairly uneventful weekend. Marcia got some quilt assembly done, I patched some systems. Chores and cooking, shopping and cleaning. Life.

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Our condolences to the family and friends of Lance Cpl. Matthew R. Rodriguez, 19, of Fairhaven, Massachusetts. He died on Dec. 11, while conducting combat operations in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.