Older blog entries for jlf (starting at number 12)

Ahh...the first day of class...and I've been working on code. I'm about four classes from being done with my Masters and I just want to be done. At one class a semester, this has taken awhile...and it's frustrating.

Anyway, I did get some minor fixes into dhcpreg. Nothing huge...but I did get one of Jason's ideas about formatting output in there. I also got the Makefile tidied up a little and added a new target to update the webstuff easily.

I still need to write some Pod. I still need to get off my duff and finish get-lease-list.pl. It's about halfway done now.

Today was a pretty good day...especially in comparison to yesterday. I actually got things accomplished today rather than just running on the hamster wheel, back at the same place at the end of the day. That's a good thing. I think morale is actually good. I sure hope it is.

Later on...

So, as I read other diary entries, I get warm fuzzies and also a sense of wistfulness. The warm fuzzies are because it's good to see so many just outrageously smart people. The wistfulness is because I wish I were not only a better programmer, but had more time to pursue become a better programmer. Looking at what some of you guys are doing makes me look at my little dhcp stuff and go...how miniscule. I guess we all have to start somewhere. It'd be nice to have the analytical skill of cdent or ahosey or the countless others on here whose projects I've looked at. Whew. Better stop before it sounds like I'm wallowing more than I really am.

The cat has decided to attack the keyboard. That is usually a sign to stop.

Hrm. I'm still blue. Fooey.

I poked a little more at get-lease-list.pl this afternoon. No stellar progress. I've been having motivational problems. In fact, most of my staff is having motivational problems. I wonder if I'm being the bad example or there's more at play ? Actually, not everyone is having trouble getting things done...but the office environment is almost like there's a constant blend of nitrous in the air making some of us be loopy and lazy. I hope that's gone next week because I really need to get some sort of feeling that I've accomplished something. I feel like I should be the example since I'm the boss, but at the same time, my allergies and sinus issues have made me feel subpar and I'm a little burnt out right now. I should probably take a few days off sometime soon to regenerate.

I broke down and reregistered aoct.org. AOCT stands for Apathy On Company Time. I registered it when I worked for IU still. I haven't actually done anything with it in over a year. Last week I decided to actually resurrect it again. I still haven't done much, but it's renewed for two years and I took the time to redo the dns, mx's, and aliases for it. I think it might provide some therapy for me.

Chris leaving really bums me out. I alternate between some anger, some sadness, and some relief. He is someone I am very close to and one of the reasons I started working here was to work with him and learn from him. I guess when it's time to go, though, it's time to go. It's probably all for the best...but I still don't have to like it.

We went to lunch at a place near the campus today. I had to get a book for a class I'm taking. (Only 5 more classes to go and I have my Master's degree...whee...) Campus is crawling with nubile young women. It's terribly interesting to watch, but in the end I just feel old. But it's a fun distraction between lunch and going back to work...

I don't feel to be in a coding mood, so I think I shall play some Dune2. They either need to port this to Linux or I need to get more ram for my Linux box so I can run it under vmware.

I've been toying with the idea of getting OpenBSD and installing it at home. I'm intrigued by an OS that is audited and designed for security. I've been meaning to do some rearranging here, anyway.

[What do you think ?]

Hrm. I seem to have gone blue. I'm not really comfortable with that. I consider myself to be good with hardware, a competent sysadmin, a queasy manager, and a novice programmer. Soemhow, through the weird convolutions of the trust matrix, I've gone to Journeyer. I wish there were a way to knock myself back down a step. I feel I am definitely an apprentice, no more, no less. Oh well.

I felt like complete ass today. I took enough sinus stuff that I felt sort of fuzzy all day. It just really wore off in the last hour or two.

I have this feeling that I'm searching for something. The problem is that I don't know what it is or where I'm going to find it. I want a sense of satisfaction that being a manager just doesn't seem to give me. I've been blowing off a lot of the bureaucratic nonsense I should be doing in favour of just doing something that has measurable output. I just feel disconnected from the human race.

And to top it off, not a lick of code has been added to get-lease-list.pl. Sigh.

Oops. Hit the wrong section...

Got some good ideas for DHCPReg from Jason. I meant to actually turn out a maintenance release last night, but I got caught up in cat-proofing my theater gear and then sucked into the TV. I guess I wasn't in a coding mood. Tonight will be better.

Afternoon Update

I packaged up Interrupt.pm and got a quick and dirty module up. The code for the actual interrupt stuff is Jason's. The packaging and such is me. The next step is to start in on some DHCPReg changes.

Evening Update

Started looking at a command line dhcpd.lease viewer. Shouldn't be too difficult to do.

I wanted Jason to be able to link to Interrupt.pm as the lead developer, but I just noticed that he hasn't been certified. He looks like he's a pretty sharp fellow and knows a ton of stuff and is extremely versed in all types of systems and programming. Just as Adrian got people to come look at me and see if they thought I was worth certifying, I ask the same for Jason. Take a look, and if you think his experience and goals are good certify the chap. It's not a pressure thing...just a hand up. Thanks.

Almost midnight update

I started stubbing out get-lease-list.pl, yet another utility for DHCPReg. This will allow a local or remote command line tool to see the active lease information. Remote portion will depend on ssh and an account on the remote machine. I'm not trying to attempt some rpc protocol kinda thing. I'm not sure that I'd want to if I could. It might be a cool exercise, but I'd be afraid of opening a server to a nasty security hole.

Tired. Feeling a little poorly, but still kinda jazzed about this script. Time to hit the sack.

Hrm. Haven't really touched technology all weekend. I mean I checked mail a few times, but nothing terribly grand.

We moved into our new house a month ago and I just today got my office at home cleaned out. Now, instead of just a path from the door to the desk, I can actually see all of the carpet and all of the books (hundreds of the damn things) are on shelves. It's nice to sit here in a fairly clean environment. I even can get to my guitars now, so I played a little earlier.

Last week was unstressful, mostly, but also fairly unfulfilling. It's a two steps forward thing, one step back kind of thing.

I'm feeling restless again. That's never good. I just can't stay focused. I made this TODO list of all sorts of things that I want to learn and work on and I can't stay focused enough to do any of them.

Oh well. Nothing terribly technical, I guess. If you're bored, I suggest changing the channel now.

Joy. It's a gorgeous day out.

I'm in the lab trying to raise a squid box from the dead. I think the RAID controller is toast because it's marked a new disk as bad. I'll test it to be sure, but I have a hard time believing that not only did two disks die simultaneously, but that the two new disks are also dead. Righto.

Chris is back. Vacation wasn't as planned. Nothing ever seems to go as planned.

Evening update

Fairly productive day...turns out the RAID controller still works okay in the squid box. It just wanted someone to come play. I removed one bad disk and the other disk marked failed started working again. Joy. Still problems, but the server works again, mostly.

Hey, Stan, that code I sent you long ago became Dhcpreg. It's up on Systhug. I don't think there have been changes since then. If you have improvements, by all means, bring 'em back, I'll package them up with it. Or maybe it should go to CPAN ?

It's been a slow day today. I'm extremely thankful for that. These past two weeks have basically been one kick in the crotch after another.

I've spent most of today doing piddly little administrative type junk. And while I usually hate that sort of thing it was okay today. It was sort of calming and that is good. I'm finally starting to almost feel okay again. I still waiver between lots of anger for a couple of people, then I sway back into understanding, then I fall into feeling lost, then back to a level ship. I think maybe I need to self-medicate or seek some sort of help.

At any rate, I went out for a short while with Stan, Ed, and Josh. It was a good time, but I was really tired, so I went home fairly early. I need to do things like that more often. It's so easy to go home and just mope around and be a recliner potato.

My god ! I've gone Green.

I guess I need to go add myself to the project(s) I work with and maybe even post my own.

Next step, plaid. Really, though, it'll be nice to be able to connect myself to projects and at least feel like I'm contributing. :)

Security. Sigh. That's something else I'm supposed to spearhead around here. Nothing like a perl/mailx bug to really get your week going well. That and one of my firewalls wasn't configured quite as tightly as I thought it was...one of the other guys happened to catch it. It's fixed now, but it irritates me when I do stupid things.

Oh well...at least I'm not playing politics and going to meetings, right...I'm actually working with real live computers. Oh the humanity. Or something. Okay, break's over...

A night of merriment was exactly what I needed. I'm feeling a little better.

I thought about Dhcpreg some this morning and think that may having a full blown dhcp config creator that creates a dhcpreg ready config might be cool. Other people have made config creators, so it's not terribly original but it could prove useful.

I've had some downloads of Dhcpreg and a lot of people looking at it, but little to no feedback. I wonder if anyone finds it useful ?