May 07
ErinFLOSS, Work floss, scripting, Work
It was the first time to generate and send the report. It deals with downloading a lot of access logs, combining them based on certain scenarios, filtering out the cruft, slicing and dicing per service accessed and then tallying the responses to see if they meet the SLA.
The first manual extraction took around 4 hours to create the report for the most critical service. After that, I sat down and created the bash+awk script to do the slicing, dicing and tallying part. It took me 3 hours to create and test the script but after that I can generate the reports for 6 services in 30 minutes, where the bulk of the time was spent in downloading the latest logs (~10minutes) and pasting the data in Excel to create the “bayoootiful” graphs.
I figured if I can automate the rest then the reports can be generated under 15minutes, and I can hook it up on a continuous service so it will send it automatically every night. After that I can work on getting rid of the need to go through Excel if I can find some API to generate it and publish them as PDFs. JFree perhaps but my Java skills are already rusty. I also need something native if possible as I cannot install stuff on the office machines. The zLinux servers are pretty much off limits though I think there is a python interpreter installed.
One thing I can say is that automation and f/loss rocks. The script is too specific and covered by IPR so I cannot post it here but it is something that most scripters should be able to do.
ciao!
Apr 21
ErinRubbish agnostic, religion, rubbish
Let me get the caveat out of the way: I was raised as a Roman Catholic by my pious paternal grandmother. I spent 13 years in Catholic schools and university. I progressed from being a Roman Catholic to non-practising, and now agnostic. It is possible that you visited my ranting space through a link I may have inadmittedly provided. You may not like what you read below so better close your browser tab now.
I love Godwin’s Law which, even though it is named that way, does not have any connection to religion. It is a de facto law invoked in cyber discussions wherein the first person who uses a Nazi comparison or reference loses the discussion immediately regardless of how brilliant their points are.
I wish there would be something similar for people who just love to bring their religion into the middle of everything. Especially those who think that referencing their omnipotent lord through all capitalized letters is a testament of their faith. I would, in my own twisted and probably ill-thought way, disagree for the following reasons:
- Capitalization as instructed by my grammar teachers should only be used on the first letter if you want to use that word as a proper noun.
- All-caps in textual communication denotes shouting.
- Or, putting everything in caps can denote an initialism or acronym. An example can be Goods of Desire, or Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks
Some might argue that they see nothing wrong if they are proud to shout and profess their faith in regular discussions. I would like to challenge you to think it over again. Do you shout that same word every time during real-life discussions? If you do, then I hope we don’t have any opportunities to communicate. Ever.
Everybody is to free and have the right to believe in what they believe in. My point was not to be lazy and try to work out that everything is about religion or can be explained automatically by using a religious reference. Not everybody have the same belief, and cramming that at our throats every discussion doesn’t help your cause. Whenever I see that during discussions I actually feel less inclined to participate further. It feels to me that I am conversing with a Dothraki native who thinks spouting “It is Known” while nodding their heads actually gives credibility to what they said.
Apr 21
ErinTop of my head
Last night I dreamt that i had to join a call of another team but the speakerphone won’t get out of mute. I moved to another phone but the volume was too low. Several phones had similar problems that I just stood up, looked for a junior member of my team and bellowed “Log a ticket to replace all defective phones in the project area. ASAP!!! ”
I need a break. My bossy side is frequently rearing its ugly head again.
Mar 13
ErinTop of my head housebandry, humor
A few more minutes and the day that marks the 14th year of being with my wife is about to pass.
A steak dinner in Bistecca (courtesy of a gift certificate), dessert of swapped Magnum ice cream sticks being eaten while the car is parked in an underground mall parking, and a lot of “I can’t remember now” conversations to while the drive home. That is how we chose to celebrate it this year.
For my wife, who is lucky to have me and I to have her, I dedicate the chorus of this Guns ‘n Roses classic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiBjCKKEe_E
14 years of silence
It’s been
14 years of pain
It’s been
14 years that are gone forever
And I’ll never have again
*ba-dum-ching*
[NOTE: Yes my wife already heard me quote that chorus to her a few weeks back. 🙂 ]
ciao!
Mar 11
ErinTop of my head housebandry, recipe
I really like the Tostitos salsa but I can’t really justify paying that much for something that could be whipped up at a fraction of the price. Ok, not exactly the way it taste but hopefully something that could pass as salsa. Here is my take on the Tosterin Salsa. 🙂
Ingredients
- Plump red tomatoes, about 1/4 kilos, diced
- 1 small tomato paste – the brand I used came in 100 grams sachet
- a sprig of cilantro, kinchay or whatever fresh herb you have access to. chopped finely.
- 1 small onion,chopped finely
- 3 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
- 1 piece siling labuyo chopped finely
- 1 piece of green chillies – the kind used for sinigang, chopped finely
- 2-3 tbsp of vinegar
- salt and pepper
Procedure
- Mix all ingredients in a saucepan.
- Heat the mixture to wilt some of the ingredients. I let it simmer for about 3 minutes.
- Transfer to a serving bowl or jar for storage.
I dont really measure when I cook as it goes against my Pacham(ba) cooking style. The different chillies are intended to give different kinds of heat. Jalapeno pepper would be nice but not something that I would have access to. The amount would vary on your taste and I only used half of the siling labuyo since it might come off as too spicy for my wife. I also used apple cider vinegar as I have that handy and I am always looking for reasons to use it. 🙂
Now off to buy some inexpensive corn or potato chips to complement the “affordable” salsa that we have in the pantry. The salsa ingredients costs about 50 pesos, which is not bad considering the grocery bought salsa fetches for 3 to 5 times that amount.
Jan 01
ErinGarbage
With just a few hours of sleep, we drove back from Cabanatuan to Pasig in record time: 2 hours and 30 minutes including the pit stops! We averaged at the speed of about 60km/hr. 🙂
The drive was almost perfect. We left at around 5:40AM so most people going back to the city after the short weekend/holiday is still asleep due to celebrating the coming of 2012. Sounds good enough for us. We actually made it out of Nueva Ecija in 30 minutes 😉
And there is something to be said about the weather conditions. We left Cabanatuan with the road covered in fog, and we arrived with Metro Manila still covered in smog. 😐 Here are some snaps that my wife took on the San Leonardo to Gapan road:
Nov 30
ErinTop of my head recipe
Some things that I realized today:
– boil a liter of water with some lemongrass stalks, steep 1-2 tea bags. Strain and cool. Doesn’t taste much but smells wonderful. Remember to sweeten it with honey or brown sugar.
– Sliced lemon adds flair to the iced tea but dont leave it in the pitcher. It will make the whole batch bitter. 🙁
– I love eating chico, but putting it in oatmeal is just plain wrong.
– making teriyaki sauce is a breeze. Just mix 2 cups water, 1/2cup soy sauce (light if available), 3/4 cups brown sugar, 2-3 tbsp cornstarch, 2tbsp minced garlic. Cook until it thickens a bit.
– fried tokwa cubes with teriyaki sauce and some chopped onion leaves = heavenly fare/snack.
ciao!
Nov 18
ErinTop of my head educational toys
Looking for where I can buy this or something similar locally. They come in multiple colors and about half to an inch in diameter. Thanks.
Nov 16
ErinTop of my head
that which sustains me will in all likelihood kill me.
Nov 11
ErinNon-FLOSS, Tipjar Tipjar, Windows 7
Aero is a default theme in Windows Vista and Windows 7 Home Premium or better but is not enabled by default. Aero adds some nifty features like Peek (showing thumbnail previews when hovering on the open programs), Shake (shaking the window minimizes all other windows), Snap (dragging the window to the edges snaps it, useful for side by side windows organization). Aero however consumes additional CPU and GPU power but in some cases it can introduce some efficiency like repainting only the areas that are affected by window movement.
Enabling Aero requires two services to be started before they can be used: the Desktop Windows Management (uxsms), and the Themes (themes) services. Enabling them from the Control Panel->Services MMC console is fairly easy but this tip jar is about enabling them from the command line to reduce the wait and teach the basics of interacting with the Windows services using command line options.
The command are split into two categories: making sure the services are enabled, and starting them up.
sc config uxsms start= auto
net start uxsms
sc config themes start= auto
net start themes
These are administrative activities so they need to be done from within a command window that has administrative privileges. Refer to previous TipJar entries on how to do this. The “auto” parameter of the sc commands can be changed to “demand” if the services are to be start manually so as not to consume resources ?at every Windows startup. The sc invocations are only required to be done once.
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