Recent Posts

Well it wasn't easy. I didn't quite think the whole process through when I started, and I had to fight to get the eggs to stay on top of the flour mountain. My arms were really tired afterwards but it was completely kneaded.

lol I bet! that's too funny

Actually wasn't too bad. It was mostly just comparing dialects between MySQL and MSSQL and adjusting the scripts. The data abstraction layer makes it easy to switch between.

Yeah, I imagine they're quite similar, just weird things like instr or index of, probably easier going mysql ~> mssql than the other way around too.

Hey having your own albums can't be bad. So will you be on Spotify?

Yeah, this record label is supposedly pretty good at "the algorithms" for the different streaming sites. Still working out finding someone with some legal knowledge to let us know if we're signing our lives away though lol (not like we're planning to get rich, but would sting if someone wants to put a song in a movie or something and we get nothing).

Cloud pricing is insane to figure out. I've tried a few times and can't get it sorted. We do have customers with cloud installations, but they pay for the server and we just help them set it up with our software. My main customer has a AWS instance that only runs during office hours, which is fine for their needs. I have no idea what they are paying but I know that they are trying to keep the costs down and were happy that my software could run in a small memory footprint

Man, I just cancelled another host... they would have been perfect if they only had the option to back up daily... and their answer to that was virtual private server (which I wasn't too thrilled about having to admin yet another server) but the minimum required to run things was their 4th step up in the pricing chart... so, currently looking for another...
(turns out, GT is on a pretty good host... if it wasn't for the 48hr outtage + 24hr dataloss)

Things are uncertain here. I mean, work wise, we have no intention on going back anytime soon that I know of, but as far as live music... there's still a gig or two happening but the scene is split on "y'all need to stop so this thing can be over" and "we're social distancing." None of the bands have been anything I'm bothered about seeing, so I've been erring on the side of caution
No "official" orders to stay in, and I'm fine with that, I'm grown and can "govern" myself, and well, the ones that cant... that situation should fix itself

Yeah I can understand that. Let's just hope nothing else major happens.

lol, I don't know how you even managed that! Hopefully it was thoroughly kneaded

Well it wasn't easy. I didn't quite think the whole process through when I started, and I had to fight to get the eggs to stay on top of the flour mountain. My arms were really tired afterwards but it was completely kneaded.

I would offer my expertise if you have any questions, but bing/google would probably be just as fast and more accurate

Actually wasn't too bad. It was mostly just comparing dialects between MySQL and MSSQL and adjusting the scripts. The data abstraction layer makes it easy to switch between.

So far so good... I was starting to worry about my full time job, being hotel related and all, but then news of the vaccine hit and things started looking up. Hopefully that changes things soon. Still not leaving the apartment much, or seeing people other than my bandmates. I find myself talking to my cats more often :nuts: My mother is really pining to see me, according to my sisters, so I may visit her on thanksgiving... One of my nieces was planning to make Thanksgiving dinner, then package it in to go containers, and have people pick them up. 45 min (each way) drive for me though they all have families except my mom & I and I figure she's willing to take the risk, so...

We're supposed to celebrate my in-laws 50th anniversary this year between Christmas and New Years. We're still hopeful but it could be that we have to cancel. In the end we have to weigh the risks.

My main band is wrapping up recording of 11 songs and are in process of signing contracts with a company that will distribute. Right now will be digital only, but supposedly (I need to go over that part of the contract) creating physical media if/when we're ever able to play live shows again. My other band had some songs that we were going to publish ourselves (very pricy, harder to recoup on our own, much smaller demographic...) but we are probably going to be picked up by that same company.

Hey having your own albums can't be bad. So will you be on Spotify?

Other than that, still working my 3 jobs lol... I might have said this before, but supposedly I'm on the final to do list for one of them... On the other, that's hosted on my servers (same as GT), after the site was down for 48 hrs we decided to move to a different server... normally, my freelance clients have their own accommodations. I come in, fix what they need, or build from scratch, give them the code and move on... but this client has definitely blurred that line.
So anyway, I found them a server to move to, migrated all the code/database, and we were testing it over a week or so, and discovered it was soooo sloooow... This time they found one (not sure where/how, maybe just googled "fast server") so I migrated again, things definitely seemed fast and smooth (and they use plesk which I've gotten used to). I was going to pull the trigger on a final data migration & domain cutover... then I realized backups were weekly... This whole ordeal was because the site was down 48hrs and 24hrs of work lost (our servers have nightly backups but everything crashed right before they fired) so I put my foot down there... I asked the company what we can do about it and they said we'd have to go with a VPS. I did the math and it's looking like $30 month (which is about what I pay here). The "cheap" account we were using was fast, and tech support has been responsive, so just waiting for the client to make the needed cancel/purchase and I'll be migrating for the 3rd time lol.
(I wish I had the time/energy to go with Azure/AWS since that seems to be the wave of the future, but I can't even get my head around pricing)

Cloud pricing is insane to figure out. I've tried a few times and can't get it sorted. We do have customers with cloud installations, but they pay for the server and we just help them set it up with our software. My main customer has a AWS instance that only runs during office hours, which is fine for their needs. I have no idea what they are paying but I know that they are trying to keep the costs down and were happy that my software could run in a small memory footprint

Looks like I'll be back in strictly home office for a while. Since the beginning of November they have been tightening things in Bavaria again, and that looks like it will extend through December now.

Things are uncertain here. I mean, work wise, we have no intention on going back anytime soon that I know of, but as far as live music... there's still a gig or two happening but the scene is split on "y'all need to stop so this thing can be over" and "we're social distancing." None of the bands have been anything I'm bothered about seeing, so I've been erring on the side of caution
No "official" orders to stay in, and I'm fine with that, I'm grown and can "govern" myself, and well, the ones that cant... that situation should fix itself

Been busy this weekend making Christmas cookies with my wife. I ended up hand kneading 4 kg of dough (think over 8 pounds) in one attempt to speed things along. Next time I'll make the dough in smaller batches

lol, I don't know how you even managed that! Hopefully it was thoroughly kneaded

At work we were just about to drop support for MSSQL when a new customer came around and said they would prefer to use it for their deployment. SO I've been tasked to make sure our initialization script is updated, and that the service can work with the newer SQL Server database version (2019). This should prove to be fun

I would offer my expertise if you have any questions, but bing/google would probably be just as fast and more accurate

Hope everything is still good on your end, and that you are still safe.

So far so good... I was starting to worry about my full time job, being hotel related and all, but then news of the vaccine hit and things started looking up. Hopefully that changes things soon. Still not leaving the apartment much, or seeing people other than my bandmates. I find myself talking to my cats more often :nuts: My mother is really pining to see me, according to my sisters, so I may visit her on thanksgiving... One of my nieces was planning to make Thanksgiving dinner, then package it in to go containers, and have people pick them up. 45 min (each way) drive for me though they all have families except my mom & I and I figure she's willing to take the risk, so...

My main band is wrapping up recording of 11 songs and are in process of signing contracts with a company that will distribute. Right now will be digital only, but supposedly (I need to go over that part of the contract) creating physical media if/when we're ever able to play live shows again. My other band had some songs that we were going to publish ourselves (very pricy, harder to recoup on our own, much smaller demographic...) but we are probably going to be picked up by that same company.

Other than that, still working my 3 jobs lol... I might have said this before, but supposedly I'm on the final to do list for one of them... On the other, that's hosted on my servers (same as GT), after the site was down for 48 hrs we decided to move to a different server... normally, my freelance clients have their own accommodations. I come in, fix what they need, or build from scratch, give them the code and move on... but this client has definitely blurred that line.
So anyway, I found them a server to move to, migrated all the code/database, and we were testing it over a week or so, and discovered it was soooo sloooow... This time they found one (not sure where/how, maybe just googled "fast server") so I migrated again, things definitely seemed fast and smooth (and they use plesk which I've gotten used to). I was going to pull the trigger on a final data migration & domain cutover... then I realized backups were weekly... This whole ordeal was because the site was down 48hrs and 24hrs of work lost (our servers have nightly backups but everything crashed right before they fired) so I put my foot down there... I asked the company what we can do about it and they said we'd have to go with a VPS. I did the math and it's looking like $30 month (which is about what I pay here). The "cheap" account we were using was fast, and tech support has been responsive, so just waiting for the client to make the needed cancel/purchase and I'll be migrating for the 3rd time lol.
(I wish I had the time/energy to go with Azure/AWS since that seems to be the wave of the future, but I can't even get my head around pricing)

Looks like I'll be back in strictly home office for a while. Since the beginning of November they have been tightening things in Bavaria again, and that looks like it will extend through December now.

Been busy this weekend making Christmas cookies with my wife. I ended up hand kneading 4 kg of dough (think over 8 pounds) in one attempt to speed things along. Next time I'll make the dough in smaller batches

At work we were just about to drop support for MSSQL when a new customer came around and said they would prefer to use it for their deployment. SO I've been tasked to make sure our initialization script is updated, and that the service can work with the newer SQL Server database version (2019). This should prove to be fun

Hope everything is still good on your end, and that you are still safe.

I had a thought they dropped. When I checked back it also seemed that our database was corrupt, so I was able to go in and run a repair on the table in question.

Yeah, not sure what they did about non-microsoft databases, on all my MS based ones, the "login" data was unable to be restored but if I sent them my "connection string" for each, they could fix it... I didn't feel like digging out all of them and some i don't even have access to w/o resetting the FTP password, so I'll just have to create a new login and change the string when/if i ever want some of my sites up again

I guess having everything on physical server is one way to keep the costs down.

Yeah, and it's a dirt cheap host. Still would have been nice if they had a mirror lol. Also lost 24hrs of data (it appears to have crashed right before the nightly backup so the restore was from the previous).

So I'm back in the office now once a week (on Wednesdays for me). We aren't all in at the same time but a pair at a time so that we can maintain distance from one another. This week was my second week with an office day. The first week went fine until I woke up the next day with a massive headache. I'm pretty sure it had nothing to do with going to the office, but then on Saturday I caught a cold. Of course with the cold I'm not sure if I got it on my commute to the office and back on Wednesday or by going to the dentist on Friday.

Even when thing are "back to normal" this is a major point in shifting "normal" to working from home. I'm still at a loss on why my boss hasn't closed the office (as in thrown the equipment in the trash and terminated the lease), absolutely no point in paying the rent/bills there.

Finally getting some major dental work done and it sucks. I spent 2 hours in the chair last Friday while the dentist drilled out broken teeth and crowns. Then screwed in three new studs for new crowns that I'll get at the end of the month. At least that will be done and I don't have to worry about it much more.

I too have been back to the dentist but yours sounds much worse! Had two crowns (right next to eachother) drilled out yesterday, wearing temps till early next month. Already had 3 major fillings and have 3 more on the books, plus a new crown... if your boys don't brush properly & often, I suggest really getting after them because my not brushing the first 20 yrs of my life is really biting me now (I only have a few teeth that don't have fillings/crowns).

I've done some extension to our home network. I bought a RAID 1 network storage device. It's a WD MyCloud Ultra ex or something like that. It has two 4GB drives installed and I've turned them on in RAID 1 mode. We needed a better storage for our family photos and this seemed like the best idea. It should provide a bit better security to the drives in my desktop.

Sounds good! I rely on microsoft's cloud (one drive) for my storage/backups.

I also upgraded my desktop by cloning my SSD from a 120GB to a 500GB, then adding a second 1T HDD for internal storage. That along with the network storage we should have enough data storage for a while.

sounds like my setup except i have 1tb ssd as primary and 2tb hdd as secondary. Need to clean up the primary though... over 75% capacity at the moment. (only 50% on the secondary).

Speaking of upgrades, remember the older Alienware I bought on ebay? I can't remember if playing video games was on the intended usage list at the time of purchase, or if I just assumed that it would be able to... but it appears it is not up to snuff... lol...

At work things are ok. We have a customer (pretty big car company), and they have insisted that we now list all the open source libraries we use, and what licenses they have for the versions that we are using. I've been involved with getting all that data down. I've decided that this is something that needs to be automated in the future. I'm just not sure how I'm going to do that yet, probably going to be a Maven plugin which generates it all for me. I'll have to see but it would be a start.

I've been a bit disgruntled in my position... tired of being server admin, even more tired of trying to do it with less than a shoestring budget. Spending so much time trying to manage hardrive space while being able to retain as much historical data as possible, while getting behind in my do to lists... and since all my server admin stuff is "invisible" it seems like I'm not getting anything done at all.

How's things going on your end? We've had one child who was in quarantine for 2 weeks because he had a couple of classmates test positive. Thankfully he tested negative but still had to stay in the house for two weeks, and by the end was getting a little stir crazy I think.

Same 'ol here... no show to go to, none to play. Still have band rehearsal once a week at least. Going into the studio next sat to record all the songs we don't currently have recorded so that will be fun. Otherwise just working (at fullime gig), or working (at freelance gig1), or working (at freelance gig2), or the rare occurrence i play a video game

So I'm back in the office now once a week (on Wednesdays for me). We aren't all in at the same time but a pair at a time so that we can maintain distance from one another. This week was my second week with an office day. The first week went fine until I woke up the next day with a massive headache. I'm pretty sure it had nothing to do with going to the office, but then on Saturday I caught a cold. Of course with the cold I'm not sure if I got it on my commute to the office and back on Wednesday or by going to the dentist on Friday.

Finally getting some major dental work done and it sucks. I spent 2 hours in the chair last Friday while the dentist drilled out broken teeth and crowns. Then screwed in three new studs for new crowns that I'll get at the end of the month. At least that will be done and I don't have to worry about it much more.

I've done some extension to our home network. I bought a RAID 1 network storage device. It's a WD MyCloud Ultra ex or something like that. It has two 4GB drives installed and I've turned them on in RAID 1 mode. We needed a better storage for our family photos and this seemed like the best idea. It should provide a bit better security to the drives in my desktop.

I also upgraded my desktop by cloning my SSD from a 120GB to a 500GB, then adding a second 1T HDD for internal storage. That along with the network storage we should have enough data storage for a while.

At work things are ok. We have a customer (pretty big car company), and they have insisted that we now list all the open source libraries we use, and what licenses they have for the versions that we are using. I've been involved with getting all that data down. I've decided that this is something that needs to be automated in the future. I'm just not sure how I'm going to do that yet, probably going to be a Maven plugin which generates it all for me. I'll have to see but it would be a start.

How's things going on your end? We've had one child who was in quarantine for 2 weeks because he had a couple of classmates test positive. Thankfully he tested negative but still had to stay in the house for two weeks, and by the end was getting a little stir crazy I think.

and we're back! The host apparently suffered a catastrophic failure over 48hours ago, email & web servers came back after 24 hours, my sql came back a few hours ago, and ms sql should be back soon... If I had to make a guess, they have all their servers virtualized on one physical server...

I had a thought they dropped. When I checked back it also seemed that our database was corrupt, so I was able to go in and run a repair on the table in question.

I guess having everything on physical server is one way to keep the costs down.

and we're back! The host apparently suffered a catastrophic failure over 48hours ago, email & web servers came back after 24 hours, my sql came back a few hours ago, and ms sql should be back soon... If I had to make a guess, they have all their servers virtualized on one physical server...

Looks pretty good. Nice to have fresh vegetables for salads and cooking.

So far I've consumed 2 or 3 red peppers, 1 orange, and two jalapenos. The peppers are the size of cherry tomatoes though... not like I'm used to seeing in the grocery store. I have killed 2 of the 4 plants in that box... having a little trouble with ants (i think) so i think some of my attempts to remedy that have made things worse I'm 90% done with a second box so I really need to get on that because I do have 6 plants ready to go (4 in new box and 2 to replace dead ones)

We have a rosemary plant outside our front door. It has surprised a lot of people since where we live it is usually too cold for Rosemary but ours has been there for almost a decade now even in snow and cold. We get fresh rosemary even in winter .

That's awesome! I have two rosemary that are exploding! I need to figure out how to propagate via cuttings (failed at least once so far) because it seems to be the plant that does best on my balcony.

I was to that's why I sent him a message. LinkedIN does have its uses

I've thought of signing up, just never have.

Yeah, I don't do much freelance mostly because I want to spend my time away from work not programming.

I miss those days lol. I have lists of things away from my desk i want/need to do but lately if I do get a break, I'm to tired to think so I just play a video game.
It was never my intent to get bogged down in (or even do any) freelance. When I moved back, I had a month or two without, but an old client resurfaced. He always "paid as we go" and we never actually finished, when he disappeared years previous. I wouldn't have felt right turning him down since he essentially paid for an unfinished project (and I hadn't gotten [re]tangled up with bands and girls). That was manageable, and eventually it was coming to an end... and thats when a different old client (who is more of a contractor, i do the work for their clients) had what sounded like a fun (and more importantly little) project. Well, in hindsight, I think that little one was to re-establish the relationship and get me to say yes to a bigger one... and since I thought the other was ending... why not? That's when the first client decided we should put the original project on hold to do a quick little side project (which would make him money to be able to pay for the original project). Techincally we finished the quick little side project, and it is generating revenue, but he keeps thinking of enhancements lol...
I bill by the hour, so it's all good, but I definitely need more time for other things in my life (like, i really need to start playing my bass outside of rehearsal... especially since we're going back to the recording studio in about a month)

I even very rarely work on personal projects anymore. Mostly because I do enough development in my work time.

That's one of the things I do like about these side projects, I get the chance to do things a little different than my full time gig, learning new tricks.

So we had our vacation in Denmark. Everything went well, the boys finally learned to swim!

That's awesome! and important!

We had good weather for the most part, and some gorgeous views. I finally even got the chance to see the sun set over the ocean (kind of a bucket list thing of mine)  https://photos.app.goo.gl/gGff11B1tEpC59GC8.

Also awesome! I have to assume I've never seen it set over the ocean (might have appeared that way over the gulf, while in FL) but I have seen it rise (at least over the gulf).

On our return to Germany we took the Corona test and 24 hours later we all were given a clear bill of health, no virus present. Then on Tuesday the boys started school again. Right now the students have to wear a mask the entire day in school, only removing to drink and eat. They will have one more week of this and then they will only need to wear their masks when they are moving about but not while sitting at their desks.

Strange times we live in! I rarely go anywhere anymore so when I do (dentist, hair cut) the rules throw me off... "oops, I'm used to just walking in and plopping down on the couch, yes, I will stand here on this tape so you can take my temp"

On Monday our youngest will get his French Horn. He signed up for a musical class and has decided that he wants to learn the French Horn. So our house will have some interesting sounds emanating out of it for a while .

That's awesome! I hope it goes well!

So far it's been staying moist, if it's still moist tomorrow, going to add 4 plants (3 bell pepper, 1 jalapeno) and if that goes well, I have the materials to make another:
https://imgur.com/a/rLG6uug

Looks pretty good. Nice to have fresh vegetables for salads and cooking. We have a rosemary plant outside our front door. It has surprised a lot of people since where we live it is usually too cold for Rosemary but ours has been there for almost a decade now even in snow and cold. We get fresh rosemary even in winter .

Thanks for the update! I was recently wondering how he was doing. That's good news!

I was to that's why I sent him a message. LinkedIN does have its uses

nothing new here... going to try to make a big push on one of my freelance projects tomorrow... i reallllllly want it to end (wtf!!! while typing that sentience, i get a email popup from that client, i can only assume it's more work... lol... never again!)

Yeah, I don't do much freelance mostly because I want to spend my time away from work not programming. I even very rarely work on personal projects anymore. Mostly because I do enough development in my work time.


So we had our vacation in Denmark. Everything went well, the boys finally learned to swim! We had good weather for the most part, and some gorgeous views. I finally even got the chance to see the sun set over the ocean (kind of a bucket list thing of mine)  https://photos.app.goo.gl/gGff11B1tEpC59GC8. On our return to Germany we took the Corona test and 24 hours later we all were given a clear bill of health, no virus present. Then on Tuesday the boys started school again. Right now the students have to wear a mask the entire day in school, only removing to drink and eat. They will have one more week of this and then they will only need to wear their masks when they are moving about but not while sitting at their desks. On Monday our youngest will get his French Horn. He signed up for a musical class and has decided that he wants to learn the French Horn. So our house will have some interesting sounds emanating out of it for a while .