Author: Lisa

Chocolate Chip Cookies with Dark Cherries and Almond Flour

Anya made me birthday cookies! I wanted to save the recipe because they turned out really well.

 
Ingredients:
  • 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup almond flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 cup maple syrup
  • 1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • 1 cup frozen dark cherries, roughly chopped
Instructions:
  1. Preheat your oven to 375°F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
  2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the all-purpose flour, almond flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
  3. In a large mixing bowl, beat the softened butter with the maple syrup until well mixed. The mixture will be looser than a typical creamed butter-sugar mixture due to the syrup.
  4. Mix in the Greek yogurt until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, mixing until just combined. The dough will be a bit softer due to the syrup and yogurt.
  6. Gently fold in the chocolate chips and frozen dark cherries until evenly distributed throughout the dough.
  7. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto the prepared baking sheets, leaving about 2 inches between each cookie to allow for spreading.
  8. Bake the cookies in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown and the centers are set but still soft. If you made really big cookies, this may be more like 20 minutes!
  9. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for about 5 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Kubernetes: Renewing Client Admin Cert

When the certificate for a k8s manager account has expired, create a new key request for the same CN and sign it against the k8s CA:

#!/bin/bash
# Run this from the K8s controller where the platform's CA keys are located
cd ~/kubectl_cert/

# Get the current year
current_year=$(date +%Y)

# Generate private key
openssl genpkey -algorithm RSA -out kubectl-${current_year}-k8admin-key.pem

# Generate CSR
openssl req -new -key kubectl-${current_year}-k8admin-key.pem -out kubectl-${current_year}-k8admin.csr -subj "/O=system:masters/CN=kubernetes-admin"

# Sign the CSR to create a certificate
openssl x509 -req -in kubectl-${current_year}-k8admin.csr -CA /etc/kubernetes/pki/ca.crt -CAkey /etc/kubernetes/pki/ca.key -CAcreateserial -out kubectl-${current_year}-k8admin-cert.pem -days 365 -extensions v3_req

# Check expiry is in future
openssl x509 -in kubectl-${current_year}-k8admin-cert.pem -noout -enddate

# Update kubeconfig with new credentials
kubectl config set-credentials kubernetes-admin --client-certificate=~/kubectl_cert/kubectl-${current_year}-k8admin-cert.pem --client-key=~/kubectl_cert/kubectl-${current_year}-k8admin-key.pem

Finding Active Directory Global Catalog Servers

… or domain controllers, or kerberos, or …

Back when I managed the Active Directory environment, I’d have developers ask where they should direct traffic. Now, since it was all LDAP, I did the right thing and got a load balanced virtual IP built out so they had “ad.example.com” on port 636 & all of my DCs had SAN’s on their SSL certs so ad.example.com was valid. But! It’s not always that easy — especially if you are looking for something like the global catalog servers. Or no such VIP exists. Luckily, the fact people are logging into the domain tells you that you can ask the internal DNS servers to give you all of this good info. Because domain controllers register service records in DNS.

These are the registrations for all servers regardless of associated site.

_ldap: The LDAP service record is used for locating domain controllers that provide directory services over LDAP.
_ldap._tcp.example.com

_kerberos: This record is used for locating domain controllers that provide Kerberos authentication services.
_kerberos._tcp.example.com

_kpasswd: The kpasswd service record is used for finding domain controllers that can handle Kerberos principal password changes.
_kpasswd._tcp.example.com

_gc: The Global Catalog service record is used for locating domain controllers that have the Global Catalog role.
_gc._tcp._tcp.example.com

_ldap._tcp.pdc: If you need to identify which domain controller holds the PDC emulator operations master role.
_ldap._tcp.pdc._msdcs.example.com

You can also find global catalog, Kerberos, and LDAP service records registered in individual sites. For all servers specific to a site, you need to use _tcp.SiteName._sites.example.com instead.

Example — return all GC’s specific to the site named “SiteXYZ”:
dig _gc._tcp.SiteXYZ._sites.example.com SRV

If you are using Windows, first enter “set type=SRV” to return service records and then query for the specific service record you want to view:

C:\Users\lisa>nslookup
Default Server: dns123.example.com
Address: 10.237.123.123

> set type=SRV
> _gc._tcp.SiteXYZ._sites.example.com
Server:  dns123.example.com
Address:  10.23.123.123

_gc._tcp.SiteXYZ._sites.example.com SRV service location:
          priority       = 0
          weight         = 100
          port           = 3268
          svr hostname   = addc032.example.com

Overnight Fermented Chicken Feed

I constantly read how awesome it is to ferment the chicken feed — except we’ve got a lot of birds, and it is cold outside (or hot) much of the year. So we would need a row of five-gallon buckets inside the house to manage the approaches I’ve seen where the feed sits and ferments for three to five days before it is used. I was curious how much fermentation you could get in 24-hours if you had some starter. So I took a scoop of chicken feed into the house & added a bunch of water. I let it sit on my nice, warm countertop for a few days. Then I put a day of food into a five gallon bucket & added my starter. Poured water over the whole lot of it & let the one bucket sit until I was going to feed the chickens the next morning.

Result? It’s got a nice sour/sweet aroma, was bubbling happily, and was well hydrated. The birds love the chicken food mash anyway, and a nice bucket of 70 degree mash on a cold winter day seemed like a nice treat even if the fermentation hadn’t gone anywhere. But it worked! I pull about a quart of the fermented feed to use as a starter, bring the bucket out to feed the birds, add more pellets to my empty bucket, pour the starter in, and cover it all with water until tomorrow when I do the same thing all over again.

Microsoft Word – Custom Table of Contents to Omit Heading 1

I know I could sort this by adjusting which “style” I use when I write documents … but I like Heading 1 as the title, Heading 2 as a paragraph title, etc. To create a table of contents below the title line that doesn’t start with the title line and then have everything subordinate to that top item, create a custom table of contents:

Select “Options”

And simply re-map the styles to TOC levels – Heading 1 doesn’t get a level. Heading 2 becomes 1, Heading 3 becomes 2, and Heading 4 becomes 3.

Voila – now I’ve got a bunch of “top level” items from Heading 2

 

Sumo Logic: Creating Roles via API

This script creates very basic roles with no extra capabilities and restricts the role to viewing only the indicated source category’s data.

################################################################################
# This script reads an Excel file containing role data, then uses the Sumo Logic
# API to create roles based on the data. It checks each row for a role name and
# uses the source category to set data filters. The script requires a config.py
# file with access credentials.
################################################################################
import pandas as pd
import requests
import json
from config import access_id, access_key  # Import credentials from config.py

# Path to Excel file
excel_file_path = 'NewRoles.xlsx'

# Base URL for Sumo Logic API
base_url = 'https://api.sumologic.com/api/v1'

################################################################################
# Function to create a new role using the Sumo Logic API.
# 
# Args:
#     role_name (str): The name of the role to create.
#     role_description (str): The description of the role.
#     source_category (str): The source category to restrict the role to.
# 
# Returns:
#     None. Prints the status of the API call.
################################################################################
def create_role(role_name, role_description, source_category):
    
    url = f'{base_url}/roles'

    # Role payload
    data_filter = f'_sourceCategory={source_category}'
    payload = {
        'name': role_name,
        'description': role_description,
        'logAnalyticsDataFilter': data_filter,
        'auditDataFilter': data_filter,
        'securityDataFilter': data_filter
    }

    # Headers for the request
    headers = {
        'Content-Type': 'application/json',
        'Accept': 'application/json'
    }

    # Debugging line
    print(f"Attempting to create role: '{role_name}' with description: '{role_description}' and filter: '{data_filter}'")

    # Make the POST request to create a new role
    response = requests.post(url, auth=(access_id, access_key), headers=headers, data=json.dumps(payload))

    # Check the response
    if response.status_code == 201:
        print(f'Role {role_name} created successfully.')
    else:
        print(f'Failed to create role {role_name}. Status Code: {response.status_code}')
        print('Response:', response.json())

################################################################################
# Reads an Excel file and processes each row to extract role information and
# create roles using the Sumo Logic API.
# 
# Args:
#     file_path (str): The path to the Excel file containing role data.
# 
# Returns:
#     None. Processes the file and attempts to create roles based on the data.
################################################################################
def process_excel(file_path):
    # Load the spreadsheet
    df = pd.read_excel(file_path, engine='openpyxl')

    # Print column names to help debug and find correct ones
    print("Columns found in Excel:", df.columns)

    # Iterate over each row in the DataFrame
    for index, row in df.iterrows():
        role_name = row['Role Name']  # Correct column name for role name
        source_category = row['Source Category']  # Correct column name for source category to which role is restricted

        # Only create a role if the role name is not null
        if pd.notnull(role_name):
            role_description = f'Provides access to source category {source_category}'
            create_role(role_name, role_description, source_category)


# Process the Excel file
process_excel(excel_file_path)