Why doesn’t everyone do this — non-working hours clarification

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by Lisa

I like that Microsoft has added “they are x hours behind you” to individual profiles, but that assumes people all work 8-5 in their local time. Which isn’t the case, so I’ve been introducing myself to new people that I need to engage in meetings including something like “I work in the Eastern time zone but am generally available until about 6PM Eastern if that’s better for you” & asking for a similar response from them. I know some people who live in the Central, Mountain, or Pacific time zones but work 8-5 Eastern. I know others who live in the same area work 9-6 or 11-8 Eastern. We have overseas contractors who work from 3:30 AM to 12:30 PM Eastern, and others who who start working around 10 AM.

Seems like it would make collaborating with others easier if we all had recurring appointments to clarify our non-working hours. A recurring each-weekday appointment like below — away so it doesn’t look like I’m just booked solid at dark-o-clock, recurring, and no reminder (because that would get super annoying). And maybe a recurring weekly one from whatever PM on Friday through whatever AM on Monday if there are a statistically significant of people who’d be working T-Sat or Sun-Thur.

Doesn’t really provide much value implemented in a small group – you generally get a good idea of when your immediate coworkers are working. But it would help a lot reaching out to other groups!

 

Super Soft Rolls

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by Lisa

Ingredients:

  • 4 cups of all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 cups warm water
  • 2 Tbsp sugar
  • 1 Tbsp yeast
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup butter

Mix yeast and sugar into warm water and allow to set until it is frothy.

In a stand mixer, mix flour and salt. Slowly add in yeasty water & mix. Kneed with a bread hook and slowly add in about 1 tsp pieces of butter at a time until it has all been incorporated. Continue to kneed until the dough is smooth and shiny.

Allow to rise until it has doubled in size. Form and allow to rise again. Then bake.

To make sausage rolls, bake at 375 F for about 18 minutes.

Useful DNF Commands

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by Lisa

Beyond basic stuff like “dnf install somepackage” or downloading an rpm and using “dnf install my.package.rpm”, this is a running list of useful dnf commands.

List installed packages (similar to rpm -qa):

dnf list installed

List packages with updates available:

dnf check-update

Update everything but the kernel:
dnf update -x kernel*

Find package that provides something:

[lisa@rhel1 ~/]# dnf whatprovides cdrskin
Last metadata expiration check: 2:35:57 ago on Fri 12 Aug 2022 11:37:43 AM EDT.
cdrskin-1.5.2-2.fc32.x86_64 : Limited cdrecord compatibility wrapper to ease migration to libburn
Repo : fedora
Matched from:
Provide : cdrskin = 1.5.2-2.fc32

cdrskin-1.5.4-2.fc32.x86_64 : Limited cdrecord compatibility wrapper to ease migration to libburn
Repo : updates
Matched from:
Provide : cdrskin = 1.5.4-2.fc32

Package info, including version

[lisa@rhel1 ~/]# dnf info sendmail
Last metadata expiration check: 2:37:19 ago on Fri 12 Aug 2022 11:37:43 AM EDT.
Available Packages
Name : sendmail
Version : 8.15.2
Release : 43.fc32
Architecture : x86_64
Size : 730 k
Source : sendmail-8.15.2-43.fc32.src.rpm
Repository : fedora
Summary : A widely used Mail Transport Agent (MTA)
URL : http://www.sendmail.org/
License : Sendmail
Description : The Sendmail program is a very widely used Mail Transport Agent (MTA).
: MTAs send mail from one machine to another. Sendmail is not a client
: program, which you use to read your email. Sendmail is a
: behind-the-scenes program which actually moves your email over
: networks or the Internet to where you want it to go.
:
: If you ever need to reconfigure Sendmail, you will also need to have
: the sendmail-cf package installed. If you need documentation on
: Sendmail, you can install the sendmail-doc package.

Show history:

[lisa@rhel1 ~/]# dnf history
ID     | Command line                                                                                                      | Date and time    | Action(s)      | Altered
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   102 | remove liberation-fonts                                                                                           | 2021-11-28 18:44 | Removed        |    3
   101 | remove chromedriver                                                                                               | 2021-11-28 18:44 | Removed        |    2
   100 | remove google-chrome-stable                                                                                       | 2021-11-28 18:44 | Removed        |    1  < 99 | install liberation-fonts | 2021-11-28 18:42 | Install | 1 >
    98 | install chromedriver                                                                                              | 2021-11-28 18:38 | Install        |    2
    97 | remove mediainfo                                                                                                  | 2021-11-16 13:31 | Removed        |    4
    96 | install mediainfo                                                                                                 | 2021-11-16 13:29 | Install        |    4

 

Which brings up an interesting command — you can undo a history step instead of trying to uninstall the list of things you just installed.

dnf history undo 98 -y

Indigo Bunting

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by Lisa

I like watching the goldfinches eating the ornamental grass seeds. Today, though, this blue bird showed up too. Looking up small blue birds, we found a rare blue bird native to, like, Venezuela … seemed rather surprising to see one here. And then I scrolled to the next small blue bird — the Indigo Bunting — which is fairly common and native to our area. So … yeah, I’m going to go with Indigo Bunting.

Arguing with the science

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by Lisa

A week or so ago, I came across an article referencing a book about how climate impact will be inequitable — and, while reading the article, I rather disagreed with some of their assumptions. I later encountered an online discussion about the article — which included, among a few other dissenters, an admonishment not to “argue with the science”. Problem, there, is arguing with the science is the whole point of the scientific method. The point of peer-review publications. And, really, modeling socio-economic impact of climate change (or even modeling climate change itself) isn’t a science like modeling gravity or radioactive decay. These kind of models usually involve a lot of possible outcomes with associated probabilities. And ‘argue with the science’ I will!

Certainly, some of the rich will move out first. You can air condition your house and car into being habitable. Companies can set up valet services for everything. But your chosen location is becoming very limiting – no outdoor concerts, no outdoor sports games. You can make it habitable, but you could also spend some money, live elsewhere, and have oh so many more options. Most likely you’d see an increase in second homes – Arizona for the winter and a place up north for summers. Which might not show up as ‘migration’ depending on which they use as their ‘permanent’ address.

People with fewer resources, though, face obstacles to moving. Just changing jobs is challenging. It’s one thing to transfer offices in a large company or be a remote employee who can live anywhere. But can a cashier at Walmart ask their manager to get transferred from Phoenix to Boston? What about employees of smaller businesses that don’t have a more northern location? Going a few weeks without pay on top of moving expense (that rental deposit is a huge one – I’ve known many people stuck in a crappy apartment because they have to save the deposit to move. Sure you get your previous deposit back, but that takes weeks)? Really makes me question the reality of mass migration of poor people.

Adding Sony SNC-DH220T Camera to Zoneminder

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by Lisa

We recently picked up a mini dome IP camera — much better resolution than the old IP cams we got when Anya was born — and it took a little trial-and-error to get it set up in Zoneminder. The first thing we did was update the firmware using Sony’s SNCToolbox, configure the camera as we wanted it, and add a “Viewer” user for zoneminder.

With all that done, the trick is to add an FFMPEG source with the right RTSP address. On the ‘General’ tab, select “Ffmpeg” as the source type:

On the ‘Source’ tab, you need to use the right source path. For video stream one, that is rtsp://zmuser:password@mycamera.example.com/media/video1 — change video1 to video2 for the second video stream, if available. And, obviously, use the account you created on your camera for zoneminder and whatever password. Since it’s something that gets stored in clear text, I make a specific zmuser account with a password we don’t use elsewhere. We’ve used both ‘TCP’ and ‘UDP’ successfully, although there was a lot of streaking with UDP.

Save, give it a minute, and voila … you’ve got a Sony SNC-DH220T camera in Zoneminder!

 

 

Maple Pecan Pie Filling

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by Lisa
  • 2 1/2 cups pecan halves
  • 5 Tbsp melted butter, cooled
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1 Tbsp all-purpose flour
  • 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 cup maple syrup

This recipe requires the pie crust to be blind baked — do that first and allow the crust to cool! Preheat oven to 350F.

Lay the pecan halves over the bottom of the pie crust.

Whisk together the butter, brown sugar, flour, vanilla, salt, eggs, and maple syrup. Pour over the pecans.

Put a pie crust shield on to protect the edge of the pie from overcooking. Bake for 45 minutes until the top is browned slightly.

Using Screen to Access Console Port

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by Lisa

We needed to console into some Cisco access points — RJ45 to USB to plug into the device console port and the laptop’s USB port? Check! OK … now what? Turns out you can use the screen command as a terminal emulator. The basic syntax is screen <port> <baud rate> — since the documentation said to use 9600 baud and the access point showed up on /dev/ttyUSB0, this means running:

 

screen /dev/ttyUSB0 9600

More completely, screen <port> <baud rate>,<7 or 8 bits per byte>,<enable or disable sending flow control>,<enable or disable rcving flow control>,<keep or clear the eight bit in each byte>

screen /dev/ttyUSB0 9600,cs8,ixon,ixoff,istrip 
- or - 
screen /dev/ttyUSB0 9600,cs7,-ixon,-ixoff,-istrip