2016 Goals Review

I don’t think I’ve ever done this poorly on my yearly goals. But I have a good reason, a couple of them actually. Please refer back to The Ochos and you’ll fully understand. But…to stay consistent, let’s run through them and see how poorly I did.

  • Learn Swift – FAIL I did some tutorials and the playground activity from the developer portal. I do like what I’ve seen in swift so far. But I’m not proficient in it yet so I consider this one a fail. While I did learn some, the goal was to proficient enough to ship an app or at least attempt an app.
  • 26 posts – Not even close. I got 8. Just didn’t have the time to write with everything else that was happening. Not to mention, I kind of enjoyed checking out a bit at night which I don’t think is a bad thing either.
  • Run Forest, Run! – FAIL – Didn’t make my 300 number but did put up a respectable 222 miles in 2016. Not bad considering I took close to 10 weeks off from running. I did start a running club at work as I only have time to run over the lunch hours it seems and maybe sneak away for a decent run on the weekends.
  • zzzZZZzzz – LOL FAIL FAIL FAIL…I had twins. There have been several nights where an hour of uninterrupted sleep was amazing. Not to mention the several nights I spent at the hospital with Evan during his surgery. Sleep just hasn’t been happening.

0 for 4. An amazing amount of failure. But I learned a lot, the family is growing and striving. The job is good and I’m happy. Overall 2016 was a success.

The Ochos

I posted this on Facebook for all those that are friends with me there. But I think it needs a formal place here on the blog…the announcement of the twins born on 8/8/2016

With a triumphant roar, the Patterson boys came into this world on 8/8. Evan Michael lead the way at 10:32am coming in at 5lbs 9oz and measuring 18 inches. His brother Andrew Douglas gave mom a bit more trouble and made a fashionably late appearance at 11:16 after an emergency c-section. Topping his brother in size at 19 and a quarter inches and 5lbs 11 oz. Both are adjusting to all the new found space and momma is recovering well.

RIP Fitbit

I think I’ve come to the end of my Fitbit adventures for a while. My 3rd Fitbit finally bit the dust. I originally got one when we had kicked open the doors of our new data center and wanted to see how much I was walking around the 1/4 mile long building. To sum it up, its a lot. On average, I was between 5-7 miles a day without even thinking about it.

When puppet leaves an un-tidy mess

A while back, I had written a quick and dirty shell script to take a simple tarball of the /etc directory of my linux machines and copy it to an FTP server. Then, to make sure that the FTP directory didn’t get out of hand, I had written the following in my puppet config for that server that would clean everything up with the use of the tidy resource type. The code looked like this:

Encryption

Looks like the government is at it again now that Apple has come out stating that they are not going to roll over and provide a master key to their iPhone software. Really NSA? How about the part where the terrorist didn’t use encryption in these attacks.

European media outlets are reporting that the location of a raid conducted on a suspected safe house Wednesday morning was extracted from a cellphone, apparently belonging to one of the attackers, found in the trash outside the Bataclan concert hall massacre. Le Monde reported that investigators were able to access the data on the phone, including a detailed map of the concert hall and an SMS messaging saying “we’re off; we’re starting.” Police were also able to trace the phone’s movements.