Recent content on Room Full of Mirrors
There is a GitHub user (LLM?) that is reporting a lot of “securityvulnerabilities” as open issues. They are mostly trash reports (e.g. “if you pass Object.prototype to thesetFooOnObject function, it will set Object.prototype.foo so that’s prototypepollution”), but what if one is real? Spicy take up front: let the security vulnerabilities be legitimate and postedout in…
Up front: do not buy SteelSeries products. SteelSeries does not stand behindtheir premium priced products. I purchased one of their headsets for almost$400 less than 2 years ago, and they refuse to replace the clearly defectiveproduct. Background § On October 16, 2024 I purchased the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro headsetfor my Xbox. I was hesitant to buy the headset because it requires a breakoutbox…
This post contains two reviews for a company I hired to deal with an erosionproblem in my yard. The original review resulted in the company coming backto improve their work. They did not ask me to update, nor remove, my originalreview. But I think it is important to provide an update, Google reviewswouldn’t even let me write all of the words I originally wanted to write (Ihad to revise my…
I have been using Silca’s hot melt wax since April of 2022.It’s great stuff, and I’ve written a thorough article on it that details my whole setup and the tricks I have learned about theprocess. So I was rather excited when Silca announced their dedicated wax warmer . I put my name on the waiting list and got one assoon as I could. Unfortunately, I am disappointed with the…
Recently, I posted to Twitter: “why do people still use pm2?” The post garneredmuch more attention than I expected it to, and I was asked by several people:“what is your alternative?” This article will outline why I think using pm2 is unnecessary and what I think should be done instead. What Is PM2? § pm2 , per their readme , is: … a production process manager for…
Lately, the topic of JavaScript classes has come up in some open sourceprojects I participate in. In short, a contributor wants to convert existingprototype defined code to class defined code. I have mostly stayed out of theconversation as my primary position is one of the “old man yells at cloud” variety. But the primary counter argument is that “classes are easier…
This post is about my own mental image, and acceptance, of my physical self.There are nude images ahead, the most revaling of which are obscured behinda mouse click. I was inspired to write this after a post by ayoga classmate from a yoga class that I started taking in the spring of thisyear (2023). My Fear § As a child, I played baseball and I remember being quite good at it. I believeI could…
I used to run my own email server for several years before I switched over to using Gmail. It was nice having my own domain, but maintaining the server and dealing with flaky internet services eventually became too much. So I have been using Gmail as my primary email service since 2004-08-19. But in late August of 2019 I finally got tired of dealing with all of the advertisements in my inbox. I…
In August of 2017 I acquired my first Unifi gear: an 8 port 60W PoEswitch, and the UAP-AC-PRO wireless access point. I paired them with a box Ibuilt that was running pfSense , and was able to setup VLANs for myregular network traffic and Internet of Things (IoT) traffic. This workedgreat. I was able to use vnStat to keep track of my monthly datausage (since I refused to pay Comcast their extortion…
This article is for the people using the Wahoo Bolt v2 and consideringthe Garmin Edge 1040 . This is not a long term review of either unit;for that see DC Rainmaker’s reviews: Boltv2 and Edge 1040 . The short summary is: the Edge1040 is a better computer all around, and definitely worth it for people whowant to actually train. Wahoo Bolt (v2) § I already have a few thoughts jotted down in my…
When I started my cycling hobby in 2014 I started out with a Trek FX7.2 , as seen in Figure 1. I put roughly 2,500 miles on that bike,and I think the most maintenance I ever did to the chain was to wipe it with acloth before putting more lubricant on. When I upgraded to my Crossrip 3 in 2018, Figure 2, I started doing better. I put almost9,000 miles on that bike and I routinely ran the chain…
It’s difficult to write this, but I feel like I need to write it down, howeverrandom and sloppily it turns out: I got laid off today. I can’t say the layoffs were a surprise. Internal events were telegraphing thatit was likely to happen. I was just crossing my fingers that I wouldn’t beincluded. I spent the past four years putting everything I could into makingKnock a success. I…
Today, I received a private message on Twitter: ‘A software engineer with a background in Linux server administration’ - Thisis music to my ears because I am trying to forge a similar path. Let me knowif you have any tips. It was in reference to the current tagline I have on my resume site, james.sumners.info . I responded with a very shortsummary, but I realized that I haven’t…
I have mixed opinions of Wahoo Fitness products. In chronologicalorder, I have owned and extensively used: PROTKT Bike Mount and Case 2014 Tickr Bolt v1 2018 Kickr Bolt v2 2020 Tickr Kickr Bike v1 (excluded from “extensive” as I just acquired this) I’m not going to go into a review of all of those products here, there’s plentyof those out there for all of them, but I want…
On August 27, 2021 I drove from my house in the Atlanta, GA area to downtownPhiladelphia, PA. My goal: participate in the 2021 Philadelphia Naked Bike Ride . I don’t get truly excited by manythings, but I was very excited for this event. First, it would be way outsideof my normal comfort zone and a chance to expand my life experience. Second,I am extremely weary of the shame we attach to the…
For some time, I have been wanting to replace my self-built router with a Unifi Gateway so that I could build a Docker server out ofthat system. Unfortunately, the Unifi Gateway continues to lack a feature Ineed: monthly bandwith usage tracking. Until it at least gains that feature,I will be sticking with pfSense . But there are at least two thingsthat I really need a Docker server for: Running…
May 01, 2020 marked two years since I switched careers .That career change was from a “Linux System Adminstrator” to a “SoftwareEngineer.” Today, I was formally promoted to “Senior Software Engeineer.”So I think it is worth taking a few minutes to write down my views on whatswitching careers and gaining a new title in that new career has meant to me. On…
First, a little background. At home, I am stuck with Comcast for an ISP.Probably the only redeeming quality of this is that they have fully rolledout dual stack IPv4+IPv6 to all of their customers. Everyone on their networkgets personal access to more IPv6 addresses than ever existed in the wholeIPv4 space. They assign a /128 to your WAN interface, and from there you canrequest a /64 , or in my…
Over the weekend a friend posted an image of an error his Xbox One X has beenthrowing at random times over the past couple of months. A quick Internet searchrevealed the likely cause to be a bad hard drive. Of course I made thesuggestion to try and get Microsoft to replace it, but I knew that the consolewas out of warranty because we both got our One X consoles at the same time(and mine is out of…
In 1999 I started work at Clayton State University asa student employee. I turned my self-developed troubleshooting skills into aa job at the university’s help desk: The HUB .After a few years I moved over to the networking department, ostensibly tohelp build out and test the wireless network. After graduation, I was broughtback as a full-time employee in the enterprise applications…
On 02 May 2016 I submitted my first pull request (PR) to the Pino logging library project. Subsequent PRs eventually led to me beingoffered a contributorship to the Pino project. Since then I have come to considerthe inventors of Pino, David Mark Clements and Matteo Collina ,to be friends. Additionally, I follow their open source work since they areextremely smart individuals and produce some…
Around the middle of May this year (2017) I was browsing through my Netflix recommendations when I came across a documentarycalled That Sugar Film . I decided to watch it. It is not anexaggeration to say that film changed me; at least since then and for theforeseeable future. After watching that film I spent the remainder of the monthfinishing off every food item in my house that contained added…
I have put off migrating to RHEL 7 at work for just about as long as I quitepossibly can. The reason? The shit show known as systemd . But thetime draws near that RHEL 6 will be EOLed, so I have begun migrating in earnest.Part of that migration is a rather important Oracle database server. SinceI like being able to start and stop things via the system service manager,I needed make it so Oracle can…
There isn’t any shortage of tutorials on this subject, but I haven’t seen anythat attempt to guide a person that has zero experience with any of it. So,the goal of this article is to give a fresh “newbie” all of the informationthey need to collaborate on projects that use the Git SCM . This will notbe a complete, or even a full introductory, guide to git ; you should…
In 2008 I built myself a HTPC . It started out running Arch Linux but switched to Ubuntu when Arch decided to forcesystemd. Ubuntu’s Upstart didn’t live up to Arch’s original RCsystem, but it fit the bill of not being systemd. I have never liked Ubuntuso it was most certainly a stop-gap solution. My replacement for Ubuntu is Void Linux . I discovered Void a few months ago when…
For the last five years this site has been generated by Wordpress .The decision to move to Wordpress was based primarily on theammount of spam that was being posted through the comment system I had written.Wordpress provides some great tools for fighting comment spam. But commentson weblog posts are becoming more irrelvant by the day; or rather, no onedoes it anymore. So I don’t have need of…