Charles N Wyble Journal

Last Post

2008-02-28T17:22:23Z

It's been a good run with LiveJournal. However I will no longer be posting here. Please see my new blog/homepage at http://charlesnw.blogspot.com

Thanks to LiveJournal for the outstanding service. I will still keep my account here and participate in the various community blogs that are unique to LiveJournal.

A bit about productivity

2008-02-25T18:25:08Z

I thought I would take some time and define my daily process and some of my productivity tips. I have always been pretty efficient, but am always looking for ways to improve.

I start my day by catching up on e-mail. I subscribe to some RedHat Emerging Technology Project lists (such as FreeIPA and et-mgmt-tools). I generally will skim those messages first as they relate to the InfrasBox project. I then move my spam into the junk folder.

My next step is to open Flock and skim my RSS feeds. I click on the articles that interest me and read them. I generally don't follow the links in the articles as that consumes quite a bit of time. If I don't know what something is I'll search and skim the WikiPedia article and/or info page. I will often bookmark something that is of interest.

Both my e-mail and bookmarks are in a somewhat obsessive/extreme folder structure and I am able to locate just about any e-mail or bookmark in less then 30 seconds. I have found that I have a very category/hierarchy oriented mindset.

Another e-mail tip I have is that I almost never save messages from a list. They are all archived (at least the ones I subscribe to). A lot of information I will never refer to again anyway. For example bug reports/triage etc. Its very interesting and topical for a short period of time, then becomes old news. I don't really have any hard and fast criteria for saving list messages, as I do it so rarely.

So that covers e-mail/rss (new information).

The above process usually takes me about 2 hours on a daily basis. The e-mail portion is generally completed while I commute (I take mass transit).

Any e-mails which require action I add to a task list.

I then work through those tasks. If I am interrupted I will either complete the task (if its less then 10 minutes) or will add it to my task list.

I am reviewing the GTD approach and looking at my current process and seeing how I stack up. So far I have the collect and organize steps down quite well. I am also able to accomplish a lot efficiently enough that my customers haven't complained about lack of progress. :)

Hopefully this post will help you become more productive. :)

Moving on

2008-02-23T18:56:37Z

I have resigned from my position with Siderean Software as of 10:00 am this morning. I am currently looking for a system engineering position. My resume can be found online at http://thewybles.com/~charles/me/resume/charles-wyble-resume-2008.pdf

I would like to give props to my network for coming through with quite a few interviews and opportunities. You guys rock!

If you would like to follow my job hunt see my twitter page which will have up to the minute information on my daily activities. Obviously my highest priority now will be finding a job. If you know of anything that I could be a fit for please let me know!

Weblogs are fun

2008-02-14T23:51:35Z

Weblogs are fun. I don't mean blogs (though those are fun too). I am referring to Apache logs. Some entries of interest from today:

24.199.1.218 - - [14/Feb/2008:13:30:53 -0800] "GET /~charles/me/resume/resume.html HTTP/1.1" 200 12687

"http://www.altavista.com/web/results?itag=ody&kgs=1&k
ls=0&q=%28intitle%3Aresume+OR+inurl%3Aresume%29+-jobs+-post+-careers+-submit+%28engineer+OR+developer%29+%28818+OR+310+OR+323+OR+626+OR+213%29Web+Java+j2ee&s
tq=30" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.2; SU 3.011; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"

220.225.234.204 - - [14/Feb/2008:12:09:55 -0800]
"GET /~charles/me/resume/resume.pdf HTTP/1.1" 200 8211

"http://www.google.com/custom?q=UNIX+,+MYSQL+ADMIN+-+
CA+more:resume_search_-_pdf_file&hl=en&client=google-coop-np&

cof=AH:left%3BCX:Passive%2520Recruiting%2520Search%2520Engine

%3BL:http://www.google.com/coop/intl/en/images/custom_search_sm.gif%3BLH:65%3BLP:1%3BLC:%23000099%3BVLC:%23663399%3BGALT:%23009900%3BDIV:%23000000%3B&cx=000807618478942348746:78fen_f3moe&adkw=
AELymgUkG39NIRUEeKJSIMYjeLVqLigGvuBpQN_nok2XOLNxGynCqLHyCklPTPDuKr4A4DkzCACfDYKqTYk5wa6PzAZNs9knfc3Wodu2ENbb9op3cjOXPCA&start=40&sa=N" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows;
U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0"

SCALE Wrapup

2008-02-11T15:22:15Z

First the good points.

The organizers did an outstanding job as always. The venue was perfect. The talks I attended had plenty of capacity. I didn't use the wireless or wired network at all. However everyone I talked to that used it had no issues. So the various core parts of the conference have vastly improved and matured.

Now the bad points.

I was thoroughly unimpressed this year. I attended two talks (one on virtualization/openvz and one on Untangle). The Untangle talk was outstanding. The OpenVZ talk I wasn't really impressed with. They gave an incredibly high level overview and a demo. Nothing really all that exciting.

Other talks that I was potentially interested in, I have already seen the subject matter covered at various LUGs in Southern California. I did see some new vendors this year (in particular Talend). However I didn't discover anything new at SCALE, which is generally my primary reason for going. I guess its a sign of maturity in the overall community and my experience with Linux. I actually didn't even attend the conference on Sunday.

So SCALE6 gets a score of 7 out of ten.

March 2008 UUASC LA

2008-01-29T15:51:09Z

So i wanted to let everyone know I'll be speaking at the March meeting of UUASC Los Angeles.

I'll be covering the following:

1) Update on the Los Angeles city WiFI project.
2) Unveiling of OpenSrcLearn.org and my work at Roosevelt High School
3) A demo of the back end technology I covered at my previous presentations

3.A) Auto provisioning a client system with Ubuntu
3.B) Network Access Control (using PacketFence)
3.C) DD-WRT on the WRT54GL tied in to back end infrastructure (Directory Services/RADIUS/OpenVPN)

I may even throw in some high availability magic as well.

I think that should fill 2 hours. :)

I plan to blog about the various things above throughout the month of February.

Yikes

2008-01-15T20:20:22Z

Dreamhost makes a 7.5 millon dollar mistake

http://blog.dreamhost.com/2008/01/15/um-whoops/

I can't believe the yahoos they let build commerce systems these days. Good grief!

If this had happened on the commerce systems that I coded/supported and it was my mistake, I certainly wouldn't be blogging about it? Why? Cause I would have been fired and then sued into oblivion. Commerce is serious business for serious coders.

Not some 2 bit guy who thinks he is a hot shot coder/admin. Those are the kind of people you want to keep as far away from production as possible. (Yes I am talking to you Josh Jones).

Ugh. This sort of stuff makes me sick.

Dreamhost should immediately terminate Josh and I strongly encourage customers of dreamhost to sue the organization and the developer who made this horribly evil and unforgivable mistake.

And yes I take commerce very seriously.

The United Nemesis

2007-12-20T15:28:47Z

The World Wide Web has many many strands. I have many spiders which sit on various strands (yahoo/google/twitter/techncorati). I track a number of subjects, brand names, company names etc. Today my twitter spy brings me news of an acquisition. Intuit is buying Electronic Clearing House (a former employer who booted me).

Now ECHO was a decent company with strong growth. Technology was well respected and well fed. A management shake up occurred and a number of people got canned. Shortly after I was eliminated (like withing a week) I interviewed at Intuit card processing services. I saw top management from my firm on the sign in sheet. So I knew something was in the works.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/industries/finance/article/intuit-buy-electronic-clearing-house-17-share_414474_9.html

Both companies seemed to not really have there head on straight in terms of systems operations management.

So someone didn't really do their homework in my opinion. Or maybe more people got canned and new blood was brought in?

Eh Whatever.

Job Hunt

2007-12-18T01:52:34Z

So the time has come for me to being thinking about my next job.

I am currently looking at positions with Microsoft and Canonical. Microsoft has a really interesting spot in LA which I believe I would be a good fit for:

http://eefeiv.notlong.com/

Also Canonical has a platform developer position which I am interested in as well:

http://www.ubuntu.com/employment#upd

I need to update my resume and setup some test virtual machines.

Application monitoring and testing

2007-12-11T18:42:20Z

So my main project at work right now is setting up automated monitoring for our hosted web applications. I did an extensive amount of research and reading and tried using WebLoad but for a number of reasons it didn't work out very well. I then started using Jmeter and have been pleasantly surprised.

Some links of interest I have come across

http://cwiki.apache.org/WICKET/wicket-and-jmeter-with-regular-expressions.html
http://jorge.martincuervo.com/2006/10/15/jmeter-and-dwr/

Many more can be found
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=jmeter+ajax&ei=UTF-8&fr=moz2

I'll probably do a more comprehensive post and brain dump on this subject later. Needless to say I will have a lot of material for my presentation in February to UUASC.

My Online World

2007-12-01T04:51:05Z

So I figured I would post a summary of the things I have going online.

1) My main and longest running blog http://jackshck.livejournal.com (your reading it now). Covering various projects and ideas. Showing progress towards them (scattered though it may be).

2) My corporate project blog. Covering my revenue generating ideas and how I am getting there. Essentially covering the nitty gritty details of building a professional services and corporate Linux/Open Source Operations training firm. http://siliconvs.blogspot.com (Silicon Valley South).

3) My "life blog". This is a fairly new blog of mine. Actually its old (created in January 2006). I went to register the blog the other day, and saw it was already registered. I'll try to post to it each and every day both in person (on topics like what I ate that day and travel times etc) and automated (sending SNORT and LogWatch reports). In a similar vein to my twitter ( http://www.twitter.com/charlesnw ) but on a more consistent set of subjects etc. The URL for my "life blog" is http://charlesnw.blogspot.com

And of course I am on LinkedIn for professional networking, and Facebook. I don't usually do much with Facebook and don't utilize LinkedIn to a great extent.

There are a myriad of other social networking sites out there. I am not really interested in them per se.

Oh of course I have a youtube account ( http://www.youtube.com/charlesnw) and a blip.tv channel (http://opensrclearn.blip.tv) Both of those are in support of my main 2008 project (the on site corporate training).

So that's me in a nutshell.

I also have all my online properties linked together. I actually have a spreadsheet with the whole setup. I should post that sometime. :)

Mobility

2007-11-27T18:27:29Z

So a number of the things I will be working on in 2008 will be projects in the field. I have become increasingly mobile in 2007 but a lot of the projects I have been working on were foundational/ core infrastructure tasks. Those are winding down now, and setting the stage for 2008.

So lets start with an inventory of equipment I take with me everywhere in my Targus TXL617 backpack:

1) HP Pavillion dv6000 laptop running Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon. Dual core AMD Turion 64. 2 gigs of ram. Not an ultra portable system but not a luggable either. A very capable system for all types of projects. I have an incredibly broad spectrum of software installed and as such can easily be a local Ubuntu mirror :)

2) Blackberry Pearl (8100) with an unlimited data plan from t-mobile. I use this device extensively. Its great for taking notes and handling e-mails/twitter alerts.

3) A 62 piece BoXer screwdriver set. Just about every type of screw can be handled with this nifty toy.

4) A no name USB headset. Works like a champ. Great for listening to music, podcasts or doing voice communications.

5) A maxtor USB hard drive. I use that to store my Vista virtual machine as well as audio/video recordings of LUG meetings. Not a lot of that there now, but much more to come in 2008. Much much more.

6) A targus tri pod. Used for video recording of various user group meetings.

7) A raines compact umbrella. Never know when it might be needed. Especially with all of the travel I will be doing in 2008. Won't always be in sunny so cal. :)

8) An AirLink 101 Super G Wireless Router. Perfect for when I need to setup a quick network.

9) A neck pillow. For all the time I spend on the bus and soon train/plane.

10) A Sansa c140 which I use to record user group meetings. Works incredibly well.

11) A nokia N95 phone.

12) A LaFonera router

13) A keyspan serial to usb converter.

And of course some assorted cables (s-video/firewire/usb/network).

Later on I will post more about productive mobility.</a>

Monsters Lurk....

2007-11-27T17:24:39Z

So I setup logwatch and snort on all my boxes recently. In todays daily report I see:

Failed logins from these:
    122.70.135.124: 68 times
       root/password: 68 times
    219.129.219.66: 1 time
       root/password: 1 time
 
 Illegal users from these:
    219.129.219.66: 1 time
       fluffy/password: 1 time


I looked up the two IP addresses:
http://isc.sans.org/ipinfo.html?ip=122.70.135.124
http://isc.sans.org/ipinfo.html?ip=219.129.219.66

both of them have been bad little boys. 

I turned off direct ssh root login on that box just to be extra safe. 

So I highly recommend deploying logwatch/snort. The default Ubuntu configuration works great. Just make sure you set an alias for root in /etc/aliases.

TODO List Progress: Intrusion Detection / Security / System Monitoring

2007-11-23T20:46:08Z

One of the items I mentioned in my TODO list was intrusion detection. In support of this goal I have

1) Rolled out LogWatch and SNORT to all of my VmWare, bare metal systems and my vpsland.com Xen Slice. I get daily summary e-mails of system/network activity.

2) Setup the /etc/aliases file on all systems to send root e-mail to charles@thewybles.com

I am in the process of evaluating file integrity monitoring software for deployment across my systems.

So the original goal of a network intrusion detection system has been met, and I am expanding that to system intrusion detection/monitoring as well.

TODO List Progress: Backups

2007-11-21T21:21:16Z

Well its taken longer then I had hoped, but I am almost done with backups. Please see my previous posts on the topic for some background and earlier attempts.

I have done a number of experiments and test runs, and have come up with the following:

1) A set of scripts on my file server which run out of cron and ssh to the server which hosts my personal home page, and the server which hosts all my corporate pages. It backs up my web pages and e-mail directory. The script is fairly simple:

#!/bin/bash
#A script to backup the content of my vpsland.com sites and my personal homepage

backup_root="/samba/backups"
backup_storage_root="$backup_root/backups/web-backups/"
logFile="$backup_root/logs/remote-backup.log"
private_key="$backup_root/keys/privateBackupKey"
rsync_opts="-avz"

echo "To: charles@thewybles.com" > ${logFile}
echo "From: remote-backup@thewybles.com" >> ${logFile}
echo "Subject: E-mail/Web Backup Ran `date`" >> ${logFile}
echo "" >> ${logFile}
echo "Starting E-mail/Web Backup `date`" >> ${logFile}

echo "" >> ${logFile}

rsync $rsync_opts -e "ssh -i $private_key" charles@www.socallugs.com:/home/charles/web $backup_storage_root/vpsland-backup
backupReturnValue=$?
echo "VPSLAND webpage backups returned $backupReturnValue" >> ${logFile}

rsync $rsync_opts -e "ssh -i $private_key" charles@www.socallugs.com:/home/charles/web $backup_storage_root/vpsland-backup
backupReturnValue=$?
echo "VPSLAND webpage backups returned $backupReturnValue" >> ${logFile}

rsync $rsync_opts -e "ssh -p 2345 -i $private_key" charles@www.thewybles.com:/home/charles/public_html $backup_storage_root/homepage-backup
backupReturnValue=$?
echo "Homepage backup returned $backupReturnValue" >> ${logFile}

rsync $rsync_opts -e "ssh -p 2345 -i $private_key" charles@www.thewybles.com:/home/charles/Maildir $backup_storage_root/email-backup
backupReturnValue=$?
echo "E-mail backup returned $backupReturnValue" >> ${logFile}

cat ${logFile} | /usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i

2) A script which backs up the music and pictures on the media server. Same as above just different source server and local storage point.
3) A script which backs up web pages and e-mail to rsync.net. Same as above script just different source and target server.

The above 3 scripts have been running for a week or so (maybe longer I dunno) and work perfectly.

The following tasks remain:

1) Backing up Patti and I laptop.
2) Backing up local VmWare servers.

Both of the above should be doable with the above script, however I have run into a problem attempting to set it up. So going to work on that later today.

3) Backing up MySQL databases. Part of me wants to do a mysqldump, and part of me wants to setup a MySQL replica. In the interest of time and simplicity, I think I'll do the mysqldump.

So if everything goes well, I should have backups finished by the end of the day today.

LiLAX 2008 Plans

2007-11-21T18:44:06Z

Speaker/Topic Lineup for Q1/Q2


January) System Monitoring Panel. Nagios will be represented and I'll try
to get some sales engineers from Groundworks/Zenoss/Microsoft to come
down and demonstrate their offerings. LiLAX has a history of panel/bake
off type presentations. I think they allow a lot of ground to be covered
and will attract more professional systems people to LiLAX. 

February) SCALE VoIP shootout. This could really get LiLAX on the map.

March) Donna will be covering Blender. This will appeal to the desktop
user crowd.

April) The guy who runs LinuxHA.com (Neil Cherry) will be doing a remote
presentation on home automation. This will appeal to the desktop
user/hobbyist crowd.

May) Dallas will be doing a "Linux command line power tips" This
appeals to the professional user and hobbyist/desktop user crowd.

June) Linux accessibility. This is a big topic. Wayne Dick has agreed to speak along with a few other people on this topic. We may get a person or two from the W3C accessibility working group to weigh in as well.  This is a hot topic... I may move it to March so its after SCALE and the accessibility Birds of A Feather session we are putting together.


Venue:

We are going to loose our current venue after December 2007. I am in the process of seeking an alternative venue in the South Bay area. More on this as I have details. If you are able to offer a venue, or have contacts that may be able to help please let me know.

Barcamp SanDiego2

2007-11-12T22:12:12Z

So one of the things I observed was as you go farther south in California, the technology landscape changes. Or at least the slice I see at user group meetings and other events.

Los Angeles is very system engineering/application administration oriented.
Orange County and San Diego are heavily oriented towards programming. A lot of .NET and Ruby but not a lot of Java.

The crowd was smaller at BarCampSd2. I attended and contributed to the Nagios/Groundworks talks quite a bit. Didn't give my presentation on community websites, as the audience didn't really seem quite right for it.

The event was well organized and the food was excellent. However other then the Nagios/Groundworks talks and a talk on a web based IDE, the content didn't really appeal to me. I made a few connections of some value.

I think I'll stick to the LA based events from now on. As its the area I live in and the market that interests me the most. We shall see.

Random Stuff

2007-11-10T05:22:28Z

So I am in a Motel 6 with Ralf and dallas in San Diego. Doing some random stuff tonight. One of those things is uploading a screenshot of my vmware control panel at home.

Also working on a spreadsheet with my various web properties and page ranks. Part of my analytics and monitoring project.

Finishing up the backups and ups stuff as well.

Will post more when complete...

Barcamp San Diego

2007-11-09T02:25:16Z

I will be in San Diego this weekend at Barcamp San Diego presenting on SoCalLugs.com and community sites in general. Will be carpooling down with some of my regular crew.

Hope to see a lot of people I know there and meet a number of new people as well. Should be fun!

TODO List Progress

2007-11-08T18:45:01Z

Part of my todo list for this month is better monitoring and understanding of my environment. As such I have setup Google Adsense and Google Analytics on my various web properties. They are actually pretty good tools for free. One of the things Google actually does right. They are an advertising company after all. :)

I also relaunched the KnownElement.com site. It has links to my various projects and the majority of them have links back to KnownElement. This greatly helps with page ranking etc. I won't worry to much about SEO/promotion etc until later on. The important thing for now is to have all the properties linked to each other. That way increase in popularity of any one of them leads to an increased ranking for the others. I'll be writing more about my SEO and Adsense/Analytics adventures over at my Silicon Valley South blog.

Also backups have progressed quite nicely. I am not backing up the audio/pictures on my media server. I will be replacing the rsync via samba solution with an rsync over SSH solution tonight.

I did some work on the UPS setup as well.

So I should have UPS and backups all finished tonight.

Then next week will concentrate on monitoring and environment analysis.

ClickItNoTicket.com post

2007-11-01T16:00:58Z

I posted on my startup blog about ClickItNoTicket.com. Future updates about the site/application will be done on that blog.

TODO List Project Completion - Voice Control

2007-11-01T14:25:18Z

I am able to control my desktop via my voice fairly well. Using gnome-voice-control and perlbox This project is complete.

ClickItNoTicket.com and a new toy (Nokia n95)

2007-10-29T02:53:11Z

Today I attended an event called MobileCampLA in Culver city. One of the events was an entrepreneurial improv. The idea is fairly simple:

1) For 5 minutes the audience throws out words.
2) For 15 minutes a team of 5 to 7 people comes up with a startup idea based on two of the words from the first exercise. In this particular case it was for a mobile application.
The startup idea must have

A) A Name: CarWatch
B) A Tag line: ClickItNoTicket
C) Market: Everyone who parks a motor vehicle and wants to avoid parking tickets
D) A logo: Will be uploaded soon
E) Revenue/Price point:

3) Each team presents and an award is rewarded to the winning team.

Our idea won based on practicality and ease of implementation.

More details to follow at http://siliconvs.blogspot.com (the KnownElementEnterprises blog)

We are targeting a January 1st 2008 launch.

Gutsy Gibbon Install Fest (announcement and behind the scenes)

2007-10-24T15:27:06Z

I have always wanted to organize an install fest. I went to one in Santa Monica a couple months back, and it was a lot of fun. Helping people get Ubuntu running on their systems and being able to realize fully unlocked computing. No more spyware/viruses etc to deal with. Etc etc.

Anyway I recently got my chance with the latest Ubuntu Release (Gutsy Gibbon).

So how did I go about organizing the install fest?

Step 1. Secure a venue.

The LUG I run ( LiLAX @ http://www.lilax.net) already uses the sun lab at CSUDH. So I contacted our host and asked for use of the room out of cycle from our normal meeting. He agreed.

Step 2. Coordinate with the Ubuntu California Team.

Through IRC and the e-mail list, we worked out the details of the install fest presenters and who would bring blank CDs and a burner. These are vital details to take care of. Also two people volunteered to give presentations. I think its very important to have presentations so new users can get a taste of what Linux is capable of.

Step 3. Send out an announcement.

Here is the boiler plate text I am using in the announcement e-mail:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

All,


	I would like to make a formal announcement of the upcoming Ubuntu Gutsy
Gibbon Install Fest.

When: Saturday November 3rd 2007 10am to 2pm
Where:
Cal State Univ Dominguez Hills ( http://www.csudh.edu/ )
1000 E. Victoria Street
Carson, California 90747
(310) 243-3696


What: An install fest and presentations on open source software (which I
will be filming for a screen cast)


Hope to see you all there!

------------------------------------

Nice simple and to the point.

I am in the process of sending out the e-mail to the following groups:

UUASC (Unix Users Association of Southern California)
SGVLUG (San Gabriel Valley Linux User Group)
SFVLUG (San Fernando Valley Linux User Group)
SCLUG (Simi Canejo Valley Linux User Group)
LiLAX (Linux Users of LAX/South Bay [the LUG I run]
SDLUG (San Diego Linux Users group)

I want to make sure it goes out far and wide. :)

I will also send a follow up e-mail with parking details etc.

Step 4. Setup signs directing people to the meeting place.

This is a vital step. Once people have found the facility you want to make it as easy as possible for them to find the room you are holding the event in.

A cool program

2007-10-24T14:06:09Z

I like to download content and consume it later (for example while on the bus etc). A number of good pod/video casts exist out there. Podcasts are easy enough to download and put onto my mp3 player. I use Rhythmbox to do that.

Videos are a bit harder. Sometimes a download link is provided (most open source conferences allow you to download an MPEG or AVI). However a lot of good talks (like the ones given at google) are put up on youtube. Now watching the typical youtube content (short funny videos like diet coke and mentos experiments) is easily done while online. However longer content (video casts) are for various reasons not something I want to consume while connected.

Fortunately my good friend Dallas Legan has written a program to solve this problem. It is called usnatch and can be downloaded from his website at:

http://www.lafn.org/~aw585/usnatch.html

It works great! I downloaded the VmWare Fusion Talk found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJPq_8ULpRg with the following command:

./usnatch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJPq_8ULpRg -i

It prompted me for the file name I wished to use. This isn't necessary. Leave off the -i switch and it will download to a default name.

Go Dallas!