Peter’s Soapbox

A Quick and Dirty “It’s Back Up” Bash Script

Today, I had a client’s T1 line go down. Unfortunately, FairPoint Communications has had a mixed track record when it comes to telling us that they have (or more often, have not) fixed the issues.

So I wrote a simple bash script to ping the IP address of the router on the down T1 line, and email me when it came back up. Think of this as the ultra-poor man’s Nagios. Continue reading A Quick and Dirty “It’s Back Up” Bash Script…

Fixing Annoying Keyboard Repeating on an Asus eeePC 1000HA

Ever since I got my Asus eeePC 1000HA, it’s had one very annoying quality. The keyboard, under Windows and Linux, would repeat keystrokes, so if I typed “Peter” I would frequently get “Peeter” or “Petter” or something else with extra characters. Very annoying. Continue reading Fixing Annoying Keyboard Repeating on an Asus eeePC 1000HA…

Book Review: SAMS Teach Yourself Regular Expressions in 10 Minutes

I bought this book, Sams Teach Yourself Regular Expressions in 10 Minutes, years ago, and read it back then after not being able to completely digest O’Reilly’s Mastering Regular Expressions (a much larger book). While the O’Reilly book has a lot more content, more examples, and covers several different languages’ regexp parsers, I found the SAMS book a lot easier to process. As the name implies, each chapter is designed to be covered in about 10 minutes, so if you have a couple of hours to kill, you can easily plow through the whole book and try out its examples to get a decent working knowledge of regexps. Continue reading Book Review: SAMS Teach Yourself Regular Expressions in 10 Minutes…

Hundred Pushups Redux, Now With Squats!

Yeah, I’m back on the hundred pushups challenge, again. I’m also doing the two hundred squats challenge on alternating days! I’m in the middle of week 4 (since I was easily able to bang out 50 squats on the first week) of each.

Now, to make it through three Thanksgiving dinners (ah, the joys of large family and being popular) without totally mucking up my progress on making physical self-improvements. I briefly was back up as high as 174# a week ago, but I’m dropping back into my comfort zone below 170#. With an “ideal weight” for a man my height and age ranging anywhere from 125-169#, depending on who you ask and what method you use, I’m toward the high end, but I am adding some muscle mass and I feel great, have lots of energy, and am told I look great, so, I’m cool here.

Book Review: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Last month, at the suggestion of a friend, I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I didn’t know what to make of it until I saw a preview for the movie, due soon in theaters. Continue reading Book Review: The Road by Cormac McCarthy…