As I was working on part two of this planned four part series about packer, I realized I forgot a crucial step in setting up Jenkins!  Due to part of our pipeline including deployment to an artifact repository and a vSphere environment, we need to create some credentials within Jenkins.  I have also created a friendly …

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Imagine a world where the next meltdown level vulnerability is announced and you have to patch your image 5 minutes ago. You  calmly run a script to force approve patches in your patch manager  and 45 minutes later the base template you deploy from in vSphere is updated and all new machines are based on the new image, …

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I have always been one to pick stupid goals and then make it happen, fortunately for me as I’ve progressed in life from childhood to adulthood I actually learned that when you set an outlandish goal, you probably need to do things bordering on outlandish to accomplish them.

After gaining my MCSE 2003 certification, I …

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A log time ago, in a place not very far a way, I had an irregularly updated blog dedicated to tech stuff that I encountered at work and in my lab, which I unfortunately abandoned (the blog). Recently work has gotten exciting and at the same time I’ve been “forced” to rebuild my home lab, resulting in me deciding to …

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An important aspect about the SAFe framework, which I talked about a little last time, is accountability. Namely, holding yourself accountable for accomplishing the things you have committed to. This is done by defining clear acceptance criteria around that commitment. The acceptance criteria describes why you are …

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“Fuckity fuck fuck.” “This is such a disappointment.” “I need to get off this bike.” “I need a hug.” These are all words that have come out of my mouth in the last 36 hours or so. All of them the result of Ironman Hawaii and my poor performance. I don’t want to dwell more than a paragraph or two on Kona; If it isn’t …

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Despite having been an athlete for 25 plus years, having experienced upwards of 35 maybe 40 tapers (and their associated prep), I have yet to encounter one that fits a mold. Some I feel awesome all the way through. Others have left me in tear filled despair part way through, only to be redeemed with an unexpectedly …

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I started off writing this post yesterday. A day where I showed up at the YMCA – at zero-dark AM – to swim indoors for the first time in weeks, only to find the pool closed for some maintenance issue, leading me to toss on my running clothes and do my hard run for the week, with the plan of finding a different pool to …

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Well I’ve had my blog offline for a while for various reasons, and I finally got back around to getting it back up!

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Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well -Duke of Albany (King Lear by William Shakespeare) I started this post about two weeks before Ironman Arizona, then got distracted by life. After the race I wanted to make this post a mixture of a season review and a statement of the plan going forward into 2016. To that end …

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