Blog Posts on Codex.org

Series Start: Managing your tech career

Fri, 09 Sep 2022 23:03:16 -0400

You know how to get the job, but do you know how to keep it, excel, and move forward? All while not giving up your life outside of work?

There is a large amount of emphasis that is put into how to search for and find a job as a software developer, site reliability engineer, and other tech positions. However, finding and landing a job are a very small part of a persons technical career. Rarely do we spend the time thinking or discussing how to manage the other aspects of a career in tech. And, by managing, I mean to take an active role in ensuring that you are looking out for yourself and not just the company. I am not saying that you should not do your best at work, but at the end of the day it is only a job.

Setting up Ruby on WSL2 using Rbenv

Fri, 19 Aug 2022 17:59:37 -0400

This should be no different than on regular Ubuntu
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The machine that I do most of my work on is my Lenovo Carbon X1 Laptop running PoP_OS!. But, because of reasons that I will not go into today, my main desktop runs Windows 11 and on that I run Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2). WSL2 has a few Linux distros that you can run on it. For simplicities sake, I have gone with Ubunutu

Website Technology Has Gotten Too Complex

Fri, 05 Aug 2022 14:46:11 -0400

Has technology always been this complex?
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My tech blog is once again live. And, I have to say that it took me longer than I thought it would to switch over from WordPress. I will get into why I moved later, (that is a topic for another day), but it still amazes me how complex things are to get up and running and configured. For this post, that is where I am going to spend my time, talking about the complexities involved in setting up a simple website.

You Have to Start Somewhere

Fri, 10 Jun 2022 19:46:31 -0400

Welcome to the start of my new blog
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At one point I had a blog. It was never a large blog, nor did I haver have a huge following, but I had a site up, and I would put in periodic updates. It was focused on technical topics, and I would post about various topics that interested me. However, maintaining a wordpress site was a bit much. It was not much, but the plugins are a pain, and I just was never a fan of using all the tools for writing. It became more of making posts look pretty than focusing on the topic at hand.

Search engines like Google and Bing have absolutely failed us.

Sat, 13 Feb 2021 17:34:21 -0500

I am going to come across as old in this post. And, this time, I am OK with that. We have entered a day and age where search engines have failed us. Instead of finding new and interesting results, search engines have been gamed to present the same top ten websites over and over again. Instead of showing interesting opinions or views, we are stuck with the same websites.

And, I blame this on the search engines. These sites are the reason that they are still in business. They advertise with them, and use understandings of the algorithms to show up at the top of searches. My question is, how do we get away from this? How do we get back to and internet of the people by the people. Not an internet solely made up of corporate interests. To be honest, I do not really have an answer to this question.

Easily enable SSO (Single Sign-On) to protect your AWS Accounts

Wed, 30 Dec 2020 14:27:20 -0500

Enabling SSO on your AWS Accounts is strongly encouraged, adds additional security, access to multiple accounts from a single entry point (with different permission sets), and above all, it is free.

The following is a walk-through of how to enable Single Sign On in the AWS console. These instructions are for people with individual accounts to a few accounts. Actually, these instructions are just a good general starting point for smaller size orgs.

How good is Pop!_OS in 2020?

Sat, 10 Oct 2020 13:08:15 -0400

I have been using MX_linux, and while I think the premise behind it is good, the implementation falls a bit flat. As someone that has used Linux for years, I was avoiding using my small and light laptop because I did not want to deal with the system that was running it. That is not a good sign.

So, I decided that I was going to install a new Linux distro on my system and get back to writing and doing things. Out of curiosity I dropped in to distrowatch to see what the flavor of the month was currently. To my surprise I saw MX_Linux on the top. After the issues I have had with it, that was interesting to see. But, sitting at spot number 5 was Pop!_OS. Huh? I had heard of it, but thought that is was some simplified version for kids. I was wrong.

Trying to Help Other Learn Programming

Tue, 12 May 2020 22:34:39 -0400

Having worked in the industry for a very long time, sometimes I forget how much I have learned (and forgotten) over the years. What seems trivial now, was once a complex idea that I had to wrap my head around, and after learning the fundamentals, there always seemed to be more to learn. This was at, in my mind, a golden age for learning computer systems and how to code. Installing Linux was not what it is today with flashing installers and disk configurators. Heck, X-windows did not start by default and you had to fiddle with configuration setting for ages to get a gui environment up to work in.

Should I stop work on CfnMason or any project?

Sun, 19 Apr 2020 08:55:09 -0400

Off and on for years, and at various companies, I have developed various tools to manage complex AWS CloudFormation templates and stacks. This came out of the lack of tooling that was associated with CloudFormation itself. It was not that CFN was bad, (it is notoriously picky) it is just that it was designed with the intention of being a way to treat your infrastructure in code based manner. That is really not true. CFN was created as a templating language with defined spec.

How to configure environment for Python Poetry based project.

Wed, 25 Dec 2019 14:36:20 -0500

How do I get started?
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I recently switched over to Poetry as a package manager for my project CfnMason. ( CfnMason is a tool related to CloudFormation stack management, but you can read about that on the Readme as it is updated. ) The question is, how do you use Poetry when you are working on a project across multiple machines and operating systems. I guess I am going to attempt to address the issue.

Setting up the cfnmason project for Python

Sun, 24 Nov 2019 08:17:22 -0500

Cfnmason is yet another tool that can be used to manipulate cloudformation stacks. It is not designed to be a replacement for CloudFormation like Terraform, but as a means of making building and managing them easier. I had written a version of this ages ago in Ruby, but with most of my work now being in Python, I am creating a new version in Python. As I have never created an exportable Python package, this will track the process of building and releasing a new PyPi package.

How do I setup a new python project?

Wed, 13 Nov 2019 21:27:23 -0500

Python prides itself on there only being one best way of doing things. However, if you have ever had the desire to create a package that can be distributed in python, then you may have run into some frustration. Out of the box, there does not appear to be a single clear concise way of creating a new project. After hearing over and over again, that the correct way in Python should be obvious, in this area, it seems that this is definitely not the case.

How do I get rid of the bell in Vim on PyCharm on Windows?

Sun, 03 Nov 2019 22:56:46 -0500

One of the most infuriating things in the world is when the the bell goes off continuously when using the Vim plugin in PyCharm. Actually, this holds true for all of the JetBrains IDEs, but I have been working mostly with Python recently, and as such, it is PyCharm that is on the top of my mind.

While there are a number of plugins that you can get for the JetBrains products, the one that I always end up installing is Vim. Call me old school, but back in the day, I had to work on remote systems. It was either Vim or Pico, and I chose Vim. Now that I have modern IDEs, I still end up using Vim for all my editing needs. The muscle memory is built in, and I don’t even think about it anymore.

An Introduction to AWS Step Functions – Part 2

Tue, 22 Jan 2019 07:31:38 -0500

In Part 1, I went through a whirlwind tour and left example code on how to create a Lambda function and a Step Function. The thing is, I did not explain how the code works. That is what this article is about. I am going to be using the same code from the previous post, but will be going through the code and explaining it. We shall see how well the formatting works.

Getting Started with AWS Step Functions Part I

Sat, 22 Dec 2018 22:57:19 -0500

AWS came out with Step Functions a few years ago, and up until recently, I have not had the opportunity to dive in and give them a try. Yes, I could build my own pipeline or state machine, but the idea behind Step Functions is that it does most of the heavy lifting for you. That, and it ties into other AWS services. As such, I decided to dive into getting started, and looked at the demo options and walkthroughs that were available. None of them met my needs, so I rolled my own.

Writing Tech Blogs are Hard Work

Mon, 19 Nov 2018 21:31:23 -0500

I once read an article that said more people need to write technical blogs. That the problem with much of the technology field was that people did not write in-depth articles on the stuff that they are doing. And, if more people were able to take the time and post a blog entry here and there we would all be better for it. As nice as that sounds, I have to say that writing technical posts are difficult, time consuming, and can quickly go out of date.

Making Adafruit Pixel Goggles

Fri, 09 Nov 2018 20:40:10 -0500

Let me start with the motivation for this project. On one hand, I had never really created a solution with a micro controller, and on the other I wanted to create a cool Halloween costume. The rest of my family was getting dressed up in steampunk outfits, and for a change, I wanted to add something to the mix. But, to do this, I was going to have to learn how to program this micro controller, solder, and how to get the code on the NeoPixel. I know that some people would laugh and say that this would be an easy project, but when you have never worked on this before, it is a completely different case.

Micro controller Hacking coming soon

Mon, 29 Oct 2018 23:46:50 -0400

I have been hacking on my costume, and as such, have not gotten around to posting the code and pictures of the project that I am currently working on. As soon as Halloween roles by, I should be able to get that up here. Hopefully, you will enjoy the costume and the work that I have done on getting the goggles up and running.

Normally, I would have tried to add it in chunks, but I have been learning how to solder, learning how to code this thing, and have been trying to get the rest of my costume configured.

Configuring AWSCLI and Python on Windows

Mon, 22 Oct 2018 20:28:29 -0400

Trying and doing stuff on a Windows 10 machine has become a rather interesting experiment. It started as a place to be able to play video games and have access to a few programs that are not easily available on Linux, to a test of seeing if I could now do all the things on Windows 10 that I could do on Linux.

Turns out, I wanted to test out the Cloud Directory service from AWS. I figured the 2 easiest ways to do this would be via the AWS CLI and Python. It did not occur to me that I had neither of these installed until I opened up Cmder.exe and typed [code light=”true”]aws[/code] and then [code gutter=”false”]python[/code] and both came back with the not found.

DevOps Consultant vs DevOps Engineer

Fri, 19 Oct 2018 23:04:05 -0400

What is the difference between a DevOps Consultant and a DevOps Engineer? This question recently came up and I wanted to add my thoughts on the topic.

First, lets address the fact that consultants are almost always hired to work on a specific project or to address a specific issue the company is facing. As such, the role of a consultant will probably always be different than that of a regular employee. The regular employee has to deal with the mundane job of ensuring the lights are on, email, ongoing projects, operations, regular development tasks. The list goes on.

Time to Hack On an Adafruit Trinket

Sun, 14 Oct 2018 14:40:14 -0400

I don’t know much about microcontrollers. Somewhere along the lines, I never learned about them, how they work, or how to wire them together and use them. Up until a few years ago, I did not even know what a bread board was. Heck, I still do not even really know how they work, but I am going to learn. And to that ends, I am starting with an Adafruit Trinket.

Issues with Ubuntu’s Startup Disk Creator for non-debian ISOs

Sat, 07 Apr 2018 08:20:31 -0400

Let me start with the scenario that led me into issues with the Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator. I had been running Ubuntu GNOME, a flavor of Ubuntu that was focused on a mostly vanilla install of Gnome on top of Ubuntu. Well, Ubuntu was finally getting rid of the Unity desktop, so the spin off that I had been using was no longer going to be updated. Fair enough.

I had Ubuntu installed, and I wanted to give Fedora a try (it has been a while), so I just needed to create a bootable USB stick. Normally I would use dd, but Ubuntu has a tool, and I thought sure, let’s try this gui tool. Quick and easy. That led me down the rabbit hole that you see here.

Why go Serverless

Thu, 28 Sep 2017 05:17:53 -0400

The question is not why you would want to go serverless, the question is why would you not go serverless.

Let us think about this for just a second. In a typical environment, you would not only have to think about the flow of the application and how its pieces fit together, but also to the underlying architecture. Now that DevOps is becoming more common, it is the developers that sometimes find themselves having to worry about these issues. Or in a more traditional shop, there is the team that the application is “thrown over the fence” to that has to deal with the underpinnings. In other companies, it is the DevOps group that works with the Dev team on designing and handling the infrastructure. But, no matter how you slice it, the infrastructure is a huge headache that has to be managed.

DevOps is more than just about developers

Sat, 25 Feb 2017 20:04:27 -0500

There. It has been said. Take a moment, and think about it.
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There is a push in the community to talk about Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment (CI/CD), and tying this all to the DevOps movement. About what practices are used to get code to market the fastest, and with minimal amount of code defects. And, I will admit, that I agree wholeheartedly, that CI/CD or some sort of pipeline is important to allow software development teams to move fast and innovate. Or, to just roll out code without doing it every 6 months. I would almost argue that CI/CD is more akin to Agile and Scrum methodologies than it is to DevOps.

Building a Windows 2012R2 Instance in AWS with Terraform

Mon, 21 Nov 2016 14:22:23 -0500

Terraform is an application by HashiCorp that is designed to treat infrastructure as code. Lately, I have been working with it to begin automation of resources within AWS, and have been quite pleased.

Lets get started with building out a Windows 2012 R2 server with Terraform on AWS.

You are going to need to have the following items configured in AWS in order for this to work, as I am not going to be using Terraform to build out these items.

Terraform vs Cloudformation — First Thoughts

Sun, 06 Nov 2016 10:25:09 -0500

Building out AWS infrastructures by hand is not something that should be taken on lightly. Just as in building out a Data Center or service in any cloud environment (Google, VMWare, etc), building out a bunch of systems by hand is a good way to inherit a bunch of technical debt and a headache or three. On top of that, it is slow and cumbersome to build out servers in a manual fashion, and since it is done manually, it is easy to make mistakes and introduce snowflakes into your environment. Instead, we need to address the build out with automation tooling.