sports

Rockin’ the Resolute Raccoon

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As I write this, the Tampa Bay Lightning are down 2-1 against the Montreal Canadiens in Game 4 of the first round of the 2026 Stanley Cup Finals. Check the calendar: it’s late April and time for my bi-annual spring sports update and Ubuntu upgrade!

Ubuntu

Ubuntu 26.04 (Resolute Raccoon) was released a few days ago. As usual, after running my pre-upgrade backup scripts, I kicked off the  sudo do-release-upgrade which, despite this being an LTS release (and jump to the 7.x Linux kernel), only took about 22 minutes to download and apply all the updated packages (maybe part of that is due to my new Frontier fiber service). Re-applying my changes to the two affected config files (upsmon and resolved) only took a few additional minutes. I also had to make a few modifications to the .vimrc files for my mouse-based editing (like right-click paste) to work.

I’m basically copy/pasting this next bit from my Plucky upgrade in April 2025. I don’t understand why a PHP version upgrade always seems to remove the old/existing packages and not re-install all of the same newer replacements. This always breaks my WordPress and Piwigo sites (which use both PHP and MySQL). Simply installing the two missing packages (libapache2-mod-php8.5 and php8.5-mysql) with apt-get install, re-applying my changes to the .ini files, and restarting Apache resolved the problem but it’s still annoying that this doesn’t happen automatically.

(Oooh, the Lightning just tied the game with a power play goal! )

The only other post-upgrade issue I had was with phpSysInfo not being able to access some system utilities like uptime, /proc/cpuinfo, etc. It took a little back-and-forth chat with Copilot, but the AI chatbot was eventually able to direct me to the proper solution with some changes to my Apache config. Everything else seems to be stable but I’ll continue to monitor over the next few days.

Football

I didn’t really follow the NFL Draft this year since both the Browns and the Bucs didn’t have any exciting first round picks. The Bucs missed the playoffs last year but we still have Baker Mayfield. The Browns finished 5-12 and fired head coach Kevin Stefanski, so I assume 2026 will be another exercise in futility with a new coach and the continued QB drama. I did find it interesting that Ohio native Penn State quarterback Drew Allar was picked up by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the draft. I enjoyed watching him play for the Nittany Lions these past few years and now I have to root against him.

Basketball

The Cavs are back in the NBA playoffs after finishing the regular season 2nd in the Central Division and 4th in the Eastern Conference. After a strong 2-0 start in round 1 against the Toronto Raptors, they dropped both games in Canada and come home for game 5 on Wednesday with the series tied 2-2.

Baseball

Despite my big Spring Training trip last month, I typically don’t get into the early baseball season due to the overlap of the NBA and NHL playoffs. But the Rays are back in Tropicana Field this season after spending last season outdoors in the smaller Spring Training home of the New York Yankees here in Tampa. New roof, new turf, and lots of other upgrades (if you can afford them). I actually went to see the Rays and Twins yesterday and the stadium looks nice. I still dislike indoor, air conditioned baseball, but I still love baseball and it was nice to see some newness at the Trop. All of those repairs were of course contractually obligated with their lease (and probably paid for with insurance after the hurricane damage) but despite that fact the new owners still want to move across the bay to Tampa and build a new stadium for the cool cost of $2.3 billion. One month into the new season and the Rays are just over .500 and in 2nd place in the AL East, just behind, of course, the Yankees. The Guardians, meanwhile, have a win percentage just below the Rays (but still over .500) and are in 1st in the AL Central. They play the Rays in Cleveland this week.

Hockey

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, the Lightning are back in the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the 9th year in a row (and the 12th time in the past 13 years). They’ve lost in the first round for the past 3 years, so everyone here is hopeful this is the year push further (and no Panthers this year!). The Bolts were on fire before the Olympic break but then had a tough run when the season resumed and then slumped slightly again near the end and just could not catch up with Buffalo. They finished 2nd in the Atlantic Division (3rd in the Eastern Conference) and now face the Montreal Canadiens in the first round.

(Another power play goal put the Bolts up 3-2 late in the 3rd and they ended up winning game, so the series is now tied 2-2 and heading back to Tampa)

 

Mark your calendar and meet me back here in October for Ubuntu 26.10 (Stonking Stingray) and fall sports!

Spring Sports Trip 2026 (Part 2): Hockey in Washington and Canada

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After spending 6 days in the 90+ degree temperatures of the Phoenix valley, I went to the low 50s and rain of the Pacific Northwest, visiting with my sister in Seattle. We flew in from Phoenix and arrived at SeaTac just after 9:30pm PDT Sunday evening, but by the time we got to her apartment downtown and were ready for bed it was almost midnight. Time for Week 2 of my epic 2026 spring sports trip.

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Spring Sports Trip 2026 (Part 1): Baseball in Arizona

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My annual March Spring Training trip has looked a little different the past few years. The last time I actually went out to Arizona for a few days in the Phoenix valley with the Cactus League was back in 2023. In 2024, I went to a local Rays game and then a single game in Goodyear with my wife as part of a Vegas trip instead. Last year, project deadlines at work forced me to cancel the trip out west altogether, but I managed to squeeze in a single Rays game again to keep my attendance streak alive. After last year’s trip was cancelled, I vowed to make the 2026 trip an epic one and finalized travel plans and accomodations in Arizona late last fall in anticipation of going. And then I changed jobs in December and started with zero PTO and an upcoming trip that required 8 vacation days. Oops! Luckily my manager was understanding of the prior plans and I was able to work things out so I’d still be able to go. So let’s do some spring baseball!

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Tablo TV OTA DVR

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I’ve had a hate-hate relationship with the regional sports networks (RSNs). Before cutting the cord on my Spectrum cable, I could watch the Rays and Lightning on Fox Sports Florida, and that continued for a while after I dropped Spectrum (and TiVo) for YouTube TV in 2020. Fox Sports then became Bally Sports in 2021 and then in 2023 YouTube TV dropped the RSNs completely (which made it hard to watch my local sports without cable). In 2024, Bally Sports became the FanDuel Sports Network and I ended up buying a separate streaming subscription so I could watch my local hockey and baseball teams for last season. Now in 2025, the Lightning announced a partnership with Scripps Sports that moved the hockey games off of FanDuel to local broadcast (on Channel 66 – The Spot) and streaming (which does not include YouTube TV, just DirectTV and Fubo). Argh! Since I still don’t want to go back to cable (although this was almost the straw that broke that particular camel’s back), my only option was, amazingly, trying OTA broadcast television.

TabloTVI haven’t watched TV over an antenna since I was a kid in the 80s … my parents never got cable, we were strictly a local channels household. In this modern age of multiple TVs, wireless streaming/casting, and mobile devices, I couldn’t imagine hooking up an antenna to a single television, so I started looking at options and came across the Tablo TV DVR for OTA (which ironically is also owned by Scripps, the same company now broadcasting my Lightning games). After doing some more research, reading some reviews (like this one), and planning the setup, I purchased a 4th generation, 2-tuner/128gb model on Amazon for $70, along with the Channel Master Omni+ 50 antenna for another $70.

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Query: Questing Quokka?

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The high temps here in Florida are finally down in the mid-80s so it must be fall! Time for Linux and sports updates …

Baseball

The Rays missed out on the post-season for the second year in a row due to a slump in the second half of the season that left them finishing under .500 at 77-85. The team was also sold to a new group of owners so we’ll have to see what happens with that. Tropicana Field’s roof is under repair so the Rays can play there again for the 2026 season. I did get to one game this season outside at Steinbrenner Field and it rained … so while I love outdoor baseball I understand why a park with a roof is a necessity around here.

The Guardians staged a historic comeback in September: after being 15.5 games out of first place in the AL Central on July 18 after the All-Star break and still 10 games back on September 1, the team surged and ended up winning the AL Central Division outright after the Detroit Tigers had a similarly historic meltdown. Unfortunately, in a Wild Card re-match between those two teams, Detroit ended up winning to advance to the ALDS. So now I look forward once again to Spring Training.

Football

The Bucs have started the season 5-2 behind 2025 MVP-candidate quarterback Baker Mayfield. He’s been fantastic for Tampa since leaving my Browns and I’m glad I still get to root for him. Meanwhile the QB revolving door in Cleveland continues to spin: Watson is still out injured, Flacco was re-signed, started the season and then traded to Cincinnati, so now rookie from Oregon Dillon Gabriel is leading the team (and had a fantastic win against the struggling Dolphins last weekend) and Shedeur Sanders is the backup. Just crazy.

A new entry this time around just to mention that the Penn State Nittany Lions, who were ranked #2 at the start of the season, have lost four games in a row (3-4 on the season), lost their quarterback, fired their coach, and are nowhere on the Top 25 for the first time in three years. On the flip side, my USF Bulls are already bowl eligible (for the third year in a row) and at 6-1 are ranked #18 on the Top 25. Go Bulls!

Hockey

It’ll be an interesting season: the Lightning and the Panthers have established a new in-state rivalry and really don’t like each other. I went to a pre-season game earlier this month and there was a combined 186 penalty minutes. At one point the Bolts had six players in the penalty box and only four on the bench. Now that the season has started, things have settled down but the Lightning are off to a slow start at 1-3-2. It’s a long road the playoffs, though!

Basketball

The NBA season just kicked off tonight and the Cavs lost to the Knicks in Madison Square Garden 119-111. I guess there won’t be a repeat of their 15-game win streak like last year.

And Linux …

Ubuntu 25.10 (Questing Quokka) was also released earlier this month. I ran my pre-upgrade backup scripts and then sudo do-release-upgrade -d (once again needing the -d parameter otherwise no upgrade was found). It took the just under 25 minutes to download and apply all the updated packages and then another 20 minutes or so for me to re-configure my various settings and files affected by the upgrade.

I ran into two minor problems this cycle:

It’s been a few days, no issues to report!

Check back here again in April for the Resolute Raccoon, spring baseball, and (hopefully) playoff hockey!

Perfecting the Plucky Puffin

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It’s Easter Sunday (4/20!) and time for my spring sports and Ubuntu upgrade updates!

Football

We’ll start with the off-season sport. Back in February it looked like the Cleveland Browns were going to lose Myles Garrett due to his “desire to win” but then a few weks later the team gave him 122 million reasons to stay for another four years. Not that it matters since the Deshaun Watson/quarterback problems continue to curse us.

After losing to the Washington Commanders in the NFC Wild Card game at the end of last season, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will be playing their 50th season in the NFL starting in the fall with Baker Mayfield at the helm again, so that’s promising at least.

Baseball

Now the early-in-the-season sport. Due to a heavy load at work and an upcoming project go-live that conflicted with my typical trip to AZ, I had to skip Spring Training out in the Cactus League this year. To keep my streak alive though (I don’t think I’ve missed going to at least one spring game going back to 1999, except for the pandemic and lockout years), I got down to Sarasota to see the Rays beat the Orioles 6-3 on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in March (and got to visit a new park too!).

Speaking of the Rays, you probably saw that Tropicana Field was severely damaged by Hurricane Milton back in October. With the roof unable to be repaired in time (and ongoing talks for a new stadium still at a stand-still), my Tampa team will be playing the 2025 season at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, the spring home of the New York Yankees. Yes, outdoor baseball in Florida (but there’s been a few schedule changes to avoid the hotter and rainer parts of the summer here)! It’ll be weird for the Yankees when they come to town and have to use the visitor dugout and locker room. 🙂 Needing to adjust to a new home stadium has its disadvantages though, and the Rays are sitting at the bottom of the AL East at 9-12. I can’t wait to see the Guardians here in September, though! Cleveland is sitting in 2nd place in the AL Central at 11-9, just 1.5 games behind the Tigers.

Basketball

On to the playoff sports. My Cleveland Cavaliers finished the regular season at 64-18, winning the Central Division and clinching 1st place in the East (both for the first time without Lebron James). They started out the season with a franchise record 15-0, broke that win streak record with a 16-0 run later in the season, and were in 1st place pretty much the entire time. They face the Miami Heat in the first round of the NBA Playoffs starting tonight. Go Cavs!

Hockey

The Lightning had a pretty good season (their first one without Steven Stamkos), finishing with 102 points which put them in 2nd place in the Atlantic Division and 3rd place in the Eastern Conference. Yanni Gourde came back from the Seattle Kraken (which he joined during that team’s expansion draft), Nikita Kucherov won his second consecutive Art Ross Trophy with 121 points, Jake Guentzal filled the Stamkos hole by scoring 41 goals, and the team had four players with 30+ goals (Point, Guentzal, Kucherov, and Hagel). It’ll be another Battle of Florida when the Bolts take on the Florida Panthers in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs when they start on Tuesday. Go Bolts!

Ubuntu

That’s it for the sports, now on to Linux-related news. Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) was released this past week. After running my pre-upgrade backup scripts, I kicked off the  sudo do-release-upgrade (no need for -d this time!) which as usual took about half an hour to download and apply all the updated packages and then another half hour or so for me to re-apply my changes to the affected config files.

I only had one problem this time and as usual it was with my good friend PHP. Just like Noble, the upgrade replaced PHP 8.3 with PHP 8.4, removing the 8.3 packages for libapache-mod and mysql but not re-installing the corresponding 8.4 versions (which broke WordPress (this blog) and my Piwigo photo gallery). Simply installing the two missing packages with apt-get install and restarting Apache resolved the problem but it’s still annoying that this doesn’t happen automatically.

One other thing I noticed was that my Pulseway monitoring app (which I was using for reboot notifications and some basic monitoring along side of my Nagios setup) was no longer working. It turned out that Pulseway discontinued their free accounts back in October! I’d been using Pulseway since Marius started it as Mobile PC Monitor back in 2011, but really didn’t need it (and wasn’t going to pay for the service) so I removed the agent from my Linux machines and then deleted the app on my iPhone.

Have a great summer! See you back here in the fall for the Questing Quokka (and hopefully some October baseball!).

Operating the Oracular Oriole

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I had zero issues upgrading to Ubuntu 24.10 (Oracular Oriole). That is all. 🙂

Seriously, this is the first upgrade since 18.10 (Cosmic) that I haven’t had a single post-upgrade issue (although 23.04 (Lunar) was close). The biggest change was the jump from the 6.8 kernel to 6.11. Maybe since 24.04 (Noble) was an LTS release there just weren’t that many changes for this upgrade cycle. Whatever the reason, I’m happy and upgraded.

Ok, can we get to the real reason for these bi-annual posts? Fall sports!

  • Behind continued strong performances from Baker Mayfield (not to mention Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, and the rest), the Bucs are tied with the Falcons for 1st place in the NFC South at 4-2 (one of those losses an OT stunner in Atlanta on Thursday Night Football the other week).
  • Behind continued dismal performances from Deshaun Watson, the Browns sit last in the AFC North at 1-5 and are tied for last in the whole league with Carolina, Jacksonville, and New England (!!). The Browns also recently announced they are leaving downtown Cleveland for the suburbs and hope to build a new domed stadium facility for the 2029 season.
  • The Rays also want to build a new stadium (and it’ll be interesting to see what happens now that Tropicana Field lost its roof during Hurricane Milton), but no post-season for them this year, the first time since 2018.
  • The 2024 NBA season starts next week, so no Cavs news right now. Of course the big NBA story is Bronny James joining his dad Lebron on the Lakers.
  • The Lightning are undeafeated (1 of just 3 unbeaten teams) at 3-0, but are in second place in the Atlantic division (and 7th overall) because of missed games due to Hurricane Milton. No Stamkos either. 🙁
  • But the real news was the Guardians beat the Tigers in 5 games of the ALDS and advanced to face the Yankees in the ALCS. After dropping the first two games in New York, the Guardians came roaring back in Game 3 to tie the game with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th with a 2-run homer from “Big Christmas” Jhonkensy Noel and then won it with a walk-off 2-run homer from David Fry in the bottom of the 10th. Unfortunately, the Cleveland bullpen could not solve the riddle of New York’s sluggers and the Guardians lost the next two games in Cleveland and the series, 4 games to 1. But as usual I’m already looking forward to Spring Training next March!

Oh, Linux? Yeah, yeah … come back in April for 25.04, the Plucky Puffin, blah blah blah. 😉

Nurturing the Noble Numbat

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Did everyone enjoy the solar eclipse last month? We didn’t get totality here but my family up in Cleveland sent some amazing pictures. The daily temps are creeping above 80 which means spring in Florida and that of course leads to my annual spring sports update and Ubuntu upgrade!

  • the Cleveland Guardians are currently 1st in the AL Central (and 2nd in the league), sitting at 22-12, a nice hot start for the season that I hope they can keep up!
  • unlike last year, the Tampa Bay Rays have started a little slowly at 17-18, in the bottom half of the AL East
  • for the second year in a row the Cleveland Cavaliers are playing in the NBA playoffs: they just won their Round One series against the Orlando Magic in 7 games and move on to face the Boston Celtics. That’s the first playoff series win for the Cavs without Lebron James since 1993!
  • the NFL Draft happened the other week, but both the Browns and Bucs had decent seasons last year and didn’t have any high picks so I didn’t really pay any attention to it (but the Bucs did manage to sign Baker Mayfield to a new 3-year contract, so there’s that!)
  • and the Lightning? *sigh* After making it into the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the 7th year in a row (and the 10th time in past 11 years), riding on Nikita Kucherov’s record-setting season with 100 assists and 144 points, they fell to the Florida Panthers in 5 games (the first time the Panthers have won a playoff series against the Lightning). I was at Game 4 here in Tampa when the Bolts won 6-3 … was I watching Steven Stamkos skate on home ice in a Lightning sweater for the last time? I hope not!! It’s going to be a tough off-season …

Anyway, Ubuntu 24.04 (Noble Numbat) was released late last month. Per the usual, I ran my pre-upgrade backup scripts and then sudo do-release-upgrade -d (once again needing the -d parameter otherwise no upgrade was found). It took the average 30 minutes to download and apply all the updated packages and then another 20 minutes or so for me to re-apply my affected changes to various config files. I ran into two problems this cycle:

  • like with the 23.10 upgrade, PHP 8.2 was removed and replaced with PHP 8.3 and again the process removed the 8.2 packages for libapache-mod and mysql but did not re-install the corresponding 8.3 versions. This broke WordPress and my Piwigo photo gallery until I manually installed the two missing packages and restarted Apache. I take good notes during upgrades, though, so I was prepared to check on (and fix) this again.
  • fail2ban “failed2start” (heh) with a ERROR No module named 'asynchat' error, but a quick Google search found the reported bug which pointed me to manually installing the latest 1.1.0 release, and that fixed the problem.

The latest 6.8 Linux kernel also fixed a problem I had just recently run into. I thought the latest release of Piwigo 14.4 had broken my Physical Photo Move extension (it was causing the Apache processes to completely lock up), but after digging into it more I tracked it down to a problem with a CIFS-related kernel patch in 6.5.0-28. I had since been running the reverted/patched 6.5.0-27 kernel from the PPA to fix this, but the problem was also resolved (or never existed) in the 6.8 tree.

See you back here in October for … Oracular Oriole!

Spring Training 2024 (Grapefruit/Cactus Leagues, and Vegas hockey!)

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My annual trip out west for Cleveland Guardians Spring Training wasn’t going to work out this year with my siblings. We were looking at the last weekend in March since it happened to coincide with my sister’s Seattle Kraken being in town at the same time to play the Arizona Coyotes (who will be moving to Utah next year!), but then our plans kinda fell apart due to other conflicts. I had resigned myself to just staying local and going to a few Rays games instead, but then a last-minute opportunity made it so that I attended spring games in Florida and Arizona!

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