sports

Indoctrination of the Impish Indri

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Note: found this in my drafts … guess I forgot to post it back around October 17th, oops!

It’s October … time for cooler (?) weather, fall sports, and a new Ubuntu distro!

After a winning a franchise record 100 games, the Tampa Bay Rays’ season ended quickly in the ALDS losing in 4 games to the (ugh), wildcard Boston Red Sox. My Indians finished their last season as the Indians and although I’m still not enamored with the new Guardians name, I am looking forward to getting back out to Spring Training in March! Brady and the Bucs are sitting at 5-1, and after a 3-1 start, unfortunately Baker and the Browns are at 3-3. The Lightning’s season is just getting started but the 2020 and 2021 defending Stanley Cup Champions are 2-1 and both wins were in OT. Almost forgot about the Cavs … their season starts this week.

Ubuntu 21.10, Impish Indri, was also released this week, so it’s time to upgrade! This one was a bit problematic and almost all of the problems were due to the inclusion of PHP 8:

  • MySQL was broken until I installed php8.0-mysql
  • my primary Piwigo photo site was completely broken since it was still running Piwigo 11.5 so I had to upgrade to the 12.0.0RC2 release candidate
  • even after upgrading, my Piwigo site was filled with ‘undefined array key’ warnings (I had to update the local config to ignore E_WARNING messages)
  • the Search Everything plugin for WordPress was broken due to PHP. the plugin is no longer maintained but I found a manual fix that got it working again
  • and not PHP-related, but for some reason phpMyAdmin was removed, so I had to reinstall it

The list looks short, but it took me a while to work through everything. This is what I get (and I accept it!) for upgrading right away without letting a few days pass and see what kind of problems other people have.

Anyway, that settles things until April, by which time I’ll have hopefully spent some time watching baseball in the Arizona sun before the next upgrade to Jammy Jellyfish!

Back 2 Back Champs!

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281 days ago, my Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup for the 2nd time in franchise history in the Edmonton bubble. Tonight, they won it again, beating the Montreal Canadiens 1-0 in Game 5.

The Lightning are the 17th team in the history of the NHL to win back-to-back Stanley Cup Championships. Also for the 17th time in league history, a goalie was awarded the Conn Smythe trophy. Andrei Vasilevskiy had an amazing season and even though he was denied the Vezina (again!), he was obviously the most valuable player in the playoffs, playing in every playoff game (including last season!) and recording 5 shutouts (every series-clinching game was a shutout, incredible!).

The boat parade is Monday. Way to go Bolts!!

Hangin’ with the Hirsute Hippo

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Spring is here (although my parents up in OH just experienced a late-April snow storm!) which means it’s time to upgrade my Linux server to the new Ubuntu release, 21.04 (Hirsute Hippo). First, the obligatory check-in on my spring sports teams:

  • the Lightning will be heading back to the playoffs to defend their Stanley Cup title … they’re currently third in the Central division in a tight race for 1st with the Hurricanes and Panthers
  • the Rays are in 2nd place in the AL East, just behind the Red Sox
  • the Indians are right in the middle of the AL Central, falling behind the Royals and White Sox
  • the Cavaliers are near the bottom of the Eastern Conference and unsurprisingly won’t make the playoffs this year
  • Brady and Gronk will be back with the Bucs in the fall when they start to defend their Super Bowl title

Ok, Linux. Despite the issues I had back in October (mostly due to the deprecation of Python 2), the April updates are usually smoother. After a quick backup, I launched the do-release-upgrade and about 20 minutes and a few configuration file updates later, I was up and running on the latest release with the 5.11 kernel:

$ lsb_release -a
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 21.04
Release: 21.04
Codename: hirsute

$ uname -r
5.11.0-16-generic

I haven’t had an issue free upgrade since Cosmic so I usually find myself Googling for various solutions. This time around, I had a few minor problems:

  • When logging in, the login banner showed “There were exceptions while processing one or more plugins. See /var/log/landscape/sysinfo.log for more information.” and the sysinfo.log file showed:

    2021-04-22 21:03:25,207 ERROR Network plugin raised an exception. Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/landscape/sysinfo/sysinfo.py", line 99, in run result = plugin.run()
    File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/landscape/sysinfo/network.py", line 36, in run device_info = self._get_device_info()
    File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/landscape/lib/network.py", line 163, in get_active_device_info speed, duplex = get_network_interface_speed(
    File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/landscape/lib/network.py", line 249, in get_network_interface_speed res = status_cmd.tostring()

    It appears that the array.tostring function was deprecated in Python 3.2 and removed in Python 3.9 (which came with the upgrade) but landscape-sysinfo was still using the function call in the Network plugin. I applied a patch (changing tostring to tobytes) and that resolved the issue.

  • I couldn’t get vncserver to start:

    Session startup via '/home/windracer/.vnc/xstartup' cleanly exited too early (< 3 seconds)!
    xrdb: Bad file descriptor
    xrdb: Can't open display ':1'
    Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused
    xfce4-session: Cannot open display: .

    In my startx file, I switched from startxfce & to exec startxfce which fixed the startup issue, but I still couldn’t connect to the server remotely. It turned out that tigervnc server was only listening on localhost (127.0.0.1). I found that during the upgrade, my /etc/vnc.conf file had been renamed (and the log said it was a deprecated file). I had to make a copy of /etc/tigervnc/vncserver-config-default to ~/.vnc/vnc.conf then set $localhost="no"; (which is what I had done in my original vnc.conf file) and then I was able to connect with the tightvnc client on my PC.

Nothing major. See you here again in October for 21.10 (Impish Indri)!

Champa Bay! Bucs win Super Bowl LV

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Wow. I was hoping for a good game for the 3-point underdog Bucs in Super Bowl LV against the reigning champion Kansas City Chiefs, but I was not expecting a 31-9 blowout. No touchdowns scored by Mahomes and the Chiefs offense … only field goals. The Bucs were dominant in their home stadium, and Kansas City killed themselves with penalties. Tom Brady has his 7th Super Bowl ring and the Bucs have their 2nd Lombardi trophy (both since I’ve lived here in Florida).

And look at this, the Bucs scored 31 points in every playoff game except the divisional round against the Saints where they scored 30:

I know I’ve said this a lot, but what a crazy sports year 2020 has been. The Lightning win the Stanley Cup, the Rays went to the World Series, and now the Bucs have won the Super Bowl. Amazing. Go Bucs!!

 

Victory Monday (redux)! (NFL playoffs)

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The Browns played a fantastic game against the Chiefs yesterday in the NFL playoffs divisional round, but just couldn’t stage the comeback they needed, losing 22-17. So close! But what a fantastic season.

Tom Brady and the Bucs, on the other hand, walked all over Drew Brees and the Saints at the Superdome, eliminating them 30-20. On to Green Bay! I hope Brady hasn’t gotten too used to our warm Florida weather now that he’s heading back to colder climes in January! Bring on the Packers! Go Bucs!

NFL bracket

Victory Monday! (NFL Playoffs)

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2020’s sports season continues to deliver. Both of my teams finished the regular season 11-5 and ended long playoff droughts. It’s been a long time since I got to watch my Bucs and Browns play football past early January but both of them won their wildcard games this past weekend and are advancing to the divisional round this Sunday!

The Browns last played in a playoff game in 2003 (losing to the Steelers) and before that was 1995 where, with head coach Bill Belichick, beat Bill Parcel’s Patriots (but then went on to lose to the Steelers) and last won a playoff game on the road back in 1969. So beating the Steelers two weeks in a row, in Heinz Field, eliminating them from the playoffs, despite all the COVID-19 issues, is sweet revenge (ok sure, no fans or terrible towels). The Browns now have to face the defending Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs (another old rivalry from the Marty Schottenheimer days).

Tom Brady continued his playoff streak, guiding the Bucs to their first playoff appearance since 2007 and first playoff victory since 2002 (the year they won the Super Bowl). It was hard to believe that with an 11-5 record they had to play a road game against the 7-9 Washington Football Team (wow, the NFC East was terrible this year), but they won and will face Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints on Sunday.

With Super Bowl LV here in Tampa on February 7, you know I’m pulling for both teams to make it, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Both teams have a tough road ahead.

NFL bracket

Go Bucs! Go Browns!

Grappling with the Groovy Gorilla

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It’s late October which means (I’ve been working from home for seven months! and) it’s time for the latest Ubuntu release, 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla).

But first, another fall sports re-cap. What a 2020 it’s been for my teams! First the Lightning win the Stanley Cup for the second time in franchise history, and now the Rays are in their second World Series, down 2 games to 1 against the LA Dodgers. The Bucs, with Tom Brady at the helm, are on top of the NFC South with a 4-2 record. Could a trip to the Super Bowl (here in Tampa, probably in March?) be in the cards to complete the trifecta? I don’t follow soccer, but even the Rowdies are one win away from the USL Championship! What’s up with Florida sports right now? The Indians exited the playoffs quickly, swept out by the Yankees, but even the Browns currently have a winning record at 4-2 (their best start since Bill Belichick was head coach)!

COVID-19 is still with us (I naively said the world would be back to normal by the time this Ubuntu release was out) so maybe I need to include that in my bi-annual updates.

Ok, back to the upgrade.

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2020 sports: post-season post!

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2020 may be an overall dumpster fire (with literal fires!) but the return of sports continues to be good to me. Except that I can’t actually go see any games in person! Oh well, I’ll take what I can get, and I’m getting a lot:

Go teams!

Labor Day Weekend 2020 – Pandemic Edition

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Normally we’d be spending Labor Day Weekend over at Disney, our end-of-summer family tradition. But (no) thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic we cancelled our annual passes last month and for the first time since 2012 we’re spending the holiday weekend at home. I’ll be barbecuing on Monday, though, so there’ll be some semblance of normalcy.

At least sports are back! I haven’t been watching the NBA bubble since the Cavs aren’t in it, but on the baseball side the Rays are solidly in first place in the AL East (5 games ahead of the Yankees) and the Indians are currently tied for first in the AL Central with the White Sox. It’s a little weird that we’re halfway through the abbreviated season that started back at the end of July. I actually went ahead and purchased an MLB.tv subscription (through Amazon Prime) so I can watch more of the Tribe.

Even weirder, though, is Stanley Cup Playoff hockey in September!! 😮 The Lightning (in the Toronto bubble) started as the #2 seed in the Eastern Conference and after a record-setting 5OT Game #1 against the Columbus Blue Jackets, went on to win the first round in 5 games (revenge for being swept out of the first round round by the Blue Jackets last season!). In the second round the Bolts faced another familiar foe, the Boston Bruins. Boston was in first place in the Eastern Conference when play was suspended back in March but went 0-3 in the preliminary round and was seeded 4th. I almost think that might have been on purpose to get the other teams to underestimate them, and you should never underestimate Boston. It was tough, but the Lightning came out victorious, winning the round in a double overtime Game 5 thriller. On to the Eastern Conference Finals in Edmonton … go Bolts!! (they’re still awaiting their opponent, Game 7 between the Flyers and Islanders is tonight)