Zoning in on the Zesty Zapus

It’s mid-April, which means it’s time for my annual post about spring sports and Linux upgrades! šŸ˜‰ First, sports …

For the first time in four years my Tampa Bay Lightning are not in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. They were in last place back in February and just missed squeaking into the last wild card spot but fell short. The Cleveland Cavaliers are back in the NBA playoffs, though, and start the first round against the Pacers tomorrowĀ looking to defend their 2016 Championship title. The Tampa Bay Rays and defending 2016 American League Champions Cleveland Indians are off to slow starts, but it’s only April and there’s a long road ahead. On the NFL front, everyone is wondering what the Cleveland Browns will do with their #1 draft pick in two weeks and will actually play the Bucs here for a preseason match-up.

Now on to the new Ubuntu release, 17.04 Zesty Zapus.

Despite being released, I had to use do-release-upgrade -dĀ to kick off the upgrade to Zesty (without theĀ “development” flag it thought there was no new release available yet). Unlike last time, I had no issues with screen and the whole process (downloading the new packages and applying them) went smoothly. I re-applied my customizations to the affected configuration files, rebooted the server, and was back in business.

$ lsb_release -a
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 17.04
Release: 17.10
Codename: zesty

$ uname -r
4.10.0-19-generic

As expected, I had a few post-upgrade issues that needed to be addressed (nothing major):

  • calibre wouldn’t start in my vnc session: I had to resize the library.png splash screen image from 1024×1024 to 256×256
  • home-assistant wouldn’t start: I had to re-create the python virtualenvĀ setup (I haven’t posted about using home-assistant yet, I’ll try and get to that)
  • the upgrade to vim 8.0 caused a few annoying problems: I had to tweak some settings in /etc/vim/vimrc
  • rather than using my old static /etc/motd, I customized and started using the /etc/update-motd.d scripts for a dynamic login banner

Canonical has now reached the end of the alphabet for their release code names. What name will 17.10 bring us in October? Check back with me then (when hopefully my Cleveland Indians are back in the World Series)!

Southwest Road Trip: Day 4

Since we rode the Tramway yesterday we slept in a bit this morning and then went over to the Anderson Abruzzo International Balloon Museum. Then we drove down to Old TownĀ where we had lunch atĀ Hacienda del RioĀ on the square (which inadvertently happened to be the same place we ate back in 2000) and then did some shopping.

Later in the afternoon, we drove past UNM and Kirtland Air Force BaseĀ before turning in the rental car (1,086 miles driven total!) and taking the shuttle to the airport, er, I mean, Sunport.

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Spring Training 2017: Day 4

Normally my Spring Training vacation doesn’t have a “Day 4” but this time I’m staying in Phoenix to kick off a four-day southwest road trip with my family. My brother had a later flight, as did my sister. So after checking out of the hotel we had time to actually go out for breakfast together at the Black Bear Diner.

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Spring Training 2017: Day 3

This morning we had breakfast at our hotel and then drove over to the Cleveland Indians Players Complex in Goodyear to watch their warm-ups and shag some fly balls during batting practice (we each got one). It was Corey Kluber bobblehead day at the ballpark so we were in line to shortly after it opened at 11:30am to get our vouchers. Strangely, getting a voucher didn’t guarantee getting a bobblehead so we got inĀ anotherĀ line to pick up our giveaway.

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Spring Training 2017: Day 2

Our morning started out early with a hike up the Echo Canyon Trail to the summit of Camelback Mountain, our annual tradition. It was great weather for the hike and we were in the shade most of the time. It only took us just over an hour to reach the top. After spending about 20 minutes taking our obligatory mountain-top photos, we made our way back down which took another hour. This was perfect timing as my sister was flying in to join us and her flight landed at 10:15am. We drove directly from the trailhead to the airport, picked her up, and went back to the hotel to watch the end of the Dayton/DavidsonĀ basketball game. The Flyers were the regular season A10 champs this year, but unfortunately lost to Davidson in the first round of the Atlantic 10 Tournament. We’ll have to wait until Sunday to see if they’ll be dancing in the NCAA Tournament next week.

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Spring Training 2017: Day 1

It’s been two years since I’ve been out to the Cactus League to watch my Cleveland Indians at Spring Training … but it’s time! The tech arsenal is pretty simple this year: my Surface Pro 4, iPhone 7 Plus, Canon PowerShot SX710, and FitBit Charge 2Ā (I also brought my trustyĀ Garmin nĆ¼vi GPS but ended up not using it because the rental car didn’t have a CD player so I couldn’t use my magnetic slot mount and hadn’t brought the beanbag dashboard mount … oops! So I ended up using Waze on my iPhone).

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FitBit Charge 2

FitBit Charge 2My two-year oldĀ FitBit OneĀ started having a problem last month where I would find it just off. Holding down the button would cause it to “boot” (showing “FITBIT 6.60”) on the screen but while it was off it wasn’t tracking any activity. It wasn’t a battery issue as far as I could tell as the app was reporting an accurate status. I tried working with FitBit support but since the unit was out of warranty, all they could offer was a 25% discount code towards the purchase of a new FitBit device.

After waffling between just getting another One, or upgrading all the way up to a fitness watch like theĀ Blaze, I decided to try theĀ Charge 2.

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