Quick weight loss update

So it's just a few days before Thanksgiving and I got on the scales to find I am now down to 318. Recall I started at 344 so that's 26 lbs to date.
I've been having to walk my mom's dog, as she's been out of town, so I have been hitting my step goal in Garmin Connect for the past seven days. 
Plus continuous calorie tracking in MyFitnessPal seems to be helping me make sure I keep my self on track to lose weight.
That's it for now, just a quick update.

freebsd postfix python policyd-spf ip addres validation error

The solution to my Problem was (for now) to add the following lines to the function _cidrmatch in /usr/local/bin/policyd-spf

def _cidrmatch(ip, netwrk)
  netwrk = unicode(netwrk)
  ip = unicode(ip)
  try:
    address = ipaddress.ip_address(ip)

This is done so that the python module ipaddr only has to deal with unicode string (as requested by the error message)
switching to python3 as suggested by other posts on the web did not work for me (maybe some missing dependencies?)

 Stolen from here, but it worked:
https://superuser.com/questions/1253657/freebsd-postfix-python-policyd-spf-ip-addres-validation-error/1253658

CIDR.pm

So for whatever reason the CIDR.pm file uses on my FreeBSD setup doesn't work for MailScanner.

II had to comment out these croak lines and now it works just fine

diff  /root/CIDR.pm /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/Net/CIDR.pm
218c218
< The result is a two-element array: 
---
> The result is a two-element array:
437c437
<     
---
> 
596,597c596,597
<           #croak "Invalid netblock range: $r[$i]"
<               #unless $isipv6_1 && $isipv6_2;
---
>           croak "Invalid netblock range: $r[$i]"
>               unless $isipv6_1 && $isipv6_2;
794c794
<     my $mismatch = shift;
---
> 
801c801
<     if (!$isipv6_1 != !$isipv6_2)
---
>     if ($isipv6_1 || $isipv6_2)
803,805c803,805
<       return $mismatch if defined $mismatch;
<       #croak "Invalid netblock: $aa-$bb";
<    }
---
>       croak "Invalid netblock: $aa-$bb"
>           unless $isipv6_1 && $isipv6_2;
>     }
810c810
<     #croak "Different number of octets in IP addresses" unless $#a == $#b;
---
>     croak "Different number of octets in IP addresses" unless $#a == $#b;
979c979
<                                 
---
> 
1014,1015c1014,1015
<       next if _ipcmp($b[$i], $lo, -1) < 0;
<       next if _ipcmp($hi, $a[$i], -1) < 0;
---
>       next if _ipcmp($b[$i], $lo) < 0;
>       next if _ipcmp($hi, $a[$i]) < 0;
1284a1285,1286
>     $v =~ s/([0-9A-Fa-f]+)/_triml0($1)/ge;
> 
1291a1294,1299
> sub _triml0 {
>     my ($a) = @_;
> 
>     $a =~ s/^0+//g;
>     return $a
> }

Gym Time

This morning I spent over an hour at the gym. 
I actually enjoyed it a lot, I noticed that I hard time not smiling.
I spent the entire on the treadmill and after 65 minute I covered 3.9 miles.
It was, according to myWellness cloud, my fastest pace for 3 and 5 kilometers, at 16:41 per mile.
At the end I was totally drenched in sweat, my shirt on the front and back, was totally soaked.
I also logged just over 8,000 steps on Garmin Connect.
I guess that's it really, but I just thought I would share.
See not everything I post is stupid work stuff, sometimes its also stupid me stuff.

One Massive Screw Up

So at work we have some MX servers running Postfix with Mailscanner/SpamAssassin on FreeBSD.
Last week I decided to continue my FreeBSD 10.3 upgrades and decided to tackle all five of these machines at the same time to 11.1.
Everything went well, or so I thought.
Turns out somewhere in the upgrade process when I upgraded all the ports the MailScanner port decided to over-write all the config files and so we would up with a very malfunctioning mail scanner.
Plus due to some other strangeness, the servers were eating up all of their memory.
Well I wasn't sure why, but nailed it down to MailScanner.
So I reinstalled MailScanner and all of its dependencies.
That didn't do anything.
It was next figured out that a configuration file had been renamed, but the original still existed so a quick copy fixed that error.
Then an issue was discovered in the antivirus scanner used by MailScanner, this was resolved by making a quick change to a configuration file.
It was then discovered, that the Bayes database had grown to large to be useful, in excess of 5GB and it was trying to load that into memory.
The database was purged and an automatic process was put into place to purge the database once a week.
Finally, as an extra precaution the main MailScanner configuration file was modified to reduce the maximum number of children processes running at a time.
 This limits the amount of mail that can be processed, but also ensures the memory used didn't exceed what was available
Anyway, all of this kept the mail for being delivered for a few hours.
I don't have anything technical to report about it, just this horrible synopsis.
The bad part is I still have a bunch of servers I need to upgrade.

Oh in coincidental and slightly related news the migration from self-hosted Exchange 2010 to Office 365 is ongoing, but working smoothly.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised.  The documentation is rather exhaustive, both official and otherwise.

I managed to migrated my own mailbox as a "proof of concept" and before I move any others I'll be testing it like crazy.  Of course because I am not changing the mail flow until we're all off Exchange 2010 I need to make sure that the MXs continue working as expected. 

I'm a work-a-holic

I don't know a better way to describe my condition than that.

I had the day off to deal with the dryer issue - see my previous post - and I spent a good chunk of the day working, as though it's somehow so important that I can't stop working even on my day off.  That is the biggest lie I think I've ever told myself and I only realized it tonight as I was, you guessed it working.

Now I have a wonderful sweet child and a wife I could've been spending the day with and I did spend some, we went to the zoo which was great because I love the zoo, but what did I do before and after that? Work.  I worked on something on my day off.  Why?  Why would I work for free?  I don't get it anymore.

I think I need to just figure out a way to stop working that would be the first best step, but I don't know what that would be.  Write before I wrote this blog entry I wrote a kind of angry email to my co-workers about stuff that broke today and how I didn't agree with their fix for it.  Of course I wasn't even there so my opinion is invalid and I shouldn't have even been involved because I was off.

I don't know.

I do this all the time too, Christmas, Thanksgiving, even the week I took off to attend my father's funeral in Arlington I worked from there too.  WHY? I have wasted so much time these last 8 years working when I could be doing something else.  God when I think about it like that I really hate myself because I've not only robbed myself of time, but also my family and if I can say so friends, of which I have very few.

I am just going to have to create a mental work block, and put my foot down - perhaps I can come up with something better than that.  My co-workers seem great at not working after work, some of them seem great at not working while they're at work.  Why can't I just not work when I don't need to be.

I think to begin with I'm going to scrap my maintenance windows - because I'm the only one who has EVER done them. I asked for a dedicated maintenance window about two years ago and I got it, but aside from two instances where I got assistance because I asked for it I don't think anyone of my co-workers have ever setup or even thought to setup maintenance on anything.  So why should I?  That would give my back my 3rd Saturday and Thursday nights.

Who am I kidding though I'm already thinking about work.  All the work I need to do tomorrow and all the work I need to do the next day.  I hate myself.

Dryer out of commission

So sometime on Saturday the dryer decided to die.  Obviously this was not something I was looking forward to.So it isn't exactly dead, but it started making a horribly loud banging sound. Afterwards it started to smell, like horrible.

No Worky

Anyway I turned it off and checked everything I can check including the lint pipe thing that goes outside.  I cleaned all that out but it made no difference. Luckily my wife remembered that we have a home warranty through American Home Shield.  So I logged on and checked and determined that dryers are covered by the warranty.

American Home Shield

So we setup an appointment and the earliest they could come out was today between 8 and noon.  It's 9:45 as I write this so as you might imagine they aren't here yet.  The dryer is a Kenmore so they set up the service through Sears. I got an auto call yesterday at work to confirm the appointment today.  Hopefully they'll be here soon.

In the meantime since Saturday we've used the tried and true method of hanging our clothes outside, because going to a laundromat can get pricey and the washer still works so this seemed like a good idea.

This morning's laundry

It does take a few hours and usually we can only get two loads of laundry done in a day, but it mostly works.  I have learned if the laundry is hung too late in the day it just doesn't get dry.  Added to the fact that it is actually getting colder for a change that isn't exactly helping the laundry dry.

Weather is getting colder, a lot colder

I'll be updating this post after they get here and provide their initial diagnosis and/or fix it.  I'm not expecting anything good though and have already been searching the appliance stores for new dryers in the sub $500 range because at this point I just want a working dryer.

-- Update 11:15 AM --

Around 10:15 the Sears repair showed up.  They went straight to work and 45 minutes later it seems to be working just fine again.  They literally took the whole machine apart and checked everything.  I was actually quite impressed.  In the end the part that goes from the lint trap back to the back where it leaves the machine was apparently FULL of line and other debris. He cleaned everything out.  Once he got it back together he ran the machine, empty, for over 10 minutes. Well I guess it was ten minutes total, but he stopped it a few times to check stuff.  He also said that everything was in good working condition.  I have no reason to doubt them.

So I just started a new load of laundry and will be drying them in an hour or so.  I'm just going to leave those white clothes outside to air dry.  I'll post an additional update once I get that in there and let you know if it actually works when it is full of wet towels.


-- Update 2 --

I wasn't paying attention to the time but sometime before 1:00 PM I started the dryer and sometime after 4:00 PM I got home and in between then the clothes dried and the dryer works again.  That's it really. I have a second load of clothes in the dryer already and a 3rd load in the washer which will HOPEFULLY catch us back up again.  Anyway that's all for laundry.