strouja

[strouja]

Windows 11 or Bust

I rebuilt my 12 year old Windows Desktop (Antec case) with a new Asrock x570 Taichi motherboard and AMD Ryzen 5 5600X  CPU with 64 GB of RAM about 5 months ago with Windows 10 Pro.  This is overkill for what I use it for, Trainer Road mostly and once in a while Zwift or PerfPro. I decided to upgrade it to Windows 11.  I was only concerned about getting  the ANT+ stick working again.  But Windows 11 would not install because of BIOS settings (this is a big controversy with Windows 11 along with them not allowing you upgrade PCs that are just 4 years old). I'm familiar with all of BIOS settings and after I changed them all (took several reboots and confirmation of things on the internet), the PC would not boot to Windows as the boot menu could no longer see or find my 2 hard drives.  I thought it had to do with my 2nd m.2 hard drive, so I removed that (pain in the ass as I had to remove graphics card, use a torx screwdriver to remove a panel, then use a  tiny screwdriver to remove the drive).  Despite taking out the 2nd drive, I had the same problem. So back to google and one cause was if Windows 10 was installed with something called MBR as opposed to GBT the BIOS boot would not see the drives. So I backed out the required Secure Boot BIOS setting and re-enabled something called CSM (Compatibility Support Module)  in the BIOS and was able to boot back into Windows 10.  Sure enough I somehow installed Windows 10 with MBR. So I needed GPT, a quick google showed that you need to wipe out everything, then reinstall apps and data from a backup, this is not what I wanted to hear.  I tried to quickly make a backup but Windows will not let you do a full back up to a USB stick and USB back-up drive was acting up. I found that I can use a disk manager tool to do the conversion without losing everything, and do the conversion from MBR to GPT.  So I had on this  PC a tool called Paragon Disk Manager and it had this feature.  So I used  this tool and did  the conversion of the disk from MBR to GBT.   I thought I was set, buuuutt after I made that change, the PC would not boot up at all no matter what I did or tried. So a total loss.  URGGHHHH!!!! At this point I said Screw it, I'll just install Windows 11 from scratch and blow away everything.  So I created a Windows 11 bootable install USB.  But installing Windows 11 was a pain as I had to delete via the Windows 11 installer all the prior "partitions" on the disk.    But I got it done and I always keep my Windows license keys in my dropbox folder and reapplied that re-installed Windows 11 (after changing the bios settings again for about the 7th time), re-installed all my apps, and to get the USB ANT stick to work I had to find the driver for that in the Optional Windows 11 updates. I got Trainer Road to work and recognize my Tacx Neo2 trainer, Wahoo tickr heart rate monitor, and Stages Power Meter So a 10 minute task turned into 3 hours for a simple Windows 10 to 11 upgrade on a newly built PC with state of the art hardware.

[strouja]

Turned 55 - A day in the life

I did this 5 years ago when I hit 50 and figured I’d do this again.  To capture a moment in time and what I did on typical day, but it just happened to be my birthday Sept. 1, 2020

Late night working

I got inspired and decided to improve our security profile on our product on a very minor issue, but it would be nice do.  So after midnight, which made it my birthday I researched on how to only allow Transport Layer Security (TLS) version 1.2 (and not allow earlier versions) to parts of our system used for internal communications.  This is a minor issue as we lock this down for all customer access and this is just for our own “system to system” communication.  So I looked up how to do this for something called Kibana and WebSphere liberty.  I checked in config file changes into something called github for our product and sent a “pull request” to have an expert review it.

So it is now 1:30 am and I’m ready to call it a night.

Can we sleep now

The wife comes up to bed and we agree to NOT let our dog Winston sleep in our bed as he can make it hard for us humans to sleep.  I would have him stay with us but Linh is not in favor.

So he whines outside our door for a good 15 minutes or so.  Now we are ready to sleep.

All of sudden we hear him barking constantly.  He behaves as a guard dog and we are perplexed as there is never anything going on late at night.  This is relentless.  After about 10 or 15 minutes of this I go out to see what the hell is going on.  He is in the next room, on my 16 year old son's bed looking out the window barking at something in the darkness. 

So I put his LED collar on and let him run around the house and chase until his heart’s content.  He stays outside for 1/2 hour or so.  I entice him back in and close the curtains in William's bedrooms so he won't go crazy barking anymore.  So I think.   FYI my son William is passed out in the basement on a new giant bean bag.Now it is probably 2:30 and I'm finally ready to sleep.  But no, we hear Winston barking non-stop again. 

FYI this never happens, normally it is peaceful here at night and the dog does not bark at things past 9 pm or so. It turns out whatever animals he saw before are still out there and he can see them from the windows on the 1st floor.  My wife is fast asleep.  I can't sleep because of this and possibly from my short but pretty hard 10 minute bike workout earlier today and the more than normal amount coffee I had today.  I normally just have  one cup but drank some leftover coffee in the afternoon.I probably fall asleep at 3 am or so.I have a 9 am meeting I have to get up for.

Working for the Man - IBM

Since I work from home I am able to get up right before my 9 am meeting. Then I run a meeting at 9:40 with my boss and my boss’ boss to go over how to allocate our finite internal cloud resources that one team wants to consume all of it.  This is all done by Webex video & audio conferencing (like Zoom).

We have a bunch more meetings.  Then I get a break sometime before noon.

Catching last 20 km of Tour de France Stage 4

When I get a break I put on the TV and through my Roku 3 put on NBC Sports Gold (without ads and European commentary)  to see if today’s Tour de France stage is still on.  I find out the race is still live and it is mountain top finish and there are 20 km left.  So this is the perfect time to watch.  I catch up on work while hearing the race and glimpsing at it.  

Although I’m an avid cyclist, race myself, and lead a fast ride every week (normally 2 times a week but reduced to one because of covid-19 and with a smaller group), I’m not a big fan of pro bike racing because I know all the top names and riders are still doping.  So I know only a fully doped rider has a chance of winning today’s stage, especially because it is mountain top finish. 

Fixing my bike

After my ride on Sunday with my former teammates: Ray Plewacki, Vic Siegfried, and Dave Fuentes, I asked my buddy Ray P. if he can fix some shifting problem of my bike this week.   He texted me earlier in the day and he agreed to come over during his lunch break.   He arrives at 12:30 as I have another meeting going on.  I tell my boss I will have to duck out of the meeting.  He is fine with that.

Ray does his magic and does micro adjusting on my Shimano DuraAce Di2 electronic shifting.  I could not shift into one of the mid gears in the back.  Ray figured it out for me.  So I’m all set for Tuesday Night World Championships.

Bike Ride

I eat my Overnight Oats in the very late morning and later on eat my vegan lentil based meal I made yesterday in the instant pot.   I finish up work, then clean my bike (clean the drive train) and put bike in car.

I drive to bike ride and get FaceTime video call from my Don Cayelli on the ride over to wish me happy birthday.  We agree to have our families go to North Carolina in a few months for a mini-vacation.  We talk about a bunch of things and he asks how old the guys I ride with.  I explain that the average age is about mid 30s, one guy I am older than his parents.  The best and strongest rider by far is 40 years old, a former pro - Jason Schneider.   He would not dope and had to leave the pro ranks as a result, doping was rampant (I claim it still is) but was much more out in the open.  That is the only reason why his pro bike days were cut short.

There were some notable strong riders not here, 2 of the regulars - Alex Batres and Jason Boslaugh.  Them not being here makes it much more manageable for me as the top guys feed off of others and try to outdo each other, in this process this puts the hurt on me.   Many other super strong riders have not been here for anytime this year since we resumed these small rides because of Covid-19. Two notable people in this category are: George Croghan & Ferry Gijzel.

The ride tonight is very hard, 3 loops with hills about 12 miles each loop.  We average 22.5 mph with stopping for lights every loop.  So a pretty hard ride.  I stay with the lead group but make a mistake on 2nd lap and don’t follow a very strong move (that I was told about) and end up doing a few miles solo to catch many 3 people and pull us most of the way to the main group on “Bennett Road” and catch them at the light.

Here is the strava from tonight’s ride

https://www.strava.com/activities/3998711104

This is missing pics of the strongest rider - Jason Schneider

Getting heckled on the ride

On the ride I get comments from the 2nd strongest rider on the ride about joining AARP.  This kid is 27 and I am older than his parents. Spencer Lofgran is this person of interest. 

Close the gap on the ride

On the last lap I was gaped a bit on a flat portion - Lawyers road as I was behind 3 folks that were not continuing the ride and the 4 guys in the front started hammering.  The strongest guy comes back and gives me a massive push that pushes me past all the riders.  This was by far the strongest push I ever received on the bike

Catching up with Mates

In the parking lot after the ride my buddy Vic Siegrfried is there waiting to wish me happy birthday.    Here is a pic from Sunday ride with me, Ray Plewacki (middle) and Vic 

Catching up with former work mates - IT Legend

I drive home and call a good friend of mine from work Anthony Zawacki to catch up with him.  He was our best worker by far but in our last round of layoffs was dismissed.  He is an IT rockstar doing great at his new job.  He asks me a work question and that reminds me to contact a team using our product to help them avert a Kubernetes problem of an expiring certificate and to fix it before it expires.

Working for the man again

I get home and hop back on my new work issued MacBook Pro 16″ laptop to figure out the commands I want the customer to run. The commands are not in our official doc and I eventually find the commands that work.  I test them on my own test system at an IBM lab and give them to support to get to them to the customer.  I no longer have contacts with the on-site team as the main person I worked with left IBM. 

I then write a long slack message to our documentation person to explain why we need these commands in our documentation. I then give sample output of the commands and what we are looking for.

The next day I spend a few hours doing more testing and spend an hour with our doc person to make all the changes to our official doc that I then get out to our customers on this release of our product.

Birthday Cake

My wife bought a 2 cakes, chocolate mousse with raspberries and apricot tart. 

I eat 100% plant based foods (past 8 months or so) but broke that tonight to eat the chocolate mousse

We FaceTime my daughter Sophia at the University of Virginia (UVA), I light candles, and we sing happy birthday with Linh, Sophia (on iPhone), William and our infamous dog - Winston.  Here are some poor photos I took in haste.

Trippy Lights & Wall Art

As I’m heading to bed my son shows me the LED lights we bought him for his bedroom and some very funky psychedelic wall art whose appearance change dramatically as the LED lights change colors.  

[strouja]

Weekend April 10 - April 12, 2020

I used to send out long emails to the hard-core cycling people about upcoming rides that I was leading and I would give a lengthy life update. Since we stopped group rides because of the coronavirus for the past month, I’ll give an mini-update here.

Friday Night

I did not plan on working Friday night but thought of a few things we should make sure worked before our upcoming release and did some hands on keyboard testing and updating our official documentation.  I did this till about8 pm.

I stopped work and then decide that my wife’s old MacBook Air from 2013 or so has her photos and documented backed up before we ship it back to Apple to get $160 credit for it. I got her a new MacBook Air that just came out that has intel 10th generation core i5 cpu, 16 GB of RAM (I wanted 32 but they did not have that) and 1 TB SSD.  I backed her documents and photos to my Synology Networked Attached Storage (NAS).

Then I decided to get on the NAS and actually find the back-ups. They were under my folder and not hers b/c of the way I  set it up.  I then decided to delete some old large files that were taking up space on the NAS that I will now longer need.  I had .ISO files for many variations of Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 2012 Server, Windows 2008 Server, Windows XP, Microsoft Office from many years ago.  I did all that clean up

Since my NAS was about 74% used I decided to take the 8 TB drive that was not being used in slot 8 and included it in my storage pool. 

Now I’m ready for bed and done fore the night.  I decide to do more work for IBM and pull out the laptop in bed and work for an hour or sol

I set my alarm for 10:10 on my phone to get up for 10:40 am Zwift race which I’m not looking forward to

Saturday

I get up before my alarm and make some coffee, water jug, and energy drink and start getting ready for the Zwift Race.  I get on 10 minutes before the race and try to get things sorted and talk to team on Discord and what not.

The race starts and it is full gas from the start. I am doing 400 watts and getting passed.  I settle in at 350 watts for several minutes and then to about 320 watts.  I find myself getting dropped from 1st group.

I push 300 watts for next 5 or 8 minutes in 2nd group and then start getting dropped.

I hang in 3rd group pushing near 300 watts and then find myself barely hanging on.

I then soldier on and then see i only did about 6 miles and we have to do 23 or 28 miles.  I decide after 20 minutes to pull the plug.  I am not up for an hour of going all out as this race would require.  I could not wait to get off the bike.

I recover on my stairs for a while, shower up, then take dog out for long walk.

Saturday afternoon I decide to take my new Trek Madone with Power2Max power meter on it and put on my Tacx Neo2 to see if it reads similar power to my Neo2.  My fuji bike with brand new generation 3 stages power meter reads 8 to 10% higher than my Neo2.

Since my Fuji bike that is on the bike trainer is 10 speed cassette and my trek is 11 speed I have to take my only 11 speed cassette of my Trek Madone.  I take off chain of Trek Madone and clean it with ultrasonic cleaner and degreaser. 

My cassette won’t come off and i text Luke Pingel and Ray Plewacki.  Luke immediately responds and helps me get it off and informs me I have to buy a new freehub as it has indents and the cassette won’t come off easily without a lot of prying. 

I manage to put newly cleaned chain and cassette on Neo2 and find that Neo2 read 245 watts vs 255 watts from the power2max on my trek.  I’ll do some more testing but my IT band on left knee is pretty bad right now and I can’t ride that hard at all now.

Saturday night I do some more testing and documentation for IBM.

Sunday

I wake up and do some more testing and find things are broken for IBM.  I chat w/ team on Slack and they give me an update on why things are broken

I get a call back from Yasir Saleem. He is an old buddy I worked with at IBM and we catch-up on the phone for about an hour or so.

I take Winston for long walk in the woods.  On the way back he finds a fox den and I never see him again on the walk.  As I’m waiting for him on the path I get a text from Linh that Winston is already home.

I get home and get William and Sophia to do the bike ride we talked about. We bring William’s friend Evan Gould.  I make sure all of our  tires are pumped up, we all have helmets and I wear high visibility 3M construction tee-shirt.

We bike to Vienna, then on the W&OD trail to Hunter Mill.  I discuss we can go to Herndon and buy smoothies or go up Hunter Station and come back.  Hunter Stations is an infamous bike hill that many riders hate because of its difficulty.  I explain this to everyone.

Since William only ate an apple this morning (we just biked 7.5 miles) and he was feeling nauseous  and Sophia did not want to go to Herndon, I take them up Hunter Station.  Evan and I go full gas up the hill, William faded and Sophia ended up walking up the steep parts.

We bike back to Vienna, William and Sophia get some food at Whole Foods. This takes 15 minutes.  We try to go to Jammin’ Java to get smoothies but it is closed, this was a place Sophia had in mind.  We bike back to Oakton via Courthouse Road again a go to Tropical Smoothies. We all get food and Sophia got food and a smoothie.   I wanted to buy bananas at Giant but they closed early for Easter Sunday.

We then bike home.

Sunday night

Now to watch Homeland with Linh, a series on Showtime.  Beforehand I do another test for IBM and the system is fixed and installs now.

Here is our ride on Strava

https://www.strava.com/activities/3291040390

Google photos

https://photos.app.goo.gl/jrCNgKiVFHNdRuXj7