First MRI

Had an MRI done on me today, it was an interesting experience.

I thought I was only go be gone for half an hour, ended up being two.

When I was in the device felt like a burrito getting warmed up in a microwave oven.

This was interesting.

Weight: 346.6

Posted in Training, Weigh In | Leave a comment

Couple Advances In Script

I was able to figure out how to subscribe in Paho-MQTT multiple Topics, I am pretty sure I can have it inspect for stuff coming in from a independent units and even Zigbee via Home Assistant.

So it may be possible to have 1 monitored script to watch all this.

Just to confirm, I was able to view Home Assistant submitted mqtt messages over multiple topics.

So I may be able to do more.

Getting cool.

Another confirm, yesterday I got my fitbit steps in.

Weight: 342.8

Posted in New Toys, Technical, Training, Virtualization, Weigh In | Leave a comment

Script Working Well

Posting a bit early today, gonna have a busy evening. It looks like I will make my fitbit goals so I will log as such. Will update this post if anything changes.

Looks like my scripts are working. Going to keep an eye on it remotely to see if it produces the right results.

Watching son run a big race today, Nike Twilight, hoping he crack 19:30 today.

Last of two weekend races.

Weight: 343.2

Posted in Fitbit, Technical, Training, Weigh In | Leave a comment

Its a Trap

Insert Star Wars Meme Here

Anyway, I was going to edit a media wiki entry. But I got an Exception TypeError.

I know this is related in the upgrade from CentOS 7 to Rocky 9. Basically the PHP version was not compatible with the Mediwiki version.

So I know I have to upgrade media wiki. It is 10:25PM, and I am tempted, but I know when I do the upgrade, things gonna break.

Anyway, I had a really long day yesterday. So boss let me cut out early so I did.

But I was still sleepy at the end of the day.

I am rethinking my scripts to broker 433Mhz RF devices.

I made some good headway. Drawing it out really helped

I got it sending email and zoneminder. Also getting it to log to a Maria DB server. I ran out of gas and had to rest.

Weight: 344.0

Posted in New Toys, Technical, Training, Virtualization, Weigh In | Leave a comment

Replacing UNO with Tasmota Devices

I actually got quite a bit of amount of steps going back and forth from the mailbox trying to get Tasmota to see the mailbox getting opened.

Recall I have these UNO boxes sensing 433Mhz

But recently moved to Tasmota

This new Tasmota system is better, but the older Uno are more established.

At least they all talk MQTT just that they have different protocols.

The uno simply sends what just sent a message, say FRONTDOOR or MAILBOX, the code has it preprogrammed in and makes it easier.

The Tasmota payload is a JSON structure. It works well with Python but I only need to know the data.

Anyway, tomorrow I will take a stab at converting the door script. Yesterday I mentioned how I was able to have python as a systemd unit (service)

I am also moving stuff out of my home to completely run in /opt.

Lot of changes.

Weight: 344.4

Posted in Arduino, New Toys, Technical, Training, Virtualization, Weigh In | Leave a comment

Python As A Service

In Centos 7 I have been running screen on reboot (via cron) to start a script like this.

@reboot screen -d -m -S pir /opt/bin/myscustom.py

But wanted to be more modern and use systemd unit files and as of Rocky 8 (Recall I am moving things to Rocky 9) I can run a python script as a systemd service and output the contents to a file for tracking.

So I went off and created a system service (unit) file

vi /etc/systemd/system/mycustom.service

In it I placed

[Unit]
Description=Home Node PIR MQTT
After=network.target

[Service]
User=larry
Group=larry
Type=simple
StandardError=journal
StandardOutput=journal
StandardInput=null
StandardOutput=file:/var/log/myscustom/stdout.log
StandardError=file:/var/log/myscustom/stderr.log
ExecStart=/opt/bin/myscustom.py

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Note instead of file I could have used append so the file just grows instead of getting replaced everytime things are restarted.

I did create the folder and chown it with larry:larry but it created the files on restart with owner root so I chowned the files themselves afterwards.

Another change is the python script itself

I need to add a -u to the first line like this

!/usr/bin/python -u

That tells python to not buffer standard out and send it immediately, that way systemd can see it.

On the personal front, son had his Senior day for cross country, where they celebrate the seniors. He did OK today, last year rocking something under 21 would be awesome but I guess I expect more.

Not getting my steps in, been super tired. I need to sleep earlier.

Weight: 344.2

Posted in Fitbit, New Toys, Technical, Training, Virtualization, Weigh In | Leave a comment

Guilty of Little Documentation

Last box I need to migrate has so much custom python scripts. Kind of a pain to convert.

Some stuff ran, but had libraries that produced different results (paho mqtt).

As I was going through this a lot of this is so deprecated, I am just picking one or two and scrapping the rest.

Weight: 342.8

Posted in Technical, Training, Weigh In | Leave a comment

Python Challenges

I now have less VMs to upgrade locally from C7 to R9 than I have in the cloud.

Looking into one of them now but am encountering python problems.

CentOS 7 supported python 2 and have a few python scripts that may not work on python 3.

I found one I had to check file dates but it did not work on python 3.

Also I want to be careful with this second to last physical C7 box. I want to make sure it is fully functional and will document as well.

I am thinking physical box, but a VM to take over just in case.

Weight: 343.4

Posted in Technical, Training, Weigh In | Leave a comment

Another Upgrade

I could have moved another server from C7 to R9 today, but am going to wait till tomorrow. Gonna let tonight’s backup happen then do it tomorrow.

Seahawks won but an incredible game was the loss by Denver Broncos.

Did not do my fitbit today, needed rest and it was raining, not sure how I am going to achieve the fitbit goals.

Weight: 343.0

Posted in Technical, Training, Weigh In | Leave a comment

State Fair 2023

Only 1 of my kids (although he brought 2 of his friends) went with my wife to the state fair.

Next year I am not sure if we are going to do it again. This was the last free ticket my kids would get

I did eat badly, but I found a nice quiet place in the pavilion to wait for the kids to finish.

Had some makers there

I did get a lot of steps in and was kind of trivial to get the balance of my steps.

Got home, and relaxed.

Weight: 342.8

Posted in Fitbit, Training, Weigh In | Leave a comment