March 18, 2017
by dhoytt
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2017 Garden Replants

These are the holdover plants from last year that need replanting I have uprooted and will get back in the ground later.

March 18, 2017
by dhoytt
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Garden 2017 Starting Point

Got my rototiller back today and tackling backyard vegetable gardens. Besides fighting weeds I have a some replanting to do primarily with collard greens and Swiss chard.

December 16, 2016
by dhoytt
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This evening at the gym while doing last reps of dumbbell presses laying flat on my back looking up to the ceiling working my gum in my mouth exhaling through my mouth, I blew a perfectly formed pearl of small liquid with a comet like trail of beads behind it. This perfectly clear beads of liquid I could see every drop in the comet like trail clearly as I was mid rep pushing the dumbbells the drops hit their apex gave way to gravity coming down in a perfect arch right into my left eye as I was fully extended on that rep. It looked like art in the that short span of time.

June 27, 2016
by dhoytt
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Rebuilt XenServer Slave

I rebuilt my XenServer slave tonight after it didn’t come back up properly last week after a power failure where I decided to ride it out on my UPS and not properly shutdown a few of my systems. The only system that had issues was this XenServer slave and since it wasn’t running my important VM’s at the time I decided to perform some more important non-computer related projects until tonight. Really the only thing that prompted me tonight to do this was I wanted to install Fedora 24 Server on a VM and I recalled I needed to get this XenServer hosts up and running.

Well the thing was it didn’t recognize and of my NIC’s built into my motherboard though they were enabled and showing properly in the bios. After several restarts and insuring cabling was correct I ended up having to remove power completely and power the system up, reset the bios and then reconfigure my bios settings to get the onboard NIC’s recognized finally.

Things were so corrupted with XenServer that even after that the onboard NIC’s weren’t recognized so I decided to reinstall since the VM’s are all on my NAS that I run FreeNAS on anyway and not local to the XenServer host. Had I needed I could have always run the VM’s on the master XenServer host.

Anyhow I reinstalled, XenServer 6.5 and tried to add it to the existing pool but it wouldn’t let me join the pool until I was patched up properly plus I still needed to destroy the old XnServer remnant name.

I tried destroying the old XenServer name out of the shared pool but couldn’t since the VM’s that were running on that hosts were still in a quasi running state. I found this article “http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX126382” and followed that to shutdown the VM’s:

xe host-list
xe vm-list resident-on=<UUID of XenServer host I wish to take out of pool>
xe vm-reset-powerstate uuid=<UUID of VM’s still on powered on state on above host>
Went to XenCenter -> Right-Clicked-> Destroy -> Remove failed XenServer host

In XenCenter I then went to Tools -> Install Update -> Showed patch that was installed in Master but not on newly installed system and just followed the GUI instructions and it pushed the patch from the Master to the slave and I was then able to join the freshly installed XenServer into the shared pool. I then configured the storage networks, placed the XenServer slave into maintenance mode and turned on multipathing. Restarted my other VM’s and they are now running on the XenServer slave and I’m back up and fully running in redundant mode again!

May 30, 2016
by dhoytt
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Another Healthy Home Garden Based Meal

The garden is starting to produce more than just the dominant swiss chard now, with some beans, chives, rosemary plus the swiss chard paired with medium rare trip tip that pulled apart with fingers. Sautéed the swiss char with the rosemary, basil, chives with a touch of brown sugar since I didn’t have any oyster sauce and some garlic in my wok then my friend she came up with the idea to grill the green beans on grill with garlic, salt and olive oil. All turned out excellent didn’t get finishing shots since the wine was flowing and started making plates and eating right away.

May 14, 2016
by dhoytt
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2016 Vegetable Garden Happenings

Well the 2016 garden is off to a very nice start. Already I have been feasting on the swiss chards that are replants from last year. As the swiss chard replants from last year go to seed they will be replaced with already steadily growing new swiss chard I planted this year and I will replace the older swiss chard with some peas I have growing already in pots.

This yeah I have swiss chard, collard greens, several type/colors bell peppers, different basil varieties, several tomato varieties, sweet red onions, yellows onions, chives, habanera peppers, jalapeño peppers, bush and gourmet beans, mesclun salad mix which consists different lettuce and green leafy vegetables for salads, mustard greens, stevia, cucumbers, squash, peas and beets. I’m sure I forgot some items but that’s most of what is planted.

I was especially attentive this year to getting the weeds out of the garden early this year and properly fertilizing the garden and it seems to be paying off. My first squash to pick should even be ready this week already with cucumbers, tomatoes, basil, stevia and beans, not far behind.

These are pictures that show what it’s all about, meals and meal prep of items from garden:

May 14, 2016
by dhoytt
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Saturday Morning Updates Word Press Web Music Server Work Stations

Updated the WordPress themes to the latest today in coordination with also updating my separate music streaming server and web server Operating Systems. I think some more tinkering is forthcoming but for now my Windows music streaming server, Linux Web Server and WordPress which resides on my Linux Web Server are updated along with my Windows 10 and Centos 7 workstations.

Configuring A High Availability Apache Cluster With Pacemaker On CentOS 7

May 7, 2016
by dhoytt
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Upgraded to new FreeNAS Stable 9.10

Over the course of last night and today I upgraded my FreeNAS from 9.3 Stable to 9.10 Stable versions via the Web interface.

I first verified that my backup FreeNAS disk array was free of virtual systems and updated that system.

Actually since I keep my backup disk array off due to power usage concerns (costs a lot) I first had to reintroduce the iSCSI storage to the Xenserver environment by “forgetting” and then reading as new storage and “reattaching” to the luns.
I then migrated my Xenserver virtual systems disks to the newly updated FreeNAS system.
After migrating the VM’s off my main disk array I then updated that version of FreeNAS to 9.10
Now all my virtual systems are being migrated back to my main storage disk array and I will be able to turn off my backup storage array for energy savings until my next planned upgrade coming in the next few months!

March 27, 2016
by dhoytt
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Darryl Hoytt 2016 Vegetable Garden Open for Business

Well this year’s vegetable garden is ready for business and as of now looks pretty good with some starter vegetables some new and some transplants from last year. The transplants from last year are the Swiss chard and chives, rosemary and sage. My new plants are my basil, bell peppers various colors, habanero peppers, edamame beans, golden tomatoes, beefeater tomatoes, stevia, crookneck squash, cucumbers. These will kick start things but more to come via seeds and greenhouse plants.

The chore this year as mentioned in earlier post was getting rid of the mint roots but I dug most out but had to go deep and dissemble my garden paver making up my raised garden to get the mint roots growing between the pavers. I also placed heavy duty weed block between pavers and dirt to replace what I had done when initially building the raised garden 8 years ago which will keep the mint and roots from growing between pavers.

I also had to replace some parts of my drip system and rearrange the watering pattern so it can grow as I add more plants. This year on the eats side of the garden I also laid my rows out east to west instead of north to south as I normally do and did on the west side of the garden. The lay out of the garden should help when it comes time to tend and harvest the garden.

I still have some work to do as far as cleaning the concrete and moving a few other things in the backyard but the garden is ready to rock!

Here is the progress via pictures:

This is my initial foray with the rototiller and removal of some vegetables I eventually transplanted back in garden:

This is my continued deconstruction of pavers to get to mint roots:

Placing weed block behind pavers:

After more rototiller action introducing new mulch and top soil:

Made rows, placed and repaired drip system, added vegetables:

Rewarded myself with tri-tip and cooked whole chicken for the week on Trager Grill I picked up in November:

March 24, 2016
by dhoytt
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Getting Started on 2016 Garden, A Little RCA (Root Cause Analysis)

Yes for all you IT folks this is the original way to perform a “root cause analysis” in a real garden pulling out handfuls of real roots that are causing me grief! l started on the garden over the weekend pulling some weeds out of both sides of the garden. Monday I tinkered with the rototiller to get it running, cleaning the already hugely modified carburetor in really a very bizarre way, by pouring carburetor cleaner into the air hole for a spell and then turning it over to pour the cleaner out. Tonight I took out some swiss chard, chives, and celery I will replant then rototilled the east side of my garden and picked out a couple of buckets of mostly mint roots!

These mints have been growing like crazy the past few years and so I went down a foot or more to go get as much of these roots as possible. I also took out the bricks from the front of my raised garden I built after piling the dirt up in the center of the garden to get the roots of the mint that were growing through and under the bricks! I’m sure I didn’t get all the roots and seeds but I really took a great deal out and the small roots left should be easier to pull out if they start up again.

This upcoming weekend the larger part of the garden will get the rototiller action and the mint roots pulled out though there’s less mint on that side and not as deeply rooted. Then its time to, make some rows, rerun the drip lines and plant my vegetables and seeds for the spring.

These are this years before pictures of my vegetable garden for 2016: