Three things from today - 9/4

9/4/2019

Back to being busy all the time!

Today has flown by as i'm trying to keep up with everything!!!

I feel like i'm learning new things about how I work as I get older. One of the things i've realized recently is how the most important skill for anyone being overwhelmed is to break everything down into smaller chunks, focus on one priority chunk and work slower and more deliberately.

It feels counter intuitive but it's really the only thing that makes sense. Working slower, you can still take time to learn things and work smarter which ultimately pays off in the long run. :)

Anyway - three things!

1. Azure AKS known issues list

known k8s on azure issues and fixes

An Azure engineer who goes by the handle andyzhangx has a great resource of common issues when using AKS. Anyone interested in Azure Kubernetes Service or Azure Kubernetes Engine should keep this handy for when they run into a wall troubleshooting an issue.

2. Docker / R package install gotchas.

Working on updating a Docker image I noticed that some of the dependencies that we thought were in the image were not working. Our Rscript was super simple:

repourl <- "http://cran.rstudio.com/"

install.packages("randomForest", repos = repourl)

Turns out -

1. RScript doesn't care whatever happens in the script, the return code is always 0!
2. The randomForest package was missing the "gfortan" package (blast from the past)

I fixed the issue by installing the package but I also had to update our Rscript to tryCatch and quit with exit code 1 on any errors so that Docker would exit if any package installs failed:

repourl <- "http://cran.rstudio.com/"
tryCatch(
         {
                 install.packages("randomForest", repos = repourl)
         },
         warning=function(warning_message) {
         message(warning_message)
         quit("yes",1)
                },
         error=function(error_message) {
         message(error_message)
         quit("yes",1)
                }
         )

3. Darknet Diaries - Xbox Underground

Darknet Diaries - Xbox underground

I finished a podcast I enjoyed immensely this morning.

It's a two part story on a hacking group who hacked around with the Xbox 360.

It's a wild ride including hacking, drugs, friendship and video games. I highly recommend it.

Also on my reading list is the Wired article for the same story.

See you party people tomorrow!