Archive for November 2008

Dear President Elect

Posted by: JDS

This is a work in progress. Now, how to mail it? I guess mail it to Obama for America

DEAR PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA:

First of all, congratulations on your historic victory. Okay, enough sweet talk.

Before I really get into what I want to ask of you, let me tell you a little about myself. Just a little. I am a 38 year old, white male of Jewish decent living in a major(ish, depending on who you ask) US East Coast city. I have a college degree and work as a professional. My wife and I also own a (struggling) small business. I have two small children, a house in the suburbs, two cars, a wife (not necessarily in that order). Okay, that's enough. Pretty normal USAian, right?

I have been thinking a lot about your election to this office. It turns out that I am VERY excited to see you there. I know I am not alone. But I have one, important, VERY IMPORTANT, request:

PLEASE DON'T FUCK THIS UP!

I voted for you mostly because you are not a semi retard (not that I am hinting at all that any current president might be semi-retarded). Not only, though, are you not retarded, you are actually one of the smartest speakers I have heard on the TV in a while. Your presence, charisma, leadership qualities, ideas, and ability to bring people together are a VERY WELCOME CHANGE. I voted for you for all those reasons, and, as icing, I voted for you BECAUSE you are "black". I put that in quotes because you are just as white as you are black, something a lot of people seem to miss.

Anyway, about my request. I know you know this and understand this request. I voted for you because, as the first "black" president, you will have to work harder, better, more convincingly, more flawlessly, more unifyingly than any previous president. More, even, than a white woman president would (well, that's debatable) have to. Because you are black. You MUST prove "them" wrong.

That is the gist, I gotta flesh this thing out. Draft 1 started Nov 19, 2008. Hopefully I'll scratch out another 15 minutes to work on this thing because I am desperate to mail it before inauguration. But if you read it online, that's good, too.

Thank you. Sincerely,
Jeff Silverman
American

Multiple SSH terminals in Tiled Windows

Posted by: JDS

Managing SSH sessions on multiple, simlarly-configured servers is easy using ClusterSSH. But I had some issues that were fixed with some cssh configuration tweaking.

ClusterSSH is pretty cool. Really. But I needed to tweak the default config a little before it worked perfectly for me. This was all presentation tweaking -- windows were overlapping and some text was not printing to the screen, as well as being to teensy.

Note that you can get a default config with 'cssh -u > ~/.csshrc'

~/.csshrc.default

# Configuration dump produced by 'cssh -u'
auto_quit=yes
comms=ssh
console_position=
extra_cluster_file=
history_height=10
history_width=40
ignore_host_errors=no
key_addhost=Control-plus
key_clientname=Alt-n
key_paste=Control-v
key_quit=Control-q
key_retilehosts=Alt-r
mouse_paste=Button-2
rsh_args=
screen_reserve_bottom=40
screen_reserve_left=0
screen_reserve_right=0
screen_reserve_top=0
show_history=0
ssh=/usr/bin/ssh
ssh_args= -x -o ConnectTimeout=10
telnet_args=
terminal=/usr/bin/xterm
terminal_allow_send_events=-xrm '*.VT100.allowSendEvents:true'
terminal_args=
terminal_decoration_height=10
terminal_decoration_width=8
terminal_font=6x13
terminal_reserve_bottom=0
terminal_reserve_left=0
terminal_reserve_right=0
terminal_reserve_top=0
terminal_size=80x24
terminal_title_opt=-T
title=CSSH
unmap_on_redraw=no
use_hotkeys=yes
window_tiling=yes
window_tiling_direction=right

~/.csshrc.tweaked

# Configuration dump produced by 'cssh -u'
auto_quit=yes
comms=ssh
console_position=
extra_cluster_file=
history_height=10
history_width=40
ignore_host_errors=yes
key_addhost=Control-plus
key_clientname=Alt-n
key_paste=Control-v
key_quit=Control-q
key_retilehosts=Alt-r
mouse_paste=Button-2
rsh_args=
screen_reserve_bottom=40
screen_reserve_left=0
screen_reserve_right=0
screen_reserve_top=0
show_history=0
ssh=/usr/bin/ssh
ssh_args= -x -o ConnectTimeout=10
telnet_args=
terminal=/usr/bin/xterm
terminal_allow_send_events=-xrm '*.VT100.allowSendEvents:true'
terminal_args=-bg lightyellow -fg black
terminal_decoration_height=10
terminal_decoration_width=8
terminal_font=-*-courier-medium-r-*-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
terminal_reserve_bottom=10
terminal_reserve_left=10
terminal_reserve_right=10
terminal_reserve_top=30
terminal_size=80x24
terminal_title_opt=-T
title=CSSH
unmap_on_redraw=no
use_hotkeys=yes
window_tiling=yes
window_tiling_direction=right

diff -u .csshrc.default .csshrc.tweaked

--- .csshrc.default 2008-11-10 14:32:53.000000000 -0500
+++ .csshrc.tweaked 2008-11-10 14:20:23.000000000 -0500
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@
 extra_cluster_file=
 history_height=10
 history_width=40
-ignore_host_errors=no
+ignore_host_errors=yes
 key_addhost=Control-plus
 key_clientname=Alt-n
 key_paste=Control-v
@@ -23,14 +23,14 @@
 telnet_args=
 terminal=/usr/bin/xterm
 terminal_allow_send_events=-xrm '*.VT100.allowSendEvents:true'
-terminal_args=
+terminal_args=-bg lightyellow -fg black
 terminal_decoration_height=10
 terminal_decoration_width=8
-terminal_font=6x13
-terminal_reserve_bottom=0
-terminal_reserve_left=0
-terminal_reserve_right=0
-terminal_reserve_top=0
+terminal_font=-*-courier-medium-r-*-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
+terminal_reserve_bottom=10
+terminal_reserve_left=10
+terminal_reserve_right=10
+terminal_reserve_top=30
 terminal_size=80x24
 terminal_title_opt=-T
 title=CSSH