Pictures of my Home Setup

24 U server rack (double sided) and our cooling setup for the hot months. 

Home computer setup and desk:

Some Previous Portfolio Screenshots

This is my personal github that I use for side projects or just public work: https://github.com/xianthe. I do have access to multiple viacomCBS (Paramount) repos, but I am not signed in to the platform currently. There should be enough here to have samples of my work. 

This is the nick music web scraping project. I remote into the VM using VSC and a WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) VM. I use both zsh and Ubuntu for this project. This is the editor I use right now but I can use vim and emacs, and have used multiple others over time. I am also trying out some of the newer editors like Comet just to see what they offer.

I set up gitlab for this project and I'm still hosting it for Paramount, this is running from our servers in the house. These are private repos for myself, our gaming hobbies or older projects we developed. This is also where the work is done for the discord plugins we run or write.

Example blog I whipped up for a friend who wants to learn coding:

This is on another github account than my main one: https://xiantai-shinigami.github.io/casca-list/

Representing Trion at a SF Game Conference with other devs and community staff:

Atlas Reactor mascot and one of our office dogs: 

Some of my whiteboarding for an email verification project that I developed during the brainstorm and planning stage:

One of our games Atlas Reactor and doing some steam updates and posting initial events so our community team can take over that role. 

Me doing some debugging in Postman for a REST API probably related to the CAS SSO project.

We have a large Plex instance at the house which is one of my hobbies with several petabytes of data. Plex is a media server like having your own Netflix library for your own media. Here is me helping a friend with Chinese translation in 2016.

The SSO library that I had to upgrade at Trion to work on all our platforms. I was the sole developer. Some of this work was in PHP, some in JS, Apache Tomcat, Apache Struts and many components in our auth and payment systems for the Java stack. All work was completed and all upgrades rolled out to production to prevent several critical CVEs. Initial patches were also done by me to prevent CVEs that could not wait for the project completion.

A sample of the Agora Games (MLG eSports) brochure site custom PHP CMS, Drupal and WordPress interface with one of the pages I authored details on. I've done several for various sponsors like Old Spice, Frito Lay, Bic (the shaving company), Hot Pockets, PNCBank and many others. Usually quick turn around projects with specs given for the ads and any custom functionality they would like for call to actions.

KeePass was my first password manager that I started using in the mid 2000s, from there I've used 1Password and now on Bitwarden.

JIRAs for our R&D and Development teams at ENA that I was scrum master for. This is the role that I did all deployments for on the Linux side using Puppet and all front-end development for our multiple tools as an educational ISP. This stack was backbone.js, PHP and several other languages. There was a ton of sysadmin and DevOps work. We had our own wireless APs and hardware customized for our clients. Our team of 4 also ran the on-premises data center in our office and were responsible for the development environments or tricky customer hardware issues.

Intro to C guide I keep revisiting when I have downtime. I also have the original Kernighan and Ritchie 1988 which is probably still in a box downstairs somewhere.

Doing admin work in Hootsuite for social media management at various startups.

Working on FB marketing integration for Trion games. I was the only admin for the company.

Balsamiq wireframing tool which I've used on a few projects. I usually use Figma these days or an online free tool for quick whiteboarding.

Lore written out on our team whiteboard at work for Trove (a MMORPG version of a game like Minecraft.)

Fixing Windows Credentials and Mapped Network Drive

Broken PC 🔧🛠️👨‍🔧

I have two main PCs I use for development. One is basically my old main pc that is now turned into a streaming / second monitor / storage device. I have a few old and mirrored drives on it that were broken with the move and/or networking changes.

I remapped the drive this morning and ran into a few issues and fixed them. I don't know PowerShell commands off the top of my head nor some of the internals of Microsoft Networking but with a bit of searching I run the commands needed to fix this issue. I have some other tasks and older VMs I need to work on so fixing these issues is step one.

While working on this, I found out the Hyper-V Network Adapter was missing from Device Manager in Win 11. When I went to reboot to ensure the hypervisor was working, I got stuck in a a boot loop. I  haven't installed recent updates in a while, but with Windows it is possible it snuck something in.

I was in the middle of working on the most recent post when this happened. So I spent an hour or two fixing my Windows 11 machine.

I initially blamed Windows because I thought the recent boot loop / update issues struck. I was wrong. I have updates paused and I haven't had a major feature update since January 2025. Just the security updates. It ended up being some issues with the network stack:

I ended up having to do Windows Recovery and sfc /scannow to fix the Windows system files. I also did the DISM command to make sure the other system files were good.

Updating the MacBook

The MacBook is my portable workstation and webcam/meeting machine so I haven't updated it since before moving.

Did this while waiting for my main computer to reboot after a windows update and fixing a mapped drive/networking issue. I'll make a post for that next. The issue is fixed just making sure Windows 11 is stable before I continue. I have quite a bit of RAM on the main computer and it can take up to 10m to reboot from a cold start. 

(Also trying out a *new* feature from Blogger for direct links to Google Search, so apologies if any links are not correct.)

Test - Reviving the blog

 Republishing some old articles.

Windows 10 Pro Storage Spaces Issues

I recently had a corrupted Win10Pro virtual disk image. After some research I wasn't aware of the fact that just turning it on isn't enough. The default options can cause data loss. There are ways to secure it but after a bit of reading this is a deep rabbit hole.

Ultimately I want backup recovery and restore options for Win10. First I am turning on System Restore points under the recovery option and File History. I am not sure why these are not on by default, or at least asked about during install.


Summary of Items used:
File History
Windows System Restore (Turn on System Restore for each drive)
Windows Defender AV (Enabled - this allows for daily snapshots, once you update your group policies)
Back up and Restore (backup is enabled)
Disk Management
Local Group Policy Editor (for editing things, run > gpedit.msc)

Links:
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-create-automatic-system-restore-points-daily-windows-10

Enabling Windows Defender:
My Windows defender install was disabled by group policy (this is a home PC). So I am walking through the recommended steps for fixing this issue.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_defender-protect_scanning/windows-defender-this-app-is-turned-off-by-group/dfa59c2a-b358-4f62-80b6-6b8e4994dc32

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_other-protect_updating-windows_10/windows-defender/dd9e4c78-efc5-4e30-8e6f-3030ae9713ff

https://www.askvg.com/windows-10-fix-your-organization-used-windows-defender-application-control-to-block-this-app-error-message/

https://windowsreport.com/windows-defender-error-577-windows-10/

https://www.lepide.com/blog/top-10-most-important-group-policy-settings-for-preventing-security-breaches/

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-protection/windows-defender-security-center/wdsc-virus-threat-protection

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/1977-windows-10-tutorial-index.html

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_defender-protect_scanning/windows-defender-this-app-is-turned-off-by-group/dfa59c2a-b358-4f62-80b6-6b8e4994dc32

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_defender-protect_scanning/windows-defender/e994f94f-92d5-4d44-9721-79c2a686ce24

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-create-automatic-system-restore-points-daily-windows-10

Follow the steps provided in this thread:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_defender-protect_scanning/windows-defender-is-stopped-by-group-policy/9152a503-2e55-46ba-9a39-1ae6ef919769

And illustrated in this thread:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_defender-protect_scanning/windows-defender-this-app-is-turned-off-by-group/dfa59c2a-b358-4f62-80b6-6b8e4994dc32

If you have a more general problem with downloading or running these malware-removal apps; or if they aren’t able to remove the malware – then run a scan with Windows Defender Offline or download a rescue disk on another PC. All of these apps run outside of the Windows environment just like WDO:

http://support.kaspersky.com/viruses/rescuedisk?level=2

http://www.bitdefender.com/support/How-to-create-a-BitDefender-Rescue-CD-627.html

http://www.avira.com/en/support-download-avira-antivir-rescue-system

http://www.avg.com/us-en/avg-rescue-cd-download

http://www.freedrweb.com/livecd/                                                                                                                               

http://www.eset.com/int/support/sysrescue/

Windows Defender isn’t supposed to be turned off via Group Policy when a third-party AV app is installed, as I’ve explained in this thread:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_defender-protect_start/windows-defender-is-off-i-cant-turn-it-on/c1ef0d9b-7940-4108-9578-de2c996b75ea

So on a home PC; we would normally assume that the Group Policy switch was thrown by malware that’s somehow managed to escalate its privilege-level to the rank of “administrator”. It’s also quite likely that the malware succeeded because Defender didn’t have a signature/behavioral detection for it – so I would recommend scanning with this set of malware-removal tools:

Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool:

http://support.kaspersky.com/viruses/kvrt2015

Emsisoft Emergency Kit:

http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/eek/

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (free version only):

https://www.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/

Eset Online Scanner:

http://www.eset.com/us/online-scanner/

Some other trusted third-party malware-removal tools are listed here:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/wiki/protect_other-protect_scanning/list-of-malware-removal-tools/d824b9af-ebd8-4c47-94e2-8ee6c544c100

Then turn Defender back on with this REG command: Right-click on the Start button, select Command Prompt (Admin), and then copy, paste, and run (enter) this command line:

REG DELETE "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender" /v DisableAntiSpyware 

As I’ve illustrated here:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_defender-protect_scanning/windows-defender-this-app-is-turned-off-by-group/dfa59c2a-b358-4f62-80b6-6b8e4994dc32

Or, if you suffer from command-line phobia, then use the REG file provided here:

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/5918-windows-defender-turn-off-windows-10-a.html

Turn_On_Windows_Defender.reg is a trusted file, and this is all there is to it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

; Created by: Shawn Brink

; http://www.tenforums.com

; Tutorial: http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/5918-windows-defender-turn-off-windows-10-a.html

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender]

"DisableAntiSpyware"=-

Links:
https://support.kaspersky.com/viruses/kvrt2015 (Kapersky Virus Removal Tool 2015)

Enabling Backup Options on Windows
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/55153-select-drive-file-history-windows-10-a.html
https://www.easeus.com/backup-software/tb-home.html (Check this one out/research)
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/windows-7-64-bit-the-backup-failed-error/a4abfd13-edcd-44e5-b658-2440672f1f90



Links:
https://www.easeus.com/backup-software/tb-home.html
https://www.acronis.com/en-gb/personal/buy-backup/
https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/how-back-up-windows-10-3635397/
https://www.aomeitech.com/download.html

Spring Tools Suite

Going to work on setting up Spring Tools Suite (STS) - customized Eclipse IDE again for the umpteenth time. Each time I start on this project I get pulled back into a much larger project and do not have time to finish. At work I normally  use Sublime or Atom editors to do my fast editing. But for debugging and code analysis I need an IDE for Java. I tried out IntelliJ for a while, but I have decided I want to go back to Eclipse, the workhorse I used to use for the last ~10+ years. Normally it doesn't take this long, but our project setup here at Trion is quite complex.

One of the things I noticed while setting things up was performance I adjusted memory settings and disabled some of the default settings on STS. I did this because as I added software, plugins and configured the very large default application I am working on, I noticed a significant performance decrease.

Links used:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyCR5jRMLi8 [Basic setup for a project in STS]
• http://answers.perforce.com/articles/KB/1084/?q=vss&l=en_US&fs=RelatedArticle
• http://help.eclipse.org/neon/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.jdt.doc.user/reference/ref-icons.htm [Icons on the package explorer]

[Update: I originally started writing this a few weeks ago.]

STS is up and running currently on version 3.9.1. In addition I have JRebel setup but there are issues with that our project so I'm working with JRebel support to get that working. It's nice to have a working debugger again. I tried using IntelliJ and though I don't hate it -- for our setup and purposes I didn't like it. I might go into details in a later post.

Parking more info about Aerohive items. I could use a link tool such as diigo, but this has more context and it won't get lost in a the shuffle, plus I can come back later and edit the post for more details.

http://www.insearchoftech.com/2013/03/22/aerohives-latest-product-release/

Parking JS MVC Info

This isn't the best blog post, but sometimes I'm reading and I read through an article (so it doesn't belong in something like Diigo or Evernote or Pocket) and I know I'll want to reference it and a series of others in its's context later. In this case its around advanced JS MVC topics. We aren't quite ready to implement them, and I'm not quite ready to throw away my research materials. I also need to get them out of my browser.

[No idea how current these are]
List of articles:
http://tomdale.net/2012/01/amd-is-not-the-answer/
http://tagneto.blogspot.com/2012/01/simplicity-and-javascript-modules.html

Found a good article about Mocks and Stubs in various languages:
http://a-developer-life.blogspot.com/2011/12/mocks-stubs-expectations-fakes-stubs.html

Learning Resources - Reposting a Link Dump

Very Ruby on Rails specific, but valuable nonetheless.

https://github.com/bf4/learning

http://railsapps.github.com/best-recommended-learning-rails-books-resources.html

http://everydayrails.com/2010/08/04/more-free-ruby-rails-books.html

http://playbook.thoughtbot.com/

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books

Program like a game developer

I really liked this article. Both because it is something I need to work on and it espouses the philosophies I believe in for how to work and make work fun.

Program like a Game Developer

Want to know Rails? Break it. Break it to pieces. Delete all of application.rb and see what happens. Create controllers that pull data from files instead of databases. Create views that initialize variables and contain huge swaths of business logic. Create models that contruct HTML and JavaScript. Tie it all together with duct tape and CoffeeScript. Test nothing, test everything. Build models that only contain one field. Build a model that houses every piece of data your application could possibly need.

This is an awesome quote. Break stuff. Don't overanalyze. Don't fuss about naming conventions and folder structure.

 

Doing more set up with my new MacBook Air (Yay!), and simultaneously my vmware instance.

Here are some of the links I have used:
http://git-scm.com/book/en/Getting-Started-First-Time-Git-Setup
http://eveningsamurai.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/changingamending-the-author-of-a-git-commit/
http://qugstart.com/blog/ruby-and-rails/create-a-new-git-remote-repository-from-some-local-files-or-local-git-repository/
http://railsapps.github.com/rails-git.html

I can't believe how old hat deploying to Heroku has become for me now as well. It's really great for getting small applications off the ground.

Setting up a new Mac OS Machine for Ruby Dev

Since I'm getting a new Mac OSX machine.... Just leaving this here. Other than using RubyEnv, I pretty much agree with it:

[Reposted from http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2998-setting-up-a-new-machine-for-ruby-development]

Setting up a new machine for Ruby development David Sep 06 2011

33 comments Latest by Tony Huynh

It used to be a jarring experience to set up a new machine for development, but progress has paved the dirt road into a silky smooth autobahn. These are the tools we use today:

1. Homebrew: Remember how painful it used to be to get imagemagick installed? Now it takes about a minute. “brew install imagemagick”. Same story for git and other Linux dependencies.
2. rbenv/ruby-build: We have some apps running on Ruby 1.8.7, some on 1.9.2, and some on 1.9.3. ruby-build makes it easy to compile all three, rbenv makes it easy to switch between them on a per-project basis. We run rbenv in production as well, so all you need to do to change the Ruby version there is alter .rbenv-version—development and production is always on the same page.
3. Bundler: Not everyone at 37signals loved Bundler at first, but now that it’s stable, they’ve been won over. I now curse whenever I have to use an old application that hasn’t been setup with Bundler. Manually tracing down dependencies?! How prehistoric!
4. rake setup: All our apps has a rake setup task that’ll run bundler, create the databases, import seeds, and install any auxiliary software (little these days) or do any other setup. So when you git clone a new app, you know that “rake setup” will take care of you.
5. Pow: No more messing with Apache or nginx for local development. All it takes for Pow to add another app is a symlink. All the apps are always configured and available at basecamp.dev, highrise.dev, etc without messing with the hosts file either.

Arch Linux VM Fun

Messed around with another VM this morning. Awaiting my new 11 inch MacBook Air, I keep watching my tracking number with anticipation! I have an old serviceable machine at home that has been upgraded motherboard and all over the years, but it's nearing end of life. It's currently running Windows 7 and has 8 GB Ram. Nothing fancy, but it works.

The VM I was working with early this morning was ArchLinux, I haven't used it before but got caught in some permissions matrix that I will have to sort out later. I spent enough time on it that I will have to move on. Old me would have gutted it out and stayed up all day, but I'm learning better habits. I'll try and make a post another day and fix the Arch Linux upgrade path. No promises, though. Pictures from the nightmare below, and some links. I should note this is all with pacman package manager, and its permissions and desires.

Summary of what I tried:
= Updating pacman "pacman -S pacman"
= Updating the entire core "pacman -Syu" and clearing the cache "pacman -Sc"
= Trying a forced update with no confirmations: "pacman -Syuf --noconfirm" (probably a bad idea!)
= Adding SigLevel = Optional TrustAll to the /etc/pacman.conf
= Above all this, doing a "pacman-key --init" to update the pgp keys
= Trying to force the update further with "pacman -S filesystem --force"

Links:
Pacman "error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files)" (Page 1) / Pacman & Package Upgrade Issues / Arch Linux Forums

[SOLVED] "signature from is unknown trust."

During all of this, took mental breaks and cleaned around the house, and played with HTML/CSS.

Setting up Virtual Box Ubuntu on Win 7

Got up this morning to set up a new Virtual Box VM for Win 7. I used the following links:

• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Ubuntu_as_Guest_OS
• http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-install-gui-on-ubuntu-11-04-natty-server.html

Gave up waiting for root device error
The only issue I ran into was that the directions had my VDI (virtual disk image) set up as SATA instead of SCSI. I went into the Virtual Box settings for the Ubuntu VM under Storage, removed the offending SATA Controller, added the SCSI controller in its' place with the VDI I had setup.

I used this link to figure out how to solve the issue: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1870942

I installed gnome IDE (this took quite a while) and then got started with a "startx" command.

Installing Ruby on Rails Framework