Rick’s Rants and Raves

I’m a decent cook, thanks in large part to my wife. I’ve gained enough experience that I’m able to cook pretty much anything given a recipe, and I can improvise even if I don’t have a recipe. But, I’m not amazing. I get food on the table that doesn’t make us gag.

Yesterday, Anne went to a scrapbooking event just prior to dinner time on a night when we had no menu plan. We’ve been eating out a lot recently so I was determined to make use of the food in the house. Hrm… but how?

So here’s what I did (not that I’m proud): put some chicken breasts on the Foreman grill, and started boiling some rigatoni. (I chose rigatoni because the box has been half used for a millennium). A few minutes before the end of the rigatoni’s cooking time, I threw some frozen broccoli into the water. When the chicken was cooked, I cut it into chunks, and added salt and pepper. When the rigatoni and broccoli were done, I drained them, then added the chicken. Now comes the part I’m not proud of: I added (ahem) ranch dressing. I tossed it all together with a little bit of Parmesan cheese, and slapped it on some plates for the kids, calling it chicken broccoli alfredo.

As Nathan finished his second plate full, he suggested “Daddy, you really should open a restaurant!”

Thanks buddy, but, um, no.

• Sandalwood soap
• a warm cat on a lap
• a fire in the fire pit on the back patio, speakers playing favorite music, geese flying south in v-formation, and s’mores
• kids who get creative with a sheet of foil
• rain after a hot dry summer
• a wonderful garlic smell from a neighbor’s dinner
• laughing with friends at work

Row 1: Nathan receives Wolf Rank; Nathan fishing at Chautauqua; Patricia, Emily and Lo at Switchfoot

Row 2: Zoo trip with friends; Apples to Apples on a rainy July 4th; Kathy’s birthday

Row 3: On the farm in Ontario; Niagara falls; horseback riding

Row 4: Kathy’s Ridge camp; Gaelic Storm at the Dublin Irish Fest; On the Ferris wheel at the State Fair

Row 5: On the ferris wheel at the State Fair; On Burr Oak Lake; Old Man’s Cave Gorge

Row 6: At The Wilds; Riding the Beast at King’s Island; Ashley’s Wedding.

The second part of the Genesys health check involves smoke-testing GAD (Genesys Agent Desktop). This script requires wget to be in your path or in the same directory.
To customize for your location, just put the host:port for all the GAD servers in the SERVERS variable. This script will then spawn a new process for each one and check:

1. Administrative login
2. Count of users logged in
3. Verify user login is presented
4. Check GAD application status via a proprietary (to my company) widget which returns the application status. You’ll probably have to comment out the whole :check_status section.

@echo off
REM Version 3.0
REM This version is more complicated because it has been redesigned to run multi-threaded for its results.
rem if we don’t have a command line being passed in, then we are the parent process

set result=%temp%\gad-healthcheck.txt
set SERVERS=wpoh0010gengw01:10362 wpoh0010gengw02:10362 wpil0210gengw01:10362 wpil0210gengw02:10362 wpky0190gngad01:10100 wpky0190gngad01:10120 wpky0190gngad02:10100 wpky0190gngad02:10120 wpky0190gngad03:10100 wpky0190gngad03:10120 wpar0130gngad01:10100 wpar0130gngad01:10120 wpar0130gngad02:10100 wpar0130gngad02:10120 wpar0130gngad03:10100 wpar0130gngad03:10120

if .%1.==.. (
if exist %result% del %result%
echo Spawning individual threads…
for %%j in (%SERVERS%) do start /min “%%j” %0 %%j
rem check for the existence of the log files and wait until all processes are complete.
ping localhost -n 5 > nul
echo.|set/p BLAH=Waiting for threads to complete
:wait_here
ping localhost -n 1 > nul
echo.|set/p BLAH=.
if exist %temp%\gad-health-check-wp*.txt goto :wait_here
type %temp%\gad-health-check-wpoh*.don > %result% 2>nul
type %temp%\gad-health-check-wpil*.don >> %result% 2>nul
type %temp%\gad-health-check-wpar*.don >> %result% 2>nul
type %temp%\gad-health-check-wpky*.don >> %result% 2>nul
del %temp%\gad-health-check*.don
if .%QUIETMODE%. NEQ .TRUE. start notepad %result%
goto :eof
)

rem if we got here, it is because another instance called us, and we’re our own thread, to work on a single server.

for /F “delims=: tokens=1,2″ %%p in (‘echo %1′) do call :_set_host_port %%p %%q
set result=%temp%\gad-health-check-%host%-%port%.txt
set LOG=%temp%\%host%-%port%-output.txt
set tmp=%temp%\%host%-%port%-tmp.txt
if exist %LOG% del %LOG%
if exist %tmp% del %tmp%

echo.|set/P BLAH=>%result%

echo.|set/P BLAH=Checking %1

echo.|set/p BLAH=%1 >>%result%

:admin_login
echo.|set/P BLAH=admin
wget –output-file=%LOG% –output-document=%tmp% –tries=1 –timeout=15 “http://%1/gdesktop/admin/mainpage.jsp?userName=dublin25&userPassword=dublin25″ “http://%1/gdesktop/admin/agentList.jsp”
for /F %%m in (‘findstr /c:”Available Links dublin25″ %tmp%’) do echo.|set/p BLAH=Admin OK, >> %result%
findstr /i “failed error” %LOG% >> %result%

:count_users
echo.|set/P BLAH=user count
for /F “tokens=9″ %%j in (‘find “Agents list Nb” %tmp%’) do echo.|set/p BLAH=%%j users, >>%result%

:user_login
echo.|set/P BLAH=user login
wget –output-file=%LOG% –output-document=%tmp% –tries=1 –timeout=15 “http://%1/gdesktop/”
for /F %%m in (‘findstr /c:”" %tmp%’) do echo.|set/p BLAH=Agent OK, >> %result%
findstr /i “failed error” %LOG% >> %result%

:check_status
echo.|set/P BLAH=app status
wget –output-file=%LOG% –output-document=%tmp% –tries=1 –timeout=15 “http://%1/gdesktop/JGenAppStatus?XmlAppStatusRequest=false”
for /F “delims=<>(). tokens=6″ %%k in (%tmp%) do echo.|set/P BLAH=%%k >> %result%
findstr /i “failed error” %LOG% >> %result%
echo done.
echo.>> %result%

move %result% %result%.don
exit

:_set_host_port
set HOST=%1
set PORT=%2
goto :eof