Patching the Patch

Posted on June 16, 2025 by way0utwest

I had to make a few changes to a SQL Saturday event recently. The repo is public, and some of the organizers submit PRs for their changes, and others send me an email/message/text/etc. for a change. In this case, an organizer just asked for a couple of image updates to their site. I opened VS Code, created a branch, added a URL for the images, and submitted my own PR. After the build, I deployed it.

And it didn’t work.

I had a broken image. I checked the URL in code and realized I had “events” copied before the URL, which wasn’t valid. Ok, edit the URL to be correct and repeat: new PR, build, merge, deploy.

And it didn’t work.

I was looking at the code live on the site, the code in the repo, and I was trying to reconcile paths and file names and keys and values and a few other things.

I realized the world for a developer hadn’t changed a lot, and in fact, I was in the age-old loop: deploy, patch, patch the patch, fix the patch for the patch, and so on. I don’t even know that I could have gotten better here with testing, as these were one-off data changes that affected the site for users. If I enter the wrong data, it’s wrong. I can’t easily test for this.

I have written code that was wrong, and a few simple tests would have caught my issues. I’ve also written code that isn’t easy to test. If I am adding or changing data, it’s hard to test that. Often, I might do some copy/pasting between the code and the test to generate the test. If I’ve typoed something, the typo continues through the test (in some cases). Even using a code generator or an AI to produce the INSERT or UPDATE code might not solve the problem. They might read my typos in a prompt.

One of the best things to help code quality in the last few decades is continuous integration (CI), where we have automated systems that compile code, test it, and run it. It’s not perfect, but it does help reduce the silly mistakes many of us likely make every day when writing code. These can’t prevent typos and issues, but if we are testing intermediate systems, hopefully somewhere along the way, a human or AI agent tries to verify that the things we were typing exist and can catch a typo.

In this case, I had to find where I’d mistyped the line and realized that I had the path wrong. The image was in a subfolder and I needed to add that to the img url.

Working with data is hard, and it’s a constant source of simple mistakes. I don’t know we’ll ever get away from patching the patch when data manipulation is involved.

Steve Jones

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Moving to Rancher Desktop

Posted on June 16, 2025 by way0utwest

I’ve been very happy with Docker Desktop for years, running it on both laptop and desktop. However, a corporate decision was made to move to Rancher Desktop, so I now have an unexpected “opportunity” to learn something new.

Here’s a short post on how things went on the desktop and laptop.

Getting Rancher Desktop

I had never heard of Rancher. I’ve met a number of Linux/Oracle people using Podman, but not Rancher. You can download Rancher from rancherdesktop.io. This is a project from SUSE, of the Linux distribution fame, and one of their many projects.

The install is a next/next/next standard Windows MSI, though once installed, I found I needed WSL2 on my desktop. On my laptop, I ran wsl –v and saw this.

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On my desktop, I installed this first, and tried to get things going. It installed, downloaded some Kuberbetes things, asked me to use containerd or dockerd (I chose the latter), and then was running. Once the engine was up, my docker commands worked and I could start containers.

However, there was a problem in that I had a volume (unnamed) that a few containers were using. However, after uninstalling Docker Desktop, I couldn’t find the volumes. I’m lightly concerned I’ve lost some data, which isn’t the end of the world, but it annoying.

Learning From My Mistakes

On my laptop, I decided to try and make this smoother. First, I uninstalled Docker.

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Next I ran the Rancher install.

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Once this installed, I started the desktop program. It again downloaded some Kubernetes components and then seemed to be up and running.

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I tried Docker components after starting the Rancher Desktop (RD), but before I realized it was downloading stuff. That was the docker error shown first below. The second one was once the online status was shown in RD.

First Tests

I have a few containers set up to run SQL Server with docker compose files. I have a batch file I double click for “docker compose up” (and another for down). I clicked one and saw this: images downloading.

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I assumed an image store would be an image store, but apparently not. Rancher must use a different place. That’s an interesting thing I need to check. Do I have extra images laying around. I think my Docker Desktop was using containerd, so maybe that’s part of this.

I could connect from SSMS fine and I could see my container running in the desktop (I had to switch away from the Containers item and back).

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I also checked some docker commands and they seemed to work. I could get a list of containers, and apparently Rancher runs a bunch itself.

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I could also see logs from my container, which are handy at times when I need to try and debug an issue.

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Summary

I have to admit that after a week, I’m still nervous. Losing a volume, whether it’s really gone or I just can’t find it, is disturbing. I hate losing data.

Rancher seems to work fine for the basic things I do with containers, though the interface feels incomplete and simple. I can’t set hardware limits, it isn’t an active interface, and I feel like I’ve lost a lot of options. I didn’t really use more, but I still feel some loss.

I haven’t heard internal complaints from anyone, so I’m assuming that most container based things still work. We’ll see how I like this across the next month.

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The Third Sabbatical

Posted on June 13, 2025 by way0utwest

I can’t believe I’ve been at Redgate long enough to get a third sabbatical. I’ve very lucky to have this job, still enjoy it, and get the benefit. I’ve scheduled it from Jun 30 – Aug 8, and I’ll be gone from work during that time.

The idea of the sabbatical is to get away from work and recharge. It’s an extended break, and while some people use this to further their career in some way, others just try to get away from their daily life.

I wrote about a bunch of projects I had during my first one. The second one was less planned, but I also had a quick review of the time away.

For this one, I have no great plans right now. In fact, life has been so busy this year, I haven’t even had time to think about what to do, but I didn’t want to delay things, so this was the best time to take it.

I started this post to get me to at least lightly focus on the time and what the possibilities could be. For now, I have a few things to do:

  • Work with a contractor to replace the covering on our riding arena
  • Rebuild a better generator house and re-wire a circuit
  • Replace some damaged fencing
  • Rebuild 2 horse feeders
  • Organize the garage a bit more
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Advice I Like: Focus on what’s important

Posted on June 13, 2025 by way0utwest

Don’t let someone else’s urgency becomes your emergency. In fact, don’t be governed by the urgent of any sort. Focus on the important. The urgent is a tyrant. – from Excellent Advice for Living

I try to set my life up to be fairly relaxed. A little chaotically busy, but relaxed. I try to stay ahead of work, plan things, get them prepped, and beat my milestones, at work or at home.

However.

As some people might say, life happens. Others might use a different 4 letter word, but I’ve liked life. As John Lennon says: Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

I do try to help others and accommodate them, but another’s emergency isn’t mine. I am here for support, and to listen, but encroaching on my wallet or my time is something I have to choose to give you. Sometimes I might, but sometimes I might not. Ultimately. I don’t want to get jerked around by others, at work or in life.

I try to remember what’s important, which might not be someone else’s thing. This might mean previous plans take precedence. Or it might mean that I decide to help with your emergency. The important thing is the important thing.

I’ve been posting New Words on Fridays from a book I was reading, however, a friend thought they were a little depressing. They should be as they are obscure sorrows. I like them because they make me think.

To counter-balance those, I’m adding in thoughts on advice, mostly from Kevin Kelley’s book. You can read all these posts under the advice tag.

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