Jeremy Ranch Triple Peaks

I've been planning this run all year so I'm glad I finally got it in before the snow gets any deeper.  It extends the Pinbrook Perimeter loop by adding out-and-backs to Summit Park Peak, Pinebrook Peak and Ecker Hill.

Click here for Garmin Connect route

I set off into the dark at 6am, it was 0º F, brr.  I put the microspikes on at Gorgoza Park and wore them the whole run except for the brief road section at the end of East Perimeter trail.  Toll Canyon is awesome in the dark, really calm and quiet.  I got to the top of Summit Park Peak just before dawn and hung out there for a few minutes savoring the view.  Heading back down into Toll Canyon was pretty incredible with the sun rising. Turning onto the West Perimeter trail there were no new human tracks since the last storm, but some pretty fresh moose tracks. A couple minutes later, I found the moose. Up onto the west side of Pinebrook Peak, I saw 2 more moose, then onto the top of Pinebrook peak.  I came down the steep east side of Pinebrook Peak which was fun, and followed the ridge and cut a big switchback following moose tracks that stayed on the ridge.  When I got to the Roosevelt bench there were 2 more moose.  I went down East perimeter, onto the road, back up Ecker hill and then down to home. Great run and 6 moose.  Here are a few pics.

View of Gobblers Knob from Summit Park Peak before sunrise

West perimeter trail

View of Summit Park Peak from West Perimeter

West side of Pinebrook Peak

Pinebrook Peak looking at Murdoch Peak

IP address conflict on RackSpace Cloud Server

I came across an issue today that took me a while to figure out so I thought I'd share to hopefully help someone out someday.

I'm working on RackSpace cloud servers configuring and compiling packages for a web application.  We are also using RackConnect, a service from RackSpace that allows the cloud servers to coexist in a private network with dedicated servers.  I started with base CentOS 6.0 image and used yum to install a few packages that I would need.  Well, I inadvertently installed NetworkManager which was the source of my problems.

After a reboot, both network interfaces eth0 and eth1 were coming up with the same IP address. Looking at other 'working' cloud servers I could see that only eth1 was configured with the private IP address and eth0 was disabled.

I confirmed with RackSpace support that the contents of /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth* were correct, but NetworkManager doesn't use these so it was configuring them unexpectedly. It was assigning the private IP address to both interfaces creating an address conflict. I could recreate this by doing

/etc/init.d/NetworkManager restart

which would create the address conflict, and then

/etc/init.d/network restart 

which would correctly assign the private IP to eth1 and leave eth0 inactive.

Because this will eventually be an application server, there won't be a need for NetworkManager so my fix was to remove NetworkManager from loading during boot.

/sbin/chkconfig --del NetworkManager


I should mention that I've used NetworkManager on laptops and desktops for years and it works great, but it really shouldn't be installed in a server environment that will probably have static addresses anyway.

Black-bellied Whistling Ducks

Some extended footage of Black-bellied Whistling Ducks in Hermann Park a couple weeks ago.  

Running Mid Mountain in December

Yesterday I tried to run the Hunter's section of the Mid Mountain Trail. There hasn't been much new snow recently so I thought it might be doable if snowshoers had packed it out. Heading up to Pinebrook Peak was perfect in microspikes, but past that there was really only animal tracks and a couple ski tracks. I stayed on the west side of the ridge where the snow was thin but then eventually dropped over the ridge onto the trail. The rest of the trail was mainly uneven crusty moose tracks and shin deep post-holing, not very runnable but I still enjoyed it. When I got to The Canyons I coasted down the groomers which was really nice after miles of slogging.

Runkeeper Map

Ducks & Drums

Here's some action from our week in Houston.

Cian loves ducks so we went to Hermann Park to find some.

Fish in the Japanese Garden.

And then the drums showed up...