by administrator | 2025 Jan 7 | business, personal, random
M, a former colleague, a client and a friend visited me a few weeks back. He is one of the best people I have worked with.
We worked with him in his role at a client over a number of projects. He has since gone to a global firm where he has worked on a number of projects with MBB.
We chatted for a long time and he talked about his recent experience. He told me that he has discovered that Global Advisors were on the top rung of intellect and work – followed by MBB who he had found underwhelming.
It meant a huge amount.
I am fortunate to get great feedback from clients, but feedback from consultants or former consultants means a huge amount. GA has been going for 19 years. Perhaps twice have I a received appreciation for work we have performed from former team members.
I made sure to give appreciative feedback to my former mentors after I left Gemini. I hope it meant as much to them as M’s feedback did to me. In my experience, appreciation is far too rare.
by administrator | 2024 Jul 1 | random, technology
This month my renewal of my Let’s Encrypt certificate and upload to Zimbra stopped working, giving me the following error code:
“error 20 at 0 depth lookup: unable to get local issuer certificate”
Per this URL from Let’s Encrypt, there appears to be a new intermediate certificate, in my case for R10:
https://letsencrypt.org/certificates/
This would mean this needs to be added to the certification chain.
My new script to install the certificate is as follows:
#!/bin/bash -x
# Set the domain and paths for the Zimbra and LetsEncrypt certificates
domain="foo.bar"
zimbra_cert_path="/opt/zimbra/ssl/zimbra/commercial"
letsencrypt_cert_path="/etc/letsencrypt/live/${domain}"
# Check if the LetsEncrypt certificate is newer than the Zimbra one
echo "LetsEncrypt cert - ${letsencrypt_cert_path}/cert.pem"
echo "Zimbra cert - ${zimbra_cert_path}/commercial.crt"
if [[ $(date -d "$(openssl x509 -enddate -noout -in ${letsencrypt_cert_path}/cert.pem |cut -d= -f 2)" +%s) -gt $(date -d "$(openssl x509 -enddate -noout -in ${zimbra_cert_path}/commercial.crt |cut -d= -f 2)" +%s) ]]; then
echo "LetsEncrypt certificate is newer. Uploading to Zimbra..."
# Stop Zimbra services
su zimbra -c "/opt/zimbra/bin/zmcontrol stop"
cp "${letsencrypt_cert_path}/privkey.pem" "${zimbra_cert_path}/commercial.key"
chown zimbra:zimbra "${zimbra_cert_path}/commercial.key"
wget -O /tmp/ISRG-X1.pem https://letsencrypt.org/certs/isrgrootx1.pem
wget -O /tmp/r10.pem https://letsencrypt.org/certs/2024/r10.pem
cp "${letsencrypt_cert_path}/chain.pem" "${zimbra_cert_path}/chain1.pem"
chown zimbra:zimbra "${zimbra_cert_path}/chain1.pem"
su - -c "openssl x509 < ${zimbra_cert_path}/chain1.pem > ${zimbra_cert_path}/chain.pem" "${zimbra_cert_path}/chain.pem" #remove expired X3 cert
cat /tmp/r10.pem >> "${zimbra_cert_path}/chain.pem" #append X1 cert
cat /tmp/ISRG-X1.pem >> "${zimbra_cert_path}/chain.pem" #append X1 cert
cd /tmp
su zimbra -c "/opt/zimbra/bin/zmcertmgr deploycrt comm ${letsencrypt_cert_path}/cert.pem ${zimbra_cert_path}/chain.pem"
# Restart Zimbra services
su zimbra -c "/opt/zimbra/bin/zmcontrol start"
else
echo "Zimbra certificate is up to date."
fi
by administrator | 2022 Oct 3 | music, selected
this song will change your life…
What a great line from a great movie. Natalie Portman’s character meets that of Zach Braff in the doctor’s waiting room in the amazing movie Garden State. She hands him her headphones and says, “You gotta hear this one song, it’ll change your life I swear...”Â
It is a movie with a great soundtrack. I imagine it being a soundtrack that Zach Braff chose in the way that music can become a soundtrack to our lives.
Music has punctuated my life. One of my great regrets is not sticking with studying music. Instead, it has been my near constant companion.
Only about once a week, does it feel like a track or artist I am listening to is in harmony with my life!
If I am listening to something right now – and I probably am – you can see that being tracked in real-time by last.fm at the bottom of this page. My top artists for the past month are also shown down there.
Garden State
| August 20, 2004 (United States)
Summary: A quietly troubled young man returns home for his mother's funeral after being estranged from his family for a decade.
Countries: United StatesLanguages: English, Klingon
Music started in an opera house for me
My dad sang in the Cape Performing Arts and Ballet company (CAPAB) for over 15 years. Bizarrely, this gave birth to two of my loves – music and rugby. My Dad was a good rugby player and played for the CAPAB rugby team, somehow even roping in Rob Louw. I was something of a mascot. I also spent a lot of time watching opera and ultimately performed via a walk on part in two – Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci. The photo on the left is me on the set of Cavalleria Rusticana with the donkey us kids christened Baby Jesus.
 So when I went to school, my pop music knowledge extended to ABBA’s Super Trouper – I think it was the one modern album we possessed other than Hooked on Classics!
Later my dad bought me a compilation cassette tape of hits that included “Eye of the Tiger” and “Drop the Pilot.” My eclectic taste in music was born.
I took music as a subject in junior school for about a year. First recorder (because that’s where we were told you start) and then piano. I was an absolutely terrible student and after lack of practice, my parents were told I should give it up at the age of 9.
There are a few moments in life that I truly regret – that is one of them. My parents had scraped together money to buy an upright piano. I had not appreciated the sacrifice.
But more than that I have regretted while observing music from the sidelines ever since. I sang in the choir and eisteddfods until my voice broke, but since some way through high school when I came to truly love music, I have regretted not learning an instrument.
Most recently I have become intectually fascinated by music. It’s simplicity, complexity, music theory, how billions of people might come up with trillions of combinations of arbitrary notes, yet it is a few that hook us.
It’s never too late
I’m not sure about that – especially when I hardly have a minute in the day. However, I am encouraged at watching the results of older students following a limited amount of daily discipline.
So I recently bought a MIDI keyboard and hopefully I will soon be able to commit some time to regular practice. It is intimidating and has sat threateningly waiting for my impending efforts.
