Dispatches¶

A Quick HAProxy Load Balancer for VMware Cloud Foundation Operations

When I need to stand up a quick load balancer for VMware Cloud Foundation Operations in the lab, I don't want to rebuild the same HAProxy configuration by hand every time. I just want a small Debian or Ubuntu VM, a VIP on the right VLAN, a backend pool of appliance nodes, and a fast path to getting the service online.

This helper script is what I use for that job. It prompts for the virtual IP, netmask, redirect FQDN, and backend node IPs, then wires up the network interface, installs HAProxy, generates a fresh configuration, and restarts the required services. It is intentionally opinionated, which is exactly why it's useful in a home lab.

Maintain Formatting of Embedded Terraform Provider Examples with terrafmt

When a Terraform provider repository ships Markdown documentation full of example configuration, those snippets are part of the product. If they drift out of style, or worse, stop parsing as valid HCL, users feel it immediately. terrafmt is a small tool that helps keep embedded Terraform examples formatted and syntactically correct in both local workflows and CI.

terrafmt scans files for embedded Terraform configuration, extracts the matching blocks, parses the HCL, formats it, and then either shows the diff or rewrites the file in place. It recognizes embedded configuration in a few very practical forms:

• Markdown documentation files with fenced hcl, terraform, or tf blocks
• Go source files that return raw strings
• Go source files that build examples with fmt.Sprintf(...)

In other words, terrafmt is a bridge between "this is documentation" and "this is still code."

Orange and White '79

Field Dispatch: Increase the ESX Certificate Key Size in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0

In VMware Cloud Foundation 9, the certificate workflow in VMware Cloud Foundation Operations ("VCF Operations") can make ESX certificate replacement look more constrained than it is.

When generating a CSR for an ESX host, the interface may show 2048 as the only RSA key size available. In an environment where server certificates must use 3072 or 4096 bit keys, that can look like a mismatch between the platform and the security baseline.

The important detail is where the CSR gets its key size. For ESX hosts, CSR generation can use the host's advanced certificate key size setting, even when VCF Operations only displays 2048.

So the question is not only what the dialog shows. It is what the ESX host is configured to use when the CSR is created.

Linux Commands Reference: Essential CLI Categories for Daily Work

The Linux command line is one of those skills that keeps compounding. Once you can inspect a system, trace a process, move data safely, and answer your own questions from a shell prompt, you stop waiting on GUIs and start working at the speed of the machine. This reference gathers 15 essential command categories into one practical page you can keep nearby, whether you are building confidence or sharpening the habits that make day-to-day operations smoother.

This is not meant to be a memorize-everything-in-one-sitting tutorial. It is a working reference positioned between beginner comfort and intermediate fluency, with a handful of deeper operational workflows where extra context matters most.

Inside My VS Code Setup: Theme, Extensions, and Settings

If you spend hours a day in your editor, your setup stops being a cosmetic preference and starts becoming part of how you think. Mine has evolved into a very opinionated VS Code environment tuned for the work I do most often: Go, Python, PowerShell, Ansible, Terraform, Markdown, YAML, JSON, and a steady stream of GitHub-driven automation.

Earlier this month, I wrote about why I use JetBrains GoLand and PyCharm over VS Code for some language-specific work. That's still true. But VS Code remains one of the most useful tools on my machine because it is fast, flexible, and easy to shape around the task in front of me.

This post is a tour of the setup I keep coming back to, the one that feels like home every time I open VS Code.

Hole in the Floor

How to Write Effective GitHub Issue Templates

A pull request template improves the quality of proposed changes, but it only helps after someone has already made it to the solution stage. GitHub issue forms solve the earlier problem: they shape the information you collect when someone reports a bug, asks for an enhancement, or suggests a documentation fix. In that sense, they're the natural companion to a pull request template, and for many repositories they do even more to reduce maintainer back-and-forth.

While my previous post, How to Write an Effective GitHub Pull Request Template, was about improving review, this post is about improving intake.

• Pull request templates help contributors explain a proposed change.
• Issue template help contributors explain a problem, an idea, or a gap before any code has been written.

That distinction matters, because most maintainer time is lost much earlier in the process: missing reproduction steps, missing environment details, vague enhancement requests, and documentation issues with no concrete suggestion.

Some Things Stay Small

What the Red Clay Keeps

There are places in the South where mercy rots before it ripens. You can feel it in the sag of a porch beam, in the black water holding still beneath the cypress knees, in the red clay that clings to a boot like a hand unwilling to let go. Even in winter the land keeps its fever. Spanish moss hangs from the trees like old church lace gone gray with grief. Cicadas are long dead by January, but their husks still cling to fence posts and bark, the empty shape of a thing that sang itself raw and left its shell behind.

This is the country of crumbling sheds and cedar slats silvered by weather, where small lives are counted at daybreak and losses are folded into chores before breakfast. The air smells of ping, wet straw, heat, stale prayer, and the sour sweetness of something too long confined. Somewhere a mother lowers her voice because the truth sounds uglier spoken aloud. Somewhere a father studies the ground as though judgment might be written in the red clay. Before anything happens, you already know everybody here has inherited something they did not choose and will not escape.