Things I did today

I was nervous about making this bean soup because the Cajun version of HamBeens 15 Bean Soup mix was just not good, but I like ham and bean soup other times. I feel bad that I ended up throwing out the rest of the cajun version last year. This time, I stopped before tossing the regular seasoning packet in from my non-cajun HamBeens 15 bean mix, and smelled and tasted the seasoning in the packet. It was terrible! The "maltodextrin and other natural flavors" ingredients list I found about the packet seemed to be true. It was just overly sweet smoke flavor. I declined to use it. I later found a recipe for ham and bean soup in which the first few directions are "Open the bag of dried beans. If it contained a seasoning packet, throw that out." The soup was a huge experiment of what I've learned about seasoning, using the Instant Pot, the failure of the Cajun HamBeens 15 beans soup and reading through several ham and bean soup recipes. So, here is the final re

No, wait, don't do all the things. At least, not all at once. I've really regressed. I'm still not playing piano or working out despite making both of those things easy and obvious. I continually say "I can do that in a half hour" until around 9pm, where I start to get tired, then say "I'm too tired, I can do that tomorrow." Man, this version of Laura sucks. She's gained weight, is eating all the sugar and easy carbs in the kitchen, barely cooking, not doing her hobbies and feeling generally tired and slightly unhappy. However, I still shower every day, and wearing my braces means I have to brush and floss after every meal, and I turn up for work and actually do work while I'm logged in - see my recent troubles with SSIS - and I've been practicing photography and still writing daily, and I've even been taking a few walks of about two miles each. All of that stuff is great! But clearly it's not enough. I have way too much t

I added the SSIS service account to SQL server, and linked it to a credential, then a proxy, and then to the job itself, and ran the job. It failed, again with the 'it could be permissions or XML' error. So, I added the login as a user to the specific database. No dice. Ok, I'll grant it sa privileges. Nope. Ok, I'll log into the server itself and find the directory that has the SSIS package and explicitly grant read and execute privileges to the service account. Same error. Ugh. *I* can run it, but ljohnson isn't even explicitly listed in the server or databases. I'm inheriting privileges from a user group. Monday, I'll track down exactly what privileges the user group has and see how the service account is any different. I really wanted to get this wrapped up this week, but really, there's no rush to get it done. I was tired enough from that wild goose chase that I just ate two bowls of cereal for dinner and called it good. Tomorrow, I&

The trick was adding a new credential to act as a proxy to run the SQL job instead of the agent. I added one of the usual service accounts we use, but that ran into the same error. I then used my own account which has sa privileges since I'm a DBA and the job ran. Excellent! Now I'll create a user with the least amount of privileges needed to run SQL jobs as it's bad form to use a user account attached to a real person, as people quit, get fired, or sometimes change their name. I looked in my freezer a while ago and mistook the giant bag of frozen meat as ham, but it is actually pork shoulder, which makes me happy - it means I can make two rounds of Spicy Pineapple Pork instead of one! I'll still be making Ham and Bean soup this weekend with the other bag of actual frozen ham, and am researching spices for that. Yes, I know it'll probably just be chili powder, cumin, paprika, salt, pepper and garlic, but what about garlic salt? Or celery salt? What if I try a mixt

Today, I connected to the new 64bit VPN and found an issue with ports for our SQL Servers with a few folks on the infrastructure group and tested fixes throughout the day. I taught a developer the right way to create a backup file from a database and how to attach it. I learned how to use SSIS to execute SQL stored procedures... but not enough to run a job via the agent, because I haven't figured out how the agent on the box doesn't have access to the SSIS package on the server. It could also be an XML error, but that seems unlikely. Regardless, my job still fails. After work, I walked two miles while chatting with my mother, and enjoyed a glass of wine while playing GeoGuessr and solving today's mini crossword.

Today was a quiet day at work. I spent it editing documentation and reading how to use SQL Server Integration Services to automatically kick off stored procedures so that the data warehouse at work can have some sort of drip feed of data. After that I started researching ham and bean soup via instant pot, and what exactly is in the HamBeenz brand seasoning packet. (Spoiler: Maltodextrin and "natural flavors") When I made the HamBeenz Cajun soup a few months ago, I found the seasonings not so grand, so I wanted to know what was in the original, so I can either increase the spices or ignore the packet and put in my own spices. I know that I often have to double the spices (or more!) that are in a recipe. I've been reading several recipes as well as the soup chapter of The Food Lab by J. Kenzi Lopez-Alt. I'll watch Pro Home Cooks' video tomorrow about using spices. Today's crossword:

I walked two miles today, did a bit of reading, and planned meals for the rest of the week. I think the big weekend meal for the upcoming weekend will be ham and bean soup. The weekend after that will be spicy pineapple pork, and the weekend after that will be.... going to the grocery store, finally. Unless I decide to eat all the rice and beans that are still left. Today's crossword was slightly annoying, but I'll still practice them. Today's Coronavirus numbers: