June 24, 2004
Monumentally, profoundly stupid
... or how I learned the lesson of making backups.
I've been planning for quite a while to upgrade my home firewall machine, running OpenBSD, from version 3.3 to version 3.5. Tonight I started the process and like a good little boy, I backed up all the important stuff, before 'turfing' the machine (rebuilding from scratch). I backed up my home directory, stuff in /etc... other miscellanea. Trouble is, I got a bit fuzzy with the 'rsync' parameters. Anybody know what the '-n' parameter does? Yeah, that's right. It means "tell me what you would do, if I issued the command for real." I wasn't actually backing anything up. I was faking it. After I reformatted the firewall machine hard disk and installed 3.5, I moved to the backup machine to retrieve the important files. Only my home directory was there. The greatest lost, of course, is pf.conf. I have some bizarre rules based on the peer-to-peer stuff, various multi-player games, etc. I now have to rediscover that information and recreate the file. I suck.... yes, indeed... I suck
June 17, 2004
It's about time I returned
After a long hiatus, I'm finally posting again and it's from sunny Austin, Texas. I'm here on business and I've found a great little coffee shop, ironically named "The Hideout". The coffee and bagels are good and they have FREE WIRELESS. There are probably many Seattleites like me who were labouring under the misconception that these things are unique to our city. Vivace is still the best, but at least while I'm traveling I didn't have to settle for a Starbucks. (Yes, they have one just a block away from here). I have so many things to post about, but I have to get my work done first. In the meantime, what's on the reading list? I'm still trying to finish Jacques Barzun's "House of Intellect". I got bogged down about 2/3s of the way through. He seems so concerned about the problem statement but I don't see any solutions offered. I'm looking for a more positive spin and a call to action. I'm also reading "How to Practice. The Way to a Meaningful Life" by the Dalai Lama. It's a very practical guide to the main principles of living a Buddhist life, without delving into the deeper mysticisms and philosophies that would drown a beginner like me. I just came off of reading both "Being Peace" and "Touching Peace" by Thich Nhat Hahn. I wish I could be more like him, and strangely enough I find parallels between these books and "Leadership and Self-Deception" which I also recently read. I need to find the words to clarify this. Stay tuned.
Hideout Seating Area