Some days, you just have to shake your head.
I just got off the phone with a colocation facility in Houston, Texas, trying to figure out why our servers are dropping like flies today. Four down so far, and signs of trouble on a few others, almost certainly foul play – I’m trying to keep in mind the old sysadmin truism ‘Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity’. Still, my lip curls a little at the thought of some fourteen-year-old kid in his mom’s basement in Iowa sending his massive botnet up against our servers in response to some unrealized slight. Or maybe he’s earning money somehow, or even just the admiration of his peers. Or maybe he’s just being a dick. *shrug*.
I’d say “he or she”, but I have yet to meet a girl with both the skills to launch a DDoS attack and the sociopathic tendencies to actually do it. I’m sure she’s out there somewhere.
Just to juxtapose, by “phone” I actually mean “Skype from my tiny laptop, sitting in the sun on the roof of my sailboat”. Seriously, had you told me five years ago that this would all be possible, I don’t think I would have laughed outright, but I would probably have smirked. All of these little incremental upgrades in technology and lifestyle have slowly and quietly added up to the WORLD OF TEH FUTUR3!!@1 that we were promised as kids. It’s finally here!
…now where’s my rocket car?
Anyhow. I was actually only using Skype because my cellphone batteries are currently dead, and I left the charger in New Brunswick the last time I was there. Since it’s a basic no-frills Motorola flip I can charge it up with a regular mini-USB cable I had lying around, but unfortunately my MacBook Air only has a single USB port. I get to choose – would I rather have my cellphone charged up, or would I rather be on the internet? Internet, I choose you.
Also in the realm of electricity, my diesel engine currently isn’t starting. I turn the battery selector to the starter battery bank, I pull the power toggle, flip on the lights and test the alarm to verify that the panel is receiving power, hit the starter button aaaaaand… nothing. Nada. Not a grumble, not a click of the solenoid, nothing at all. I’m hoping it’s just a wiring problem, as the wiring is a real mess and I may well have accidentally disconnected a wire when I was cleaning up the other day, but frankly I can’t tell.
To add to that problem, I have no water. I’m drinking (and cooking, and cleaning) from a 10l jug currently, because my water tanks are empty. Filling the tanks requires motoring up to the nearest hose, and, as I said, my engine isn’t starting. *sigh*.
Man. I think it’s time to convert this blog over to WordPress. I’ve been using Drupal for the past year, and in a solid year I have yet to find a reasonable way to upload photos. For instance, I’m sitting less than four feet from the exposed wiring rats nest that is my starter panel, and my laptop has a camera – but for me to take a photo of that and post it to the blog involves using Skitch to take and resize the photo, uploading the photo to the webserver, and referencing the URL using full HTML tags. I can do that, but I don’t wantto. With WordPress, I can do all that in one step, and I think that’ll make a huge difference for me.
Anyhow – an email just came in requesting an RSVP for the Open Web Vancouver speakers’ pre-conference social next Wednesday night – and I’m realizing that I’m just over a week away from speaking to 400-odd geeks about work that I’m currently procrastinating against. Soooo… I’m going to cut this abruptly and get back to work.