littlesvr.ca is now in its fourth incarnation! It started as a massive old PII, which I eventually replaced with a tiny Koolu for 400$. I was excited about that because the new server used less than 10W of power, had no fans, but did everything I wanted. Later I upgraded that to an Intel Atom …
Continue reading littlesvr.ca is big againThere are licence agreements, disclaimers, waivers, and other such crap that exists because there are lawyers, who later become judges. I get that and I don’t know of a solution for it, that’s not what this post is about. It’s about this, which I just received in the mail from Enbridge (from a flyer about …
Continue reading Can we stop with the benevolent bullshit please?My son likes tools. I hope that he keeps getting better at using them and he’ll know more by the time he’s 12 than I do now. To get him started I needed a real workbench for him, which is his own. I’ve been planning this for a while, and finally got it done. Here …
Continue reading Start-em early, workbench for my 2-year-oldI was looking for a script like this and for some reason was unable to find one. I’m sure every sysadmin has something like this, but maybe not. It’s helpful for cases when you have only one server without any kind of load balancing and one day it simply runs out of memory (or disk …
Continue reading Monitor linux server memory/filesystems and email/reboot when lowI first thought this was a joke, but it isn’t. Someone actually ran a study about how well people can detect bullshit. And the result is a wonderfully-written paper (which I’ll copy here, because the original will probably get its URL changed). I haven’t finished reading it yet (my attention span isn’t what it used …
Continue reading On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshitI wanted to build this for a long time. I hate looking through random boxes for a socket that’s 1mm larger or smaller than another socket which almost fits the nut I’m taking off :) Part of the problem is that all the large socket sets you can buy have some sizes missing. Even the …
Continue reading DIY portable socket organizerSince I expect this to be a long post, I’ll give you the answer at the top: both are in-effect critical sections, you should avoid performing unnecessary operations there at all cost. Or else it will cost you and other people days, months, years of wasted time. POSIX Signals I’ll start with a story about …
Continue reading What does a POSIX signal handler and an SQL transaction have in common?Everyone disables SELinux, it’s annoying! Hah! I’ve been saying that for years and years, but the quote above isn’t mine, it’s from Scott McCarty‘s security talk at LinuxCon 2016. The room was full of other Linux Pros and the statement was followed by way more nods than grimaces :) SELinux zealotry reminds me of the …
Continue reading Everyone disables SELinux, it’s annoying!I vaguely remember there was a time when I had a one-page resume. I also remember that time didn’t last long. I’m baffled when I get resumes how many of them are two bullets long, especially in our industry (software). Lots has been said and written about how it helps your professional career to work …
Continue reading Awesome Student ChecklistSometimes I don’t understand the world. One of the things I couldn’t understand is why it is so difficult to find an online clock that is simple and can be resized. For years I would google “clock” and variations of that, and all I would get back was crappy small digital clocks on pages 80%-full …
Continue reading Test/Exam clock