What is this about?
It’s March 2020. Coronavirus time. I have been stuck (I know the word we are supposed to use is “safe”, but come on, who are we kidding) inside for 5 days. Now, I like doing nothing as much as the next guy, but this time, I was really doing nothing. There was a power outage right before I left my apartment, and that screwed up my home server. So, during my self-isolation at my sister’s cabin in the woods, I have nothing to check up on, nothing to manage, and nothing to maintain. My finals are done, job search is going horribly because nobody is hiring during this pandemic, and my server, with all its 7 TB of media, is down.
But I had to do something! Can’t just sit idly and watch TV all day! So I got a VPS to pass the time “playing” server. I just had to have something to tweak and maintain! This ended up being a better decision anyway, because it allowed me to move my CV website from WordPress to a personally hosted WordPress on my VPS (immeasurably more control for fraction of the cost). After a day, I was also able to move my email server from G Suit to my personal one, even more savings! But I didn’t know what a pain it would be to set it up properly so that major email providers don’t flag my legitimate emails as spam. So I spent another day intermittently working on my VPS to successfuly set up SPF, DKIM, and ultimately DMARC. “Yay” to not being flagged spam!
If you have been counting, that was three days of not idly sitting around. On my 4th day, I decided to take a break. So I did.
Today’s the fifth day. As I was yet again monitoring something that didn’t need monitoring, I thought it would be better if I actually utilized all the time I spent staring at a few dials I designed for myself to stare at. THAT gave birth to this blog. It’s going to be my something-to-do as I wait for my online classes to start while being stuck in Pendleton, South Carolina.