I spent the weekend experimenting with new open-source projects that will either supplant hosted services, or improve my sysops experience. This is not an uncommon way for me to spend a weekend, as https://ethitter.com/2017/01/replacing-slack-ifttt-and-zapier/ and the whole of https://ethitter.com/category/vps-adventures/ demonstrate. Once they’ve “stuck,” I’ll post something at ethitter.com about these latest discoveries.

It started as simple teenage rebellion but ended up tearing Syria apart, setting in motion events that continue to rock the Middle East — and the world. The boys behind the graffiti would become unlikely revolutionaries and reluctant refugees. Not all of them would survive the upheaval they helped unleash. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/the-graffiti-kids-who-sparked-the-syrian-war/article33123646/

He considered becoming a police officer after graduating from high school, but instead took a job as a syrup quality-control inspector at a Coca-Cola plant. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-23/-bro-i-m-going-rogue-the-wall-street-informant-who-double-crossed-the-fbi

Any time I start thinking that I know what I’m doing as a sysadmin, I remind myself that sudo reboot is, too often, how I “fix” things.

I still often think about this sentence. pic.twitter.com/T2LlTJHzZP — Bo Churñey 🇨🇦 (@bochurney) March 16, 2017

A man suspected of robbing four people at gunpoint […] accidentally shot himself in the face after one of his alleged victims hit him with a car, authorities said. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-hawthorne-robbery-20170315-story.html

That feeling when you’ve been coding so long that words like succeed don’t seem like they’re spelled correctly.

Please replace this text with the error page you would like to serve to clients if your origin is offline. I encountered this message as I tried to access an archived article from a national newspaper. Given my job, I couldn’t help but chuckle; somebody missed a step on their setup checklist. I’ve definitely been there.

“Celestial Navigation” is one of my favorite episodes of The West Wing.