Aging does funny things. As a teenager, you know everything. As we get older, we gain experience and see we know very little. The knowledge we gain we write down now, because we know we will probably need those thoughts later, and lets face it, our buffers are getting full. Lots of re-discovering ideas and re-learning has led me down a new path. Let me give you an example.
When I was younger (you know, last year) I set out to setup a OpenBSD router and later build a OpenBSD web server to test on. It took a lot of research as I had not setup an OpenBSD server before. I had no experience with a unix web server or any kind of firewall and had only dabbled with Linux Slackware and XFCE4 back in the day. So while I was no stranger to pain and suffering, I definitely lacked the needed skills. But I struggled through it and called a few friends (a lot) when I got stuck. Finally success! Well, sort of, I had built an excellent router and an ok OpenBSD 5.9 web server with WordPress mostly installed on it but it was on my home network. It wasn’t available on the web for the most part. Neither the router or the web server had email capability and the web server was often used as a test server. Not an ideal host. But lots of good learning was had.
Now that I am older (you know, this year) I realized that I needed to get a little more professional in my trade. I’m a Developer\DBA with a strong belief in Operations automation and a love for well designed systems. But just myself, my girlfriend, a smattering of coworkers and friends, and perhaps LinkedIn™ knew about me or my skills. How do I let the rest of the tech community know? How do I share my crazy ideas with others?
Well why not a blog. All the cool kids are doing it. But I’m not much of a follower and I like to know how things work as I suffer from Chronic Terminal Curiosity (CTC). Perhaps I could build server that was secure yet eclectic and build a stylish website on that server hosted in say a bunker or under ground lair …
Well building a bunker, though hella™ tempting, is just not in my budget right now. I guess I could compromise and host on a cool sounding cloud provider. I don’t want to use a commercial OS because they would not give me a snapshot of their source code (I know, weird huh?) and I don’t want to get locked up in their eco system. Oh, and I have no idea on how to build a website. What to do?
I found the perfect solution. Host on Vultr™ cloud provider, which definitely has a cool name (but probably no bunker … yet), to set up a Virtual Private Server (VPS) on and use OpenBSD™, a sweet secure OS which Vultr provides as an easy to use install option, and install WordPress, an open source website made for blogging. I mean, really, what could go wrong? In my case a surprising amount. WordPress has needs and OpenBSD is secure for a reason. Getting them to play well together took some time.
It worked out in the end. I now have a place to capture what I have learned, some general thoughts, and a way to share those learnings with anyone who has trouble sleeping at night and requires a sleep aid.
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