Well that blew up… fluffy rambles

Comments

So, I found out that my wildcard SSL certificates weren’t being renewed, which in turn was because certbot needed to be able to edit DNS records in order to do so. In investigating that I found that I couldn’t install the latest version of certbot and its Linode plugin, which led me to discover that my server was actually running the i386 ubuntu core with amd64 grafted onto it, instead of being actual amd64, which was in turn because this server had been provisioned years ago and i386 was the supported configuration.

So I went through the exercise of trying to switch over to amd64, found that the best path forward was to back up all my data (which was already done since I keep incremental backups every night) and just reimage. Which seemed like a pain. But the alternative for a more graceful transition was to set up a new VPS, migrate stuff across, and then decommission the old VPS, which would have also been a pain.

So anyway I decided that since my server was still basically running 32-bit and would be stuck there forever if I didn’t rip off the band-aid, I’d rip off the band-aid.

While I was at it, I’d been meaning to switch to nginx for years, and this was a good enough excuse as any.

Read more…

Three triumphs fluffy rambles

Comments

Three nice things happened today:

  1. It turns out my favorite dress has pockets which I somehow didn’t realize at all and now it’s my even more favorite dress

  2. first day at work went well

  3. Hacked my camera to make it Better

Read more…

Song Fight! Live(stream)! Last night! fluffy rambles

Comments

Hey y'all! Song Fight! Live(stream) has gone really well. A bunch of us learned a lot about live streaming online and I’ve picked up many more tricks for the future. And maybe we’ll be doing more of this stuff!

In the meantime: tonight is going to be the live fight (where people can vote in real time for their favorite new song), and I have a song in it. ANd it starts in about 20 minutes from the time of this post! Please show up and show your support.

I also had a lot of fun being background support on night 4, and it was also a thrill to be involved in the Seth Gibbs tribute and for my set to be so well-received on night 3.

It’s actually pretty cool how this whole thing is accessible to everyone in the world (who’s awake at this time, anyway) and not just being limited to people who could physically come, and I hope even post-pandemic we’ll keep doing online events like these.

But anyway. All that said I’m glad this event is soon to be over with: I need some heckin' sleep tonight. (And I start my new job tomorrow!)

Current state of things fluffy rambles

Comments

So let’s see. It’s been a few days since I decided to stop going to social media (specifically, Twitter and Mastodon) and things are feeling pretty okay. I’m still getting plenty of chatter, but it’s with groups of friends instead of the entire Internet. All of the bad news still manages to make its way to me but I’m not, like, immersing myself in it, and when I have conversations about stuff it’s with actual people and not a gigantic abyss of torment.

It’s helpful that right now Song Fight!’s chat is being fairly active due to the not-quite-live stuff taking place, and it’s nice having real conversations with these people I’ve known for so long. In some ways I feel like the pandemic is the best thing to happen to Song Fight!; the in-person live events were starting to feel like we were all just going through the motions, for the most part.

Read more…