Black Cat Blog

Thoughts, Stories, and Ideas

  • Saturday Double Shift

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    I had difficulty sleeping last night so it was one of those very rare times that I could answer the security operations center when they reached out to me to see if I would do a double shift. Seeing as I couldn’t sleep, I answered that I would and the fact that the site I work at is great! I do need the money as well. This coming week’s paycheck is going to look very nice but I hope I do not burn out. I am not quite a spring chicken anymore.

    I still feel surprisingly good and I managed to write another 600 words on my book. My goal is to average 400-600 words per day of writing. If I can manage that, the book will quickly develop into something. I believe that this is entirely possible provided that I remain in decent health and do not get sick. I am trying to write from a stream of consciousness and not be too concerned with anything other than putting thoughts to paper. This is what my therapist, Nan, would recommend.

    The book I am working on is basically about building home computer labs and growing them in increasing complexities and features. The chapter I am working on is the planning stage. It’s a bit dry but necessary.

  • Feeling Oddly Good

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    Despite having a very long week ahead, I am feeling oddly good about it. I think that is largely due to earning a good amount of money. It is kind of a shame though that I will have to work so many hours in order to receive such a nice and helpful paycheck. The trouble is that security guards just are not seen as very important. The salary plight is very real. But I still feel okay about my earnings.

    I had a pretty successful day too. I stood up a self-hosted email server out of my home and got accounts created for myself and Denisse. It feels good getting crap out of the cloud. Corporations are really irresponsible with our data and the best way to recapture our freedom and control is to host our own data using free/open source software. Now I just have to get Denisse to start blogging. I really do it for pure enjoyment and not to monetize it. Hell, I don’t even think I really could monetize it if I wanted to.

    It felt so good to chat with my email hosting provider and tell them I was cancelling my email hosting plan. They wanted to know why and I told them that I would be doing it myself. They tried to use marketing psychology to tell me why this would be a bad idea. So far, I am only seeing upsides. The one downside, if you want to call it that, is I am responsible for the mail server’s reliability. Personally, I don’t care that much. The idea is depriving corporations of money. I found out one reason that my email hosting plan wasn’t terribly expensive is that my data was being sold. Yeah, um, hell no. I am not the product here. Don’t charge me for a product and than monetize me further.

    I am getting closer and closer to beginning to write this book on self-hosting and the home lab. If more and more people did this, Big Technology might lose some money for a change and we might gain substantial freedom. After all, Big Technology has pretty much lawyered up good so you can’t practically go after them for losing your data anyways. Thus you might as well retain 100% control over it and not allow them to make money off of you and your content. I already stopped using most corporate social media. I only actively use Reddit. I only occasionally use Facebook for its marketplace. I can really be found actively on Mastodon, and you guessed it, I host my own Mastodon instance as well.

    I host my own WordPress blog too. All this self hosting takes place on Dell OptiPlex 7060 8th Gen i7 with a 14TB HD and 64GB of RAM. I have fun and get a lot of satisfaction out of it.

  • Network Address Translation Learning

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    The last two days I did some serious learning about network address translation that I can apply to the book that I want to write on home labbing. For the uninitiated, the basics behind Network Address Translation is that it allows a whole bunch of computers to share a single public IP address. But that’s just the very basic part of it. Network Address Translation also has to allow external access to computers inside the network.

    Since I am now hosting my own email, I have to obviously have access to the mail server which is a small virtual machine on the inside of my network. Whodathunk that this would be so damn complicated!? I guess there could have been two other options that would have made things simpler, but my my current setup does not lend itself to them. I could have placed all of my servers in a DMZ with a different IP scheme or I could have done split horizon DNS. I would really like to have done split horizon DNS but I am limited by the router that I must use for my internet service.

    So the answer becomes the ugly kludge called “hairpinning” or NAT reflection. The first part of this setup involves the stage before a router makes a decision on routing. This is called “prerouting.” In this stage, I had to match anything destined for the public IP address and translate it to the internal address. Then I need a matching “postrouting” rule to translate from the internal address to the public one. That will take care of external users. But what happens for internal users? Well, this is where hairpinning takes place.

    So any connections that originate internally need to be translated like this: internal address to public address and then back to internal address again. This makes it possible for internal users to reach services based on the public address. It’s ugly but it works for now. I do want to move toward away from hairpinning and towards split DNS. That will take longer and more research however.

  • Some Deep Thinking

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    Last night and this morning I find myself doing some really deep thinking about some various, yet oddly interconnecting ways. Last night I was thinking about time and the white persons’ peculiar preoccupation with it. Yes, time is a unique preoccupation of people of Caucasian persuasion and I know it because I am that person and I hate it. Time is a meaningless social construct designed to control us. I want to go back to an era when the only measure of “time” that mattered was the changing of the seasons. Or even for the nomadic peoples, the migrations of animal herds and shepherding.

    Then this morning I was thinking about self-identity and how I identify, and by proxy, we, identity ourselves. Again, it seems to be a uniquely white concept to identify ourselves by what we do. I am trying to break myself of this habit. I want to identify myself by my hobbies, loves, interests, and passions. Work only need be what I do to make ends meet. I realize I spend an arguably disproportionate amount of time defining myself as a security guard instead of a Linux power user cum expert, a motorcycle rider, an animal rights advocate, and a radical progressive leftist. That sounds a lot better than an occupation that the media has turned everyone against.

    I really want to have a personal reboot on my thinking. It begins with realizing I am more than what I do for a living. I do need to upgrade my security guard license to an armed one so that my earning potential reaches low to mid $20s per hour. That I do not mind so much because more money may help me hate what I am doing less – 😆. If having a bit more money provides a bit less stress and makes self-identification easier, then I am all for it!

    I have some life options ahead of me. I don’t see myself affording a car anytime soon and I am bleeding red ink over Uber and Lyft rides. In order to see more of my hard-earned money, having a little electric scooter would be very welcome and nice. It would save me probably in the neighborhood of $150-$200 a month. That’s a lot of money maybe 27% of a single paycheck that was spent in commute alone. I already took a look at my cell phone bill and got it down by about $35 a month. Every little bit adds up.

  • Unbelievably Pissed Off

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    As the title reads, I am so angry I could cry. I rarely get this angry and incensed that I am beyond yelling or even silent anger – this is one of those times. I just watched a segment on YouTube from vlogger Lindey Glenn called People With Jobs Are Sleeping in Their Cars Now. I agree with about 99% of the content that Lindey puts up. About 1% of the stuff she puts up though is capitalist apologia and I don’t care much for that as I think it detracts from her overall vibe and message. Anyhow, I digress as the episode put me in a very dark and angry place. There is truly no hope for the United States now and it really doesn’t matter what political aisle you identify yourself on.

    With thanks to politicians of Democratic and Republican persuasion we have effectively criminalized homelessness. We have found a way to do a complete end-run around the constitution which expressly forbids criminalizing a status. I am so angry and sad. It’s going to take a fucking miracle to fix this and there is no political will to do so because the venture capitalists have actually bought up all of the housing resources, alternative or otherwise, and made basic living impossible. I am autistic and will not survive 12 hours, let alone 24, living on the street. Is life worth living if I cannot even lead it in basic safety and dignity!? I am really thinking right now.

    Maybe it is dangerous to think this deeply so late at night when the night demons come out. The night demons are real for people that suffer from major depressive and generalized anxiety disorders like myself. Yes, this is a very real phenomenon. I am feeling so much right now that it will be a good thing I am seeing my therapist tomorrow. I feel so much right now that I know the only thing that will improve things for me will be talk therapy to help stop the swirling thoughts. Not even sleep is helping me recover.

    On top of all of this, I think I might have been the victim of a job search scam. This is not of those direct monetary ones but one where the company posts a fake job and then requires their candidates to “solve a problem” or “complete a task.” They do this knowing people will jump through hoops in these economic times. This task was especially difficult but I did solve it. The more I think about it, the more I think this was a phantom job offer. It only made me angrier! I need to sleep this off.

  • A Reattempt At Writing

    I am going to make another attempt at writing a fun information technology book. This time I have a much better idea for the intended target audience. Surprisingly, my therapist helped narrow down the audience to the intermediate computer user who is fascinated about how computers and networks operate and wants to learn more; take it to the next level. In my latest thinking, my ideal reader will want to balance learning by doing with grokking the theory behind it as well. So I may sit down to figure something fun out this weekend when I am at work

    I am planning on enjoying today’s day off to its fullest possible. Yesterday, I was so tired that I was falling asleep on the job. I will also have Friday off too and it will feel good. In an ideal world I’d rack up enough paid vacation and just relax. This is going to be a short article as I have a lot to do.

  • A Sleepless Night

    Last night was quite unpleasant. It was another sleepless night. I really needed three days off but my boss contacted me about covering a four hour shift on Thursday and then I would have Friday off. I need the money and I am in no shape to turn opportunities down. This isn’t much fun but it costs money to live and the elites would have it no other way. Life feels like an unending punishment.

    Last night I think I brought back my Mastodon and WordPress instances back from the dead. Well, I know I brought back my WordPress instance. I am not so sure about Mastodon. The database might have gotten corrupted while I was doing a few things and I stupidly neglected to take a backup of the damn thing. Well, I seem to keep learning this lesson over, so yes, this is stupidity at this point.

    I don’t know quite how today is going to play out other than that I will be spending another 4 hours guarding a dock door when I am rather capable of so much more. This also frustrates me very much.

  • Learned Something

    Abilify is making a big difference in my life. It’s not miraculous by any means but I am doing better. However I learned that I cannot take it at night because it is activating. I wake up at 4:00am all ready to rock and roll. By 2:00pm, I’m falling asleep. So yeah, I’m going to try it as a morning med instead.

    Another day in the coal mines is upon me but I don’t necessarily care because I am doing what I must. I feel better than I did last night when I was all salty and morose. I’m in better spirits and feel a better sense of hope; at least for today. My goal is living in the present. I’m asking myself what my needs are to make today happen. That’s the most important question and thought.

    Looking beyond today will merely overwhelm and sadden me. Once I have a better handle on my depression, I can begin to be more forward looking. For now, a life in the present is a life well lived.

  • I’m Pissed Off

    I don’t know why but I’m exceptionally angry this evening so I’m doing some additional writing to externalize the thoughts. I feel like a victim and I’m simultaneously angry and depressed about this. I feel like no matter what I do I just get knocked around by life. I had my hours cut at work and I’m wondering what will be next. I feel like I’m being exploited as I’m being paid a whopping $17 per hour. This is two dollars an hour over minimum wage in a medium cost of living area.

    The conservatives would tell me to get another job while they’re stealing money left and right with a cigar hanging out of their mouths and sipping on expensive liquor that I’ll never afford. I don’t know if this is capitalism, corruption, or both. I personally think America is too late to be saved. Tomorrow I go to work to earn the miserly sum of money. I’m nothing more than a whore for my employer. I have a fully incorporated pimp. The irony is not lost on me.

    I’m tired but sleep does not restore me. My two hobbies no longer give me satisfaction. I feel like a machine of anger and despair. I’m too chicken to off myself. I’m also chicken for wanting to go to sleep and not wake up. I don’t see a path forward. Today I lost sight of living for today. Perhaps I will regain this tomorrow.

  • Frustrations

    I’m somewhat frustrated that my skill set in computing seems to have atrophied. I’m struggling and making rookie mistakes. On the flip side it is good that I am recognizing this and I do need to slow down and plan better; step away when my frustrations start to get too high.

    I’m finding myself looking forward to work today. It’s easy and I earn okay money. Things could be better, and yet, they could be a whole lot worse. I do need to honor my promise to Denisse to help her study and I am doing that first thing when I get home.

    I think while I sit in the dock office this morning I will try to get Let’s Encrypt certificates working so I can stand up my private cloud and have it secure. I am planning on hiding it behind a VPN because I don’t want it externally exposed.