Black Cat Blog

Thoughts, Stories, and Ideas

  • Feeling Somewhat Chuffed

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    This morning I solved a vexing problem so I am feeling good. I decided to redo my home lab from the ground up because I did a poor job planning and implementing it. Thus, my WordPress site got compromised. I am not proud of that one because normally I am really good about hardening systems. While troubleshooting something, I forgot to re-enable SELinux and I think that might have been the culprit. At least I had all of my posts backed up and all I lost was a draft of something I wasn’t really feeling anyway.

    I just re-imported the posts on a fresh WordPress install with only the minimum number of plugins that I need in order to have everything function. I had a lot of extra shit that should have been reserved for a development environment. Lesson ultimately learned but it was a good one.

    When I get home from work, I’ll bring my mail server back up but also re-implemented. Just by reading some man pages, I learned a lot more and I didn’t even have optimal connectivity between my cloud VPS and my home network. I never knew that multiple addresses could be assigned to a single WireGuard interface. Instead, I had 3 tunnels I was maintaining it became kind of a routing nightmare. This should make things vastly easier.

    I am thinking about re-implementing the mail server on FreeBSD for the ZFS file system snapshot features. I already decided to standardize on one web server instead of having three separate ones. I also went the FreeBSD route for that. Mastodon is still powered by Debian Trixie. On the server side of things I profess to have a deep love for both FreeBSD and Alma Linux. For all intents and purposes, they’re equally good. I generally use FreeBSD when I need the features that ZFS provides or I need a routing/firewall platform. Alma Linux excels as a hypervisor. I do love Arch Linux for my desktop experience.

    Sometimes the options are so equally good, it’s difficult to make a decision. I do want to avoid a homogeneous network as much as that is possible. It’s better to run a heterogeneous network so that you have less chance of a single point of failure: I am looking at you Microsoft. In many networks, that single point of failure is Windows.

  • An Honest Question

    I have an honest and open question here: Why is it that some occupations are really looked down on? I think the answer mainly lies in attempts by the moneyed class to keep us fighting each other instead of them. It’s one more age-old tool of psychological control perhaps devised by Sun Tzu himself. Despite having almost 3 decades worth of experience in information technology, I find myself working as a security guard and it’s amazing how people treat us as worthless.

    I feel like a glorified and uniformed Walmart greeter. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy being kind and friendly. I do not enjoy being the subject of ridicule. This ultimately brought me to the whole notion of the occupational caste system in America. We are judged by what we do for a living. This basically forces me to seek self-identity elsewhere. I am fortunate enough that I (mostly) do not see myself as a failure; ‘Murica failed me as it has done so many others.

    I feel like the folks that work so hard to make life livable, safe, convenient, etc. are often accorded the least amount of respect. I already do not love what I do and I feel like I am in a state of chattel slavery. This makes my already unpleasant job that much more difficult. Then I have to be a whipping boi for other peoples’ problems!? And then I have to go home and worry about how I am going to make ends meet. I have had enough of this broken system.

  • The Conundrum of Anonymity

    I am facing a moral dilemma right now and I do not really know what direction to go. Thus far, I’ve managed to stay fairly anonymous on the internet because I practice good operational security. However, the thought is swirling in my brain about giving up the anonymity because my brain is telling me that it is based in fear. While being anonymous is a form of protection and has its implied security, sometimes I just want to give this up in favor of screaming who I am from the rooftops. The trouble is that once you do this, there’s no putting that genie back in the bottle.

    Do I give up my anonymity online and practice what I preach about not living in fear of my government? Well, I don’t fear my government so much as its reprisal for my criticisms. I don’t want to be placed at some black site and tortured and imprisoned. Maybe I am being dramatic or maybe not. Given what’s happened to our immigrants, my fear might not be so misplaced after all.

    I am principally using this blog as a journal to help me manage the difficulties associated with mental illness. I hope that it, in some ways, furthers society’s goals to end the stigmatization of mental health discussion and treatment. Sometimes I feel like it would be powerful to not hide behind a pseudonym and actually tell the world who I really am. Other times, I realize that there can be power in anonymity as well. Anonymity allows you to stay in the fight against injustice longer because it takes the system that much longer to discover who you are.

    I often proclaim that I am not afraid of my country’s government and I think I am just probably trying to convince myself that I am not. Anonymity provides security and it is actually reductive to level the accusation, “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” If only, le sigh, it were that simple.

  • Feel Like Giving Up

    I feel like giving up this foolish escapade to write a book. I say it’s foolish because I seem to keep on restarting and starting over but getting nowhere at all and learning nothing. Perhaps I wasn’t meant to write a book. Perhaps I should focus my efforts more on video content creation teaching people about networking and systems administration through building computer labs. Maybe it would be more interesting and engaging through recorded content. It will be something that maybe I need to explore.

    I know blogging is kind of falling out of style where as vlogging and short video content is growing in demand. The kids want to learn these days but they want to learn in ways that they know is best to them. Many don’t learn that well from written content and learn much more effectively from short form video content. Is it something that I deign to try? I don’t really know.

  • Hobby Challenges

    Doing this deep dive into the home lab computer hobby has really challenged my research, critical thinking, and troubleshooting skills. I am also grinding away the surface rust. In the process of my research, I vaguely remembered that proxying has been used as a technique to avoid the problems of hairpinning and NAT. I am not really in an easy situation where I can just move things into a DMZ network and resolving IPs internally hasn’t completely solved my problems with email. Anyhow, I read about TCP streaming through NGINX and I thought maybe it just might work.

    Thus, I installed the streaming module and configured a TCP streaming proxy for ports 25, 143, 587, and 993. It turns out that this was so successful and so much simpler than worrying about correctly configuring source and destination NAT to do everything so precisely. With just the simple TCP proxy in place, all I had to do was to source NAT everything through a simple rule and my email problems are elegantly solved.

    I am learning a lot of things I didn’t know and I am seeing some gaps in my knowledge that research will have to fill so that I can continue to write the book that I am in the process of planning: Grokking the Home Lab: Learning Through Building Real Systems. I think it is about time someone wrote a book for the new home lab hobbyist. At least I know I am going to leave out some material on network address translation hairpinning – because fsck that! There’s a lot easier ways to go about solving some of the problems introduced by IP address sharing.

    While the challenges can be, at times, frustrating, I am enjoying the journey. I need to sit down and find a good time to write and document all this. I need a format that works for me and I have yet to find one. My therapist recommended letters and that did not work so well. I am thinking of setting up another blog dedicated strictly to IT whereas this one is more of my mental health coping skill and life strategy. It would be somewhat confusing for readers so I bought a domain called www.tcpipguy.com. I think that will be the name for my blog. I might add a the to it. Maybe building the book out of timely blog entries that are related to home labbing is the right approach.

  • Days Off

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    It is so nice to have some badly needed days off. I managed to get my home lab segmented off from the rest of the home network which I wanted to do for security and privacy. That way if I have guests and they bring their devices, I don’t have to worry as much about viruses. I got that achieved despite it being a pain in the ass. Well, okay, it’s mostly achieved as I still do not understand why my industrial grade OPNsense router is not properly routing WireGuard tunnels but that is troubleshooting for another day. Everything else works including my blog, email, and Mastodon. I am good to go.

    Now I am just chilling with Denisse on the couch and doing my semi-daily blog entry. I did a gummy last night and I am still feeling no pain from it. I love the relaxed, no-care, and emotional pain-free feeling. Everything in my life, save for Denisse, is utter shit right now and I am oddly okay with it. I say oddly because it’s not exactly normal to feel okay about a shit situation. Well, acceptance of things you cannot change is good I guess.

    I am getting Denisse’s birthday gift early this year. I’m buying her a Samsung Galaxy S25 for her 50th. But since things like color and case need to be picked out, it’s something that she should really be involved in. I can deal with having the shitty phone for a bit. She deserves something nice. I also feel good about being able to do something nice for her.

  • Feeling Down

    I’m feeling down because I’m still, at heart, a people pleaser. This has lead to me being overwhelmed and taken advantage of by most work places. My current one is no exception. It’s sad because I work hard but get scraps in return. I believe that it’s time to move on from my present employer.

    I want to learn balance in the workplace and to only take on extra shifts when it is personally beneficial. I stopped doing that with my current employer. I’ve been “taking one for the team” and it’s lead to bitterness and a feeling of unappreciation. I’m just repeating a pattern in my life.

    So maybe I seek out better opportunities and happier circumstances. We shall see! But in order for conditions to become better for me, I have to drop the people pleasing attitude once the interview is over. The interview is a deliberate act. Once I’m hired and have a few weeks under my belt, I can be more selective.

    I still want to continue writing my book. I am just so exhausted that I can hardly think. This isn’t a good situation to be in but what can I realistically do when there are bills to pay and I have to support Denisse. I will add that I love Denisse dearly and I would do almost anything for her. I am proud of her for sticking out the phlebotomy class and doing pretty well at that! I know that once she graduates, she’ll pick something up and then life will be easier for the two of us. We just have to be stoic and keep moving forward.

    I once had a psychiatrist, Joel Goldstein, who made a wise observation that I am stubborn. I never saw myself as stubborn but he was not incorrect and that was something that I needed to process. I think that being a stubborn person has mostly kept me alive and moving forward. Right now I need to channel this stubbornness and stoicism. Doing this may reap some rewards.

  • One Sleepy Kitty

    I am very tired and going to need a couple of days off. Fortunately for me, I will have Thursday and Friday off. It’s not quite enough time but better than nothing at all. I guess I am taking what I can get. That much said, I am learning to do what benefits me the most and not necessarily what helps my employer. I am unlearning being a “people pleaser” and it’s hard when I was raised that way.

    I am working a split shift today for a total of 12 hours. It’s not going to be easy but it will be completely doable. During the time period that I have off – between 11am and 4pm – I will hang out at the library and hopefully accomplish something of note. I want to try and make some headway on my book with the working title, Grokking The Home Lab: Learning Through Building Real Systems. I had some material written but it wasn’t in the style recommended to me and hence it was scattered and I ended up scrapping it.

    When I go to the library this morning into the afternoon, my operative plan is to write this book in a series of letters to a, “Dear Davoy” style. Nan, my therapist, recommended this approach as a method to reduce writer’s block. She assumed that it would work for fiction and non-fiction alike and I don’t see how this won’t work. Right now I cannot concentrate much and that’s because I have not fully woken up yet. Once I do though, I want to be ready.

    I guess that doing this in a series of letters will make it so that it will be easy to write out of order and from a stream of consciousness. Oftentimes, this is the way I think best. I can always go back and organize the material at a later point. I can always do the edits at the same time. Since both DNS and IP addressing is very important and I’v been hard at it. So while both concepts are fresh in my mind it is time to put the writing efforts in.

  • A Bit Late To The Game

    I am a bit late to the blogging game today and it was mostly because I am just so damn tired. When this week is said and done, I will have had close to 60 working hours. To top it off, 28 hours will be paid at time and a half. 8 for working a holiday and the remaining 20 for straight over time. It will all help very much but it’s going to leave absolutely smoked. I am again reminded of how much I hate America. America is a country where we give assistance to millionaires and billionaires while the regular working class gets nothing except for hardship.

    I am ready to go home and hit the hay because I am so tired. Fortunately, this shift is flying by and I only have two hours left. Then I get to come in and work from 7a-11a tomorrow. That won’t be bad. What’s going to suck will be Tuesday and Wednesday where I will be working 12 hour days. I guess it’s going to be nice to have Thursday and Friday off before the fun begins next week.

  • 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.