Black Cat Blog

Thoughts, Stories, and Ideas

Category: Thoughts

  • Network Address Translation Learning

    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

    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.

  • To The Salt Mines

    Today begins a 7 day streak of work. While I am not thrilled about it, I will manage. At least during the week, I am only working 4 hour shifts. That makes things much more manageable. Today I shall live in the present as I did yesterday. I will enjoy the challenges that Linux and BSD provide.

    I would like to look for work right now. It’s something I want to do but I’ll end up doing it passively because the grass is not greener on the other side. The schedule I have now works despite not quite being ideal. At least work is easy enough.

    This morning I want to get my private cloud going. I had time this morning to install the operating system and I chose Alpine Linux for its small, efficient footprint. I’m finding that there is an ideal Linux distribution for just about every scenario. The only 2 Linux distributions that I dislike are Ubuntu and Mint. They’ve been as troublesome as Windows.

  • Present Times

    I am a student of history. It is these current times of extreme socioeconomic injustice that the Black Panthers of the 1960s and 1970s prophetically warned us about. While the Black Panthers’ primary goal was racial empowerment of black lives, they also knew that empowering the lives of every poor and working class person mattered. They understood it was ultimately division amongst ourselves that was hurting us.

    While today’s Black Panthers still must necessarily be about helping the lives of black people and immigrants, they still have a vested interest in helping all oppressed people. If you are working two full time jobs and still cannot make ends meet, you are not a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, you are a victim of a rigged system. This system has us so thoroughly defeated that we have no time whatsoever remaining to organize against it. By the words of our friends that tried to warn us, this was completely by design. This is no accident and no by product. These conditions are intentional.

    We earn less money despite being collectively more educated and working harder. Our money is stolen from us at the grocery store, the clothing store, the energy companies, the entertainment companies, and even the internet service providers. Homelessness is on the rise amomg the employed! Yes, the employed! If that is not staggering than I cannot fathom what is. It may no longer be enough to organize against the system. That ship might very well have sailed. More drastic measures may need to be taken to prevent our lives from further descending into survival.

    It is time to start paying attention to the wisdom of the Black Panthers. It is time for all working class to open our minds and hearts to their experience and foundational knowledge as organizers. I encourage everyone to go to this website: https://www.uate.net. I have hit my final straw and have reached out to them in the hopes that I can use my technology skills to help them. If you have any kind of skills, whether you are white, black, latino/latina – whatever your background – please ask to become a panther. Panthers are smart, wiley, adaptable, and never give up. I am learning neither should I and neither should you.

    In our darkest of times there is hope! Let’s utilize the wisdom that many human lives have brought us. Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Tim Cook, and Bill Gates are but 5 people. They have made it impossible to work for reform within the system. The Black Panthers know that when barriers are built up within the system, we work outside and around the system rigged to kill us slowly.