I have been having a pretty fun holiday punctuated by getting a couple of computer related tasks taken care of.
First, I have pulled full backups of all the domains I host. Surprisingly to me, this number has grown to double digits (ok, 10. But that counts, right?) The backups themselves aren’t notable but having the host FTP them directly into my home server was a first time event that I think deserves some note.
Second, after months of having two brand new 320 gig hard drives laying around doing nothing I have finally installed them and set them up. Now everything is separated in a way that makes me happy (for awhile at least). One physical drive for the OS (Ubuntu Heron at the moment), one for data and one for backup. I also have full and incremental backups scheduled.
I am still amazed sometimes at the things I now take for granted that a few years ago sounded like rocket science. Opening a port on the router so that the FTP server can be accessed from outside the network sounds like it should be abig deal. Heck, having an FTP server at all is something I used to wish for but figured would never happen.
The lesson for me is the same as ever. Technology for its own sake is fun but if you really want to learn something, find a problem that needs solving and then solve it. You may have to make up a problem, but having an end point in mind makes learning a new tool easy. You’re so worried about the solution that you hardly notice when you’ve suddenly leveled up in geekiness.
For my next task, I need to find a problem that requires a VPN set up at the house.
