Friends, I did a thing

So, as you may know about me, I’ve got a strong interest in open-source software. It’s fun: pull something for free, break it, get a new one. Free as in free beer appeals to my senses. And the horror of spending an extra hundred on a Windows license…

Keeping on Track

I realized that this professional blog has begun to veer into personal stuff. I don’t really want this. Sure, we have tragedies in our lives. But if we are going to stay above the mire, we have to keep walking. So I’m going to discuss some of my…

Losing your Roommate

Travis was my roommate at Sangamon State University in 2008. We had a lot of fun times and he was one of the best men I knew from then until now. Two years ago, I saw him for the last time when my now-wife and I came back up from…

A Network of One's Own

A few days ago, my delighted wife and I completed purchase on a bit of condo space in Chicago. Given your beloved author is the primary techie of our house, it fell to me to build up our own at-home network. That’s right: finally, the chance to fully control…

Great News from the Finance End

For the first time ever on hartr.net, cloud migration has resulted in a significant savings on AWS costs, which have been mitigated 90%. Migrating from Amazon towards DigitalOcean has also resulted in a 33% reduction in compute costs, which is terrific news for everybody who likes to read or…

On the wonderful onset of May; or why you need Vitamin D

I went for my first run of the spring yesterday. It was really wonderful being able to go out and run on the newly-built Chicago riverfront walk. This particular segment wraps along the river between Irving Park and Addison, and there’s plenty space to avoid the other locals as…

Flotsam in the Ocean

It’s been a few minutes, but I hope everybody has been up to some sort of good. Wow, the world has changed significantly since my last post. Again, I hope that everybody who reads this post is taking decent care of themselves and their own. Part of the shock…