Derailment
A Train Of Thought That Jumped The Track

I consider myself a pretty good speller. I recognize that not everyone puts the same degree of emphasis on correct spelling as I do. Nevertheless, I think that if you're going to write something that will be viewed or used by the public, then you should make sure it's correct. This applies especially to program code. Read on for some fun.

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At the $DAYJOB, we have a cluster of build systems that we use to test source trees on various platforms, including FreeBSD, Linux and Solaris. Some of these machines are fairly old, and have relatively puny hard drives by current standards, yet they continue to do their job just fine. We've simply begun to run low on local storage, as the source trees grow and developers need to work with multiple branch and tag checkouts.

Rather than try to boost local storage with extra drives (not a surefire solution everywhere), we focused our attention on a shared storage solution. The idea was to reuse some decommissioned hardware and create enough storage for every build system to be able to mount its home directories and give developers the space they need to do their work.

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Just read a fascinating post which describes an AP report on how fake IDs actually help people survive sectarian violence in Iraq. Since Iraqi surnames refer to tribe and clan, you can be targeted as a Sunni or Shiite by name alone. Being able to travel under an assumed name makes your daily life safer. It's an interesting real-life example of the law of unintended consequences.

Security is a topic I frequently think about. Computer system security is part of my job as a sysadmin, but I enjoy thinking about it as a larger socio-economic issue. Good security reading can always be found at Bruce Schneier's blog.