Bloggity blog-blog

I don't know what "bloggity blog-blog" is supposed to mean, although find myself saying it when I encounter something interesting that I could theoretically blog on.

Honestly, there have been a million things I've wanted to blog on lately, but I find that I have only enough time to work, take care of my baby bean, and handle required adult things like bills and housekeeping.

There are lots of things on my to-do wish list, but I figure I will get to them when the time is right. "Simplify and focus" is my current mantra and it's suiting me well.

I am a dreamer, but not in that artsy, can't-hold-a-job kinda-way that many other people are. I am a dreamer that is constantly trying to find the right dream that can be shifted to a full-fledged plan....the kind of plan that, in the past, has landed me back in school or finding another job. The thing is, I don't want either of those things right now.

Right now I want to keep the job that I have, and school just doesn't sound appealing. While I've concluded that at some point during the last eight years I traded my dreams for plans, my dreams aren't always as brilliant or focused as they have been in the past...and the plans are less enthusiastically executed.

My "simplify and focus" mantra really doesn't create room for dreaming big so over time I am sure I will grow tired of it and get back to my dream big, act big way of being.

So there is my bloggity blog-blog for today. It might be a big waste of 0's and 1's, but that is the beauty of blogging - you never have to worry about the value of your words, you can just let them express whatever truth you are experiencing during an otherwise inconsequential moment in your life.

Red letter days

Thank God.

Expired ssl certification

I was notified by a user that she received an expired certificate notice from her browser when going to one of the websites I maintain.

When I view the certificate in Firefox I find:

Issued To
Common Name (CN)
Organization (0)
Organizational Unit (OU)
Serial Number

Issued By
Common Name (CN)
Organization (0)
Organizational Unit (OU)

Validity
3/1/2005
3/1/2006

Fingerprints
SHA1 Fingerprint
MD5 Fingerprint

Some research....
* The man page for ssl
* I found /usr/share/ssl/certs. There are lots of interesting things in there including a make file and a make-dummy-cert file.

I will continue to explore this issue to next week.

Newsyslog issue

Problem
I modified some newsyslog entries because my web access files were being trimmed to 100k. That means lost data. I modified the entries in /etc/newsyslog.conf to:

/the/correct/directory 644 5 * $W6D0 Z

The only things I changed were the "*" which was previously "100" in reference to log trimming, and "$W6D0" which was previous "*".

The log rotated and now nothing is being logged to the file. The latest log simply states:

Apr 2 01:00:41 myserver newsyslog[61593]: logfile turned over

Running a FreeBSD system, fyi.

I found descriptions of this type of problem at http://www.derkeiler.com/ and FreeBSD Diary.

Solution
I restarted Apache. I verified it is now logging.

My next step if that didn't work
HUP the newsyslog processes. kill -HUP newsyslog

Lessons learned
1) Always restart Apache after making changes to configuration files.
2) You can find a process's id by doing ps -auwx | grep

Cesar Chavez

I hope I'm not losing too many Chicana points by blogging on Senor Chavez so many days past his official day of celebration in California. I've been (happily) wicked busy with work and haven't taken the time to honor his memory.

I could refer you to my reference of choice on the web - Wikipedia to tell about who we was..and I will...go check it out.

My guess is that what Cesar Chavez means to me is a more interesting thing to blog about. I don't have a coherent theme on the topic of Cesar Chavez so I'll do what comes naturally in my web ways - an unorded list:

• Cesar Chavez lived in San Jose when he began his social justice work. I am a San Jose native, so I feel a sense of familial pride beyond the "Mexican connection" we share.
  


• Cesar Chavez empowered workers. The work of Cesar Chavez has reinforced (or perhaps shaped) my belief that all work is valuable, all workers should be equally respected and fairly compensated.
  


• It is my impression, and folklore, that Senor Chavez was a humble man. In a valley of greed and arrogance, I am reminded that it doesn't have to be this way.
  

Gracias a dios for Cesar Chavez. I hope my work honors his memory. !Que viva Cesar!