After a glitchy upload problem that is going to be solved by "doing it again, only harder," I appear to be once again flinging nearly five years of never-before-seen @CreativeCommons licensed variety show photos to the internet archive.

Here's hoping I don't have to employ the --do-it-even-harder switch.

#TechnicalJiggeryPokery

Music for computer touching:

https://futurecityrecords.bandcamp.com/album/tears-in-rain-a-tribute-to-blade-runner

#TechnicalJiggeryPokery
#NowPlaying

Finally getting a chance to upgrade all the #OpenBSD things to the 7.3 release.

Coffee in hand...and here we go!

Thank you, devs, for keeping all the machines in the clown house running smoothly.

#TechnicalJiggeryPokery

After a bit more #TechnicalJiggeryPokery, the gemini server on whirling.top has been restored.

Next step, actually writing something to put in there. :)

After quite a bit of #TechnicalJiggeryPokery, I managed to get our tiny toy webserver back online after a long hiatus.

It's now running #OpenBSD on an old thinkpad r50e from 2004, making it the oldest functioning computer in the clown house.

I'll start work on restoring our #gemini capsules soon. In the meantime, I'm excited that whirling.top is once again spinning!

Today I learned how to change the login of an existing user on a system.

While the answers I needed were in the man pages, I was kind of surprised to not have encountered a blog post or howto on how to perform this task before now.

I know so many computer touchers who have, for one reason or another, wanted to change their name.

Anyway, check usermod(8) for details...and remember that you can be anyone you want and be called anything you like.

#TechnicalJiggeryPokery

I found a bug in #OpenBSD and submitted it to their mailing list.

It's a first for me. :)

Other than slogging my way through gathering the relevant proofs of the problem, it was a fairly smooth process.

While I'm nervous about a negative response, it's exciting to know I may have caught a problem and helped make things better despite not being a developer.

Thank you to everyone on the project who created tools which allow fools like me to contribute.

#TechnicalJiggeryPokery
#RunBSD

I just plugged in a FFS2 formatted usb disk, and it refused to mount.

I took a look, and it seems to think it's formatted ext2fs now?

The drive has never touched a machine that uses that filesystem, and it's a new-ish drive that hasn't thrown any errors...until now.

Baffled and poking at it...any wisdom from the greybeards would be appreciated.

#TechnicalJiggeryPokery
#OpenBSD

The laptop has survived the upgrade to #OpenBSD 7.2 without bursting into flames!

What little #TechnicalJiggeryPokery required was of my own making, and entirely about upgrading some packages.

Helping @SocialGaff break old things until they do new things, featuring an ancient thinkpad, an ide to sd card adapter, and an i386 build of #OpenBSD.

So far, the swearing has been minimal.

#TechnicalJiggeryPokery

I think I'm slowly getting braver about digging under the hood of technology and seeing what makes it tick.

I had a helper script for a task which failed, and so I ended up firing off the tools it uses manually.

The helpers are helpful, but its really neat to have a vague understanding of what's going on behind (beneath?) them.

i think this also immediately makes me suspicious of any tool that prevents me from doing this sort of spelunking.

#TechnicalJiggeryPokery

You would think a person who's relatively comfortable on a command line would have figured out that scp has a "-p" option to preserve their carefully thought out permissions a lot sooner.

I have been doing this wrong and fixing them manually on the destination end for an *extremely* long time.

#CommandLine
#TechnicalJiggeryPokery

Successfully moved our house's nextcloud server from #Debian to #OpenBSD without burning anything important to the ground!

#RunBSD
#TechnicalJiggeryPokery

Apparently I need to add "walking globe knocks UPS plug out of wall" to my threat model.

On the plus side, having your speakers plugged into a 'surge protect only' outlet is a terrific indicator that something's amiss.

No jams? No power.

#CircusLife
#TrueTalesOfACircusAdmin
#TechnicalJiggeryPokery

Catharsis, in pictures.

#backups
#DriveFailure
#TechnicalJiggeryPokery

I just swapped enough drives around to requiire post-it notes to keep them unconfused. On the plus side, the one acting as our server's data drive is no longer randomly powering off.

#TechnicalJiggeryPokery

As our file server is still down at the moment, I just used magic-wormhole to send a copy of our latest podcast over to @avalon for transcription.

So easy! Why didn't someone tell me about this tool sooner?

https://github.com/psanford/wormhole-william

For all your "shoving that one damned file over there" needs.

#TechnicalJiggeryPokery

I just discovered this plugin for my text editor, which allows me to have my entire "directory of jumbled text files that I laughably treat like an extension of my addled memory" at my fingertips.

Handy stuff, if you're into that sort of thing:

https://github.com/alok/notational-fzf-vim

I liked it especially because it didn't require me to completely overhaul the way I'm already (poorly) handling my notetaking.

#vim #TechnicalJiggeryPokery #Luddite #PlainText #Writing

Looks like my lineageOS running Nexus 5x has decided that charging is an extraneous feature and decided to stop supporting it. After a few checks on different chargers, I fear it's the hardware.

Gr.

I did find an old Nexus 5 in my junk pile. If it holds a charge, it might be time to give UBPorts a try...

#TechnicalJiggeryPokery
#CellphonesAreGarbage

After a bit of #TechnicalJiggeryPokery, I was able to successfully restore our troupe's nextcloud server from a backup!

Which meant I got to watch my "before-times" calendar populate the month as if the world had not gone all 2020.

So many cool shows, workshops, and other creative projects lost to doing the right thing.

One might think of it as a kick in the (in this case not) proverbial clown pants.

#TrueTalesOfACircusAdmin