“I know only that I don’t know anything.” —Socrates

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose....

As the end of the year approaches, I am also approaching my goal of reading 52 books this year. The tally is 51 as of today. I have several in progress. However, a few of the books could be classified as novellas. I shouldn’t nitpick, but I may still try to read a few more full-length books anyhow.

Piper is a short from Disney Pixar. Go buy it. It’s six minutes of wonderment.

Were I to live my life over again, I should live it just as I have lived it; I neither complain of the past, nor do I fear the future; and if I am not much deceived, I am the same within that I am without … I have seen the grass, the blossom, and the fruit, and now see the withering; happily, however, because naturally. —Michel de Montaigne

“He does not lose anything, for with the loss of himself he loses the knowledge of loss.” —Jack London, The Sea-Wolf

Despite my distaste for all things Google, I’ve decided to give Google Compute Engine a try to see if there is a cost savings to be had over Amazon AWS offerings. The site has been completely migrated and is running on what I consider to be underpowered hardware. I will scale it up if necessary, but I want to see how much I can push this configuration before it locks up....

The home office moves toward entropy without fail; however, I managed to restore some order today in preparation for a new computer monitor and in the hopes of tracking down my lost Mont Blanc. Alas, the writing instrument remains missing.

The more work I do with web applications and complex backend architectures, the more I like NGINX. It has come a long way and is mighty powerful. I hope it remains lightweight as it matures.

It seems that my domain registrar, and thus my DNS provider, was under a DDoS attack making my site unresolvable for a short while. It looks like the issue has been resolved. I’m hoping there’ll be no more outages today.