A Brand New Year!

We all take time to make resolutions and what-not. We hope to achieve goals. We strive to untangle our goals from the tangle of daily activities.

Whether we achieve them or not...it is important to try, to make some kind of measurable distance to the goal. Whether we succeed or not matters little. What matters is moving a little closer to where you hope to be. Appreciate the distance.

Quick Story: I remember being told, repeatedly, that the system I was an administrator of could not have automated backups. It had to be all manual. First, being told something could not be done, in technology, tends to trigger my mind. I start to identify possible solutions. Having learned enough political knowledge, I knew what to say to move the topic on and calm the raging storm generated by the people that I was suggesting this to. Since they offered no solution, I said: 'that is interesting, thanks for the input. As I am going through documentation for my other projects, I will keep an eye out if this ever gets updated.' Sure enough, the API existed to create the backups. The OS could run some commands to check running processes to detect if a backup was still running. The OS could run some commands to check the backup logs to determine whether errors happen. The OS could send me an e-mail or instant message when either of the last two was flagged. The only thing that I could not really automate was due to the business having one specific day (different each year, dependent on other processes in the business). I asked the bosses what goes on that particular day. I identified an opening: a technical person was working and could, if nothing else, create a file with the day. I asked if creating a file with a date in the text document be added to their list? They said 'sure'. Now we have a trigger: If this text document changes, then I could rotate the backups into an archive, delete the old backups, and send an e-mail if any problems exist, including if this process did not run on the expected month (The random day always happend inside of a given month). Next was making a shared drive between the technical person and my server.

This was an undertaking. I used what I learned up to that point, in addition to the clarity provided by ESR's [The Art of Unix Programming](http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/). I broke up everything into functional elements (whether it be a coded function or a small script to achieve one small thing). Then wrote abstracted code to call those specific elements and tie them all together...a control script.

Being told "This cannot be done" is a very general statement provided by a narrow mind. This statement hides the intricacies of why something cannot be done. Looking at each piece, which lead a person to believe this could not be done, and resolving the issue lead to success. Typically, it is a bit safer to say: "I have not seen a way to do this, yet" or "If this can be done, several issues would have to be address".

As school starts up, it is important to keep your mind focused. Here are some Ted talks that I enjoy watching, about this time, each year:

* https://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts
* https://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_battling_bad_science
* https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_learning_revolution

What are my predictions for the year?

* Probably to be a little healthier.
* Learn some new technolgy.
* Hopefully move to a phone that has a more secure (and private) OS.