I need to track what I eat, and since I have a blog (accessible from anywhere, a few readers that may speak up to offer advice or keep me honest), I'm going to start tracking my progress here. I'm likely to block access to these once they become large and personal enough, limiting access to friends, family or maybe site members. Right now, it's all open.

Discipline is logically choosing to do something that is either an affront to the stagnant or restraint from compulsion. A dieter disciplines himself to eat only healthier foods until it becomes habit, preference and eventually lifestyle. A runner begins by ignoring the body's preference to remain still. He pushes himself to run.

The chattering mind keeps one up late, interrupts tranquility, deals in doubt and questions, borrows from tomorrows' maybes and avoids the now. The mind can be loud, excluding present conditions that deserve attention. A quiet mind is a disciplined mind, like a quiet student seeking understanding and knowledge. There is a time for questions. And, there is a time for quietness.

Once your account or computer has been compromised, what do you do? First, change your future behavior. Second, secure your computers.

Last night my entire address book received email from my jason@jasonn.com account touting a Chinese website where the email claims I bought a new Macbook Pro dirt cheap. It looked like someone accessed my mail server and spammed my contacts through it. But, the address book was my Gmail address book and my email server stores no such list.

I've changed my methods and views. I no longer want to sympathize or understand my clients who make bad decisions, use bad product or are hampered by troublesome tech. I've done both. I've been oblivious to their plight because all my stuff just worked. I've been in the trenches with them. And, that just means I do my work slower while my stuff creeps along at a rate of crummy.

Folks hate documentation. They hate doing it and everyone loathes reading it, especially when it's verbose. But, documentation is essential to profit and efficiency. And, I'm not talking about the efficiency of doing a lot of stuff quickly. I'm talking about getting your job done and putting profits on the bottom line. Email, calls, texts, etc. waste time.

If you're expecting a simple rndc or named.reload to work, and it kicks out this ominous error you don't understand, the wiki or newslist solution may mislead you.

Before you do anything else, check to see if named is actually running. There's a few ways to do this:

% ps -aux | grep named

% top (and just look for named)

Read more

The commands and conf file locations below assume you're on a typical Linux system. BSD places items in /usr/local/etc/ instead of /etc and you may want to use "locate" or "whereis" just to make sure you've got the right file/program.

% netstat -n -a |grep 3306 > filename.txt
Tells you what's connected to us. Remove "> filename.txt" to just view it on screen.

% mtop

18 months of discipline.