Tom's Meandering Mind - Poignant articles on webdev & start-ups, pointless bytes, and pure lunacy.

January 28, 2010

Dan

The crisp California breeze washed away the drudgery of my six-hour confinement within the metal conduit that had taken me from my home in Ohio to the realization of my pipe dreams on the West coast. I was looking for a boy I hadn't seen in seven years. I spotted him immediately; a man with the same long, lanky frame topped off with a head of wild, bright blond hair; the same jovial smile and carefree gait. My old friend hadn't changed one bit.

A few months prior to our reunion in early 2008, Dan Haubert and I started TicketStumbler as an escape from corporate finance and the banality of suburban Ohio, respectively. We went on to join the ranks of YCombinator founders, to hatch a reasonably profitable business, and to meet dozens of extraordinary individuals who are now fixed friends--to name just a few adventures.

In late September of 2009, to the complete bewilderment of the hundreds who knew him, Dan took his own life.

It is difficult for me to articulate the loss I feel as a result of his death. Dan was always the one person I could count on. He was a fixture of indelible character and unwavering dedication; he was like the brother I never had. With his loss, I feel a line has been cut. Dan kept me anchored to a time that had largely faded from memory and an inner child that, like his, found it quite preposterous that two Ohio boys could start a company, get funding, and move to Boston on a whim -- all without somebody finding out we were making it up as we went along. Having lost him, I can't help but feel a bit adrift.

For Dan, retaining friends from childhood was natural. He was intensely amicable, enjoyed the company of others, and genuinely loved to help people. For me, though, anchoring the past was no small feat. Dan was my oldest friend; the last remaining relic of a bygone age and my only tie to the simple life of Starcraft and street hockey I'd all but forgotten. We kept in touch over the interim years via email, thanks largely to the fact that he wouldn't leave me alone. He was one of the few people who corresponded with me during my year-long military deployment to Afghanistan in 2007; he outlasted my then-girlfriend by months.

From the moment I found him that awful day to the writing of this sentence, I've been unable to make much sense of this absurd ending to our story.

To Dan, life was an extension of a question we'd been trying to answer since childhood: how do I play video games all night without my parents knowing? Ever the hustler, Dan hacked his way around every rule in the book. Near the end of college, he picked up a second major he knew nothing about just to weasel his way into a cushy internship. Brick walls were mere speed bumps to him.

Even if I can't bring him back or comprehend why he left, I can take solace in keeping his spirit alive. So, Dan: I won't be hollowed by the corporate ladder. I'll keep treating life as the game it is. I'll share all the knowledge I gain. And when Starcraft II comes out, I'll trounce some Koreans for you.

Farewell, old friend.

-----

Epilogue

This post was originally authored in late October 2009 and final edits were in place by November. It was then that I made a promise to myself: I would not post this until it could serve as a form of closure. The three months following its completion were spent dealing with considerable emotional and financial fallout. I called on friends and loved ones (who answered, with a resounding roar of support), meditated, and sought counsel--both legal and emotional.

I don't pretend to understand Dan's fate -- it being so uncharacteristic of the man I knew -- but I once more wake excited for the challenges ahead. My finances are slowly stabilizing, I'm doing fun, challenging work with good people and I've shed much of the anxiety that plagued me in the months following Dan's death. In November, recovery was a mere hope; now, it is a growing reality.

I'd like to once again thank all those who played a part in that recovery: you know who you are. Without you, I dare say this would still be a draft.

"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies." –Jack Kerouac

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July 29, 2009

Starting Up, One Year Later: Recovery

[This entry is part of a series. Read previous entries here.]

I didn't find a hotel on the morning of June 2nd, 2008. I stuck to driving up and down the same road, too afraid of losing my bearings among the haphazardly-placed Boston streets. After an hour of slowly-increasing radii, I gave up and pulled into an eerily desolate parking garage. The mechanical clunking of the ticket machine was the only sound to break the morning silence.

My car wasn't the best of beds, but I wasn't complaining. After all, I was on the cusp of a new adventure! I'd just driven 14 hours straight, from Cincinnati to Somerville; this was my first official morning as an honest-to-god startup founder and Bostonian! Okay, so maybe we weren't totally in agreement on the whole Bruins vs. Red Wings thing.

* * *

More than a year after that fateful day, I'd learned first hand the life of a bootstrapped startup founder is an adventurous one, but also a tiring one. I'd become tired of staying in every night. I'd been worn down, working on a site that after a year was making enough money to warrant continued toil, but not enough to buy me a supreme pizza. I was tired of feeling guilty for seemingly never giving enough while simultaneously dealing with the realization there may not be an "enough". All of these issues attributed to the malaise of my previous entry.

Then, a couple weeks ago I finally got the joke: In my fervor to escape the slavery of corporate America, I'd made myself a slave to my supposed salvation. They say in Zen that when one is finally enlightened, there's nothing left to do but have a good laugh. Mine was no satori, but I laughed just the same.

And I gave up. Not on the business, but on the notion that I could be satisfied merely by clawing my way up this topless mountain each day. I now go out occasionally, even though I can't afford it. I do my best to be productive on a daily basis so that I may enjoy the free time I make (because unlike a normal job, nobody is going to give it to me). And I definitely get more done in less time as a result (thanks in part to a more disciplined schedule). I've sweat and bled and drank the Koolaid -- and it has been a blast. Yet, with balance comes perspective, and I'd been lacking both.

The most important life advice I can give after my short time as a startup founder (and comparatively short time on this earth) is this: keep yourself grounded. To many, a year isn't even an especially long time to toil at something one is passionate about, yet it took an awful toll on me -- one that I am just now beginning to fully recover from. Dedication and sacrifice can be valuable assets, but they can also be a nefarious enemy. One which slowly robs you of your ability to see the forest for the trees, until all perspective is lost.

Sacrifice is generally necessary when starting a new company, but in my case I found it to have diminishing returns. Eventually it caused me to become far less productive than I was to begin with. Even now, money is a constant stressor, one which instead of motivating me, simply gives me one more thing to needlessly worry about.

A few months back, I finally went to a mechanic to have maintenance done on my car. It wasn't until the next morning that I noticed what an enormous weight had been lifted from me. I had allowed the warning lights on my dashboard to dictate my stress level while driving for nearly six months. That's just plain stupid! And my car nearly sustained expensive damage as a result (there was no oil left, for one). Deal with warning signs when you first see them, before they send you into a downward spiral.

(This will likely be the final post on this topic for a while. The initial purpose of this blog was to educate others; to share what I've learned not only over the past year as a startup founder, but over a decade+ of web development. Up next, I have a great tutorial for architecting a Comet setup, if that's your thing!)

Filed under // OYL

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July 6, 2009

Music Monday: Jenny Lewis

Acid Tongue by Jenny Lewis

(download)

If you haven't had the distinct honor and pleasure of hearing the heart-melting voice of Jenny Lewis, you certainly should. Give her a listen, then pick up (as it were) Acid Tongue with haste. There's definitely some Joplin in her, which I'm sure contributes to my love. The album in question comes on a bit mellow, but gradually finds some teeth and is even quite playful at times. Jenny's is one of those voices that makes the world seem more beautiful for containing it, so if you're looking for some cheer this Monday (I realize those of you with normal jobs tend to dislike Monday), here's a good place to start.

Only time will tell if I keep up the Music Monday schtick! It isn't completely unlikely, given my propensity for alliteration. And love of it.

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June 25, 2009

Living The Dream

It was seven a.m. on a nondescript Monday morning and I'd yet to go to sleep, not that it especially mattered. I caught a chill walking out the door in shorts, a t-shirt and a pair of sandals. The sky was overcast and the weather drizzly as I made my way to the bakery down the block to fulfill a compulsory desire for a cup of coffee and cheese danish. Dew clung lazily to the leaves of trees lining the street, droplets occasionally losing their grip and striking me with a deliberate coldness I couldn't help but slightly resent.

Young people waited for buses, cowering in store entrances and under awnings, hiding from the light rain indifferently nipping at my arms and legs. A man in a black suit and similarly black umbrella passed by, seemingly unaffected by my neighborly smile. "Somebody's got a case of the Mondays," I concluded.

The entrance to Anthony's was flanked by teenagers, which I recall finding odd. Had he enlisted teens to guard his pastry shop? No matter; a bit of fancy footwork and they were deftly avoided, left in my proverbial dust. "Kids these days," I mused. "Do they've nothing better to do than impede my pastry acquisition?"

Having acquired my coffee and danish despite the sentries, I once more evaded Anthony's Royal Guard and made my way back to the apartment, eating and drinking along the way. A 20-something wearing a backpack sped past me via the parallel sidewalk across the street. The air had begun taking on the sounds of morning risers and nine-to-fivers. A water delivery truck coasted by and came to a stop ahead. A man in a green shirt came out with two jugs. I remember thinking, "Who needs 10 gallons of water at seven in the morning?" Then I thought that perhaps he must have more than one delivery that day.

I took one last breath of the fresh morning air and stepped inside the dark, silent apartment. The outer door slammed shut behind me with a loud thud, which reverberated through the quiet hallway. My coffee and danish consumed and my belly full, I decided it an appropriate time to retire for the day, as I was rather tired, and I'd no compelling reason not to.

I settled into my futon with a contented sigh and thought of all those people outside, compelled by various forces to go places and do things, largely against their will. I reminded myself, I have no alarm clock. No place to punch in. Nobody to provide for me, but nobody to rule over me either. Lest I forget, I was still... living the dream.

* * *

Bootstrapping a company is hard, unforgiving, relentless work. Sometimes it's the little things that remind me why I do it. What reminds you?

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June 21, 2009

Starting Up, One Year Later: The Downward Spiral

[This entry is part of a series. Read previous entries here.]

A fellow developer, entrepreneur, and friend said this to me yesterday:

I feel like all I do is wake up, code, then do it again.

His statement vindicated my own feelings -- feelings that began to gradually manifest sometime early this year. I'd gone home to Ohio for Christmas and come back somewhat refreshed (as refreshed as one can be after a week in the midwest), but it wasn't long before the storm I felt coming settled above my desk and started to let pour. I decided, I must just need a change. So I quit smoking, because that didn't seem to be doing me much good. And I started going to the gym six days a week again, because I felt like a lazy pile of shit. And those helped. Well, the latter anyway. Most recently, I managed to successfully trick an incredibly smart, beautiful woman into dating me; in that regard I haven't been so lucky in a long time, if ever. So what gives?

What about my friend? This is a guy who seems to have a pretty balanced life, all things considered. His startup received some funding which (presumably) means he isn't watching his net worth decline like most startup founders. He has a long-term girlfriend he's rather happy with. His tweets suggest he occasionally engages in activities "normal" people do. I can't speak to the cause of his malaise, but after careful self-examination and admitting some hard truths, I did find the cause of mine: Me.

* * * * *

The life of a startup founder is, quite naturally, inextricably linked to his or her business. While it certainly wasn't the case six months ago, I do have some semblance of balance in my life now. The problem is, I can't justify it to myself. Dan and I aren't sitting on piles of money, so why aren't I suffering more? Sacrificing more? I can't even sit in bed writing this without thinking, "I should really be working," and therein, as the bard would tell us, lies the rub.

All the stuff "normal" folks do to unwind and interact with the world outside of their jobs -- go to the gym, read a book, go out to dinner, watch TV, play a game, etc. -- I either won't allow myself to do or feel guilty over doing. These cathartic activities are, as it turns out, rather important (to those of us who aren't robots). In my case, foregoing them led to a gradual, at first imperceptible downward spiral which has culminated in what I can only describe as a crushing cycle of stress and guilt. I feel both constantly stressed by my unending responsibilities as our sole developer (better finish that feature or we starve to death! OMGBBQ! No! I've no time for a BBQ now!) and profoundly guilty any time I try to relieve that stress. When I tell people, "all I do is work," I don't mean that literally; I don't write code 16 hours a day. But when anything else I do is met with self-loathing, what else do I really do?

I implore those of you planning (or just beginning) to start up: don't fall into this trap! Without a doubt, there are sacrifices that must be made; you'll need to work long hours, limit social activities, and weather disasters along the way. But regretting every moment you don't sacrifice isn't one of them, and it doesn't scale. Paul Graham says starting up is like being "repeatedly punched in the face," but we founders can do a lot of the punching at times. After a year of running a startup you may find yourself feeling like you're waking up in Office Space, or worse. You won't be doing your company any favors by digging your own grave, trust me. The worst part is, I know if I could have one week of completely guiltless, justified relaxation for the year I've given, I could reset and do another, no problem. I could handle the stress fine were I able to exorcise it occasionally, without creating more as a byproduct of guilt. Silly me, though: I dug this giant hole then threw away the shovel!

Though I managed to transform myself from someone who loved every moment of life to a man who doesn't always enjoy getting out of bed (and I don't even have a particularly comfortable bed), there may be light at the end of the tunnel. Spending time with my special lady friend is the first thing I've managed to do without feeling guilty in quite a while, maybe because I feel that finding a great woman is equally as rare as creating a great company so both deserve some time, albeit an unequal amount at first. I even took yesterday off because I woke up without the desire to even look at code, and I only feel semi-terrible about it! I might not know exactly how I got here, or how to get back to where I was, but I damn well know one thing: when this is all said and done, no matter the outcome, I sure as hell won't feel I didn't give it my all.

* * * * *

I'm not really sure what you should take from that rambling diatribe against me, but one thing might be: Don't lose perspective. Today Dan said to me, "You know what's at stake -- take a break if you need it." At my core, I'm a very laid back, "whatever happens, happens" sort of guy, so phrases like "you know what's at stake" have a tendency to freak me out because, no, I don't really know what's at stake! Is it something serious?! So I just assume whenever somebody says something like that, there's a lot. And I get a little nutty.

And maybe that's why I'm here now, writing this. Because we're told as founders to work hard and sacrifice and give a statistically-impossible 110%, and just don't die, and if you do all that, chances are good you'll eventually succeed. If not, you'll probably fail, and you'll wonder, "did I do enough?" I've never been partially responsible for a company or someone I profoundly care about (not gay! not gay!); how awful would it be to fail and feel I could have done more?! Shit, shit, shit! I've only ever been responsible for me and God knows I don't take myself remotely seriously!

Then again, maybe you'll wake up one day and wonder, "Why the fuck am I doing this to myself?" Then perhaps you'll convince yourself that, like pre-moistened towelettes, pre-forged guilt is a good thing because it'll keep you focused (and clean). Months later you'll finally admit you're being irrational and write a whiney diatribe about it, which fails to actually resolve anything. But at least you got to reference The Big Lebowski. And somebody will probably submit it to Hacker News and get karma, so it isn't all bad.

So don't lose perspective! Starting your own company is a big deal and you should sacrifice as much as you can to make it successful, especially if other people are in it with you. It's definitely a reason to put your big-boy pants on. But it isn't worth hating yourself over. The irony is, I've done things in my life way worse than "not working hard enough," and it took losing perspective and manifesting guilt to finally prove I have a moral compass, even if it's too broken to find North.

Thanks for reading. Now get back to work, you lazy sod!

Filed under // OYL

Comments [10]

June 9, 2009

Git Tip: Spin Off a Directory Into a New Branch the "Right Way"

One root directory in our git repository accounts for about 99.999% of files in the project. Tired of checking out 13,000 files each time I needed to switch between branches, I decided it was time to cut the ties that bind and send this directory tree off into the world (as a new branch). Thankfully, there is a simple and clean way to accomplish this task.

git-subtree to the Rescue

git subtree is a very handy project and is described (concisely) thusly:

An experimental alternative to the git submodule command.

It can (appropriately) be acquired from github. From here, things are pretty easy. The following assumes you have a folder media inside your repo which you would like to spin off into a branch (creatively) named media:

$ cd /var/repos/my-cool-thing
$ git subtree --prefix=media --branch=media
$ git push origin media:media

Now, just wait. In my case, wait a couple hours. See, wasn't that easy? Actually, I feel silly telling you all this. I'm sure you would have investigated the matter yourself. To which you reply,

Fuckin'-A. I don't need no smart branch-makin' developer to show me where the bear shit in the buckwheat!

Now that I've ruined a quote from a timeless motion picture, let's move on! There are two really handy advantages to using this method, rather than something even simpler or built-in:

Only the commit history for the relevant files is retained
Unlike the git submodule command, git subtree doesn't produce any special constructions (like .gitmodule files or gitlinks) in your repository

git subtree has many other uses outside of this basic case, though, and I encourage you to explore them. For instance, when the command completes, it will spit out a commit hash to stdout which corresponds to the current HEAD of your new tree; you can do whatever you want with it – go wild! Rather than just using the branch, I could have spun it into its own repository and linked it back to the main one, for instance. Read the manpage for more.

Until next time, cats and kittens!

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June 6, 2009

Starting Up, One Year Later: The Honeymoon

[This entry is part of a series. Read previous entries here.]

Last year I teamed up with a friend to create TicketStumbler. We got accepted into YCombinator, hardly believing our good fortunes. Over the summer we made many great friends, turned out a useful, quality product that was profitable from week one, partied with investors, got covered by some (mildly) prominent publications... yes sir, our story has it all!

And like any story, it has a beginning.

I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain.

It was the summer of 2008 and, along with a friend I hadn't seen in seven years, I'd started a company. And gotten flown to California. And gotten into YCombinator. I'd probably had an amazing meal and a glass of 12 year old scotch by the time our story begins, too. It was all quite a shock to me; only a few months earlier I'd been stuck in Afghanistan, hating my life. But that was the past; there in California began not only a new adventure (which I covet), but a new chapter in my life. Forsaking my college education, I'd thrown my hat into the entrepreneurial ring. And, of equal importance, gotten the hell out of Ohio.

When I think back to that summer in Cambridge, I can't recall much of anything that wasn't new or exciting to me. I came to make a group of wonderful, intelligent friends I still talk to. I created a web site from the ground up that people used and liked (still do!). I listened to insightful commentary and gained valuable advice from some of the brightest entrepreneurial minds. I even learned one of my beloved "programming heroes" can be a bit of a condescending jackass (not you pg; who'd want a rampant table-user as his hero?!)

On the work front, life wasn't always easy. Topics such as parallelization and asynchronous network programming were new to me and caused me much frustration. Some nights I would go to sleep feeling utterly defeated and powerless, only to wake up with a renewed vigor. Our weekly YC dinners were cathartic during those times. I was able to air my grievances to developers who knew my pain and subsequently relate to their own troubles, many of which I'd encountered and bested in the past ("Who the hell could ever manage to properly setup a mail server?!"). We swapped advice and assistance and generally had a grand time. In the end, I gained significant knowledge of some very interesting and practical topics and learned that having fellow programmer friends is pretty... awesome!

Time remained determined in its advance, much to my chagrin; I'd wanted that summer to last forever. I'd found a sort of stillness in the flurry of work and excitement that I'd never felt before. I remember expressing to my Father, who has so often been my counsel, that at last I felt a sense of peace and happiness that I'd been in search of for years. At that moment, everything in the world was perfect and beautiful. I knew that although I couldn't stop time, perhaps I could at least keep myself from forgetting that feeling. I've since realized that even if I could derive no other positive experience from this chapter in my life, learning to harness and employ that Zen-like outlook has been more than enough to justify it -- but I'm getting ahead of myself.

We launched TicketStumbler at the beginning of August, to much excitement (on our parts, anyway). Orders started coming in and we quickly reached "Ramen" profitability. Dan pitched to investors at Demo Day to much interest (theirs, not ours). Then, just as quickly as it had began, YC was over and all my new friends scurried away to the greener pastures of Silicon Valley (traitors!). Though largely friendless and alone at our new Bostonian home base, spirits were as high as ever. We retained our spartan work ethic and remained utterly optimistic of the future and all the wonder and success it might bestow upon us.

* * * * *

I like to refer to the four months described here as the honeymoon phase of a startup. Nothing has been proved, but more importantly nothing has been disproved; everything is in front of you. This is the time to make mistakes for momentum will keep you going, failure not being even a glimmer in your eye. You've nothing to do but work with reckless abandon.

And work you must! Much like a child's first years, a startup's first months are its formative ones. You must iterate exhaustively to build a solid base. We were fortunate in that our idea was already quite fleshed out, but that doesn't mean things simply went off without a hitch! After a month of hard work, a stroke of genius may look more like one of lunacy; you may have to adjust fire quickly to hit your target. The good news is, you can do that! Talk to startup founders and you'll hear uplifting stories of cloning a competitor's feature the same day they release it; never underestimate the power of your own agility!

Finally, never discount the importance of face-to-face contact with other entrepreneurs. Online groups are nice, but a bit of a cheat in this regard. No matter what happened during the weeks of YC, we always had those weekly dinners to ground us. We knew we weren't alone; others were sharing in our pride and pitfalls. Through these mutual experiences we grew close and formed a network not only of emotional support, but of practical support as well. When one of us succeeded, in a way we all succeeded, and that is a strong catalyst for selfless assistance and support. Besides, surrounding yourself with people of equal or greater intelligence than yourself is just a plain good idea.

In part three, our story continues and begins to explore the idea that the drive and energy associated with scrappy young startups is not unlimited and how some of us are not entirely indefatigable after all.

Filed under // OYL

Comments [3]

June 5, 2009

Starting Up, One Year Later: Chasing Dragons

Tilling my own grave to keep me level
Jam another dragon down the hole
Digging to the rhythm and the echo of a solitary siren
One that pushes me along and leaves me so...

To a developer, our needle is code; our heroin, the project life cycle. Starting a fresh project is so liberating; so high-inducing. An empty git (or subversion, or...) repository with all the promise that only a blank slate and the thought of tomorrow can bring. The code flows so naturally when there are intriguing new problems to solve. The "zone" is reached; that state where the whole of the Universe is code on the screen and everything else melts away. Bugs are squashed indiscriminately and without remorse; no quarter is given.

Then, something happens. A few weeks, months, a year in, that rosy tint begins to fade and the truth comes to light: all the interesting problems have been solved. There are bugs, but they're so elusive and rare that the time cannot be justified to fix them, though they still grate on the mind. Parts of the code begin to smell; some files are avoided out of fear for what will be seen. The ticket tracker begins to fill with yawn-inducing minutia and, seemingly suddenly, the project that was once too fun to share has become a maintenance project for a summer intern.

* * * * *

It has been just over one year to the day since my YCombinator "class" began. When I talk to my friends made during those days, many of them express burnout or general malaise -- even some who's companies are doing rather well! The high gained during those first months was incredible, especially for we first-time Founders. The downside is that some of us spent later months trying to chase that dragon down.

As it stands, TicketStumbler marks the first project I've spent a whole year on; I'm usually lucky if I last 6 months. Despite failing to catch my elusive dragon, the company remains an ongoing adventure and a rather extreme learning experience which I wouldn't trade for anything right now -- even if my Developer's Addiction occasionally suggests otherwise. That being said, I feel this marks a good time for some reflection on what I've learned over the course of a year as the solo developer in our modest, two-man, seed-funded Internet startup. I'm going to put together some posts, though in true hacker style, I will say only that Part Two will be "done when it's done". I hope you find them as useful and interesting as I'll find them cathartic.

UPDATE: Some folks seem to be confusing this with saying I'm going to quit working on TS or something. That wasn't the intention at all. Here I am merely expressing a sentiment that many developers feel, which I will expand upon later. Everyone hears the "good" about startup life, but it isn't all good. But that doesn't mean you quit, either.

(Part One of an unspecified series -- Part 2 now online)

Filed under // OYL

Comments [1]

April 16, 2009

Setting Up the nginx_request Plugin

The nginx_request plugin for munin has given people some trouble and since there doesn't seem to be any information regarding how to work around the minor issues it has, I'm posting this up for posterity. First off, remember you need to setup the stub_status module first, which needs to be compiled into nginx. The file downloaded below contains in-line documentation on what you need to do.

The first glitch is that the current plugin on MuninExchange seems to have a bug for some Perl versions (or something). I'm not really a perl hacker so I was too lazy to figure out what the real issue was. Instead, I just went ahead and grabbed the version from munin's trunk, which works fine:

wget "http://munin.projects.linpro.no/browser/trunk/plugins/node.d/nginx_request.in?format=raw" -O nginx_request
sed 's/@@PERL@@/\/usr\/bin\/perl/' <nginx_request >nginx_request

Don't forget to move the file into the munin plugin folder and make it executable (and change that sed command if /usr/bin/perl is not your perl!). The second glitch is an issue with the default 'url' env var. If you get a blank graph, chances are this is your problem too. Basically, the default url is generated in a way that may create an unreachable link or non-absolute location. Editing /etc/hosts could fix it, but let's just keep things isolated to munin. Edit your munin-node.conf file (usually in /etc/munin/plugins-conf.d/), adding the following to the bottom:

[nginx*]
env.url http://localhost/nginx_status/

Or whatever the url happens to be for you. And that's it!

Comments [0]

January 26, 2009

Meh, I Quit.

Smoking, that is. It has started to bore me and I always said I would quit when I got bored of it or died, whichever came first. It's practically illegal everywhere now and I'm sick of pansy bitches complaining when I smoke within 50 feet of their delicate nasal passages. I have about 1.5 packs remaining and after those are gone, I'm done. I don't expect this to be difficult, but I figured I would put it in writing anyway. I am supremely confident that my laziness will beat out any addiction, habit or desire I may have formed in the past 6 years. I just wish I had some other way to take a break every couple hours and relax/concentrate a bit.

P.S. I reserve the right to take up the habit if I get deployed again because there isn't shit else to do. Just sayin.

Comments [5]

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