duckland.org

So, the freeze here back in February ended up killing two rose bushes and the orange tree. We replaced one of the roses, and it is already blooming.

Wow. March has passed us already. It was a busy month for me. I attended some training, I rebuilt my firewall, I posted on my my photo blog, I tweaked my theme, I cleared out my desk at the $JOB in preparation for a move.

Training

I attended my first external training class in a long time in March. I took ‘Certified Scrum Master’ as a virtual course. The instructor did a good job presenting the information without if being a pure info dump, and he structured the class in an engaging way even if it was over Zoom. Now, I just need to go take the test…

The Plague

On 19.March, I got my first does of anti-plague venom. This Friday, I get my booster shot. Unlike some in my fair state, I plan to keep wearing the mask and following all the sane safety protocols, but I do care about my family and the rest of my neighbors, even if they do not reciprocate the feelings.

The Firewall

Well, it has been a few weeks with the new firewall, and things seems to be going well with it. Speed is nice, and everything seems to be working out just fine which is nice after the hassles trying to get a new firewall up and running.

Photo Blog

I am 1/4 of the way through the 3rd year of my Project-52 posting a new photo every week. Most of the photos I have posted have been taken with my cell phone. Since March 2020, I have not gone anywhere very far from the house, and while I find things to take pictures of, I have not been motivated to crack out the main camera, so I guess the cell phone is now the main camera, leaving the Olympus OM-D E-M5 as a backup.

Cleaning the Desk

No, I did not change jobs. It is the fact that my $COMPANY announced last year that we would be moving out of out our current building, and moving into a new building (new to us, not new to the world) around the end of Summer 2021. Well, it seems that the Powers That Be(tm) seem to think that we will not be going back to the office before we move, so they have us go in, socially distanced, and clean out our desks in preparation for the movers to come in in August. So, after 54 weeks, I went in to the office and packed up a box to bring home.

No commuting for me for a while, it seems!

When I was here last, I was talking about how my trusty firewall appliance of many years had fallen over, and the challenges of trying to get pfSense working on the new hardware. I figured it was time for a quick updates.

This last weekend, I did cut over to the purpose-bought box for the firewall, but I have not as of yet put to use the extra ports for WiFi and DMZ use. I still have a bit of thinking to do on how I best want to set that up.

Whilst I am not pleased to find out the IPFire team’s thoughts on wireguard, I respect their decision on their project. Given that I am currently running wireguard at home (I have not had a chance to test it outside yet due to the plague) I was hoping they would support it. As if the fact I could not get pfSense booting was not reason enough, the pfSense project announced that they were dropping support for wireguard for the foreseeable future.