The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Friday, January 01, 2021

The upside is that 2020 is over—the downside is that COVID-19 is not over, murder hornets are a thing, and the election is still contentious

All I can say is—thank God it's Friday a new year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!


The forced march of progress

When I first wrote the Lua module for libtls, I had issues with using TLS_API to version the code, so I ended up using using LIBRESSL_VERSION_NUMBER instead and mandating at least LibreSSL 2.3.0.

But now that I'm switching away from LibreSSL, I can't rely upon LIBRESSL_VERSION_NUMBER anymore. After some thought, I have decided to no longer support versions of libtls prior to 20180210 (or LibreSSL 2.7.0). The non-LibreSSL libtls versions I've found all seem to be newer than 20180210, so that shouldn't be much of a prooblem.

Saturday, January 02, 2021

When one IP address fails

I wrote my own gopher server several years ago. And it works fine for my own uses, But I could not load gopher://raymii.org/. I could use telnet (the gopher protocol is very easy to use by hand). I could use nc. But my client could not connect.

I finally dived into the problem and I found the issue—not all the addresses for raymii.org work! My code would call getaddrinfo(), which returns a list of addresses, and my code would just use the first one returned. Only in the case for raymii.org not all the addresses accept connections. And that's an issue that I've never encountered before.

The fix was easy—attempt to connect to each address and return when the first one connects.

Wednesday, January 06, 2021

It's finally the Twelfth Day of Christmas!

By the Twelfth Day of Christmas, my true love has gifted me:

I now have here 140 people, 34 of which are playing loudly, 66 are prancing about loudly, and 40 complaining that the noise is making it difficult to milk their cows. Speaking of which, there are 40 cows milling about constantly mooing, and making such a mess on the floor. There are 184 birds flying about, honking, calling, cooing and otherwise making more of a mess on everything but the floor, to the point where it's wise not to eat the pears without a thorough cleaning (and possibly peeling). The 40 golden rings aren't quite enough to make up financially for all the damage caused so far.

I think next year I'll just ask for a pair of socks.

Friday, January 08, 2021

Notes about the first time I tried a S'more

For some unknown reason, Bunny came into The Computer Room with a S'more in hand for me. This was my first experience with a S'more.

“Um, did you slay the Stay Puft mashmallow man?” I asked.

“Okay,” said Bunny, “the marshmallows were kind of big. Do you like it?”

“Like it? I can't even get a hold of it.”

“Would a fork help?”

“Wait a second,” I said. “Let me flip the plat over and see if I can get it that way … ”

“Wow! That marshmallow sure is sticky stuff.”

“There we go.”

“Do you like it?”

“Mmmmm mm'm mmmm.”

“Pardon?”

“Iths okay. Messy, but okay.”

“So it didn't knock your socks off?”

“I'm not wearing socks, but yes, if I was wearing them, this wouldn't knock them off.”

“Oh.”

“It's okay. A bit too sweet for me, but I don't hate it.”

“But at least you tried it.”

“Yes,” I said. “At least I tried it.”

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