Laundry Problems

So for quite some time now, I’ve been avoiding something…

There is a class of problems that I often refer to as laundry problems. This harkens back to my college days when I would put off doing my laundry for days and days. I would look at the large, overflowing bag of dirty clothes and be overwhelmed just looking at it.

“Oh man…,” I would think, “I need to haul that big dang bag to the laundromat, sort it, wash a bunch of separate loads, dry it, fold or hang it, and then haul it all back…”

It was pretty much over before it began.

“I just don’t have time…,” I would think, “I’ll do it on the weekend…”

And the laundry would continue to pile up.

At some point, that horrible day would arrive. I would open a drawer, or look in the closet, and realize that I was taking the very last shirt, or the very last pair of pants. (Note 1: Generally this came after re-wearing several articles of clothing. Having re-worn everything decent, you were down to that one shirt or pair of pants that you really didn’t like very much, but that you would rather wear than… well.. do laundry. Note2: Being incredibly self-aware when it came to my laundry-procrastination abilities, I would always be sure to have an overabundance of underwear… re-underwearing being a fate too horrible to ponder.)

And so, with no other alternatives, I would resign myself to fate: I would be spending that afternoon or evening doing laundry.

And you know what? Every time, when I was done, I would think the same thing:

“Well… that really wasn’t so bad.”

Lots of problems in life are laundry problems. We tend to make the obstacles or difficulties seem so big in our minds, we end up avoiding doing anything.

This website has been languishing on an old, outdated AWS instance for… well… about five years.

Every time I thought about fixing it, I came up with several dozen excuses for why now just wasn’t a practical time to take on that task.

No question: A laundry problem.

Last night, in a fit of pique (note: the result of me being irritated at myself, because I’ve injured my own pride by continuing to procrastinate) I dove in and tackled it.

Holy hell, I love AWS, ssh, and rsync because now I get to say, “Well… that really wasn’t so bad.”

It took me probably 45 minutes from start to finish. I was so frickin’ proud of myself, I even shifted the site over to HTTPS using a Let’s Encrypt certificate. That took a little longer, because there was some learnin’ involved, but that really wasn’t so bad either.

Hmmmm…

I should probably start working on my taxes…

I just don’t have time…

I’ll do it on the weekend…

-TL
Tom Liston
Owner, Principal Consultant
Bad Wolf Security, LLC
Mastodon: @tliston@infosec.exchange
Twitter: @tliston
March 18, 2021