About 10 years ago, I had a blog that garnered many more hits.

I posted there the obvious idea that it would not be long before physical products would soon by protected by DRM, and this would limit user ability to modify them and to use them as one wishes.

Even my political posts didn’t receive so much pushback, so much excoriation, and so much vehemence all advocating the idea that this would never and could never happen. There were several dozen comments telling me how much of an idiot I was.

I don’t know why. Perhaps people just didn’t want to believe it?

Not a new story, but of course it is happening. It will happen more. In fact, in the US I’d wager it’ll happen to nearly everything.

I don’t care about being right, really, as it was completely obvious that I would be, but I wonder why were people so reluctant to believe it?

Some sort of self-protection? Some variant of the just-world fallacy?

I have no idea.

I could really use three monitors, but I don’t have room for all three.

Three 5K monitors, of course.

I have a CCNP certification now. I got it a few weeks ago.

It was a very hard certification. The CCNP requires one prerequisite exam and then then three different CCNP-level exams consisting of a mixture of multiple-choice and practical tasks (configure and/or troubleshoot a router, switch, etc.) Comparatively, the Microsoft ones were a lot easier though harder than they once were.

Next week I am going after my Red Hat Certified Engineer certification. This one will be the most difficult of all as it’s all practical, all hands on. There are no multiple choice questions and only two hours to complete what I understand is many tasks.

I’ve been studying 8-10 hours a day for a few weeks now.

I feel pretty confident. I’ve learned more in a shorter time than any other time in my life, though I’ve used Linux for years so it’s not foreign to me.

But now I can set up in minutes – all without consulting anything online — services and capabilities that once took me hours to configure.

So I’m ready.

I think.