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01/03/2003 Archived Entry: "Making changes"

Tomorrow we're heading over to Rich's place on Gabriola Island to see if we like it. Really, we're doing this so we stop pipe-dreaming...we've been talking about how nice it would be to move over there and have a nice quiet little life on an island where we can maybe start a little business and carve a little niche of individuality. Note how many times I said 'little' in that last sentence and think about why that is. I am utterly sick of the rude people, the crowds, the smog, the traffic and the high concentration of idiots in Vancouver. I'm originally from a small town, and while I dislike the remote possibility of living in that small town ever again (thanks for the lung problems, Mr. Weyerhauser!), another small town (or island community, preferably) sounds awfully nice.

Jen is from a small town as well, and I think that maybe the short period she's been living in Vancouver has made her realize that it's not all fun and excitement. Mostly it's just as I said above...rude, stupid people and their cars. It doesn't take much to realize that.

But then our plans get a little complicated...I need a job. I need a job badly, so that I can do Jen's immigration papers and get her Permanent Resident status. I must somehow be able to prove that I can support her for 3 years (if need be) in order for them to accept her into the country...whether she's my wife or not. More rampant stupidity on the part of the government policymakers, I'm afraid. It's not hard to see that we are not a marriage of convenience and that I'd do anything I need to do to be with her. Unfortunately, what I need to do is follow the rules that were set up in order to prevent other people who are trying to scam the system from succeeding. I guess that's what we all have to do, constantly...bring our behaviour in line with the lowest common denominator of human ethics, rather then seek to live our lives honestly and individually, even if that individuality gets some strange looks or is outside the boundaries of conservative folks.

Being that I'm trying to keep a 'geekly' aspect to my recent posts, here's a hint for you Unix newbies: 'chmod -R o-r /etc/' doesn't secure your system from intrusion. I just figured I'd tell you that since the guy I help with his linux system didn't understand why that might be a problem.

(For you newbies: it removes the ability of anyone other than root, or programs run by root, to read the important configuration files in the /etc directory. Unfortunately, a lot of thing need to be able to do that...don't mess with top-level directory permissions, the defaults are pretty much always good.)