I just finished moving my email infrastructure to the new server (Gentoo + Deathgod Box of Doom). I had to wrangle quite a bit with SMTP-AUTH this time, and found very little help out there that didn’t have to do with using MySQL for the authentication piece. For me (and probably many others), that’s just overkill.

So after figuring out how to do it I decided to do a writeup on it. I would very much like to save others from having to go through the same thing I did. Plus, when I inevitably forget a step someday I’ll have this to refer to:

How To Get Postfix To Use SMTP-AUTH WITHOUT Using MySQL

VIDEO: O’Reilly Gets Pwned

I got to see something really cool the other day. Some guy was being paid to hand out fliers at a mobile phone store here in Queens and the guy running the place saw what he believed to be the guy wasting time talking to friends.

So he moves out to where he’s in line of site of the guy (while still in the store, which had customers in it) and he opens his arms all the way out. “Hey! What I am payin’ you foah…” (think Sopranos). The guy, as if scripted, comes back with, “Why you bustin’ my balls?” (Sopranos) And he’s yelling this. Again, in front of customers.

People barely noticed, except for me. It was awesome.

So I am staying in Queens, which is markedly not New York City. I thought it was virtually the same, but it’s not. Not even virtually.

Well things are about to change. Our main contact up here got us a wicked cool place in uptown Manhattan. We’re right by central park and the Mac store, and we are getting everything taken care of. Laundry, expenses, tons of nice dinners, etc. This guy is hooking us up.

So the days of being stranded in the outskirts of the city are done. For the next two months I’m going to be in the thick of it. Taking the subway to work, being a stone’s throw from everything in the city, and absorbing the energy the way it was intended. Life is good.

I think one of the things that separates those who are successful from those who struggle is the ability to make use of existing resources — especially information.

Those who can do this effectively end up doing like a tenth of the work while yielding double the output. Those who don’t spend their lives reinventing simple tools, and as a result achieve just a fraction of the results.

Being successful is largely a matter of having a better system for doing things, and this is a major part of it.

It occured to me recently that having what I belive to be an “opinion” is actually a pretty high standard. I know this isn’t true in the strictest sense of the word, i.e. according to the dictionary anyone can have one, but I disagree.

The vast majority of “opinions” are nothing but echoes of peoples’ latest influence. They are parrot songs that were particularly catchy for whatever reason. I think a true opinion is one that stands on a solid base of knowledge and then branches from there.

I was struck with this while debating a friend about the fall of America. I found myself giving the whole “fall of Rome” argument. I’ve heard the argument a number of times, and it’s always made sense to me, but what do I really know about Rome? Not much of anything.

So do I really have an opinion about what caused the fall of Rome? No. No I don’t. What I have is the ability to echo a very small portion of someone else’s opinion, which I find rather intellectually hollow.

Don’t make that mistake, and call others when they make it. It’s not a real idea until you’ve already benefited from existing knowledge and then have something new to add based on that understanding. Until then you’re just posturing.