(The Crazy Antics of Shaun M. Thomas)
On the cusp of my 41st birthday, it’s inevitable that a certain amount of melancholy or nostalgic regret seizes my attention. At least, that’s the cold and clinical way I’d normally frame it, given my disposition. In reality, being 40 wasn’t so bad. My life is decidedly not perfect, but perfect is the enemy of good.
It’s hard not to consider though, the path that led me here.
It’s only now, in a fever born of a withering cascade of chronic insomnia, I can look back upon what I am and how I came to be. Always anxious and unsure, contemplative and melancholic.
It’s incredibly sad this appears to be the level of discourse we’ve sunk to. Regardless of how I personally feel about Trump, who is quite likely the most incompetent and self-serving person to ever hold the office, the amount of hyperbole surrounding his administration is staggering. What’s worse, the indignant zeal, the sheer vehemence directed toward those who voted for him, is nothing short of appalling.
To support more of my tinkering in an effort to test various Postgres cluster configurations, I decided it would be really nifty to have a virtual server. I could not only spin up VMs and containers to validate architectures, but experiment to my heart’s content with other potential technologies.
Postgres is one of those database engines that carves out a niche and garners adherents with various levels of religious zeal. The community, while relatively small when compared to that of something like MongoDB, is helpful almost to a fault. Members from the freshest minted newb to the most battle tested veteran will often trip over themselves to answer questions found in the various dedicated forums, mailing lists, and chat rooms. To that end, let’s answer one particular question that ties everything together: what exactly is available to someone who wants to participate with the Postgres universe these days?