How very fitting then that I awarded specialty rubber ducks to the winners of my 2011 ServerFault Challenge. =) In the process of asking a question on ServerFault or other online communities, I have often come upon the answer to my question. That's a large part of the reason why I started blogging. As I would troubleshoot issues in the real world, I found that writing out my experience would cause me to see the issue in a simpler way and I'd almost always find the solution. By that point, I would have 90% of a blog post written anyway, so I might as well publish it to the benefit of others. If my post or forum question didn't net an answer, well, it usually refined my thought process and made it a valid contribution to the nets at large. Someone, somewhere will then have a much easier time answering it or perhaps learning from what troubleshooting steps I've already taken.