For blog post "Simulating SSL outages with Go"

reachout.go

package reachout

import (
	"fmt"
	"net/http"
	"os"
)

func ReachOut() string {
	host := os.Getenv("API_HOST")
	url := fmt.Sprintf("%s/api/ping", host)
	resp, err := http.DefaultClient.Get(url)
	// deal with response
}