I've always been interested to see what Linux's answer to Exchange is. I think I finally know: Tomcat.

It's not that Tomcat has the same functionality as Exchange, but it certainly has the same "Wow..." factor.

As in, "Wow....this is a really crappy product."
"Wow...it took Apache 8 years to do this?"

So, Linux can now compete with Microsoft in every facet: we, too, have a worst-of-breed product!

(Note: I'm being extra-harsh to Tomcat. This is because I don't like it.)

Subject: Seanchan don't even hate women who channel.

Curse you, Robert Jordan, and your spamming ways!

So today was my last day at Digerati. I can't must up enough to write any more about it at the moment. So ...assume you'll never hear any more about it, considering my track record.

Still writing, still Linux'ing, just...not here : )

Recently something changed for one of our clients. We had a Scalix deployment on-site; Scalix is startlingly like Exchange, except that it run on "Linux". I say "Linux" because technically only Redhat is supported. And it quite unfortunately uses sendmail.

But not in any normal configuration. 127.0.0.1:25 is basically an unaltered sendmail installation that handles local processing. 192.168.1.10:25 is a Scalix-specific version of an SMTP daemon, I assume based on sendmail, that functions as a relaying SMTP server for the groupware functionality. It uses sendmail, the binary, to send outgoing mail.

Previously, we were sending email directly from the groupware server, host to host. Then somehow, almost all of Verizon's DSL ranges in Harrisonburg got super-mega-blacklisted. About 6 months ago, I switched it over to using a smarthost. At the time, Verizon let DSL-range IPs relay without authentication. That's not a problem; the smarthost (all-mail forwarder, basically) works fine in basically any configuration...and takes some of the headache off of us.

Then, a few months ago, they went to using SMTP-AUTH, which is a scheme that requires login information to be sent before the server can send email. That's also..fine, although it's not a typical setup to require AUTH from valid IP ranges. Apparently, Verizon is unable to control spam effectively even from their own users. That's fine; SMTP-Auth is not hard to set up, even in archaic Sendmail, so I turned it on. Problem solved.

Sometime last week, though, something weird happened. I'm not sure if a configuration changed or if there's corruption on Verizon's end, but now suddenly this single client has to authenticate *every* email address, and the SMTP-Auth information has to match the FROM: header in the email.

This is stupid for various reasons. I can only assume it's a misconfiguration on their part, but I was unable to reach anybody above the "Trained Droid" status on the business help line.

Coincidently, Verizon "Business" service is worthless. I mean, in basically every aspect. If you're going to sell service to a business, as a business DSL account, at an increased price, you would think they would at least fleetingly claim to support more common configurations like, say...Exchange. Or more than one email address sending from the same IP. But the official Verizon business support Line that was fed to me: "we only support webmail access. If you can send and receive from the webmail, our responsibility is done. My systems group won't even touch it if you can send through the web site."

So fine. One-finger salute to the phone and I hang up. The problem is that sendmail has no mechanism to support multiple outbound authentication username/password combinations to the same server.

AuthInfo:outgoing.verizon.net "I:address1@verizon.net" "U:address1@verizon.net" "P:password"

Great! Using a groupware server, you will have multiple email addresses sending out through it. Inside the office, they use address1@verizon.net, address2, address3, address4, so on. If I set the AuthInfo to use address1, then address1 can send through the groupware server. Verizon's mail server, however, will reject any mail appearing to original from a FROM: address that doesn't *exactly* match the login hash. Even accounts with a master/child relationship, the child has to authenticate; it is *not* okay for the master account to authenticate for every child account.

This is patently stupid.

So I wrote an SMTP proxy that handles authentication. Or, more precisely, I modified one I found on the Internets...heavily.

It pulls from /etc/mail/user (a whitespace delimited username/password pair file; I plan to modify it later to parse fetchmailrc files) at load time and spawns a series of mail-handling daemons. It then forwards all SMTP traffic to the "real" mail server. It emulates enough SMTP server-side to get a MAIL FROM:, then looks up the from header address in the user file, base64s the info for AUTH LOGIN, and forwards it. Assuming it gets an OK, it fowards the FROM and immediately starts passing through all the text.

So the proxy works great. The last problem is that sendmail won't accept a port for the smarthost (DS) entry...which sucks. All of this is running on the same machine and the proxy is listing on 31337. So then as a final act of defiance, I had to add an ip alias to 192.168.1.99, set the proxy to listen on *that* address, :25. So it goes

LAN --> 192.168.1.10:25 (Scalix) --> 127.0.0.1:25 (Pure Sendmail) --> 192.168.1.99:25 (SMTP Proxy) --> Outgoing.verizon.net:25 (Retarded Mail Server)

I'll probably figure out in about 2 days how to do multi-AUTH in sendmail. I'm sure something else (Postfix or qmail) could have done it, but I'm not about to figure out the entire Scalix processing stack so I can swap sendmail for another mta. Bad mojo.

Bad day...bad day.

Ian turned in his notice yesterday. We went to BW3's to celebrate; he won't mind me saying he got roughly a 60% salary increase, because I'm super proud of him. Now *I* have to get out of there. Billable hours are killing me softly...with their song.

And maybe a 60% salary increase for me! That's not as drastic as it seems when you realize I get paid in GOOD JOB! Stickers and check plusses. Got a call today from Mclean for a datacenter position, and I have an interview Friday in the burg.

I can't help but wish I'd left more of an impression on the internet. If you google for me, you get

1) This page (which is unfortunate)
2) A series of postings I made to the ICRADIUS back in 98.
3) A presentation I did on NeXTSTeP in college
4) The first three chapters of Lintuition
5) Me badmouthing Wi-Fi for the local newspaper
6) Me on the Horde mailing list (IMP, not WoW) asking a legitimate question and getting shot down by the maintainer.


PS: If anybody reads this after finding SCALIX and Verizon tagged, email me for the script and directions. It's not good enough to post for general availabilty, but I'll be glad to send it to other people screwed by Verizon.

For anybody who doesn't know, my grandfather (Buddy) died last weekend. The official link from the DNR is here:

http://www.dnronline.com/search_obitdetails.php?OID=6722

There's not much point in saying what's already there; my hope is to once again add the loss of a dear person to the annals of the Internet.

My grandfather and I had an interesting relationship. Neither of them were ever TV grandparents. My grandmother can't cook worth a lick; I suspect she's forgotten how. When I was growing up I never got a particularly great feeling from either of them and honestly dreaded the yearly Christmas parties. The cousins and I would get together and steel ourselves for the yelling from her. As we got older, the parties fell apart until it was just immediate family and a few really close friends. Then the close friends fell apart.

It wasn't until I was older, early 20s, that I hit the realization some people never do. I gave up my dream of having idyllic grandparents and took a serious assessment of who they were as people. I separated who they were as a couple and who they were individually; both were vastly different. I realized that while they appeared, outwardly, to basically hate each other, it was the type of hate that only grew from 50 years of genuine love.

My grandfather was highly successful, business wise. He only bragged about it occasionally. He came from the old school of thought, as most grandparents do, where if you have to apologize for your actions and beliefs, you shouldn't have done them and shouldn't have them. He possessed a keen, analytical mind and had no qualms about using it. When I was contemplating going to work for someone about a year ago, I mentioned it to him in passing. I can't remember exactly what he said, but it translated it roughly to "I've played golf with him. He's nice to your face but you can't trust him. He's a sonofabitch; if you go to work for him he'll screw you somehow." It's hard to find a more honest reference.

Of course, much to our embarrassment this came out *all the time*. Frequently I would have dinner with them at Red Lobster. Inevitability, a behemoth of a man would walk in and sashay his way into a chair or both. My grandfather, with the lack of concern that only comes with age, would loudly state the obvious. Then the careful social dance would play out; we would pretend he didn't say it, the fat guy would pretend he didn't hear it, and the earth kept spinning.

In these later years I learned about him as a human being. I'd like to say we had lots of meaningful conversations about the deeper parts of life, but we didn't. We had a few, and they were powerful and quality. But it's unfortunate; I was only aware of him as a person and not just a vague idea for a few short years; not long enough to really get to know him.

One of the most cruel parts of life is that when you're old enough to get to know your family, they're no longer the same people they once were. My grandfather used to be a private pilot; he never quite encouraged me to take it up, but whenever I discussed it with him he seemed to be more interested than usual. He encouraged me countless times to start my own business doing whatever I thought could make it. He offered me sound advice and startup capital. Always a loan, never a handout; a loan with generous repayment terms, perhaps, but I wouldn't take and he wouldn't respect any less.

He did a lot of charity and foundation work that nobody knew and he never mentioned. I don't think it's really charity work if you mention it, but there are definitely buildings at JMU that would not have been built without his help and kids who would have been scholarshipless.

He never liked the idea of being in the ground and we entombed him in a mausoleum in the Keezletown, VA cemetery on Saturday. There was a fresh coat of snow on everything and the wind was hitting 25mph at times; the family was freezing but it was beautiful. From the site, you can see almost the entire length of the mountain and his first farm, purchased almost 15 years ago after he "retired" from the apartment complex.

I didn't cry, then. Not really. I seem to have faced an unusual amount of death in my time, at least when I compare myself to peers. I went out briefly with a girl who had never been to a funeral; a few of my friends have been to only one or two. One of my earliest memories is going to a funeral for one of my grandfather's uncles. I think I've become desensitized to death. Not from TV or movies, but from the sheer number of family funerals I've gone to. I was afraid for myself this weekend. I never cried, never even felt a pang. Like every other time in my life, I was completely stoic.

So I decided to write this. Writing is great therapy, and as I go I'm crying. My jaw hurts and my lips and cheeks are salty. And I miss my grandfather both for his absence and for my failure to know him better. I love my family and friends dearly, above all else. It's why I refuse so adamantly to move just for a job and why it hurts me so very much when friends leave or drop out of contact. It's probably very unhealthy. So it goes.

Above my desk is a picture of Mom, Dad and I they had taken in a studio just before college graduation. Amid the countless books, papers, bills, computer components, and philosophical musings of Ayn Rand, it remains the only picture. Sometimes when you look at a picture you can tell if the smile is genuine or forced. My smile is only slightly forced; mom and dad are beaming. And I cry again, because life is so frustratingly short.

Another of the folks I "grew up" with got married today. Regrettably, we were never that close; I spent a lot more time with her brother than with her. She made a beautiful bride, as brides are wont to do. I don't recall ever seeing an ugly bride...but then, consider the time and skill that goes to creating them in the days before their wedding. But in this case, the radiance was all natural.

Seeing as how this was a family affair (my parents and her parents are friends from literally hundreds of years ago), we (mom, dad and I) went together. The wedding was about an hour away. There was a girl, a cousin of the groom I have been told, who was as tall as me. Honest. I was frightened, but in the good way. Now, she had on about 1" platforms with 4" heels, so she was probably only about 6'3". And I mean "only" in the same way as saying "Johnny Cash was only a singer." I mean, it's not technically *wrong*, but I should probably be shot for saying it. The girl lives in Utah or Colorado or some nonsense, I'm pretty sure, so embarrassment doesn't matter.

Problems:
1) I'm with my parents. At the ripe age of 24, I am still unable to work my magic around parents and their friends. This is totally mental, and it's a personal problem, but it's because the person I have to be around them and the person I have to be to Talk to women are mutually exclusive. Some of it is that I'm a very private person and it irks me to no end when people I know are aware of my business.* I don't know why...I think if I were near death, the best my friends or family would get was "The doctor's not sure, but I might have to go back next week."
2) This girl is clearly out of my league...and not in the casual way where I'm joking and say it, but I don't really believe it. I never even consider "leagues"; it's a stupid term and not at all valid. The only way a girl is "out of your league" is if she's such a bitch that she thinks she is. Problem solved. But in this case..yeah, I think so (she's out of my league, not that she's a jerk..)
3) The last time I tried dancing it was an unmitigated disaster.

Bonuses:
1) I'm in a full suit with a totally hot tie.
2) I am taller than her. This is rare...statistically, only about 2-4% of the population is going to be taller than her. I just made that up. But it's pretty accurate.
3) I've been doing my "I don't care about anything" routine for about 20 minutes, wherein I try to project the same aura that I imagine a warrior to have before a siege on his castle. A warrior that is at peace with the world, his place in it. Serenity.. The aura part never works, but as a mental exercise I've found this *immensely* helpful before dealing with anything stressful.

Some of the randomly selected folks at the table are talking to me about my job & degree. They're excited to know that I did CS, for some reason. They are the first people -ever-. And then they say "You should meet our granddaughter, she goes to Bridgewater." Then I remember there was an eclipse tonight; planets are aligning, so from within the WarriorDome I assume that she has to be the Amazon. I let it slide; I'm honestly not trying to pick up chicks at this wedding...all I really want are some more delicious chicken tenders and maybe some apple cider. So then the lady says "Oh, here she is!". The lady introduces "my granddaughter", who is not an Amazon, to everybody at the table. I am last. I shake her hand and say "Hi..Wes, nice to meet you."

She looks into my eyes like she's about to lay siege to my castle. She says "Nice to meet you, too", as if she means it, at the exact same time as her grandmother eyes me and says "This is my granddaughter, ___________".

I can't give you her name...it's unique enough that I'm sure somebody would know this girl and the last thing I want her to do is become the butt of jokes from all three of my irregular readers. But suffice it to say her name was meaningful and appropriate. Somehow my brain connected everything together and the Dome shattered. In fact, I think my composure shattered as well. The Warrior doesn't lose his composure over women, but even he gets blindsided sometimes :/

So she left; maybe I'll hear from her one day if she can stop laughing. Later, I went to get some more cider (top notch!) and on the way back made eye contact with the Amazon. Gave her my winningest smile and went to go talk with her. And then...BAM! CB! Somebody with a higher trump card than mine jumps up. He's taller than her (we're about even) BUT..he's actually attractive. Cursing my luck, I sat down with my parents and starting doing shots of sweet tea.

The upshot of all this is that I met a girl who is actually going Uni in Ft. Collins, a school I was looking at for masters work. We had a decent chat about the school and if she had any friends in the CS program, what they thought of it, etc. I keep getting taunted by Colorado.

Warrior Wes does not like social gatherings, btw.



*I realize the irony in posting about this to a blog. It's different; this is partially for my own introspection and partially for you to laugh at how worthless of a human being I am. Plus...I'm feeding you a bunch of crap about my life anyway; knowing my fictitious business is not the same as having my mom watch me from across the room as I try to convince somebody to take their top off and dance.

Somebody, quite angrily, asked me about progress on the "Book". Let me assure you each, devoted readers, that absolutely ZERO progress has been made. When I get home from work I'm so mentally drained that I can barely read on a 5th grade level. Also, the last chapter is a miserable failure. Not only is it short and uninspired, but it's not funny. Much can be forgiven, I'm sure, but not being funny is a major sin.

Oddly enough, being mentally incoherent is the perfect state to either code PHP or to read more Wheel of Time. I'm midway through Book 6: The Power of Apocalypse (better known as "Rand and the Man with the Giant Yellow Hat"). The story line engrosses you with unbelievable...wordiness! But it's still really good. One of my favorite parts goes something like:

Rand> Ah, I can't let women get hurt, but here, I need you to go kill these guys. But don't get hurt.
Maidens> No problem, boss. You want we should makes thems an offers they can'ts refusk?
Rand> No..no, that's okay. Just go.
Maidens> Aye-aye!
Rand> You two, status report?
Starscream> I told you we could never hold Transformer Planet! The Autobots are rallying with some new leader. They call him "Tandy", and I think he might be a homosexual.
Rand> Pity you never bring me good news. -rand embraces the Nintendo Power and slices starscream in half-. What of you?
Duke Igthorn> Our ancient enemies from the Age of Legends, the Gummi Bears, have been spotted leaving New Gumbria. They have a giant weapon that shoots light! Something must be done...


I'm not sure how Rand's going to deal with the Gummi Bear Legions. Only time will tell...

So I'm working right now for a job where, basically, the sum of my net worth is what percentage of my time is directly billable to a client. Anybody, in any field, will realize exactly how much this sucks. I mean, it completely..sucks... There are dozens, if not hundreds, of studies that say the Billable Hour is contributing heavily to work-related stress increases through the decades. Why is that?

Unrelated to where I actually work, the truth is that within small companies, only a certain percentage directly generate profit. In most small businesses, that percentage should be 100%. If each employee generates direct income, then each employee only has to work enough to cover themselves + their portion of the company expenses.

However, as you increase employees (say from 1-2 in a small shop to 10 people in a still small shop), managers do not directly produce income most times. So with, say, 4 techs and 3 support staff, each tech has to generate their pay and share, plus an additional 1/7th share, and 1/4 of the managerial salary. In service oriented companies, this gives rise to the soul-sucking and mythical Billable Hour. This is the break-even point.

Techs, especially geeks, despise the Billable Hour. We are a new generation of employees which greater powers have named "Information Workers." Geeks believe, at our very core, that the value of our work is not measured in the amount of linear time we put in, but instead the results of our labors. That is why many geeks are willing to put in 60+ hours a week, often for the thrill of seeing projects through to fruition. It's the hunt for solutions we value, not the per-minute bill rate or the On-Clock/Off-Clock ratio.

Trench workers, geeks, have two types of problems. Some problems are interesting, and we will spend untold hours working on them. These are problems that have value in the solution; it may be intellectual, something never before tried; it may be spiritual, a gift to the world. Or it may even be purely selfish, a new technique to try for the joy of it. The other type, "uninteresting problems", are the types of things that are rudimentary or broken by design. For instance, fixing roaming profiles problems for a client when roaming profiles are broken by design. Reformatting and reinstalling Windows is rudimentary and should be handled by interns. Consistently, though, it's the uninteresting problems that we get paid for.

Why? Because things that are broken by design are much more likely to break. Over, and over, and over. Interesting problems typically only need solving once, and they are more or less unique. Uninteresting problems are the continual drain on your willingness to work. You wake up in the morning for interesting problems; you fall asleep at night, exhausted, because your day was filled with zero intellectual stimulation. Clearly, this accounts for a significant part of the Tech Turnover, a common trend whereby it is impossible to keep highly skilled people in a job once their skills are matched to the job. Management is typically surprised by this; even with astronomical salaries and a bad economy, Tech Turnover will remain high. To the truly skilled Information Worker making a decent wage already, additional salary plays second fiddle to the promise of more engaging work. This brings us to the Billable Hour Truth Zero: Knowledge workers often value job challenges and learning opportunities over compensation.

And that is why the Billable Hour is so egregious to IW's. Management has taken a very powerful genie, the whole of a worker's education, experience, and life, and trapped it in the most ill-fitting container possible: linear time. This creates a huge schism between management, who needs a clear way to provide income, and the IW, who knows in his heart that linear time is the worst possible way of representing the skills that he possesses.

Eventually this dichotomy shows up on the venerable Timesheet. As the IW becomes increasingly efficient in a job that requires no additional skills, learning, or effort, Billable Hours drop. Mainly, this is due to increased efficiency on the part of the IW. Problems that originally took her three linear hours to solve now take about thirty minutes. In order to provide the same income per IW for the company, the Client:IW ratio must increase in proportion to her efficiency. Now, she's solving more problems per Timesheet period, but the critical thing that matters to her, increasing of skillset, never changes.

Management eventually decides she is slacking off and has a Talk with our disaffected IW. "You need more Billable Hours. You used to have thirty Hours per week, but now you only have seven. We can't keep you on like this."

What management failed to realize is that, in many cases, they were directly charging their clients for the incompetence of their own Information Workers. As the IW reached perfection and her clients were serviced better, it took much less time to do it. The schism widens, and the IW who is still at her first job realizes the First Truth of BIllable Hours: the Company makes more money if their Information Workers are less competent, not more. This is not to say the IWs can be incompetent; they must have a baseline knowledge in order to support the product. But as their knowledge grows from baseline to expert to guru, it takes them less time to solve the same problem. This translates into a much shorter resolution time on problems, and many fewer Hours being billed out per week.

Eventually the schism grows to outright animosity. Management assumes the IW has stopped trying. The IW is overloaded with far too many clients to keep track of because she is a "high performer", yet barely even covers her own salary in linear Billable Hours; stress builds and resumes start getting sent out. Our favorite IW worker takes a new job where she will be able to learn new skills. Perhaps it is a non-Billable job, or a more highly technical support/consulting job. She still cannot reconcile how management decided her entire life could be billed by the hour.

Our favorite management team, on the other hand, now has a conundrum. Their star performer that did three times more clients than anybody else has just left. It was for the better, she was losing the company money. But she had built key personal relationships with her oldest, most valuable clients. And to replace her, they either have to offload parts of the client list to other, not as good techs, or find a new one.

Except that at the price they were paying the former IW, they can't hire somebody with the same skillset. In fact, even at significantly more they probably couldn't; a person with the same skillset would not be interested in the job for the same reasons that the former IW worker left. And so management has to hire a greener IW. The greener IW can't handle the same client load, but he gets almost 35 Billable Hours per week because he is inherited a system that is way over his head. Problems that took the Guru 10 minutes to solve take the Green a few hours. The numbers look great, though! Management is blissfully unaware of the Second Truth of Billable Hours: It will take at least three green employees to replace the Star Information Worker...for the first few months.

And so, neglecting to learn the Second Rule, they are forced to employ two additional, less experienced workers to fill in gaps. Perhaps, if the management team is especially sharp, they will learn the First Rule on this iteration. But most likely their client base will not grow fast enough to fill in the Billable Hour gap when their three new employees hit the Expert level. And this, the Third Rule of Billable Hours:

Green IWs can have outstanding Billable Hour ratios, but "strangely" don't have that many clients. Expert IWs offer a compromise between the number of clients and the Billable Hours. Guru IWs can support vast amounts of clients, but are unlikely to produce significant gains in Billable Hours due to their exceptional skill level.

Assuming the client base grew during the time from the three Greenhorns getting recruited and the first one reaching Guru status, the cycle starts over. If the client base did not grow, it's very likely the company will suffer severe financial backlash when the Guru leaves. This is because most of the employees will spend their time an Expert status. Experts need relatively large amounts of clients to get Billable Hours and thus justify their existence. But the company -must- hire at least 2-3 new employees to take on the workload of a fully utilized Guru; therefore, the client base must expand to give the 2-3 new employees at every iteration enough support requests to draw Billable Hours against.

Once again, the Four Truths, in order of importance to management staff:

Zero: Information Workers are highly skilled and often value increasing their skills and being challenged at work over monetary compensation, assuming their salary baseline is being met. Information Workers who are bored care little about the job and are an extreme flight risk.

One: A company billing by the hour will make more money with one less-competent worker than one highly skilled one, as long as the less-skilled worker is ultimately able to perform the job.

Two: It will take at least two, if not three or more, less-competent workers to shoulder the workload of a Guru who leaves the company. But this is a temporary condition, and will eventually result in workers who are underutilized and, more dangerously to the company, bored at their job.

Three: The natural progression is Greenhorn -> Expert -> Guru. They can be distinguished by their Client versus Billable Hour load. Greenhorns can handle a small number of clients and generate large ratio of Billable Hours to Hours. Experts support a medium number of both, and generate the best income per marketing/acquisition dollar spent. Gurus can handle a huge client load, often 3x more than an Expert, but still turn in an often unprofitable Billable Hour Timesheet. Gurus will be leaving the company shortly, but will need to be replaced as per Truth Two.


Some ways to fix this:

- Personal projects. Research giants 3M and Google have brilliant ideas in giving their engineers time to work on personal projects that "may" profit the company ultimately. Other giants that actively did this yet still made money: AT&T/Bell Labs/Lucent, IBM, HP.
- A la cart pricing may be more palatable to IW workers. It is somehow less offensive to many of them to charge by work performed, which has a correlation to their skills, and not the time involved, which is completely unrelated and may be outright insulting.
- A la cart pricing also gives the company incentive to retain the most highly skilled workers; currently, the reverse is true.
- Realize that in many cases, a reduction is Billable Hours is not the fault of the IW, but is in fact a failure of management, sales, and marketing. Most Information Workers will perform their jobs in the most efficient way possible; that is part of the Information Worker's Creed.


END RANT.


Updates:

-I took one kitten to the SPCA. The other will be going shortly; last chance. The are super adorable.
-Anybody in town for Christmas: I have a $75 gift certificate to Taste of Thai, and I'm not afraid to use it.
-How many Aes Sedai does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Seven. Five to manipulate it into the socket, one to write The Great Lightbulb, A History, and one to convince it that it's not being manipulated; it always wanted to be screwed in.

PS: Becky is still the most awesome girl ever and one of the few girls I've ever met that has Read A Book.

Sleepin time.

Merry Christmas to all whom the wish applies, in case I don't update before then.

http://www.shevix.net/Kitties/

There are two of them..they just don't like having their pictures taken together. : )

Remember, they're only going to people I can personally trust, so no friend-of-a-friend unless you can vouch for them on your honor...

Need to get rid of 2 kittens, probably about 4-6 months old, very playful, but skittish. Don't make me take them to the SPCA and give them to somebody I don't know. Or sell them to a Chinese resturaunt; they're far to small to turn a profit.

I can provide pictures to anybody who wants them. Tell your friends, if they're good w/ animals.

HLUG Meeting 0 was...worthless. I had somewhere between 8 and 15 people tell me they'd "be there". One of them (Jim) showed up; Jim is a man true to his word and worthy of legend. Some other folks who had never RSVP'd also showed up so that was nice; it increased our body count and chip consumption accordingly. I *might* have one more meeting and see the results of that, but at this time I'm not planning one. The turnout was too disappointing. I was really hoping for some new users (most of the people who agreed to come were new) but I guess that fell by the wayside. That's okay, I didn't expect much. I think the era of the LUG is more or less dead. Even so, it was a nobel attempt and I had to try at least once.

Speaking of Linux, I'm in the market for a new laptop in the next few weeks. I've been looking at a Lenevo, but the Sales Droid at Office Depot won't let me boot the stupid thing from a Linux CD. I've tried two seperate managers, and even involved a bribe once or twice. Still nothing. It's a problem simply because I use Linux on my laptops and I have to make sure that it will run it with a fair amount of certainty. Right now I have an HP, but it has USB 1.1 and no built in wireless...among other problems. Pretty much every notebook is coming with an Intel 950 onboard graphics setup. I've never heard anything too -bad- about the 950, but never anything all that good either. I was trying to find a laptop with an expandable PCIEx video card, something in an nvidia. But it's turning out to be almost impossible unless I want to drop $3,000. Suggestions appreciated. I would also like an AMD Turion x2, but if I can't find that, a Core 2 Duo would be outstanding. NO ATI's, since ATI can't seem to pull Linux drivers out of their ass with three wishes and a magic lamp.

I am back working somewhere on a short-duration agreement. Commercial, onsite support is as horrible as I remember. Rosetta just reposted the Linux Engineer job so I'm trying to determine if I should send in another resume or not. I'm really not that good at going out and correcting Exchange or roaming profile problems; the concept of "software that breaks on it's own accord" it too foreign for me to be any good at it. I need to be on the back-end again. I don't mind working with customers in the least...just having to correct problems in worthless software -all the time-.

Speaking of worthless software:
- Exchange
- Active Directory
- Roaming Profiles
- Outlook
- Office Plugins
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- SBS Server


There is a pattern emerging...

The HLUG site:

HERE!

Somehow about two weeks ago I destroyed one of the favorite parts of my endoskeleton. I think when I lifted a bag of feed incorrectly I blew out a gasket in my back and it's probably going to require servicing soon. Aside from being a complete jerk and bailing on Ben & Erin's move, I also managed to stay rolling around on the floor like a child with a seizure for most of the day. I finally got enough muscle relaxers in down the ol' esophagus to sit upright and type for a few hours.

Lying face-up on the floor, in a recliner, or walking stretchy-laps around Martins gives you plenty of time to think. This is unfortunate in many regards; foremost, when I think, it is typically a disaster. Nothing of substance gets accomplished, really. I just end up ridiculing myself about my own past failures. Which...are numerous. Failures with friends, failures with work, failures with school, failures with myself. The most unfortunate of all this, though, is that I have a "well beyond average" memory. I remember all of those failures. Most of them I can laugh at because, frankly, they were funny even then.

I haven't changed physically much since college, other than I've lost some weight (thus balancing my proportional frame a little better) and grown more hair. So...really, the whole 'date thing' never worked out, and most were failures. But one time in particular was a Colossal Failure. Her look of disgust is etched in my memory like a hot poker. Now, admittedly, I'm not sure if she was disgusted because it was *me*, because it was *me* from a lower social class, or because I was a nerd. It doesn't really matter; once you get the look, you never forget it.

Some people would let that get to them; not me, I have a strong superiority complex. But it illustrates my problem: I cannot forget.

Mostly, I cannot forget the friends I once had. What a horribly shitty transitional period in everybody else's life. I wanted to track down Brenda again; the only thing saving me from another four hours of ridiculous searching is the fact that significant portions of my spine are numb. I can fire, at will, a series of names and the circumstances that lead up to why I no longer talk to them. Bothersome, yes, but with closure. The ones that suck are the ones that I have no earthly idea (or at least no logical reason) why they stopped talking to me. And yet, others havn't. Brenda totally stopped talking to me, Charles didn't.

So whoever's still out there and still gives a shit about old friends, lets get drunk and tell lies about each other. Have booze, will travel.

-----------------------

Back still hurts : /


I'm trying to open up negotiations to get "huug.org", for Harrisonburg Unix Users Group. If that doesn't work, then I'll open up negotiations for "slice.org", "Shenandoah Linux, Internet, and Computer Engineers" or maybe "StandardNerds.org", which has also been suggested.

I meant it as a joke, but I kind of like SLICE : /

RHANG = Rockingham/Harrisonburg Administrator and Nerd Guild
BOM'D = Benevolent Order of Maud'Dib
HLUC = "HLUC Likes Unix Chicks"

A thought occurred today. ian and I were lamenting the lack of non-college nerds that we can find easily and get drunk with.

I've decided to form a non-student-oriented LUG in Harrisonburg if I can get enough people interested. Mostly we meet at El Charros...but I hope to do real talks and presentations and crap.

Any interest?

I just re-upped my LJ paid account for six more months. This forces me, in effect, to continue writing.

There's some discouragement brewing in the Land of Large Words. I drove by my old stomping grounds, Vaix, yesterday and today trying to buy a hard drive. The place looks like an Atomic White-Trash Bomb exploded all over it. They are right next to WSVA, which is one of the oldest radio stations in Virginia; WSVA is a talk AM station, AM550, well respected throughout most of VA. They have a shiny, clean building with nice masonry work, clean sidewalks, and ample parking. But sharing a parking lot with them is Vaix. Vaix has no fewer than a dozen cars, each more Whitetrashier than the last. A few of them are up on blocks with no tires (or wheels). A few are completely missing engines, or the engine was pushed out through the radiator hole and left on the ground. All of them have multiple broken windows. Unfortunate.

I need to drop by one day when Fred is there and try to find some hard drives.

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Rob turned me on to Robert Jordan about a month ago and I started reading the Wheel of Time. Robert Jordan has forced me to change my writing style. I'm more aware of my own verbosity. And I am constantly haunted by the word 'was'; it lurks in every sentence. It becomes increasingly harder to ignore the word, rewriting sentences to exclude the various forms of "is" except for exactly when I want them. An example:

#1: "Sitting next to the refrigerator, the coffee maker was a relic from a bygone age. Each line was carefully crafted, each burner endowed with the fiery power of 220 volts."

That's passable, but it's not elegant. Much like C or Java, elegant is more important than passable. Here's a rework...

#2: "Our coffee maker, a relic from a bygone age, sat next to the refrigerator. Two-hundred and twenty volts coursed through it, endowing each burner with fiery power."

That's better, but when you rework too many sentences they all start to take on a certain meter and homogenize into a vile comma-fest. So you also have to provide some uniqueness to keep the reader from choking on your pathetic appositives.

#3: "Coursing with two-hundred and twenty alternating volts and forged in a forgotten time, our coffee maker dominated its companion refrigerator as a wolfhound daunts a Snickers bar."

This is great! Except...that it's far too verbose. It's obviously a run-on; sometimes that's acceptable. In this case, I chose to make it that way because of the intended effect. One or two sentences like this you can keep up with, but if you have lots and lots of them, your beautiful comedy quickly becomes a textbook. I often fear that every sentence I write ends up like Example #3. And so after writing a brilliant simile or some awesome comparison, I'm afraid that if I don't tone it down and use smaller words that I'm going to lose people halfway through. Also, I think they make me look like an arrogant bastard. But I also really like the Snickers joke, so I have to figure out a way to keep that.

#4: "Our ancient coffee maker sat next to the refrigerator, filled with 220 volts of casual power. While physically smaller, the Coffee Oracle dominated the refrigerator like a wolfhound to a Snickers bar."

This is okay, but it doesn't imply the age I was hoping to portray. This coffee maker wasn't built in the 1950s; it was hammered in the forges of Atlantis, the last great relic before the ocean took her forever. It was discovered, quite accidentally, by a group of English Freemasons while they were diving off the coast of Guatemala. They said it "contained an odd power; the coffee never got cold, yet never burned."


I like #3 the best, and it's probably that or an edited form I would use. But string a bunch together and it can get hard to follow. I do this, quite literally, for almost every sentence.

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Gratz to Adam "Super FyreMan 69" N. for his successful attempt at fatherhood! : ) Wish him well!

I honestly wasn't even aware anybody read this any more. I certainly don't. But, I suppose, by request...an update!

I haven't been updating because, frankly, unemployment is tremendously boring and nothing of any substance has happened to me. I avoided writing new updates because my sardonic wit might be misinterpreted by potential employers. Also, pretty much all of my creative writing, FWIW, has been channeled into The Book and leaves little room for the rantings of a madman on a website. I assume that at this point fewer than three people will read this anyway. I probably won't renew my paid account; LJ is dead.

But, by request from an anonymous coward..

For the last few weeks my cousin and his adorable (read as: hot) girlfriend have been staying with me. They had a minor run-in with some Thieven' Sombitches a few weeks ago who broke into their apartment and jacked some stuff. Nothing terribly valuable, but it was enough cash and items to qualify as felonious theft. Aside from some drama with the credit card company, not much has happened. Local cops haven't turned up much, but the case *did* make it onto the 6 & 11 oclock news. My aunt (his mother) is deathly afraid of them living in the same apartment for...some reason. Kind of sucks for them, but I'm fine with it; Girlfriend is really fun to talk to and they both keep the boredom level down.

I'm two interviews in to my job application with JMU which I won't mention much further, for fear I should jinx it. I've gone into passive job hunt mode until I hear back on this one. I have, at count, turned down three job offers, one of which was really solid. I did an interview with a company that specializes in online data storage. They seemed like really nice folks and I like the atmosphere, but it was very much a startup. At Vaix & WW, I really didn't have it in me to go through another startup, especially when I don't necessarily trust the business model. Many have tried online storage and failed: myspace (version 1), mp3.com, geocities, yahoo. Now AOL has moved into it with X-Drive, which basically means it must be a horrible idea that will never catch on.

Ultimately I decided it wasn't the path I wanted to go down. I'm looking for something with more responsibility and activity. We'll see.

I bought an iPod today; finally, I have given in to the crushing weight of unbathed hipsters. In this case, it was the Saga of The Radio that finally clenched my decision. I had the option of replacing the HU, amp, and speakers in my vehicle, including splicing around the amp, OR getting a CD-changer emulator and hooking up an ipod to it. Now I can control the ipod via the steering wheel controls and it costs less than half of the sound system revamp, not including speakers. It's a 30G G5 (Video) and I spent almost all night redoing the ID3 tags on my MP3s so the damn interface would work right. I even got an app in Linux to sync the music with it. Good times.

I have a new cat. Kitten, really; her name is Sierra.


She enjoys biting my feet whenever I wear socks, playing with Cold-Eeze wrappers, and munching electrical cords. She used to enjoy men-cats until last week. Now, like me, she gets no action.

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Went to El Charros today with Rob & Sean. It turned out there was a geek meeting at the same time, so we sat with them and subjugated Rob to all manner of nerdy jokes touched with the twang of XX. As normal, we continued talking about computer crap all the way to the check out line. I was the last one to get there and there were three hotties paying. I dropped my voice to a whisper.
"Guys..Guys! Stop talking about computers!"
Rob caught on and looked at me, but apparently nobody else did. I continued, in my best 15-foot voice.
"Yeah, so I was surfing the other day and my emergency pager went off. There was a fire in some hotel and I was the closest, so I ran in with my shorts on. There was a pregnant woman inside and I couldn't just leave her there, so I had to carry her through the flames with no firesuit on. So I'm outside..."
Sean breaks in: "Did she go into labor?"
"..oh hell yes, I had to deliver it right there on the beach..."

I continued on for the better part of 45 seconds until they left. I don't remember *everything* that I said, but as we were leaving Rob said something like "that may have been the most amazing thing I've ever seen."

That's what I do.

Michael Crichton caught a lot of flak from me about State of Fear when I first started reading it. It was massively boring for the first 50-100 pages and I just couldn't get into it at all. But I must rescind my previous away messages about it and instead tell you that State of Fear turned out good. Crichton decided to take on the environmental lobby, for the most part. The book is quite damning of faulty science and ecoterrorism, especially related to global warming. He covers all sort of areas, include what i've always referred to as "bounty science" and the establishment of environmental groups, the government, lawyers, and universities that thrive on imagined threats and then suing people for them.

He knew if the book got popular then he would be on the ELF shit list, so it has more references than many textbooks I've read.


--

I've been playing Oblivion recently, and I think I'm going to have to stop. This is weird, so bear with me.

Friday was a family member's 91st birthday, and she wanted to go Traditions. Traditions is a non-chain restaurant on north 42 that does "Family style" dinner. They have a buffet set up with stuff like fried chicken, country ham, turkey/dressing/gravy, etc. Okay, fine.. Last time I went I ended up on a special date with Mr. Toilet for the entire night. So I unwillingly went again because, after all, how often do people have 91st birthdays?

I busted three Dr. peppers, which is exactly three more sodas than I've had in a *long* time. (this is because I try very hard to not eat corn syrup now). So I got a massive sugar rush + a minor caffeine boost. Additionally, something gave me an upset stomach; at this point I suspect the turkey. No Bathroom Antics this time. But as many of you may know, you feel 100% better once you 'get it over with'.

Regardless, I was nauseated; every time I laid down in bed, I felt sick. In addition, my brain had made the jump to hyperspace, so I couldn't sleep at all. I was totally disconnected and not really thinking very well. About 3:30 I shut off the TV and tried to sleep. About 30 seconds later another round hit my stomach and I realized I was going to throw up.

I went to the bathroom drinking some water. My heart rate was way up. I stood there, still feeling weird, and I realized that instead of vomiting, I was probably going to die. So I took my water and went downstairs. I figured that at least downstairs an ambulance would be able to find me easier. I drank some more water that tasted like pure salt so I dumped it and got it out of a different faucet. Much better.

And then the panic attacks started.

When I was younger (think, 10), I made the unfortunate mistake of watching a Billy Graham special. Billy Graham is an old school preacher, of the Brimstone & Fire type. I do appreciate that Mr. Graham is worried about my soul; I am too. But..10 is a little young. This is why you shouldn't let kids watch TV *ever*. Since that special, and particularly in my late teens, I would occasionally have these extreme mental fights between myself and infinity. It normally ended up with infinity winning and me curled in a little ball crying. Seriously. It happened every few months.

I mainly have it under control, but between the food poisoning or whatever, the influx of sugar, and the lack of sleep, I was screwed. It was like being assaulted by everything I've ever been afraid of.

And I kept seeing in my head (the part that was totally unaware of its surrounding) some sort of demon leaving a doorway and coming to get me. I *think* it was one of the little gremlin things from Oblivion, but I thought it a demon laughing at me because when I wasn't paying attention I'd already sold my soul.

It didn't occur to me to ask "what for". No girlfriend, no job, no money, and food poisoning. I think my soul is intact.

So no more Oblivion for a while.

It also means I didn't get to Moorefield, which sucks. But at least we got rain all week : )

Still waiting to hear back from That College Which Shall Not Be Named. It was Super Move In Week of Destiny for them, so I'm not surprised.

My kitty died over the weekend. I could recount to you how she came to be here and the various stories that would no doubt bore you, but I won't. I'll save myself the torture. Lucy Deviers, so named for Lucy Pevensie, has now left. I tried to find a picture of her, but I can't. She wasn't keen on having her picture taken. She was a good girl, and I miss her very much. I plan to make a headstone out of some river rock. Maybe use it as an excuse to go fishing. She always liked fish : )

Much lighter, but still not 'in balance', I passed my CCNA exam today, first try. Which means I am now Cisco Certifiable and worth an extra $10 a year at a job...on paper.

But really...it's a pretty big deal.

Yesterday and the day before I spent "a few hours" crafting a new, improved resume and writing a new cover letter to send to "A local school". This school is within an few hour's driving distance and in an uncharacteristic lack of telling you everything annoying and boring about my life, I'm not going to list which one. Some things are better left unsaid. Regardless, I'm mega- excited about it; dropped a super-duper PDF into the mailbox mid-afternoon yesterday and hopefully I'll hear back saying something like "Wes, you are the one for us, you are the only one we love!" It was kind of like somebody said "Here..we saw you're unemployed. Let us create this job for you. We read your mind. Yes, we are that good."

I encourage everybody to check out the most recent episode of the Venture Brothers. It reigns beyond outstanding. If the Sun is "okay", Earth is "pretty good", and Jupiter is "fantastic", then this last episode was the Oort Cloud.

Speaking of space: in case nobody saw, Dr. James Van Allen, of the "Van Allen Belts", died recently. It was a sad day for *this* physics nerd, even if nobody else seemed to notice :( Rest in peace, Doctor J.

Demolition Derby is FRIDAY at the county fair, 8 PM. Not exactly Charlie Daniels, but still pretty good. Moorefield Fire Department Fall Bash is in TWO WEEKS (Sept 2). I'm in charge of group gathering for both events. Let me know if you want to go. Both events have all the Redneck you can stand, but the Fall Bash has none of the cruel aftertaste. I'm taking a deck of cards, maybe some Uno, and maybe some Newcastle if enough people want to go.

Maybe driving to Maryland tomorrow to pick up a car (not mine). Back to reading CCNA book #3!

OHH HE SAID IT!

No, but seriously. What is with people in the middle ages? HELLO, INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE.

No, but seriously (for real)...what's with every single girl ages 22-27 being divorced and +1 With Child? Did I miss a memo? Was college supposed to be a lot more fun than it really was?

Job hunting is starting to take it's toll. If I read any more CCNA material my head is going to grow 3x, Grinch Style. Except instead of that little metal heart container, it's going to be my skull that fractures. I was in my room, all distractions turned off, reading CCNA ICND book. I wake up 2 hours later with my neck *killing me*, mostly because I fell asleep with it back about 120 degrees. Luckily, that means all the stuff I learned got stuck up in there, along with all the snot. So I should be in A-1 shape to take the test.

Sent three more apps today. One of them went to Blacksburg, officially, which is a new development for me.

Perhaps I should set up some kind of business locally. I wonder if there's enough call to have a full-time contracting job replacing Exchange servers with Linux servers that have the same functionality...but don't suck?