Older blog entries for jLoki (starting at number 39)

I tried to introduce some paradigm shifts into our sales foce by educating them for about four hours on Open Source and how money can be made selling exactly that. I then proceeded to show some of our stuff that actually is OpenSource, finding a highly disinterested crowd at the end of the day. If they can't sell it (and make a commission out of it) they're not interested. So we changed a few commissions to reflect our business model: there's money to be made for them by giving away Open Source components for free.

Harold and I are working on converting everything in the Campbell office over to Linux and Plan 9. Our new brochures show a smiling admin/secretary and read "Even our front- desk uses Unix". Inside you find the first of three campaigns to migrate companies to Linux or BSD as part of the Risk Management stuff we do. The coolest thing today (a too warm sunday, I tell ya) was finding drivers for the Minolta QMS color laser printer and Linux online. And a lot of documentation on QMS and SNMP. I love it when stuff like that happens.

On the Evil Empire side, I dug out VC++ this morning and wrote a short program to eliminate Nimda-Stuff within a whole netblock.

Oh, and I started cleaning up my home-office, found some very interesting things I thought I had left in germany when moving over here and spent about an hour writing another sensor for NOBAD using PGP to ensure control file integrity.

I'm tired of waiting for someone to come up with a Linux/BSD port of something like netstumbler so I'm gonna write it myself. Will involve serious driver hacking, I am sure. Userland stuff will be implemented in Python. Next step: get garmin_py to react a bit faster :)

As the day moves on, there's the news dripping in. Slowly we move back to business as unusual and some of us even manage to smile every once in a while. Someone finally managed to mount the white boards to the conference rooms and a truckload of furniture just came in this morning, waiting to be setup for the sales and marketing team.

I hired a sales manager and some guy to look over our documentation and turn it into executive reads, less technicalities more buzz. We also hired a girl to do technical stuff in Washington, DC and a bunch of people in Santa Monica and Seattle. Another win on the front would be the fact that both NOMAD and our assessment tools will be available under the BSD license.

It seems like the tragedies of NY and DC lie like a black shadow over everyone and everything. Work is slow, if not paralized, and no ten minutes go past without someone coming in and keeping us updated on the events out there.

Moving in furniture and computers. Went to Central yesterday to buy switches and oozles of Cat5 to crimp to perfection. Looks like we've got a CPA/VP Finances on the hook, she might come in useful if all the receipts for that crap I bought arrive.

Yeeeehaw. The new office is finished and we're moving in as I type this. It's small but freaking cool looking and since it's just some place where we will be hanging out if we're not around the rest it's cool. I've put a drawing up, pictures will follow.

Long time no write. I've had a good time back in Germany, gave a talk at LinuxTag, reworked my sites, took some crappy consultant jobs, became a scapegoat for a dying dot.com, etc.

Decided to take a sabbatical a few weeks ago - and did. Now I'm feeling refreshed (and broke), with a bunch of new ideas.

Got SiteAccess working on my Zope install.
Ran down the street to the next 7/eleven and decided I need to do more sport. Was one of my 2001 resolutions anyways.

More analysts.
Some strange e-Mail from an even stranger person. Wants to buy smurftarget.net for his "collection of collector smurf figurines". Idiot.
Not really news, but a nice read: Fourt Quarter Earning (Un-)surprises

Currently four machines fight for space on my desk: an Amiga 3000, running AmigaOS 3.5, a small WinNT box to install all types of software on and try out exploits, a FreeBSD server and a Mac OS X Dual G4/400.
One has to go, between coke cans and ashtrays space becomes scarce and I need at least some inches of air to stack CDs and other crap I buy at Weird Stuff. Guess I'll relocate the BSD server under the stairs, next to his already relocated brother, even tho I'll miss my X Window system.

Thanks to Greenspan and lowered interest rates, stock prices are going back up. That, and the beginning of a new fiscal year gives managers money to spend - consultant services boom again.
$80k for some crappy security audit? They gotta be frigging shitting me?
Six hour debate why releasing the source of something does not make it less secure - and unexpected help from the finance department ("Imagine, 200 unpaid developers....").
Turned in my vacation days for Q1/2001 - Boss not happy, does not accept my request for time off for LWE and DefCon as "required training".
Going public while hundreds of dot.coms file Chap. 11? Are we crazy? Analysts ask strange questions, especially me.