So, here I bless you with my third journal entry; puts me at an average of one every three years. Alert the media.

Anyway -- what does Roblimo actually do for this site? I'm sure he'd contend it's something -- but, really? Does anyone actually care about the videos he seems so determined to foist off on we Slashdotters? How about his interviews? I mean, for one, they could almost be scripted in Ruby -- "highest rated comments, one question/comment". How hard is that? I see no reason it needs his (eh-hem) steady editorial hand to guide the ship through those particular shoals. Then there's his tone, which seems, at least to me, to go somewhere between ESR and simply null set.

Contrast this with, say, Timothy, who I find relatively benign and doing a solid job, or Rob M., whose presence and guidance built /. into what it is, and who, at the site's peak, permeated every facet -- and in a good way. Indeed, I fondly remember, and miss, the "quickies;" Rob and Hemos doing their thing; CowboyNeal doing his.

I can't, for the life of me, think of one item that Roblimo has contributed which I found truly interesting, compelling, or novel. I can't think of any way he's truly affected the site for good.

I'm sorry, Rob -- maybe you're a nice guy under it all -- but please, just go away.

The famous -- or, perhaps, infamous -- Alexis de Tocqueville Institute is an interesting site. Having spent years lambasting Linux and "hybrid source," as shown here, and here, and elsewhere, I found it fascinating that when I viewed the site today, its title tags now say, "This site best viewed using Mozilla Firefox(r)"; you'd think, at the least, they'd put it in the body of the page, and might, instead, actually say what their site is in the title tags; they must really like Firefox. In addition to that, showing their usual penchant for "fair and accurate" reporting, their lead quote goes thusly: "Not because it is easy, but because it is difficult...", and attribute it to John F. Kennedy. I found this interesting, as well, because, according to the JFK library's transcription, it goes more like "not because they are easy, but because they are hard." When one of the 20th century's best-known president's has one of his best-known quotes mis-quoted -- and it's the intro banner to the site -- it just makes you wonder about their ability to do any type of research into esoteric matters such as the lineage of 30-year-old operating systems.

Well, a mere five years after getting my Slashdot account, I might as well enter something. It's been a strange trip: from Summa4, telecom vendor extraordinaire, to Cisco, then to Xanoptix... errr, Xan3D Technologies, Inc. And now? "To oblivion, and beyond!" As of 12/31, I'm scheduled to get the axe, and join the 80% of the company I zorched the accounts of last Tuesday. Ah, the joys of being IT.

The thing that's up in the air, though, is the fact that there's still 20% of a company in place. An engineering company. With computers, and servers. That I've managed for the last four years. Which leads us to the conclusion that someone is going to have to maintain the damn things.

Meanwhile (a la Lemony Snicket), back at the ranch, in July sometime, visions of a Xanoptix w/o VC were dancing in my head. And visions of Asterisk 1.0 were, too. As well as visions of the quote (in hand) that Xanoptix received for our PBX install. All of which, once combined, made me think that getting into the whole telecom thing might not be a bad move. I'd kind of been hoping that Tyco would have propped us up until at least April, but nooooo...

So, fast-forward to now: they still need me for p/t IT, I'm not established in telecom... let's blend 'em! I'll propose to management that I be a contractor for 1/2 my cost to Xanoptix, while going forward with Asterisk, and using the Xanoptix facility for office-y stuff (eg., fax machine, phone, conference room, T1).

In the immortal words of Yoda, "An interesting time, it will be."