July 27, 2000

Framework name, hardware foo, new job for Barb

First of two demos of the framework that we had to be ready for, although this one was certainly the lighter weight of the two. The lack of phone calls means that everything must have gone well.

We decided on an initial name for the framework (OpenInteract) but we haven't gotten the licensing stuff worked out yet. I'm thinking GPL/Artistic (just like perl), but we have to get NDA stuff worked out first, plus a little infrastructure would be a good thing...

Got a new hard drive today and installed it, along with transferring the old CD ROM out and moving a newer one in. (The old one wasn't cooperating with the mp3 ripping s/w -- yes, I've been bitten by that bug. I can see a rio in my future...). Doing stuff with hardware can be very satisfying. As long as you do it every once in a while rather than eight hours a day. The first task assigned to me when I got the job at IREX a few years ago was to build a bunch (10+) of cheap-o intel machines, configure them with Win95 and get them on the network. The cheap-o-ness of them manifested itself in the myriad cuts sprouting on both hands from the crappy metal used in the cases. Ouch. Mark and Christopher still chuckle about that...

The k5 happenings have been amazing, and really underscore the ease with which almost anything on the web can be taken down. Things like this make me very nervous about having a large, public community site. How many such attacks does ebay get? I don't like relying on the whims of script kiddies as to whether a site of mine gets taken down.

In any case, it's excellent the support Rusty has received. The /. guys have been excellent -- I'm sure they put a bug in the ear of VA Linux about the hardware, to boot. Hopefully he'll find a good home for it if he decides to move it (which I think he was going to do anyway).

Also: Barb got a job! It only took a couple weeks after she left the symphony, but she'll be teaching middle school english at a private school about five minutes away. It's amazing how little compensation teachers get: what a shame.

I also had something bouncing around my head about version numbering reluctance, but it's not quite there yet...

(Originally posted elsewhere)

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