Advogato blog for dsifry

14 May 2002

Tue, 14 May 2002 16:33:13 GMT

Hmmm, lots going on.

First off, I've got a new blog where I put up my tidbits about the industry and whatever suits my fancy. Linuxcare people will remember my cto-alerts, this is it, taken to the next level. It's called Sifry's Alerts.

We launched Sputnik in February, and we released the 1.1 version of the open-source Sputnik Community Gateway on April 29. The Gateway will run off of CD (it is an ISO image) and will turn any old Intel PC equipped with 802.11b wireless card and ethernet card into a secure authenticated firewalled wireless router. We got some good press and reviews, as well as mentions in The Economist and The New York Times. More cool software is in the works, can't talk about it publicly yet.

16 Oct 2001

Tue, 16 Oct 2001 07:39:57 GMT

Things are looking very good. I'm eagerly anticipating coming out of stealth mode, but it is too soon, too soon...

14 Oct 2001

Sun, 14 Oct 2001 09:13:30 GMT

Compiling 2.4.13pre2 on a new dual processor P3-500 I got from a friend. You know who you are, and if you're reading this, thanks! The box will make a very cool server for my new IPs just received when Verio sold their DSL business to Earthlink. So far all that has happened was a 2 hour outage while the technician switched my line over, and I received a /248 subnet instead of the /250 subnet I used to have, which means 4 new completely unused IPs to stick up outside on my DMZ. I'm quite psyched about that.

mperry, no worries. I didn't know you were going to be away from the house so much - you made it sound like you'd be sitting around playing on your computers all day. :-)

And it is a bit wierd seeing an advogato diary response to a phone call I made - a wierd cross-modality interaction there. Cool, nonetheless.

Sweet! My compile is done. Off to install the new kernel.

12 Oct 2001

Fri, 12 Oct 2001 08:53:10 GMT

Aaaaaugh!

Coding Binge

I really got to get some sleep.

5 Oct 2001

Fri, 5 Oct 2001 06:56:18 GMT

Don't wanna jinx it, but I think I just got the big bug(tm) fixed. I've been testing the fix for most of the night and I haven't been able to break anything. This is good(tm). :-)

Met with two German PhD students tonight at a local coffee shop. They stuck a microphone on me and interviewed me about IT and the Silicon Valley lifestyle. Fuck if I know much about that, what the hell. It was nice talking to them - let's face it, having 2 people listen to me talk about myself without throwing up is always an ego boost. :-) My wife hasn't done that for quite some time now, not that I hold it against her. Life as a blowhard can be frustrating sometimes.

Got a pretty big meeting tomorrow. Even though I can't talk about it now, wish me luck! I promise to let you all in on what's up as soon as I can.

Looking good...

3 Oct 2001

Wed, 3 Oct 2001 07:55:47 GMT

Excellent, excellent, excellent. Good things are happening. Getting pumped.

30 Sep 2001

Sun, 30 Sep 2001 08:57:42 GMT

Ahhh, got a big hunk of new functionality done today. Feels really good.

Looking forward to showing this off when it's finally releasable.

29 Sep 2001

Sat, 29 Sep 2001 08:46:40 GMT

paci: Congratulations!

I am getting soooo pumped. Very cool tech is happening right now. Too bad I can't talk about it...

24 Sep 2001

Mon, 24 Sep 2001 10:33:45 GMT

I love it when a plan comes together...

So far so good, learning some interesting things about building bootable CD-ROMs. Thank goodness, there are a number of good projects already oth there putting together the CDs - the Linuxcare Bootable Toolkit, the LNX-BBC, the BBLCD Toolkit and others. Still, it has taken me about a week to come to grips with El Torito, initrd, rdev, syslinux, cloop, and all of the other niggly things that can go wrong.

It is really cool to break through bottlenecks and actually create something other than coasters...

Stay tuned...

10 Sep 2001

Mon, 10 Sep 2001 04:46:34 GMT

Third time around getting this diary entry posted...

Layoffs

My heart goes out to the folks who are without work involuntarily, good luck in the job search!

Startups

I'm a startup guy. I'm in the throes of getting a new venture off the ground. It's awesome. I love watching an idea turn into reality, watching other people get jazzed about the idea, watching an idea blossom into a business. It's better than sex. Really. After all of the crap I've been through with my last startup, there's a part of me that's astonished that I'm throwing myself into the breach yet again. Still, it feels so great to be working on something creative again. And the hope (folly?) is that I'll take the lessons I learned in the last go-round and make sure to not let them happen again.

Personal

Having fun with the bbq - since it's almost autumn in SF, the summer fog is finally lifting and so I've been doing a lot of grilling in the afternoons. Yum. Melody just keeps talking more and more, I'm secretly convinced she's a child genius. She's solving puzzles made for 4 year olds, and she isn't even 2 yet! She shows a lot of signs of giftedness. Whoops! There goes all of my jinx-buzzers, going off again. Wierd that I'm superstitious about good thing happening in my life - I'm much more comfortable when I'm struggling, in a wierd sort of way.

New Arrivals

Welcome, mperry! Welcome, aftyde!