Serious Business

A brief story about OSS foundations, money, and why I hope FreeBSD dies a quick death.

Let me start by saying: every day I have to deal with FreeBSD. Through an unfortunate combination of circumstances, a co-worker has been blinded by the lies of FreeBSD and now swears by its superiority over other operating systems. Thus most of our servers that have been installed by him in recent years run the shit. Since I started this has been the subject of many day-to-day jokes/jabs in our small part of the floor.

Don’t get me wrong here; I know FreeBSD works on servers. I know it works well. However, I think FreeBSD is about as useful on the desktop as any Linux distro is (‘what a POS’). To this end, Gordon (a coworker) decided to surprise me with the following (which I only received after the fact):

Gordon wrote:

Hello FreeBSD Foundation,

I would like to make two donations. One from myself and one from a
co-worker. My donation isn’t a problem. However, the one for my
co-worker might be a problem. The donation from the co-worker has
to appear from him — but I would be paying for it.

(It’s a bit of a practical joke on my part. The coworker doesn’t
much care for FreeBSD. He’s one of those filthy Debian users. Seeing
his name appear as a donor for FreeBSD would result in much comedy at work)

Can this be arranged?

Regards,

-Gordon

Son of a bitch.

This f’n guy. Do you see what this  guy is doing to me? KILLING ME SLOWLY.

_Well_Fucking_Played_Gordon_

So this letter gets sent to deb@freebsdfoundation and board@freebsdfoundation. One would think that Gordon’s going to slay with this one, right? WRONG.

Instead of taking the free money, although slightly underhanded, in pretty good faith / kind gesture, the FreeBSD foundation replies to him with this:

Dear Gordon,

Thank for your interest in making a donation to the foundation. I
understand your intent on playing a practical joke on your co-worker.
We all try to have a good sense of humor here. But, our donors list is
extremely important to us. This is where we have a chance to acknowledge
and show our appreciation to our donors. The names listed there are
FreeBSD’s biggest advocates. And, BTW, we do have a policy that we only
list the name as documented on the check or donation service.

I hope you understand why we can’t support you with your request.
Thank you for your support of FreeBSD.

Sincerely,

Deb Goodkin
Director of Operations
The FreeBSD Foundation

Wut?

Really?

_Really?_

Listen guys. FreeBSD isn’t so hot nowadays. When someone offers you money for your shitty work, take it. Take it and fucking run. Use it to get that stick shoved up your ass surgically removed. What if he was going to donate hundreds of dollars? You wont add 12 letters to a web page because someone might be butthurt if they found out the true story behind it? This is whats wrong with these shitty fucking OSS projects.

For future reference FreeBSD foundation: NO ONE GIVES A FUCK.

Idiots.

Anyway, I will be making a donation to some shitty OSS project other than the FreeBSD project and forwarding the receipt on to Deb in reply to her message in the near future. Thanks for the laughs.

It’s been a long month, and there just doesn’t seem to be an end in sight!  I’ve been living a more fulfilling life for the last 2 months than I did for the previous 1.5 years. My old job consumed me; I brought work home every night, and that was only after I had been at work well past everyone else had left. Don’t get me wrong, it was my choice, and I felt like I had nothing but work so I didn’t mind it at the time. Looking back now however, I’m glad it’s over, and I feel no regret towards taking the last two months to realize who I am and what I love.

I sent myself to pycon at the end of March as a mini ‘vacation’ of sorts (despite the fact that I can’t really afford to spend money like that). The trip started off rough with me missing my flight out, but picked up from there. Truthfully, I had a great time. I didn’t really learn much, but I did get the chance to meet some really cool guys, got to eat lunch with python superheroes and generally just enjoyed myself for a few days away from DC.

I spent the week after pycon packing my stuff up, moving it all to NoVA, and cleaning the old house. Truly an awful experience. I either need to get rid of my expensive stuff, or just generally stop buying toys. I have a spending problem, I admit it. I didn’t really need 5 turntables, or 7 rack servers, or 6 UPS (which weigh a f’n ton) just to name a few things off the top of my head.

I got a chance to hang out with some local security guys, and as an added benefit I got a feel for some of the jobs out there as well. Finished up an interview process with a company I think I could do really great things at. Got a chance to check out NoVA-DUG (really enjoy this lot!) and it inspired me to throw all of that useless Django knowledge I’ve got floating around in my fat head into an app. Don’t have a name for it now, but it’s meant to be a middle ground between VCS’s and those groups out there that just haven’t gotten on board with storing code in repo’s (I know they’re out there, I recently worked at one).  Did most of the work last weekend and have spent a few hours here and there getting up to speed on jQuery to give the site that o-so-loved web2.0 look/feel. FunFact: I am terrible at web design!

This morning I got an offer letter that I need to respond to within a week. I actually like the job a lot on paper. I feel like I’d be better supported than past experience and from the looks of it I could actually walk to work in minutes! That said, I’m apprehensive about this decision and want to make sure I really weigh out my options. The way I put it: I don’t want to look back six months from now and wish I had made a different decision. I wont stick around at a job that makes me miserable again, but at the end of the day I hate saying ‘no’ to people too. I would drag it out and just make myself miserable and it wouldn’t be right. Wherever I do end up I want to feel really good about, and hopefully I’ll have a better idea of where that place is within the week. The last of my resumes have been sent to the appropriate parties and now I’m just waiting. I’ll post an update when I have a better idea of where I’m going to end up (if I can).

Last weekend I got word that my motorcycle has been fixed and is ready to go! First thought: F YEA! Second thought: FML, I don’t have a helmet. I had actually ordered a replacement the night before the call came (thinking it would still be another week till my bike was done). None the less, my helmet should be in on Thursday, and starting Friday the forecast for the next week is nothing but clear skies and 75-85*F. I’m going to try and get in as much riding as possible (while finding a job!).

Get me your 360 if you want to back up any new games.

Just a heads up to anyone having some issues with new releases: it’s being worked on. I’ll post an update soon.

Every now and then, I’m presently surprised by the security industry. Tonight I had the pleasure of hanging out and talking shop with some really cool guys (and gal) at CapSecDC. Turnout wasn’t what I expected; there was a relatively small group of people and it took a bit to break the ice (oh neckbeards), but in the end I’m really happy I took the time to head out. Met some really great people, and can’t wait to meet up again. I went looking to get involved again in the local security scene and unintentionally ended up leaving with a few really cool opportunities which I’m looking forward to checking out.

It amazes me how out of touch I became in a single year of working at a job that was both unfulfilling and not really what I wanted to be doing. I moved to DC to really get into computer security. It was my whole reason for picking where I went to school and what I majored in and the jobs I took as a student. Up until a year ago I was really heavy into security, and somehow that all got lost in the void that was my life 1-2 years ago. All I know now is that times are a changing!