response 100 of 112:

Dec 1 05:37 UTC 2004

Whoa.  The fact that someone as IGNORANT about system administration as
gelinas charges SIXTY DOLLARS AN HOUR is outrageous.

response 102 of 112:

Dec 1 15:39 UTC 2004

Whoa.  The fact that someone as IGNORANT about how to function as a
human being as is the author of #100 STILL BREATHES is outrageous.

response 104 of 112:

Dec 5 11:54 UTC 2004

Yeah - way too cheap.  Being in business is expensive.  $100/hr is more
realistic.

response 106 of 112:

Dec 20 15:13 UTC 2004

My standard rate is $120/hour.  I consider myself a bargain.  I should
be charging more.  Lots of people do similar work for lower rates.  I'm
pretty often hired to fix their messes.

What I am expert at, however, is software design and development, not
system configuration or system administration.  I come to tasks like
configuring exim on nextGrex with *NO* experience, *NO* special
knowledge, and virtually *NO* interest.  I do it by reading the manuals
and figuring things out from scratch.  It's a mystery to me why anyone
thinks I'm the only person who can do this.  It bothers me that I'm even
being trusted to do this - it'd be nice if someone with some experience
were looking at what I was doing.  I think I'm doing OK, but I'm well
outside my domain of expertize here.

Not only don't I really have any expertize at this stuff, but I don't
really like doing it.  I do just enough work on my own systems to keep
them barely functional.  I'd rather be designing and developing new
software.

There is a lot about the way the Grex community and the Grex system work
these days that I don't like.  I have about eight ideas for software
changes to Grex that I think could make Grex a better place.  I feel
like I have to get all this nasty system configuration junk out of the
way before I can do any of it.  It's a big hunk of work.

And I'm just not sure how much I care about Grex these days.  How much
effort do I want to put into this place?  Why am I putting so much
effort into something of such dubious relevance to anything?   Wouldn't
it have been more worthwhile to say, work on the Kerry campaign instead
of nextGrex?  Once Grex was an idea we thought had a future.  Now it's
just the trailing edge and the future is happening someplace else.  I
used to care a lot about the community, but I'm finding the level of
incivility around here has risen quite a lot, and my willingness to
endulge it is has fallen quite a lot.

The fallout from Valerie's departure has also had an impact.  At this
point, any mention of my personal life on Grex is going to be greeted by
all sorts of self-rightous jibes aimed at Valerie, which I am not
interested in hearing.  I get enough of those even when I don't mention
Valerie.  So I no longer say anything about my personal life on Grex. 
If I had another child, I would not announce the birth on Grex.  That
means Grex is just not a central part of my life any more.  I've been
moved to the fringes of the Grex community, if there still is anything
you'd call a community on Grex.

So from what well do I draw motivation to work on this system?  I did
the backtalk RSS stuff because I was interested in figuring how to do
RSS stuff, and Grex made an convenient arena to try things out on.  I
was happy to see the board's decision to move to co-location.  Seeing
other people make an effort on Grex's behalf does help inspire me to do
the same.   The general lack of anyone doing anything rather saps my
energy.  I'll try to get some more work done.  There isn't really that
much left to do.  Just all those "last few things" that always seem to
pile up at the end of any project.

response 108 of 112:

Dec 21 04:10 UTC 2004

Thanks Jan, for all your work.  I still care about Grex, even though I
haven't been abole to muster the energy to do much lately.

response 110 of 112:

Dec 21 19:32 UTC 2004

Stallagtite, then.  ;-)

response 112 of 112:

May 17 02:15 UTC 2006

TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE