10:30 AM Whew. Mondays. Things have moved around here, as you have no doubt noticed; these are the last for a while, I promise! Well, no, more like "I vaguely intend." There are things I want to do to this place, but they will happen slowly, as I have time. Something very rare around here of late.

Anyway, some of the structure that was broken on January 1 is now fixed; that "Last Week" link should now work, among other things. I can also do my weekly updates with a script again. Yippee! <SEG> I could have done that a while ago, but I'm too lazy.

I'm beginning to move in the same direction as several of the other Daynoters; my main workstation at home is now a Linux-only machine. Granted, it's a mere Pentium 166, but it runs Linux well enough, as well as serving as a firewall and NAT router for Keri's Windows 98 machine.

More later; most of today's time budget was eaten by the structure changes. Have a good one.

2:20 PM So hard to find good help these days. Thanks to those who notified me that I'm an idiot; the information was appreciated. <G>

Blah piffle.

11:30 AM I got to work yesterday around 7:00 AM. Went straight into meetings, didn't even have time to really check my email. Aside from a short break around 11:00 for lunch, I spent the entire day in that meeting room. Then I dove into a project requiring a fairly high-level VPN, with certificate security and other such fun items. Said project should take a week of careful planning and implementation; it's to be finished, polished and ready to rock tonight. Lovely.

I left the office last night a little after 9:30, went home, and went straight to bed. Woke up this morning with a headache and, so I am told, mumbling something about PTPL, IGMP, and DHCP Routing tables. I'm still not close to done - the $#%#@$% thing refuses to accept that it can see the outside world from a VPN connection, despite all evidence to the contrary. I hate computers.

Later.

8:00 AM OK, either everybody else on the planet is insane, or I am. Personally, I think it's everybody else; I'm just peachy.

Along about two, three weeks ago (I can't remember exactly, and can't be bothered to look) I made a bunch of comments about Windows vs. Linux. For the record, I didn't (I think) come down heavily in favor of one over the other. The main point I was trying to make was that both operating systems are TOOLS. They have some similarities, they have some differences. They are not equally well suited for every job. For some tasks, Windows is, believe it or not, better than Linux. On other tasks, Linux is better. And there is a whole range of tasks that either OS can do perfectly well.

Why am I bringing this up again? Because over the last three days, I've gotten a bunch of email from various people (some are, I suspect, actually one person with multiple addresses; there can't be that many people who would misspell "hypocrite" as "hipocrit") all blasting me for my stance. I did get one email today with the subject "I like your slant on MS". I half-expected it to be another flame, but no, this gentleman seemed sincere.

My question is, where have YOU people been? That was weeks ago, and I didn't get these comments then. Oh, I got some flames, which I expected, but they tailed off and my trash folder stopped getting so big. Now they're back. WTF??

Regarding the flames; PBBBBBBBBBBBTH. I would respond to your arguments, but I couldn't find any. I'd say "grow up," but aside from the obvious waste of effort that would take, I don't want to myself, so why should I ask you to?

Those of you (and you know who you are) who had reasoned arguments for my being wrong, I read your emails and answered directly; I stand behind my opinions. They come up to about chest height, and block some of the flame. For those who emailed to express their support for my position; thank you. Appreciated.

Enough on that. On to the good stuff.

VPN. That project I spent the last two days slaving over went belly up in deep water yesterday; for various and sundry reasons, a client-server "RAS Style" VPN is out of the question. So instead, we're setting up a server-to-server VPN between there and here, which is going to require MORE long hours and, most likely, a flight out to North Carolina early next week. I don't like that idea; morning comes too early as it is, and they hold morning two hours earlier there than they do here. Ah well.

What are we using for the VPN? Well, that depends. There are two possibilities; Microsoft Windows 2000, and Linux Mandrake. This is one of those tasks that either one will be well suited for; both can handle the VPN and static routing, both have excellent remote administration capability (Terminal Server on 2000, SSH on Mandrake) and both have all the requirements needed for the job.

On the one hand, these servers are single-taskers. They are only going to do one job, and that's the VPN. That means two things; that Windows will most likely be perfectly stable throughout, so that's not a consideration, and that the default installation of both is going to include a lot of fluff. (Before you say it, I know Linux can be trimmed way down; I don't have time. These two servers have to be up and running in North Carolina on Tuesday, and their assorted parts are still on store shelves.) SSH is more secure than terminal server; on the other hand, there's going to be a 1024-bit encrypted VPN between the two; telnet would be perfectly secure.

So what's it going to be? I don't know. I'll keep you posted. <G>