![\"Bigbrother\"](\"http:\/\/blog.maclawran.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/c0c65-bigbrother-scaled500.gif\")
<\/div>\nI also wrote it because I got tired or watching things manually.\u00a0 Netscape had just opened up the NSAPI, literally that month, and BB was one of the first programs to dynamically generate web pages.\u00a0 The idea was I could install it, leave it onscreen and tell from across the room whether things were OK (green), or there was a problem (red).<\/p>\n
The problem with being a Systems Administrator is visiblilty.\u00a0 If you’re visible, it’s generally because there’s a problem (which is of course, your fault), and needs to be fixed.\u00a0 If you’re not visible, it’s “why are we paying this guy so much?”.\u00a0 Big Brother was helpful here in a bunch of ways – first it published system and network information in a “red is bad \/ green is good” format easily understood by PHB’s.\u00a0 This kept them busy.\u00a0 If there was a problem, they could just hit “refresh” instead of “redial”.\u00a0 Good for me, because the last thing i want to do when I’m putting out a fire is discuss putting out the fire…”<\/p>\n
And Big Brother became popular.\u00a0 Used everywhere.\u00a0 Like Nagios is today.<\/p>\n
I didn’t realize it at the time, but we were causing some companies real pain.\u00a0 Quest was one of those companies.\u00a0 They were selling their Foglight software at about $50K a pop.\u00a0 BB covered a lot of the same ground for free.\u00a0 Quest salesmen would hit a place and see Big Brother already there.\u00a0 They called us ‘the virus’.\u00a0 So they did the smart thing – offered us a pile of money and bought BB.\u00a0 We sold out.<\/p>\n
I didn’t expect the downside.\u00a0 Quest is a sales company.\u00a0 They could be selling Ginsu knives – they’re a sales machine, it’s what they do, and they do it well.\u00a0 BB was a 99.5% free product and the sales guys saw a big mailing list.<\/p>\n
For 4 years I tried to hold the community together.\u00a0 I couldn’t mention how Quest had forbidden us to upgrade the free product, or cease providing support on the mailing list.\u00a0 Sales guys wanted to spam the list of people who downloaded the free version – I told them they couldn’t – that it was against the privacy agreement we had – even went to the company lawyers to make sure we wouldn’t violate our own Privacy Agreement.<\/p>\n
So the privacy agreement got changed… then there was the “upgrade or die” message that went out – that killed the community.\u00a0 Thank goodness Henrik created Xymon, a Big Brother clone (“can’t we sue them for copying… no you don’t want to do that”), and salvaged what was left of the brotherhood.<\/p>\n
I’ve spent the last 10 years there taking care of BB.\u00a0 Spent the last year architecting a cloud version (that I really like).\u00a0 It’s not like there are a lot of dev resources… there was me, Rob and Jun.\u00a0 I was responsible for ‘the vision thing’, new features, and the User Interface.<\/p>\n
My departure effectively puts BB in maintenance mode. And it’s really strange to not be associated with this thing I created.<\/p>\n
And I need to look for work.\u00a0 And because I had no idea this was coming, I was really blindsided.\u00a0 Couldn’t find a copy of my resume anywhere (I finally found a copy on The Wayback Machine<\/a> – the archive of old web pages maintained by the Internet Archive).<\/p>\n And it’s scary.\u00a0 I’m about to turn 50.\u00a0 50?\u00a0 And I suspect I’m about to deal with Ageism for the first time.\u00a0 This is going to be interesting.\u00a0 It certainly focused my attention.\u00a0 And living in Key West?\u00a0 Not a huge demand for senior Unix guys down here (except at the Navy base).<\/p>\n I’m lucky because Quest has a sensible policy regarding Inventions – you can invent something and it’s yours provided it’s done with all your own resources and on your own time.\u00a0\u00a0 I also always have a side-project going – generally to do with new stuff I want to learn about – so it’s not like the skills aren’t current (video, cloud, jquery, big storage).<\/p>\n So what’s next?<\/p>\n I’d like to go back to doing SysAdmin work.\u00a0 Taking care of machines and networks… there’s never been a period where I haven’t taken care of machines and a network, so that’s pretty comfortable.\u00a0 I suspect I may run into “But you haven’t used Version 7.1 of blah blah” (look in the resume I probably wrote something similar to blah blah at some point).<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n I like being a Sys Admin…. I used to describe my work as a combination of Clint Eastwood and Mr Spock – rarely have I run into problems that required a committee to solve them; that’s what I do, it’s what Iike to do.\u00a0 Even dealing with users.\u00a0 I’ve mellowed – I’m no longer the BOFH (Bastard Operator From Hell)… then again put me in a room with enough stupid users for long enough and that may change.<\/p>\n And there are the patents.\u00a0 2 of them, with more being filed.\u00a0 My favorite is the “Consumer Self-Activated Financial Card”… you get the card first, then activate it yourself.\u00a0 Maybe Paypal, Google, Facebook or some bank might be interested.\u00a0 Activation patents are cool because if you can’t activate, you can’t do anything else.<\/p>\n See it here: http:\/\/telicash.com<\/a> and click on any of the pictures.<\/p>\n No matter what I’m sure this is going to be a trip.<\/p>\n And, by request, a link to my resume: http:\/\/root.sh<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I got a surprise a few weeks ago… my manager at Quest called and just said “Hey Sean, your last day is next Friday… (blah blah blah)… do you have any questions?”. I said “no” and hung up. I wrote Big Brother – the first web-based Systems and…<\/p>\n