Aoct (Apathy on Company Time) started as a response to working for Indiana University - a pet project for Dilbert-esque complaints about management. I eventually left IU and went to work for an independent ISP. Once I left, my disgruntled stated diminished, only to return again after I went into management at the ISP. After a few years, they were sold and I left there, too. I'm now completely out of the tech business, though I do miss it from time to time.
The only things of note that still live here are my mostly defunct bio and my software that I wrote while at the ISP. It's no longer being maintained, but still might be of interest to someone as a base for other projects.
Over the years we've rolled a fair amount of our own software, mostly so we can get our jobs done. Some of the tools or patches have proven useful enough to us that we thought someone else might find them useful as well. These are all opensource projects and as such we would very much appreciate any input people may have on these things. Some of these are new and well maintained some are old and crufty, but have some value as information.
Things we thought about or want to think about and maybe want you to think about too.
Here's a quick bio...(please note that this bio is way out of date and I can't be bothered to fix it at this time.)
I've spent the last 8.5 years in the computer field in various places, starting in tech support in late 93 and working my way through PC support, Netware Support, unix support, unix administration (SunOS 4.x, Solaris, NeXTStep, Digital Unix, HPUX 9 & 10 (don't even ask...please...), and Linux. Due to some bad decisions I moved up into management. I'm still a tech as well, but at least 50% of my time seems to deal with politics and managing others. I think I'd rather herd cats. So, here I am...almost 28...working on my own little ulcer.
The software I've written is stuff that started for work, but grew into something I continued working on for myself. I hope that if you decide to try it out that it works well for you. Feel free to offer suggestions, ask questions, send me cash, whatever you want.
This is from my colleague Adrian...I don't know what the source is yet, but I've asked.
"We've all heard the "herding cats" analogy with regard to managing programmers. Managing sysadmins is like leading a neighborhood gang of neurotic pumas on jet-powered hoverbikes with nasty smack habits and opposable thumbs. Oh, and as a manager you're a neurotic junkie puma too, only they cut your thumbs off and whereas all the other pumas get to drive around on their badass hoverbikes and fire chainguns at the marketing department, YOU have to drive a maroon AMC Gremlin behind them and hand out Band-Aids and smile a lot, when all you're REALLY thinking about is how to get one of them to let you borrow his hoverbike for a few minutes so you can show those fools how it's DONE. This is because managers are usually people who proved that they were handy with a chaingun and were thus rewarded by having their thumbs cut off and their weapons handed to some punk college hire."
You just have no idea how funny (and maybe true) this is until you've been a manager.