I'm not quitting that easy. (Was: Re: I would like to vote also.)
>>>>> "Branden" == Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> writes:
Branden> On Thu, Nov 30, 2000 at 08:45:34AM -0800, Karl M. Hegbloom wrote:
>> I would like to be able to vote on this also.
Branden> Too bad, so sad, you already resigned, goodbye.
Branden> --
Branden> G. Branden Robinson | Convictions are more dangerous enemies
Branden> Debian GNU/Linux | of truth than lies.
Branden> branden@debian.org | -- Friedrich Nietzsche
Branden> http://www.debian.org/~branden/ |
No, I have not resigned. I almost gave up and wrote an email
"quitting" and then thought better of it and "unquit". My feelings
are very hurt over this.
About two years ago, I had my computer in an office at Portland State
University where I was employed as a systems administrator. I was
afraid at one point that my PGP had gotten compromised, and deleted
it. I had not generated a revokation certificate; I didn't know that
existed until it was too late.
I created a new key and submitted it... around that time, I was
getting restless and wanted to go skiing. I had not been able to
afford skiing since I was low paid restaurant labor; PSU being no
exception; I was paid $7.12 an hour to admin there. I moved out of
my apartment, put everything in storage, quit the job, and hopped a
bus to Mt. Hood, where I soon had a job in the TimberLine Lodge
kitchen. It was disapointing. I'd asked for a cooking position, and
they put me in the dish pit, for $6.00 an hour. The greedy waiters
did not share the tips. It was fairly busy and the food was around
$15-20 a plate; they could afford to pay more.
I did get a ski pass, free rentals, and meals though. Prime rib I
could not complain about and really nice high performance demos. I
found I can still ski as well as I could in high school.
Meanwhile, I'd left Portland behind with no notice at all; and had
not notified Debian that I was going anywhere. It was admittedly
irresponsible. If I do that again, I'll go to db.debian.org and mark
myself on vacation, etc. That did not exist then; and I was just
plain fed up with the low income lifestyle here in the city. (I'm at
that point again.)
I brought my laptop and some textbooks with me to the mountain.
While I was there, I completed "Advanced Programming in the Unix
Environment" and much of the Minix book + some of the Minix sources.
I also made good progress in "Essentials of Programming Languages".
I hacked a little on XEmacs `makefile-mode', improving font-locking
and imenu support to make it work better on the glibc Makefile
system; I began to study glibc.
I think I made faster progress there than I have made here in the
city. My mind was at peace. Less noise, fewer stray thoughts, less
of the feeling that someone is always demanding my attention, or that
there's someone behind me tapping their foot wanting me to hurry up.
When I got back from there, I managed to get my job back at the
University, and began hacking on the build setup I've yet to complete
for the XEmacs 21.2 beta. I spent a year living out of a backpack;
rather than paying rent. I was unable to upload bugfixes to my
Debian packages since my key was not in the keyring anymore. I also
missed out on the Red Hat IPO because of it... lots of good that
would have done anyway since I've no money.
In October, my father got in a car accident and was killed. I flew
to Arizona for the funeral, and when I got back, I found an apartment
and set up my computers again. The PSU professor I'd worked for
referred a man to me who wanted to set up a firewall machine; an IP
masq proxy router for an office DSL line. During the course of
installing Debian for that, I found several annoying bugs in the
installer, and sat down to fix them.
That's when I became involved with the Potato boot-floppies project.
Several times during that process, I was unable to upload releases,
NMU's, or bug fixes because I had no key in the keyring.
I would like to continue being a member of the Debian team. Right
now things are in flux; I had a job interview last Monday, and have
not heard from them yet. If I get the job, I'll soon be moving to a
better apartment. If I don't, perhaps I'll chuck it all and go ski
bum.
You don't have to put my key in the ring if you don't want to. Wait
until I've a more stable living situation and have time to be more
activly involved again. But I still consider myself a member of
Debian.
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