Kebe Says - Dan McDonald's Blog

So recently I acquired @danmcd on Twitter. It was a long time coming. I was relatively late in early-adopting twitter: late spring 2009. By then someone else had claimed the handle danmcd, to my chagrin.

I was chagrined (in 2009) because I’ve been danmcd at SOMEWHERE since 1988. First .edus, even a .gov and .mil, and of course a series of .coms including my own kebe.com

(Who and/or what is Kebe might be another blog post in and of itself. In the meantime, this answer will suffice:

)

Names are important. Especially in the virtual world, they establish not only presence, but often place as well. I ended up being @kebesays on twitter for a long time. Luckily, Twitter makes handle-swapping relatively easy, so anyone who was following @kebesays got moved over to @danmcd without issue. I still keep /* XXX KEBE SAYS … at the top, because if you see that in my code, it indicates work-in-progress issues; and aren’t we all works-in-progress?

Speaking of names and places: one name and one place that has been associated with Triton and SmartOS - Joyent - will no longer be associated with SmartOS or Triton. Samsung has decided to use other in-house technology for their future, and that work will continue with Joyent. SmartOS and Triton are being spun off to MNX Solutions, where I will be continuing SmartOS development. See the MNX Triton FAQ and my email for more.

Oh and yes, I’ll get to be ‘danmcd‘ at MNX as well.

Pardon my latency

Well, at least I’m staying on track for single-digit blog posts in a year. :)

Okay, seriously, 2020’s pandemic-and-other-chaos tends to distract. Also, I did actually have a few things worth my attention.

RFD 176

The second half of 2020 at work has been primarily about RFD 176 – weaning SmartOS and Triton off of the requirement for a USB key. Phases I (standalone SmartOS) and II (Triton Compute Node) are finished. Phase III (Triton Head Node) is coming along nicely, thanks to real-world testing on Equinix Metal (nee Packet), and I hope to have a dedicated blog post about our work in this space coming in the first quarter 2021.

Follow our progress in the rfd176 branches of smartos-live and sdc-headnode.

Twins & College

My twins are US High School seniors, meaning they’re off to college/university next fall, modulo pandemic-and-other-chaos. This means applications, a little stress, and generally folding in pandemic-and-other-chaos issues into the normal flow of things as well. Out of respect for their privacy and autonomy, I’ll stop here to avoid details each of them can spill on their own terms.

On 2021

Both “distractions” mentioned above will continue into 2021, so I apologize in advance for any lack of content here for my half-dozen readers. You can follow me on any of the socials mentioned on the right, because I’ll post there if the spirit moves me (especially on issues of the moment).

First off, long time no blog!

This is the last post I'm putting on the Blogspot site. In the spirit of eating my own dogfood, I've now set up a self-hosted blog on my HDC. I'm sure it won't be hard for all half-dozen of you readers to move over. I'll have new content over there, at the very least the Hello, World post, a catchup post, and a HDC 3.0 post to match the ones for 1.0 and 2.0.

David Reed passed along a pointer to this paper by Dan Geer:

A Time for Choosing

Please read it, and understand the founding spirit of the Internet. And with that, I say goodbye to Oracle.

15 years ago I was finishing up last-minute changes at NRL while getting ready to move coasts. While I'm not moving coasts, I'm at the point where I'm finishing up last-minute changes again.

I'm leaving Oracle this week, and will be trying something a bit different after that. I've been doing IPsec or at least TCP/IP related work for the entirety of my time at Sun. I expect to be back in TCP/IP-land relatively soon, but I will be learning some new-to-me technologies in the immediate future.

I've met and worked with some extraordinary people during my time at Sun. I hope to keep in touch with them after I depart. If any of you half-dozen readers wish to keep up, I'd suggest following my Twitter feed until I decide whether or not I find a new home for this blog. I'm also findable on Facebook and LinkedIn for those so inclined.