[geeks] KVM for Sun Sparc Servers with USB keyboards

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Mon, 4 May 2009, hike wrote:

> gee, i thought working for the usa government made one a democrat.  a
> libertarian is rare.

I guess it depends on whether you get disgusted with how things don't
work, or whether you just break down and accept it for the sake of the
pension.  I worked for the state government, not the federal government,
so maybe the benefits weren't enticing enough.  I hear that federal
retirement package is a real gem.

For me, specifically, it involved reducing my agency's required budget by
some large amount each month, and eliminating a huge wasteful project.
The net effect could've saved the taxpayers of the state of Texas $125M
over the following 5 years (and some similar amount thereafter), and save
each insurance agency in the state some $500/mo or so--all via a zero-cost
project[0] I defined and wrote every line of code to support.  When it was
deployed, someone two levels of management above me took all the credit
(including national press in some magazines and a commendation from the
legislature).  That $125M budget savings?  Rather than returning it to the
taxpayers in the form of lower property taxes, the agency used the funds
to buy new executive cars, office furniture, and other fluff to keep the
apparent budget demands high.

My personal reward for the project (besides the satisfaction of doing the
job well)?  I got a $50/mo raise and I got yelled at by my boss who said I
would "never again do any software development crap" because it took away
from my "primary job duties"--which consisted of supporting the system I'd
supplanted!

When faced with that, there's only one conclusion: "No matter how
efficient I make my part of the system run, someone else will bloat theirs
in order to keep headcounts and budgets high."  Getting back to somewhere
that has profit motive was one of the happiest days of my life.  Money
saved gets spent -usefully!-.

At least the medical insurance agencies got to be rid of their expensive
leased-lines with mileage all the way out to San Angelo.  At least...until
the agency managed to lose all the source code through gross
mismanagement.  I've no idea what the state runs to exchange that data,
but hopefully it's some variation on that theme.


[0] Short form: "Why move hundreds of leased telephone lines from San
     Angelo to Texas and buy a huge terminal controller to plug them all
     into an RS/6000 when we can use this In-ter-net thing plus SFTP and
     get rid of the telephone lines and existing on-lease terminal
     controller entirely?"
-- 
Jonathan Patschke ( "They don't have the right to read a book out loud."
Elgin, TX         (                  --Paul Aiken
USA               (                    Executive Director, Authors Guild