I finally had enough. About four years ago, while working for Nildram, I was allowed to bring in an old Linux box in and put it on the Internet, on the agreement that is was not for commercial use or for hosting websites that should otherwise be considered potential custom for Nildramkeep it under my desk. The idea was that it was for friends/family/open-source stuff. At first it lived under my desk. Later it was moved into the server room (a kind of free colo arrangement ‘perk’). Friend #1 supplied an old desktop machine for the server in exchange for a login. Later, we gave Friend #2 a login, and they supplied a larger HDD as the original 2Gb one was soon full. Both friends knew that it was not to be used for commercial purposes, or anything high-bandwidth. I used it for hosting my hang-gliding club’s website and mailing list (non-commercial), my personal homepage, and hosting ‘golder.org’ services (friends/family virus+spam-filtered IMAP mail accounts etc). Friend #2 mostly used it for University stuff and running a small IRC server. However, Friend #1 started selling e-mail accounts and web services to various people, and then went on to start setting up sites selling Steroids and other banned substances. So, while I’ve been spending my free (as in ‘unpaid!’) time keeping the software and spam filters all up-to-date and secure, he’s been trying to make money out of the deal. Unfortunately, that’s just the way this guy is, and I’m fed up of being taken the piss out of by a ‘friend’, so I’ve given them until the end of June to make alternative arrangements before I shut down the server and let them take their kit back. I’ll just move my stuff off to my backup server (albeit behind an ADSL line) for now, so apologies to anyone that uses these services if things appear to slow down a little for a while, or if there any disruption of services over the next few weekends as I move stuff off the old server.

Unfortunately, no GNOME work this weekend, as a customer has put in a ‘must be working by Monday morning’ deadline on a hastily thought-out new feature, which means I’ve got to concentrate on that today. I’m starting to think that the GNOME sysadmin team doesn’t work. A team is supposed to mean ‘people working together and sharing responsibilities’. A couple of the members are great, and spend a fair amount of time looking after their own areas of the job, but there are a few members that just don’t appear to have done anything useful since becoming members. They just chip in the occassional comment, and if I try to get them to do anything useful, they just say ’not now - I’m busy’. I think that’s a shame, as it seems that now that I’m not finding the spare time to do things, nothing is getting done, and people are having to send in reminders, as nobody has responded to their original request. As GNOME sysadmin team leader, I am obviously failing to properly motivate the team members, so I’m wondering what I can do. Once I get some spare time again, should I concentrate on re-organising/re-recruiting a decent team, or should I just crack on single-handedly with the outstanding list of requests and ignore the problems in the team.

I may be overdrawn at the bank, and facing the possibility of a visit from the Thai police for not having enough money to pay an accountant to submit my last years company balance sheet, but at least the garden’s looking nice. I’ve spent a couple of hours a day clearing some overgrowth from the dry river at the back of the house, and it’s looking much nicer now. When the rain comes, it should look really nice. Work is coming along slowly but surely, and I’ve got a few invoices due, so I’m fairly sure (I surely hope!) the money for the accountant will arrive in the bank before the end-of-May deadline. If not, the resulting fine will put me back into the last financial century, or maybe even in jail.