John's lame vanity page

Yup, everybody is supposed to have a homepage these days so I finally decided to make myself one a few years ago.. It's still not especially pretty, and most likely won't ever be by current standards because I won't be putting frames, JAVA or any of that junk on it. If you don't like the colors, don't expect me to fix that either, go pick some defaults that YOU like for your browser because that is what HTML is supposed to be about.

Normally, most people wouldn't be wanting to know about me, but for some reason of another, here you are. :) So I guess I should not disappoint anyone and go ahead and tell you something about me so here comes the whole shocking story:

Profile of a geek

I'm currently the designated network guru for the Beauregard Parish Public Library and the Beauregard Parish School Board. Being in a rural part of a poor southern state helps when preaching the virtues of the Open Source model, especially the part about getting servers for nothing by reusing machines too outdated for anyone to want as a Win95 PC. And of course the part about the per client license fees being $0 also helps. So I guess I'm doing my bit to save a few of the taxpayers's dollars; so the government can waste them on some other program. :)

Physically I am 36 year old, 6'0" and 180lbs. Mentally I'm a self-confessed 'propellerhead' with radically libertarian (tempered with a modest dose of conservative teachings to keep grounded in reality) political leanings. As a geek, I have little social life and have never been married. Guess that's the price one pays to gain access to the inner mysteries of computing, but lately I have been working on the 'getting a life' problem. :)


Things that I think matter

Eventually I intend each of these to link to a page where I can vent on each of these subjects.

Politics
I'm a weird mix of hardcore Reagan conservative and Libertarian. Ya gotta study all of the seemingly odd positions on issues to see how I hang them all together into a coherent worldview.

Linux and the Free Software (Open Source) movement
Remember, sell the idea to newcomers as Open Source but the real meaning is all about Freedom.

Cuecat Resources
The CueCat® is a silly little free gadget that turned into a major test of freedom through the stupidity of it's creators. And I ended up deciding to get seriously involved in the battle for Intellectual Freedom and join the EFF.

Software

Of late I have been writing a few small utilities and of course they are all under the GPL or PD. As I get them into a state where I am not embarrased to have the public see the code it will get a link here. If an item is named, but not linked it is getting close to release. Holler if you really want to try the messy version as a alpha tester and I will schlep it into a tarball and send it on.. :)

SecretStash 0.1
A set of scripts to create an encryped stash that gets mounted at login and unmounted again at logoff. Even catches CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE, which makes it possible to slam a lid on your secret stuff in one fast keyboard action.
FixWeb
Simple PERL script to help bring a uniform look to a site by adding headers and footers and providing simple macros. Does not run at access time so does not impact server load like SSI or php would.
Dumper
A simple package to rebuild a DOS/WfW3.11/W9x machine on demand and/or nightly. Lets face it, securing a DOS box for public access is impossible so quit trying! Just let the public screw it up then blow it away and rebuild it again with a single command.
White Box Enterprise Linux
A very preliminary effort to respin Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Links

Everybody has to have links to their favorite sites, so here are a few of mine:


If you have any comments, send em to me at jmorris@beau.lib.la.us.
And if you are paranoid like me, here is my PGP/GPG key.


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