I'm still alive ... <promise towhom="self"> I will update this more often </promise> ...
cisco have told me that they can't think about taking me on until August - random hiring freeze time ... oh Cisco are posting a few million less dollars profit this year, even though it's still more than the GNP of some random small country - eek, market crash time - Cisco response, let's not hire so many staff. arse.
however, i've been having a ball helping out with SmoothWall (my website design btw - heh), an open source project to build a cleaner, better router with firewall properties ... the intended market, as far as I can see it, is realistically Windows users and other less capable users, where they can bung in a floppy and CD into an old bit of kit, say a 486 or P-120, with a NIC and modem, and be connected inside of 20 mins. sweet. the momentum is gathering on it - it's a real nice project with some great guys working on it - so it'll be nice to see what happens in the summer. it's covermounted on linux format amongst other places this month, so hopefully we'll see the userbase swell again :)