Have you ever seen a $25,000 PC Card that hooks to a scanner to produce clean content used for forms? Some professional groups pay those kind of dollars so they can use EDI to speed up their collections. Call the filer a service provider and call the paper billing company a payer. So why does the payer make a provider kill trees to get paid?

One year ago, I stuck my resume up on Dice and Monster expecting to find a nice job as a system administrator. I wrote a decent resume, outlined my abilities and accomplishments and waited to see my cell phone light up with calls. Nothing happened. I went to both job boards and saw that I had a few hits. I seem to remember about four hits on each board for a total of eight hits.

The time has come to gulp down the pumpkin pie and before you load up on Turkey, Ham, Roast Beef or a nice Vegetarian cuisine, to consider your goals and objectives for the year. Notice I didn't say resolutions. Of course, if you start off the resolution sentence with "I resolve to..." then that will work just fine along with your goals and objectives.

Joel Barker wrote an interesting book entitled, "Paradigms:The Business of Discovering the Future". Originally written several years ago, I find it relevant today. In his book Barker has more of an interest in how we think about the future than making predictions.

At one point in time and not too very long ago, I fancied myself a decent system administrator with a decent resume and work history. When I finished a series of writing tasks working on technology subjects that included system administration, I thought the time had come for me to work in a shop with Linux and MS.

I opened the morning paper and turned to the front page of Business - Section D. Right in the middle of front page at the top, four columns wide and headlined with major graphics a story line asked "Mind if we share?" The lower headline read, "BitTorrent pours out movies, TV shows - and controversy".

Back in 1995, I read an article about the scarcity of webmasters and switched my specialty. I often look for hot spots and retool to meet the needs. Before 1995, Oracle Financials was hot. I just didn’t care much for the rigidity of technology. But, I was an accountant and an IT guy so I had tooled up for database programming.

Last Wednesday, I went to a pub with some people from work. I wore a t-shirt I picked up at Linux World Boston in 2003. As my co-workers left one by one, I moved to the bar to strike up a conversation with the bartender. It was a quiet night and serving drinks slowed down as everyone left.

Back in February, Ralph Green asked me to speak at the North Texas Linux Users' Group. I discussed Linux administration and then took questions. Some one in the audience asked me about Mono. I gave a cavalier answer having a bias against it. Then someone else in the audience said that I needed to get my facts straight.

Recently, as in last week, I learned a new Texas idiom. A senior executive at a client explained what he meant when he said that I was beating his dog. I didn't have a reference for the comment until he said that if he invited me over for a barbecue and I beat his dog that was inappropriate. "How would you like it if you invited me to your house for dinner and I beat your dog?" he asked.

I plead guilty to past transgressions. So, call me a hypocrite if you will. I don't care anymore. I refuse to get stuck in the past because the present and the near future is fun.

Indulge if you will in recurrent and persistent thoughts, impulses, or images experienced as intrusive and distressing. The obsession with Microsoft in Open Software communities is excessive and unreasonable and a product of the mind. My only hope is that such thoughts, impulses, and, or images can be expunged by logic or reasoning, which is contrary to the notions in the psychiatric community.

Did you know you can download SourceforgeEE for 15 users for free. You'll find it on Sourceforge.net and it comes in a VMWare appliance. That version will accommodate 50 users if you want to pay for more than 15 seats. From an enterprise point of view, the cost is quite reasonable.

Open Source methodology has gained some ground in one of the last places you and I might expect: In the development area of corporations. Consultants are calling environments like Sourceforge Enterprise Edition a Digital Development Environment.

Would you like to buy a mailing list and start a Broadcast Campaign? Then just put some kind of message at the bottom of the email that says unsubscribe or opt-out and a physical address like 201 Mullview Place, Bigfoot, Montana 59106. Make sure you have a subject line and a header.

Four years ago, I bought a book entitled, "Mac OSX: The Missing Manual" and noticed it had reached the #1 best sellers slot at Amazon. I remember wondering how an operating system with 3% of the PC Desktop market could sell enough books to rank #1. Then, I realized there I was buying one too. I didn't use a Mac, but my wife bought one and needed to learn this new fangled UNIX desktop. The point? The Missing Manual served a big need - big enough to warrant a #1 best seller.

A reliable source says the days of Linux sysadmin books have ended. If you can barely sell 5,000 copies, then why bother? Programming books continue to sell at a fast pace, so you can guess where job demand in IT has gone.

Let's see how long have I used Linux as a desktop? Hmmm. Over 10 years? That's right. And the first issue I had at that time was finding an easy way to get to my ISP. The second issue at the time was the lack of a graphical web browser. Then Netscape produced an unsupported one that worked fine.

If you have followed my articles on LDAP, you know we began looking at objectClasses in the last installment back in March. Since that time, I haven't written much more about directory servers. I began contemplating whether or not to continue the LDAP series because things have changed. Let me explain:

As I delete spam from my Gmail spam folder, I notice the volumes increasing. A year ago, I would see about five to ten emails a day in that folder. This morning, I woke up to 56 items. The volume of spam has grown, no doubt.

Would you like to get your hands on "Linux System Administration" and have Bill Lubanovic or me show up to your local LUG or UNIX User group meeting? Then you should contact Marsee Henon at O'Reilly. Of course, if you would rather have another author and another book she can handle that too. Marsee works with various groups around the country to make sure they have books and speakers.