I finally got around to picking up a flash for my camera. What a difference it makes! I posted a test picture with it on my photo blog. A bounced flash literally made that picture.
Not only have I been nerding out in my free time, I've been nerding out at work too. Today I actually put the finishing touches on a pet project, enabling an Apache server in Linux to authenticate against an Active Directory. It was really a lot easier than I thought it would be.
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Get Samba installed, working, and join the Windows domain.
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Setup Winbind to run on startup if it isn't already.
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Add winbind stuff to PAM.
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Compile mod_auth_pam for Apache, add to configuration files, and presto, you can authenticate against the AD for web directories.
The other involved thing I've been working on is a SSH communication module with network equipment. I ended wrapping a SSH library for C# in a bit of custom logic, and then adding event notification to it so that it would function asynchly (i.e. a GUI or some other thing could still do its work in the foreground while it waits for replies from my library). At first you figure, sending commands over SSH to a switch or router is simple! But then you realize there are all kinds of weird cases. For instance, when you issue a command and the router stops with '--More--' on the screen.
Guess I'll graze over the other work details of late as well. When I first came to my position, it was a Delphi, Oracle, Perl shop. We're now writing .NET (C# with WinForms and ASP.NET), and I'm coordinating the move to Microsoft SQL Server 2005. The majority of the old stuff is being abandoned in favor of this new unified platform (i.e. we can write 'thick' clients in C#, deploy them with MSIs via SMS, rewrite only the presentation layer, reuse data/business layers, and have 'thin' clients on ASP.NET in very little time). Next week I think we'll be placing the order for the SQL development server, a dual, dual core AMD Opteron box with 6GB of RAM, and a SCSI320 array... I wonder if I'll get a chance to try EnemyTerritory or AoE on it?
When I first came to my job, I did not at all intend to convert them to a Microsoft shop. Overall I'm pretty neutral in the Everyone vs. Microsoft struggles, but I have to admit, when you're dealing with a Windows-centric environment, there are quite a few compelling reasons to develop in .NET.