BSDCan Travel Fund Auction in honor of Mike Karels

Mike Karels has been around the BSD community since the last century, and was integral to our projects. How integral? If your name is on the definitive book on the topic, you’re integral.

On his way home from BSDCan 2024, Mike passed away.

I could go on and on about what a humble guy he was, and how he helped many folks. Or I can tell you that he backed Run Your Own Mail Server. He had no need for my book, but thought it was worthwhile? I was stunned. And appreciative.

With his family’s permission, I am auctioning off his reward in his honor. And something extra.

Here’s a copy of the backers-only edition of RYOMS, Ruin Your Mail By Running It Yourself, with a sponsors-only challenge coin. After fulfilling sponsor gifts, I have a scant handful of coins left. I don’t sell them, despite repeated requests, the occasional threat, and one ham-fisted blackmail attempt. The only way to get one today is by winning this auction.

Bid on the set by leaving a comment on this page.

The auction runs from now until 5PM EDT 12 May. If the bidding goes nuts in the last few minutes, I’ll leave it open until it settles down. There’s no sniping this auction at the last moment, as I want bids to escalate beyond all sensible limits.

Mike was a cool dude. Honor him by giving the next generation a chance to join us.

“Networking for System Administrators, 2nd Edition” Update

“The book is underway.” What does that mean? The first half is largely done. The Windows stuff is PowerShell. The Debian stuff uses ip. FreeBSD is the reference Unix. I wrote a chapter on what folks need to know about TLS, to go in the middle. I sadly sent that to Bob Beck for his comments. I understand where TLS has been, but Bob has good insight into where it will be.

Bob’s a good guy, but he also has cause for a lawful quarrel with me. Whenever I start to feel depressed, I listen to that recording of the BSDCan 2019 closing ceremony. That man screaming “LUCAS” in tones of rage and despair? That’s Bob.

He can now declare himself avenged.

If I’m talking modern TLS and modern networks, I really need to address QUIC. Not long ago, QUIC was largely theoretical for sysadmins. None of our common applications supported it. Yes, half of the traffic to Google went over QUIC, but I couldn’t deploy it. It merited a paragraph or two, no more.

Turns out that nginx main release now supports quic. I can reasonably deploy it. Except I’m using Apache. I’ve been running web servers since well before nginx, and never saw a reason to change. Yes, yes, Apache has issues, but I’m accustomed to its odd little habits and even the thing with the whirling razor blades followed by vinegar mist.

Could I skate by with three or four paragraphs on QUIC? Many tech authors do. I have this career because I don’t skate through, however. So I get to migrate my systems to nginx. Or perhaps stick an Envoy proxy in front of the web server. Haven’t decided yet. I’ll probably talk through the decision on the fediverse.

But it’s all Bob’s fault.

On the plus side, I have a sketch of the n4sa2e challenge coin. It’s not final, but it’s the way I’m leaning now.

n4sa2e challenge coin sketch

For the two people who care: this coin’s featured rodent is Willoughby. Lara Jean did a great job of capturing his character.

The only way you’ll get one of these coins is by becoming a print sponsor. Your backing will sustain me as I struggle with envoy. Or nginx. Probably both, then one.

I think the rest of the book will go quickly. You still shouldn’t nmap addresses you don’t control. DNS hasn’t changed, nor traceroute, nor netcat. I have to weave some TLS throughout, of course, which makes the netcat part a pain. (Standardize Netcat Flags and Give It TLS Challenge 2025!)

But at least Bob will have the pleasure of hearing me scream “BECK!” in blended rage and despair.

More Titles in Direct Print Sales

In spare minutes, I’ve been expanding my direct print sale operation. You can now get all of these in my bookstore. If you pay for the print book, you get the ebook free.

titles available in print on tiltedwindmillpress.com, 21 April 2025

I have other books in the system, but am waiting for the print proofs to arrive. They come from a new printer (BookVault). Before I tell you to buy a book, I need to know that BV can produce the book as intended. They’re competent, but everyone handles PDFs slightly different. I’ve caught a couple weird color things and a skewed margin. So, despite my efforts to trim down in-house stock, I’m accumulating books. Dammit.

The thing I’m super excited about? Bundles.

It’s about eight years too late, but I now sell the FreeBSD Storage bundle in print. If you buy it from me, I can afford to knock 20% off. Even with shipping, that makes it a better deal for you than buying from Amazon.

My hope is that the kind of people who want to, for example, run their own mail servers will also want to buy directly from the author. That would help make up for the current, unforced and wholly unnecessary, economic implosion in the US.

Next up? The rest of the tech books. Discounted Cross-Platform Unix Mastery and Total Mastery bundles. Then all the fiction and finally, The Full Michael in print.

Updates will follow as more titles appear.

“SSH Mastery” now available in print direct from me

The headline kind of says it all, but it won’t let me put a link so I’ll repeat it. If you want SSH Mastery in print you can buy it from me. Unlike any other store, buy the print and you get the no-DRM ebook for free.

Thanks to the number of retail channels I use I have no ability to generate per-title book sales figures, but SSH Mastery is consistently near the top at most of the stores.

Print and ebook editions of all future Tilted Windmill Press titles will be available first through my store. Adding a backlist title is a few hours work, and a couple weeks of waiting to be sure that the printer does a good job. Yes, it’s a third printer. I’ll rant about why in March’s See the Sausage Being Made column, which I still owe my Patronizers.

Anyway, you can get a print/ebook bundle of SSH Mastery. It’s a mere eight years later than I wanted, but that’s tech for you.

If you want to know if I have a particular title in print, see my store’s print category.

Now available: combined print/ebook bundles direct from my bookstore

The question I get asked most often is “Can I get a print and ebook combo of your books?” No, hang on, that’s not quite true. Technically, the most common questions are “Are you mad?” followed by “Are you serious?” but the print/ebook combo thing is a solid third place.

I am delighted to announce that after years of work, I am deploying direct print sales from my bookstore. Buy the print book and get the ebook free. Ebook will arrive in minutes. The print book will ship in about a week.

Only Run Your Own Mail Server and Dear Abyss are available so far.

While I’d like to offer a discount, the big bookstores would price match me. And yes, you pay shipping. With shipping charges it’s more expensive and slower than Amazon Prime. Every penny outside shipping, printing, and processing fees goes to feeding my family, however, so that’s a win (for me). I’m looking at ways to reduce the cost, but I need to see if anyone will actually order this way before I sink more money and time into it.

When you place an order, my store invokes BookFunnel for the ebook and files a print order with BookVault. In minutes, BookFunnel will send you an email with links to download your books. They’ll be available for redownload at https://my.bookfunnel.com. A few hours later, BookVault will send you a print order confirmation.

All new books will be available on my site before anywhere else. I will also be adding older titles as time permits.

I’ve been working on disintermediation for over ten years. This is the last big piece. I am delighted.

Why did this take so long? Well, shipping in the real world is kind of a mess. That makes shipping in WooCommerce kind of a mess. For most authors BookVault would be plug-and-run, but I’m special. My sponsorships are incompatible with BookVault. I wound up employing Sleeping Giant Studios to resolve incompatibilities between the two. I highly recommend SGS for any WooCommerce daftness.

“Networking for System Administrators, 2nd edition” cover art

The inimitable Eddie Sharam has finished the cover painting for the new edition of Networking for Systems Administrators. It’s a parody of Giuseppe Zocchi’s Pietre Dure of Architettura. It’s a wraparound, but you can see a mockup of the front cover at the sponsorship page.

Eddie painted this. Like, on paper. With paint. The current plan is to include the painting as a Kickstarter reward level, much as we did with the cover for Run Your Own Mail Server.

At this moment, N4SA2e has 98 print sponsors. Two more sponsors and I have to do a challenge coin. If I have to do a coin, it’ll have the usual rat and bear the words NEVER MY FAULT/ALWAYS MY PROBLEM.

Mind you, my plan is that I will get exactly one more print sponsor and then y’all’ll stop backing it, so I don’t have to do any extra work.

New Releases: Dear Abyss, The Last Hour of Hogswatch

It’s the end of the year, so I’m shoving a couple titles out the door at the last minute. Like you do.

First up we have Dear Abyss: the FreeBSD Journal Letters column, years 1-6. The ebook is on most platforms now, and print is leaking out.

For the folks who are into solstice holidays, my story The Last Hour of Hogswatch is now available standalone. It’s only in my bookstore; I don’t bother putting short stories on the big stores any more, or in print.

Happy holiday-of-your-choice, folks!

“Dear Abyss” live on Kickstarter

Confession time: I don’t love Kickstarter. I don’t love money either, but it does seem to be a dependency when living in capitalism.

When I release a book on my site, I sell a few copies. When I launch it on Kickstarter, sales go up tenfold.

So: Dear Abyss is live on Kickstarter. The book exists, and the moment I get paid it goes to everyone.

Backers immediately get a copy of Letters to ed(1), the out-of-print three-year compilation.

“Networking for Systems Administrators, 2nd ed” open for sponsorship

TLDR: “Networking for Systems Administrators, 2nd Edition” is open for sponsorships at https://www.tiltedwindmillpress.com/product/n4sa2e-sponsor/ and I would appreciate your support.

Longer version:

Every large company I’d ever worked in since 1995 suffered from a continuous feud between the sysadmins and the network team. One team would demand an inch, the other would insist on 25.4 millimeters, and battle was declared. As someone with an ankle shackled in each world, I quickly reached two conclusions.

One, the job is hard enough without us arguing past each other.

Two, everybody involved needed a short sharp visit from the Slap Fairy.

About ten years ago I achieved my lifelong goal of becoming a full-time writer, and promptly lost my mind. I could keep being a writer so long as I kept bringing in money. If I didn’t bring in money, I’d get stuffed back in a cubicle. I had to write books, and quickly. I had made a list of titles I could spew fast. One of them was “Networking for Systems Administrators,” meant to end that feud or at least bring about a ceasefire.

Because my other goal was “pay the mortgage before I get stuffed back into a cubicle,” I slammed out that manuscript in about a month.

To my surprise, it was well-received. Managers bought the book in bulk to distribute to their staff. Network administrators bought it to give to select colleagues. Sysadmins bought so they could successfully argue with their network administrators.

It’s been ten years, and that book needs updating. Some of the commands have been changed. 100Mb Ethernet is rare, while 10G and 100G are almost common. There’s all those tidbits I could have done better, if I hadn’t been driving myself too hard. Let’s Encrypt made TLS omnipresent, so I need to add that. And of course it must have a proper Eddie Sharam cover.

If I get ~100 print sponsors I’ll do another challenge coin, like the one I did for Run Your Own Mail Server (https://mwl.io/archives/23836).

So, yeah. https://www.tiltedwindmillpress.com/product/n4sa2e-sponsor/ is my effort to bring a tiny peace to IT departments around the world. I would be grateful for your sponsorship, and your support with the mortgage part.

Thank you for your consideration.

PS: I should also mention that my collected FreeBSD Journal advice columns, Dear Abyss, is going to kickstarter soon. “Dear Abby for Sysadmins” isn’t going to sponsorship, but if you’re interested you might check it out. (https://mwl.io/ks)

Mail Talk 8 October 2024, with bonus Craig Maloney Memorial Charity Auction starting–NOW

Next Tuesday, 8 October 2024, I’ll be talking about Running Your Own Mail Server at mug.org, 6:30PM EDT. MUG is my local “hard-core Unixy People” group. Giving a talk during a book release is bad planning, but I am crap at scheduling.

One of its members was Craig Maloney. Many years ago Craig asked me if I was the same Michael Lucas who had written a couple RPG books in the 1990s. I admitted my guilt. He pulled an obviously-read plastic-bagged copy of Gatecrasher out of his backpack and asked me to sign it. The dude had friends across the world and did his best to boost us all. An all-around great guy, who sadly lost his life to cancer earlier this year.

Craig had sponsored Run Your Own Mail Server. I am now left with his sponsor gifts. I’ve checked with Craig’s family, and they’re okay with me auctioning them off for charity. The Craig Maloney Memorial Auction runs on this page from now until my MUG talk ends1.

The sponsor gifts will never be available in bookstores, at least not new. (I do have a few extras that I will auction off for charity over the rest of my life, but I’ll stretch those out.) I don’t want to describe them here because not all the sponsors have their gifts yet and I’d rather not spoil the surprise, but you can see photos at link 1 and link 2.

I’m going to end this auction a little differently, though. The auction will close at the end of Tuesday’s mug.org talk. I’ll ask live, online for any last bids. You can bid by posting on the page or in the video session. The auction will close when bidding stops. Comment on this post to bid. Once the auction ends, I’ll notify the winner. The winner sends me the donation receipt and I ship the gifts. I pay for shipping.

The beneficiary is Mutual Aid Disaster Relief. They’re as close to the ground as you can get these days, and donations are tax-deductible in the US. You can choose from several donation targets. I don’t care if you donate cash, fill an Amazon shipment with the North Carolina wishlist, target Puerto Rico, or whatever. Just get them the money and get a receipt.

Anyway, leave a comment to bid. Good cause. Ridiculous prize.