Category: writing

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Penguicon 2017 Schedule

Next weekend, April 28-30 2017, I’ll be at Penguicon. Two weekends after that (12-14 May), I’ll be at Kansas LinuxFest. But we’re on Penguicon right now.

Here’s my events and the description for each. Each is 1 hour unless specified otherwise. And I’m asking your help for some of these events. (Updated to add the LN2 events, which I’m not running but a guy has to eat sometime.)

Friday:
8PM: LN2 Ice Cream
9PM: The OpenBSD Web Stack – OpenBSD is best known for security and networking. But they also have a highly secure web server and load balancer. This talk will take you through the OpenBSD web stack, presenting its strengths and disadvantages. We’ll cover the httpd web server, free globally valid SSL certificates through ACME, the Common Address Redundancy Protocol for two-server clusters, and the relayd load balancer. Many of the security issues common on web servers are simply not an issue on OpenBSD. Come find out why!

Saturday:
9 AM: Writers and Traditional Publishing – So you want to sell a book to a publisher. How do you do that? What should you expect? How do you optimize your chances of getting not just a deal, but the deal you want? What gets some people into traditional publishing, and keeps others out? Come hear authors discuss the good and bad of the publishing biz!

10-11:45AM: Author Meet & Read, Vol. 1 – A big room with Clif Flynt, Mary Lynne Gibbs, Jen Haeger, Christian Klaver, James Frederick Leach, David Erik Nelson, John Scalzi, Clarence Young, and myself, all showing off our books, talking to our readers, and signing books. I will have my books still in print for sale. I’m expecting that the others will all have long lines and I’ll be there alone, so this is your chance to heckle me in person.

10:54-11:03AM: reading from git commit murder – Readings are tightly scheduled, so I expect this to begin and end sharply on time.

1PM: self publishing in 2017 – Self-publishing is an increasingly important channel for authors to reach their readers. It also changes constantly, with new tools and distributors opening daily and existing platforms changing. This panel brings together veteran self-publishers to share their experiences, discuss the changes of the last year, and give new authors an edge in the business.

2PM: 90 second reads – Join a handful of Penguicon authors as they read 90-second passages from their novels. The selections will be thematically linked based on keywords, such as sorrow, fury, funny, love, etc. Timing is crucial! After, there will be a Q&A with the authors.

3PM: LN2 ice cream

5PM: Writing High-Performance Nonfiction – Writing nonfiction is not merely reciting facts. It’s a specialized form of storytelling, very different from your college essays and book reports. Whether you’re writing memoirs or computer texts, using storytelling techniques transforms your work for the better. This talk takes you through making your nonfiction not only readable, but memorable.

7PM: BSD Operating Systems in 2017 – I’ll be discussing the current options in BSD-based operating systems, the big news from recent projects, new developments, and where we’re going from here.

8-10PM: LN2 ice cream

Sunday:

10AM: breakfast – LN2 ice cream

11AM: Senior Sysadmin Panel – Storage – The years know things that the days and weeks never know. We’ve gathered half a dozen people who’ve been sysadmins for over 20 years to talk about the one of the most dreaded and annoying topics in computing: storage.

12PM: Self-Promotion for Creatives – Independent creators are their own PR departments. We have to not only make all the things, we have to spread the word about all the things. Here we have a bunch of artists and writer types who successfully spread their work across the world. What works? What doesn’t? How can you be shamelessly self-promoting without being a jerk? Come find out!

Where could I use help?

In the 90 second reads panel, I get a few 90 second periods to read a selection from my fiction. Each read should have a theme. Our group has four themes: Betrayal, Heartbreaking, Scary, Funny.

For those of you who have read my fiction: I could use suggestions for parts of my books that you thought fit these themes. I have a few thoughts, but what I think fits a theme is probably not what struck you lot as fitting that theme.

So: if you’ve read my fiction, what of mine would you suggest for a brief reading in any or all of those themes?

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At the GP Central Library 11 March 2017

Libraries are starting to like me. Which is cool, because I like them.

Next Monday night I’ll be talking at the Troy Public Library on High Performance Nonfiction–basically, how I write books. See, I’m on the library’s calendar and everything!

Then on Saturday, 11 March 2017, I’ll be at the Central Branch of the Grosse Pointe Library, 10 AM to 2 PM, for their Write On Pointe local authors fair. I’ll be selling copies of, well, everything I have copies of, I guess?

Stop by. Say hello. Otherwise I’ll be talking to my neighbors, and I think we all know that won’t turn out well.

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I’ll be at the Troy Public Library

I’ll be at the Troy Public Library on 27 February, at 7 PM, giving a new talk on writing High Performance Nonfiction. If you want to know how I write my books, come find out.

Please register beforehand at the event site.

I’ve thought of writing a book on writing readable nonfiction for a few years. Giving this talk a few times will help me design that book.

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Get your name in the relayd book

(note: comments that are not bids will be deleted. The next post is for meta-comments.)

There’s a long tradition amongst science fiction writers of selling bit parts in books in exchange for charity donations. It’s called tuckerization.

I see no reason why science fiction writers should have all the fun.

I need a sample user for the forthcoming book on OpenBSD’s httpd and relayd. This user gets referred to in the user authentication sections as well as on having users manage web sites. They will also get randomly called out whenever it makes sense to me.

That sample user could be you.

All it would cost is a donation to the OpenBSD Foundation.

The catch is that I only need one sample user.

That should be the user with the biggest Foundation donation. Because I’m from the US, where bigger is clearly better.

It makes sense to auction this off. The person willing to make the highest donation will get their real name and preferred username, or reasonable substitutes, used as the book’s sample users.

They’ll also get their name in the back of the book, in both the electronic and print versions.

The auction will take place in the comments section on this web page. Yes, you place your bid here. (edit: a bid is a promise to donate if you win, not a statement that you have donated. You know, like an auction.)

Some questions and answers.

  • Is this a cynical scheme to raise money for further development of assorted OpenBSD-related projects?

    Yes.

  • Any limits on our name and username?

    I reserve the right to reject names or usernames. If your birth certificate really says your name is an obscenity, I’m pretty sure you have a nickname. Similarly, even if your username on all your systems truly is henningsux, or your legitimate full name is Felicia Urban-Channing Kildare and you use your initials: nope.

    I won’t spell out exact rules for names, because you people are clever buggers and would find a way around them. Your name. Your preferred username. Or reasonable substitutes for them.

    This is intended to be fun. Dirty words and insults are not fun. In public.

  • Will you treat me with respect?

    Uh… have you read my work? I can pretty much guarantee condescension and insolence. Perhaps not a huge amount (this isn’t a book on sudo), but some.

    Then again, this book involves openssl(1) commands. You’ll probably catch some of my perfectly understandable emotional reaction to having to type a command like this:

    # openssl ocsp -no_nonce -issuer chain.pem -VAfile chain.pem -header Host ocsp.int-x3.letsencrypt.org -url http://ocsp.int-x3.letsencrypt.org/ -serial 0x0367016F53A2A5425C1E50BB17D2AE63378A -respout ocsp.der

    Not only do I have to write about that string of stupidity, I have to write about it in such a way that you’re happy to read it.

    I’m gonna have a tantrum. It might as well be about you.

  • I’d like you to use my spouse’s/mother’s/soulmate’s/hamster’s name

    First, read the previous question and answer. Once I’m through with the user, this person might no longer be your soulmate… or your mother.

    I will search on your preferred name, to make sure I’m not abusing a social activist or anything like that. But yes, within the same limits. If your hamster is named Dumbass, nope. Same for your soulmate, or your mother.

  • I’d like you to use a historical figure/deceased developer/etc

    No.

    I’m not going to make statements like “I don’t trust George Washington/MLK/creepingfur with shell on my server, so he gets locked in a chroot.” Our dead heroes deserve better than to have me sniping at them. Besides, one person’s hero is another’s monster.

    Yes, creepingfur had a really good sense of humor… but no.

    Could I be nice? I have that ability, but nobody reads my books for kindness.

  • My company name–

    No.

    This is not a way to advertise your firm.

  • Why do this here, instead of an auction site like eBay?

    Partly because authors normally do this sort of thing on their web pages. Partly because it simplifies the running of the auction. And partly because it means I have no financial connection to the results. Touching donated money causes me weird non-financial risks, thanks to how US federal and state law interacts with my family situation. (No, I won’t explain that. It’s personal. Deal.)

  • Why not have the Foundation run this, then?

    They’re busy writing code and arranging hackathons.

  • Why do this now instead of when you started writing the book?

    Because the OpenBSD Foundation exceeded their fundraising goal for 2016. I’d like to see their 2017 start with a boom.

  • When does the auction end?

    5 PM EST Monday, 16 January. Or sometime shortly after that.

  • That’s a stupid time. Where’s my countdown timer?

    It’s convenient for me. It also will discourage last-minute sniping.

    If last minute bids are coming in fast and furious, I’ll let it run until bidding stops for five minutes or so. Fight it out fair and square.

  • When does the auction start?

    When I hit “publish” on this blog post.

  • How do I bid?

    Comment here with your bid amount. Each bid must be a minimum of $5 more than the previous bid.

  • How do I track competing bids?

    Check the “Subscribe to Comments” box when you bid.

  • Where will the winner be announced?

    On a separate blog post the evening of 16 January.

  • How do I claim my prize?

    You have three days to make your donation. Send me your PayPal receipt.

  • What if the winner doesn’t pay?

    The prize falls to the #2 bidder, who I will contact.

  • What exactly will the winner get?

    Your name and username in the body of the book, in places where I need to refer to a person. Some degree of emotional reaction to your name. Probably not a very positive reaction. Your name in the back of the book, described as the “Tuckerization Charity Auction for the OpenBSD Foundation Prize Winner” unless I can come up with a less awful and mutually agreeable way to say that.

    If the auction goes over $100, I’ll ship you a signed copy of the print book when I ship out the print sponsor copies.

  • Will you be offering sponsorships on this book?

    Yes. Once the auction ends.

  • You said this was for SF writers. Don’t you write SF?

    Yes, but nobody cares. For those who want to pretend to care: here’s my latest SF novel, Hydrogen Sleets.

  • I have things to say about this other than bids!

    Comment on the next post, please. Not here. I am easily confused. Comments to this post that are not bids will be deleted.

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    MWL’s 2016 wrap-up

    The year-end post is an Internet tradition. Being naturally conservative, who am I to buck tradition?

    It’s a couple days early, but I’m going to go out on a limb here: the list of people 2016 killed does not include me. Yet. (Dear 2016, this is not a challenge. I would not dream of questioning your ability to slaughter folks. You are the champ, truly.) This was in doubt for a while, but I responded well to treatment. My bone marrow has started firing. I have hemoglobin again. At the end of 2016, I stop taking all the meds.

    Now that my bone marrow is firing again, the theory is that it will keep going. It might not. I need to monitor my blood for the forseeable future. Hey, if I reach 50 and that’s as bad as it gets, I’ll be doing good.

    The lesson here is: if I stop making words, don’t assume it’s only because I’m an undisciplined slacker and that I need to “try harder.” That’s a great assumption if it lasts for a week, but if it keeps going on I need to see the doctor.

    Dammit, what happened to my youthful invulnerability?

    Writing-wise, I published three tech books:

    FreeBSD Mastery: Specialty Filesystems
    FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS
    PAM Mastery

    I’d like to note that the specialty filesystems is now my worst-selling tech book of all time, lagging far behind the PGP and Tarsnap books. It’s a necessary prerequisite to the jails book, though. (No, you won’t have to read it to understand the forthcoming jails book, but I had to write it before writing the jails book.)

    The ZFS book was co-written with Allan Jude. The specialty filesystems book was mostly written in 2015. PAM was written entirely in 2016.

    I published three novels:

    Kipuka Blues (Immortal Clay 2)
    Butterfly Stomp Waltz (a crime thriller)
    Hydrogen Sleets (aka “Aidan Redding 3” or “Montague Portal 4”)

    The first two were written entirely in 2015. The last was half-finished in 2015.

    So, yeah… anemia pretty much whupped my butt in 2016. While word count is not the be-all and end-all of writing, it’s a useful metric for a working writer. I wrote 15,600 words in July, 4400 words in August, and 5000 in September, for both fiction and non-fiction. That’s not enough to make a living on.

    I started treatment in September. They said it would take effect very slowly.

    At the beginning of October, I thought I was feeling well. I set myself a three-day challenge to complete a short story. It bombed. My “feeling better” was a condition the experts call “wishful thinking.”

    October: 6900 words.

    In November, I wrote 30,700 words. December so far has only 25,800 words, but I see a drop every December because of the holidays. That’s fine. I’m shooting to break 30,000 before the end of 2016.

    As of today, total word count in 2016 is 195,700.

    I’m not back where I need to be. But I’m clearly on the way back. Apparently, if your brain doesn’t have oxygen, it stops working. Who knew?

    Many of the November words were fiction. I wanted to write something quick and short, because I really needed to complete something. 28,000 words later, I had a new Prohibition Orcs novella. Which my writer friends will tell me was a daft thing to do–short stories sell. Novels sell. Novellas don’t.

    But orcish rumrunners in 1927 Detroit amuse the crap out of me, and that’s all that’s really important, so buzz off. I’ll post the official announcement on it once it’s available on iBooks.

    Other things in 2016? Well, today I hit 60 inches on the stretching machine. That’s great for my martial arts practice. I put on weight: not good, but highly predictable when you have roughly enough brain power to handle Star Trek: Voyager. (I was still saying the plot twists before they appeared on screen, though: I was slow, not dead.)

    Where am I today?

    The novel I started on 1 February 2016, git commit murder, is flowing nicely. (Think “Agatha Christie does a Unix con.”) I haven’t spent more than a year on a novel since 2001, and I have no intention of starting now. I might stretch my fiction hours in January to keep that from happening.

    The new tech book, “Relayd and Httpd Mastery: OpenBSD Web Services” is also flowing nicely. I’ve almost finished the httpd part–all that remains is OSCP stapling.

    Best of all: once I get going, the words pretty much arrive the way they used to. Getting started is still painful, but I expect that to improve with more blood.

    My 2017 goals?

    • Write 4 complete tech books.
    • Write 4 novels.
    • Keep practicing martial arts.
    • Stand up against racism, sexism, and fascism in my daily life.
    • Be sufficiently flexible to kick Ray Percival in the head at BSDCan.
    • Drop 20 pounds.
    • Stay writing.
    • Stay married.
    • Stay alive.

    If I pull those off: I win.

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    Challenge bomb

    I felt great on Monday. Did 2400 words in 3 1-hour sessions. Tuesday? My anniversary. I had more important things to do than write. Today, after packing for Ohio LinuxFest, I’m exhausted.

    So: I made words, but I didn’t finish anything.

    I’ll finish this piece next week, after the con. Completing a small something will do more for me than a similar number of words in an ongoing book.

    Stupid anemia.

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    I’ll be at Rust City Book Con

    On 12-14 August, I’ll be in Troy, Michigan, at the first ever Rust City Book Con.

    Actually, I’ll be there on the evening of the 11th, hanging out in the bar and practicing my socialization. (“Smile. You know, retract your lips to expose your teeth. No, no, not that far! Better. Hold out your hand–oof! Ugh… A little slower, and (gasp) with an open hand, not a fist. Remember, this isn’t your dojo. Now say ‘Hi! My name’s Lucas, who are you?’ Close, but it’s ‘who,’ not ‘what.’ And a little less teeth.”)

    I have panels Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Unlike Penguicon, I only have 3-4 events, so I have a lot more free time to sit in the empty corner of the lobby and contemplate the emptiness of existence talk to readers.

    There’s also a bunch of other writers there, most of whom are far cooler than me. You should show up and see them.

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    Why I refuse to join Kindle Unlimited

    Lots of my self-pub writer friends urge me to sign on with Kindle Unlimited. They tell me I’ll make more money by making my books only available on Amazon.

    They’re probably correct… in the short term.

    But if you have only one customer, and only one sales channel, that sales channel can destroy yo without warning. And today, Amazon’s scam-fighting techniques are crushing authors guilty of only one thing: trusting Amazon as their sole customer.

    Puzzled? It took me a while to figure out how this scam was working, too. And it’s driven home that signing on with Kindle Unlimited is like playing Russian roulette. Eventually, it will burn you.

    Understanding why means understanding how Kindle Unlimited works.

    An author places a book in Kindle Unlimited agrees that the title will be exclusive to Amazon. You won’t be able to get it on iBooks, Kobo, or sell it on your own store. Authors can place any fraction of their books in Kindle Unlimited.

    Readers who sign on with Kindle Unlimited get unlimited access to books in KU for $10/month. Readers can try the service for free for 30 days.

    Amazon sets aside a pot of money each month. This money is divided between KU authors each month, based on the number of pages of the author’s books people read. Amazon increases the pool each month, keeping the payout per page somewhat constant.

    An author who violates KU’s terms of service gets their publishing account suspended. All of the books published with that account get yanked from sale, and any money Amazon hasn’t paid out is lost.

    As a businessman, I have problems with Kindle Unlimited. The price you get paid has nothing to do with how many you “sell”–it’s entirely in Amazon’s control. They can change that at any time, and you have no recourse. The exclusivity clause means that readers who like Kobo or another ereader have no way to legally get your book.

    Also as a businessman, Amazon offers little interaction with suppliers. Yes, I write books, but that’s with my author hat on. Once I take off the author hat and put my business hat on, I sell widgets. (Strictly speaking, I sell nothing: I license copyright. That’s a separate discussion, though.) If Amazon has a problem with me, they’ll shut me off with minimal explanation and not give me an opportunity to get back in compliance. They might offer a big publisher a chance to make whole, but not a little company like mine.

    I’m a full time author. Yes, my wife works, but she’s not supporting me. Our goal is to be able to live on one person’s income, so that if something happens to one of us we will be okay. If I do not make enough money to realistically contribute to my family, then I need to get a job that does.

    By that measure, I’m successful. (Thank you, loyal readers!)

    An amount of money sufficient to support my family is small enough that Amazon does not care about me. My business is quite literally not worth an hour of an Amazon support rep’s time.

    So: if I screw up, if I anger the 800-kilogram capybara that is Amazon, and Amazon is my sole customer…

    I’m out of business. Kaput. Done. Finished.

    Most one-person publishing businesses are smaller than mine. And Amazon cares even less about them. I don’t know if you can have negative caring, but if you can it’s in Amazon’s software.

    Let’s go back to how Kindle Unlimited works. The rules are simple. The purpose of simple rules is to be abused. Anyone who knows anything about fraud, or anyone with a security background, can come up with half a dozen ways to scam Amazon out of a share of the profits.

    Here’s a way that seems to be in play today.

    1. Start a “book-booster” service. The service automatically generates Amazon accounts and signs them up for the free 30-day Kindle Unlimited trial. It can also “read” the books. This can be built out of the same freely-available software used for building web sites.
    2. When an author buys the service for one of his books, the service checks out “reads” the book.
    3. Poof! The book climbs in the bestseller lists.
    4. The boosted ranking makes the book more visible. Perhaps some real humans will notice it.
    5. The author gets money from Amazon’s pool.

    This is a clear violation of Amazon’s terms of service. If you get caught, the Amazon Capybara will eat you. You’re out of business.

    Depending on how you ask, the current book-boosting algorithm is either naive, or takes advantage of Amazon’s ranking methods. It borrows the books all in one day. In reality, book sales are spread out and erratic, achieving averages only on a quarterly or even yearly basis.

    It seems that when Amazon sees a book getting a one-day sales spike, from accounts that act in concert, it concludes that the author has hired a book-boosting service and closes the author’s account.

    How do these book-boosting services attempt to hide their customers?

    By also boosting Kindle Unlimited authors who have not hired the service. They’re attempting to make this seem like normal activity.

    The catch is–again, Amazon does not care. To Amazon, authors are plentiful and of low value.

    If Amazon sees this kind of boost on a KU author, they unilaterally close the publishing account. All books, including those not on Kindle Unlimited, are removed from sale.

    And this is only one scam among many. Amazon crushes these scams with extreme prejudice. It isn’t looking to crush one-person publishers, but if a few low-value publishers like mine get caught up in scam-fighting software, that’s an acceptable loss.

    There’s no way to know when one of these scam-fighting measures is about to hit you. Amazon’s decision-making processes are opaque.

    Now, let’s look at life without Kindle Unlimited.

    As a publisher who uses Amazon as one of many sales channels: Amazon is about half my income. Losing them would suck.

    If I signed on with Kindle Unlimited, I would probably get enough additional reads to more than compensate for the loss of Kobo, iBooks, and so on. But then I’m completely and utterly at Amazon’s mercy.

    I’m playing the long game. No, not a year-long game, or a five-year game. Try twenty years, a hundred years.

    My ultimate goal is to guide readers directly to my site for everything, providing a disintermediated revenue stream for myself and my heirs. I want to transform Amazon, Kobo, iBooks, and all the other bookstores into billboards that pay me. That directly conflicts with using Kindle Unlimited.

    Where do you want to be in twenty years?

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    Penguicon 2016 Lucas Track Schedule

    While the folks at Penguicon reserve the right to change the schedule at any time, we’re close enough to the con that I’m comfortable releasing my talks and panel schedule. This is extracted from the official Penguicon descriptions. and schedule.

    Friday, 30 29 April:

    6 PM – Social Media for Writers (panelist) – Hamlin
    What social media trends does a writer building their web footprint need to understand? What are some Dos and Don’ts?

    8 PM – PAM: You’re Doing It Wrong (speaker) – Windover
    PAM, or Pluggable Authentication Modules, is one of the most occult parts of managing Unixish systems. The unique configuration syntax and idiosyncratic rule processing drives many sysadmins to copy working configurations from other people and random blog posts. This talk takes you through the essentials of PAM configuration, You’ll learn the components of PAM, how PAM processes rules, how to use multi-factor authentication, and get an overview of some useful PAM modules you probably haven’t used, based on my forthcoming book “PAM Mastery.”

    10 PM – the ZFS File System (speaker) – Windover
    ZFS, the Zettabyte File System, is one of the most full-featured filesystems available today and gives almost unlimited storage flexibility. Originally created by Sun Microsystems, the independent entity OpenZFS now develops ZFS as deployed in illumos, Linux, and FreeBSD. This talk takes you through ZFS’ features, including: data self-healing, deduplication and compression, clones and snapshots, copy-on-write, boot environments, replication, and more. Once you use ZFS, you’ll never understand how you lived without it.

    Saturday, 1 May 31 April:

    11 AM – Networking for Systems Administrators (speaker) – Windover
    Too many organizations have a tense relationship between the network folks and the sysadmins. Sometimes it degenerates just short of war. But basic networking isn’t hard–if it was, network engineers couldn’t do it. This talk teaches the essentials, in a way that lets sysadmins troubleshoot network problems on their own. Sysadmins have amazing visibility into the network, once they know how to use it. We’ll cover cross-platform tools for viewing and troubleshooting the network, on both Windows and Unix.

    4 PM – Encrypted Backups with Tarsnap (speaker) – Windover
    Online backup is incredibly useful, but has many privacy and integrity risks. Tarsnap is an online backup service that only handles your data in encrypted form. It’s inexpensive and reliable. Plus you don’t need to trust the Tarsnap service–they can’t access your backups even if they want to. And Tarsnap’s built-in deduplication saves space, letting you store terabytes of backups in mere gigabytes of disk. This talk takes you through using Tarsnap, from backing up a system to customizing and rotating backups, to fully restoring them.

    5 PM – Acts of Shameless Self-Promotion (panelist) – Portage Auditorium
    What’s the best way to get your name forward?

    7 PM – reading (speaker) – Writer’s Block (313 & 315)
    My first ever fiction reading: my datacenter crime story “Wifi and Romex” I’m sharing this hour with Ken MacGregor. Don’t know which half I’ll get.

    Sunday, 2 1 May:

    10 AM: Self-Publishing 2016 (panelist) – EMC 1
    This panel discusses today’s self-publishing options and business models. Our panelists include authors who are both self- and traditionally published, in fiction and nonfiction, including people who are making an income entirely by self-publishing. We’ll discuss why we made the choice to self-publish, the pitfalls and lessons learned, and which business choices we’ve made on our respective self-publishing efforts.

    12 PM: BSD Operating Systems in 2016 (speaker) – Windover Charlevoix B
    The BSD family of Unix has a been kicking around for almost 40 years now, and have taken different paths than Linux. Come see the last year’s developments in BSD land! One of them just might solve your intractable problem. We’ll talk about new things from FreeBSD, OpenBSD, plus updates from NetBSD, Dragonfly, and assorted derivatives.

    2 PM: Senior Sysadmins Panel – Windover
    Some say systems administration is a young man’s game, and that eventually sysadmins rise into management. They’re wrong. A sysadmin who measures their experience in decades has made mistakes younger sysadmins can’t even imagine. This panel lets you learn from their suffering, take advantage of their experience, and laugh at their pain.

    I’ll have print books at all of my tech talks, including the brand-new FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS. You’ll be able to find my novels up in the Writer’s Block, rooms 313 & 315.

    I’ll be kicking around the con the rest of the weekend, except for probably a lunch break Saturday. (Anyone interested in pho?) I’m not making a firm schedule for the rest of the time, but you’ll have a pretty decent chance at finding me at any of these events.

    Friday 4 PM: LN2 Welcome Back Ice Cream
    Friday 11 PM: LN2 After Hours Ice Cream
    Saturday 3 PM: LN2 Guest Flavors Ice Cream
    Saturday 11 PM: LN2 After Hours Ice Cream
    Sunday 11 AM: LN2 Sunday Brunch Ice Cream

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    Sponsorships for “FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS”

    I recently put up a post musing offering sponsorships for tech books. The reaction I got, both in blog comments and private email, was overwhelmingly positive.

    And people are eagerly awaiting FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS, by Allan Jude and yours truly.

    So, I’ve decided to try selling sponsorships for FM:AZ.

    Ebook sponsors ($20) get their name in the ebook. Print sponsors ($100) get their name in both the print and electronic versions. Other books will have other pricing levels.

    Some of the emails I got after that first post let me know that some people will happily pay a few dollars to get a link to their dodgy web site in a reputable location. For that reason, I won’t be linking to sponsors in the ebook. (As usual, it’s a handful of jackasses that ruin things for the rest of us.)

    You should know that the money from the sponsorships goes entirely to me. Allan both a) has a steady paycheck, and b) is too generous for his own good. (It’s, like, blatantly obvious he’s Canadian.) I intend to buy his beer at BSDCan.