What became twoguys.org began as an idea Greg and I often talked about while working at Mindspring. We wanted to give something back to the open source UNIX software community. It was a unique time in history when geeks could consume a T3 or two worth of bandwidth simply because they had a good idea. Times changed and ISPs became commodities. Little companies with radical ideas that once had the business world on the run transmogrified into normal corporate creatures. And then what once was lauded as "core values" was sold out to a dark and evil thing.
After five years of mind numbingly stressful sysadmin life, I needed a change. Mindspring had a few thousand customers when I started. The new Earthlink had over three million customers when I left. I followed the CTO to Cbeyond, a next generation telecom startup. Alas, the scenery there was much the same. I stepped out of the fast lane in the summer of 2001.
In September of 2001 I was looking at another job offer. This offer would have me in New York on the 92nd floor of the North Tower on September 11th. I declined the offer and made plans to unplug and go to a monastery to live the life of a Buddhist monk for a while. It is fair to say that those were interesting times for everyone in the US, even for monks in the middle of the Ventana Wilderness. I am feeling much better now. My dose of monastic life was short but illuminating. I hope to return to Tassajara some day.
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