A letter from Jul 25th, 2021

Dear FutureMe, Friday I powered off 80 of 81 servers, shutting down GroupWise at work. My 25 year career as a GroupWise administrator has been on hospice care for seven months now. Night before last, I pulled the plug on it. I was sad, of course. I don't actually agree with those people who say on their deathbed that they regret spending so much time at work. I _built_ things. The work I did made other people's lives better. I loved that job (until it changed, and I no longer did). There is a lot of good to say for becoming _really_ competent at a big old complex thing. But, with my career in seven months of hospice care, I managed to get to the acceptance level in my stages of grief. I was great at something no-one wants any more. Such is life. The whole Microsoft world is such a mess. These people have the attention span of a five year old, and it shows. Competent they ain't. Well, the PowerShell idea was a good one. And they often do get the different cats in the herd to step up and at least _try_ to define their interfaces. But overall it is a wild mess. Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my non- GroupWise life. I hope something good comes along. P.S.: Did I call it? Microsoft now has their official Linux distribution: CBL-Mariner. Therefore, Windows 15 will _really_ just be CBL-Mariner running WINE. ;-)