All things must pass...

[William LeFebvre]

You knew it wouldn't last forever, so now the other shoe must fall.  And
I've already used three cliches!

Gentle readers, I am leaving Rice at the end of May.  And with my
departure, I will be stepping aside as Sun-Spots moderator.  I've been at
Rice almost 10 years (as an undergrad, a graduate student hacker droid, an
instructor (one summer course), and as staff).  I'm sick of the graduate
student life and I want a real job in a location I can call home.  So the
wife and I (and the dog, too) are moving to Chicago in the first weekend
in June.  She's leaving her high profile, high pressure, high benefits job
to move up close to her family in the northern suburbs of Chicago.  I'm
leaving my "systems programmer" position to take on a job as "Manager of
computing facilities" for the EECS department of Northwestern University.

So: Q&A time.

Will I still be involved in the Sun community?

     You betcha.  If anything, I'll be more involved, because I'll have
     the time and motivation to be so.  In fact, I've already been asked
     to be on the next SUG conference program committee, I've started
     writing a monthly column for the Sun Observer, and I was recently
     asked to give a talk at the Santa Clara "Sun Expo" in June.

Will I still be on the network?

     Yes:  Northwestern is on "MERIT", which is connected to the NFS
     backbone.

What happens to Sun-Spots?

     It stays here.  I have set some things in motion to alleviate the
     pressure of moderating the list, and I have not ruled out the
     possibility of completely automating the digestification process and
     removing the moderator completely.  However, I do plan on
     establishing "eecs.nwu.edu" as the home of the new unmoderated,
     undigested list called "sun-managers".

And the most important question:  will my username still be "phil"?

     Well, since I'll be the one in charge of issuing usernames.......
     (In fact, the current system manager has already set up an account
     there for me, with the username "phil").

Maybe once I stop moderating this group, I might even have enough time to
answer some of the questions that are asked here (and even be accurate
about it :-))!

	William LeFebvre
	Sun-Spots moderator
	Department of Computer Science
	Rice University
	<phil at Rice.edu>