bogen.org

The Wisconsin State Journal, the local Madison paper, published a piece I wrote about Christmas at the South Pole today.

If you are a hero, an evil overlord, an evil overlord’s accountant, or any of several other common roles in science fiction and fantasy, the Viable Paradise writers’ workshop has some tips to help you with your work. Some examples for evil overlords:

• My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.
• I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really am. Good messengers are hard to come by.
• I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.
• My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.

This is a column I wrote for a local newspaper that will never see the light of day. <long, sordid story removed for the sake of brevity> There is no sake to let it continue mouldering in my archives.-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Some people call me cheap. I drive a used car. I read used books. I
listen to used CDs. Heck, many of my clothes are used. But even though I
like to save money by buying used, I generally draw the line at used food
and computers.

The Bargain Corner of this newspaper is replete with used computer systems
for sale, most retailing for $250 (the maximum asking price allowed in that
section). An ad for a used computer system in the Bargain Corner might read:

Complete Pentium III system; Windows 98;
15" monitor; Inkjet printer; $250
(608) 555-1212

A veteran of the high-tech industry like myself takes one look at an ad like
that and immediately forms a profile of the sellers. Most likely, the
sellers just purchased a new computer system and now they want to recoup
some of their investment in the old system. The system they are selling was
probably purchased three years ago for $1500-2000 dollars.

While some people might look at that $250 price tag and see a relative
bargain, seasoned computer purchasers look at that price and imagine an
awfully thick pair of rose-colored glasses perched on the seller’s nose.

New computer systems can be had for as little as $400 these days. With
bigger hard drives, faster processors, more memory, and better software,
those $150 extra dollars go a very long way.

That’s not to say that our prototypical sellers above are necessarily out to
defraud their fellow Wisconsinites. It is far more likely that they simply
do not or choose not to understand how quickly computers lose their value.

When you buy a new computer, you might be paying as much for the service and
support that the manufacturer provides as for the hardware itself. Once
that service and support expires, the only value left in the computer is in
the various physical components.

Computer components are advancing so rapidly that features once available
only to those who purchased premium computer are quickly pushed down into
the affordable mainstream models most of us purchase. This downward flow of
new technology quickly devalues what has gone before it.

So, even though that used computer might be just as functional today as it
was three years ago, the actual value of the computer is far, far less than
it was.

Beyond the overvalued and overpriced nature of many used computers, the
physical condition of a used computer is often hard to judge. Who among us
has not witnessed a coffee cup helpfully emptying itself onto a computer
keyboard? Do any of your friends, family, and coworkers treat the computer
like a poorly measured two-by-four that just needs one good whack to get it
into place? Will you be able to spot this prior abuse while standing in
front of a used system at the seller’s house?

Unlike when buying a used car, there are no mechanics to whom you can take a
used computer for a helpful once over. Maybe a computer-savvy friend or
co-worker will come with you to inspect the system and perform a cursory
surface examination of the hardware and software, but that’s about all you
can hope for. Even if you know how to do so, most used computer sellers are
not about to let you run complex, time-consuming, invasive diagnostics on
the systems they sell.

You are buying the hardware as-is and unless there is obvious physical
damage to the system, any problems with that hardware will most likely
remain unknown until the money changes hand and you get the system home.

How much is a used computer worth? There is no Blue Book or online price
guide to steer the market. Sellers will naturally ask for as much as they
can get. Computer buyers must compare devalued used, and possibly abused,
systems with new systems. They must then determine if the potential price
savings and headaches of a used system offset the higher cost and advances
in technology available on the new systems. There is no right answer for
everyone and every computer.

Today’s lesson: It could be much worse
By: Garrison Keillor
It could be worse. The Pharaoh keeps piling mud on your desk to be made into bricks, and you work late, and you head onto the freeway, which is packed with Huns and Visigoths, and your mere presence infuriates them. They shriek at you and make vile gestures. Meanwhile, you’re listening to the teeth-grinders on the radio blaming the president’s troubles on the Democrats.

Downtown, you run into a covey of evil teenagers, the girls with black lipstick and chopped black hair and black clothes, the boys with graffiti tattoos and their belts down around their femurs, and they look at you with such extravagant loathing, you want to tell them, ”I am not worthy of so much contempt. Please, I am only a pedestrian like yourselves; save some of that for Hitler and Stalin.”

You go into the restaurant, Les Espensif, to meet your wife to celebrate your marriage and view its remains. The joint is way hoity-toity and attended by attitudinous waiters with fake accents serving half-ounce medallions of pork on a white plate two and a half feet in diameter with swirls of green foam on it and a spoonful of caramelized rice for $28, which you eat in 45 seconds as your spouse tries to sucker you into an argument about home maintenance, and you think, ”What happened to that old joie de vivre that I was known for back in my salad days?” Well, it could be worse.

It would be worse if you didn’t have a shed. A man needs a shed. A shed with a woodstove, a workbench and an old couch, coffee cans of bolts and screws, a pile of old Playboys, a bottle of Old Overcoat, a tin of snoose, a deck of cards. The Pharaoh can’t touch you here: You are safe in the bulrushes.

A den isn’t as good, or an attached garage. You need to put some distance between you and the Main House, which, as we all know, is the domain of women. A woman is likely to pick up your Ventril-O-Disc from the kitchen counter as if she’d found a cockroach and demand to know what it is.

A shed is a place where you can practice ventriloquism and do the exercises described in the book on Dynamic Tension that you obtained from Charles Atlas, the World’s Most Perfectly Developed Man. You need a place where you can sing your song and not hear her say, ”Would you mind?”

There is almost nothing so good for you as singing old songs, whether you sing praise to the Lord God or sing about the gin-soaked barroom queen in Memphis and your friends Long Tall Sally and Bony Maroney and Jenny Jenny. You’ve got trouble in mind and the water tastes like turpentine but you know you belong to the land and it’s a grand old flag and the sunny side of the street is where you should direct your feet.

Ben Hecht said, ”Old songs are more than tunes. They are little houses in which our hearts once lived.” In other words, they are sheds.

Winter is coming, which simplifies everything and shows you that the essentials of life are heat, food, shelter, plumbing. The rest is decorative. The life that your wife writes about in the Christmas letter, the life of steady accomplishment and upward movement on life’s graph, is mostly fiction. The reality is that we are all in over our heads. I am and you are. God help us. And so far He has. It could be worse.

Whatever bonehead things we’ve done, we have not yet put our tongue on the pump handle and let it freeze there, and this is a fact not to be overlooked. There are pump handles around, and in freezing weather they become lethal. You walk past them and they exert a powerful force on your body, particularly on your tongue.

Imagine the misery of standing, tongue frozen to the iron, waiting for the firemen to come and pry you loose. In my darker hours, ever since I was 6 and went trotting off to Benson School, I have imagined that the pump handle would be my fate, but so far I have avoided it, and you, too, my friend.

Together, once again we hope to come through the cold season with our tongues intact, and if we do, then winter has no grip on us. It could be worse.

Madison Magazine published a story I wrote in their September, 2004 issue.

This story was originally published by the e-zine Explosive Cargo in 1996. Until today, It was mouldering away in my archives.

It could use some editing, but I decided to present it, as is, to retain the original flavor of the piece.The Overly Caffeinated Generation

by David Bogen

There are a large number of things in the universe that simply make no sense. Beyond the obvious ones like “How could anyone possibly find Michael Jackson attractive?”, and “How could anyone possibly not find Cindy Crawford unattractive?” that is. No, I’m thinking about the less obvious, more mundane unexplainables. These are the questions to which the great philosopher Aristotle answered, “Huh?”, the great theorist Einstein replied, “Say what? Who?”, and the simply great Homer Simpson responded, “Mmm…Sixty-four slices of American cheese.” It is these great matters that weigh upon my mind, giving me both a splitting headache and a remarkably flat head perfect for holding my drink at parties.

One thing that has occupied my mind lately has been what some might consider to be a trivial detail, “What on earth are we going to call the next Generation?” Ok, I admit, the next Generation is about five to ten years from needing a nickname but, like my scoutmaster once told me, “Don’t use the younger Scouts as fishing lures.” Oh wait, that was a completely different time and place. I think he said, “Be prepared. And don’t use the younger Scouts as canoe paddles!” Yup, that’s what he said, and I think that it is good advice all around. It never hurts to be prepared, and nightcrawlers do make better bait.

I have to admit, there is a personal facet to this problem. As near as I can figure, Generation X has gotten its greasy fingerprints all over me. This isn’t all bad, of course. I can mope around the town for no good reason, wear enough flannel to intimidate native Scotsmen, and use words like angst with no fear of reprisal, even if I don’t know what it means. But let’s face it, no matter what defines my Generation, we got stuck with a downright cruddy name.

Ok, let me discuss my problems with this name. Rather I’m going to write and you’re going to sit right there until you finish that damn broccoli! The most obvious problem with this name is that we didn’t get to choose it. Who chose this name? I don’t remember anyone asking me, that’s for sure. I would have suggested names like “The Get the Hell Out of My Way Generation”, “The Overly Caffeinated Generation”, or “What?” There are no Generation pollsters, and this is a problem. We can forecast the results of an election months before the actual event, but we can’t prowl the malls of America looking for people dressed entirely in flannel and shaking from too much coffee? It should be written into the Constitution, as an amendment, that Generations should get to name themselves. (This, of course, right under the amendment which states that there should be a National Peppermint Day, which coincidentally enough, would also fall on my birthday.)

Let’s face it, beyond the obvious fact that not one member of my Generation was consulted on this tiny little matter (after all, it’s only the name I will be grouped under for all eternity), the name itself isn’t that great. Generations before mine got good names like Baby Boom and Baby Bust. We got X. What is X and where did it come from? Was there some sort of Alphabet Olympics and X managed to pull out the title by scoring a perfect ten on the balance beam? Perhaps there was a giant Alphabet Chariot race and X managed to beat out Charlton Heston for the title. If only it were that glamorous and exciting.

Most people will probably admit that they have no idea what the surface of Venus looks like. These same people will probably tell you that the X in Generation X is derived from mathematical roots. Oh boy. Named after math? Is there possibly a less exciting scenario in all of the world? What academic subject will the next generation be named after? Biology perhaps? Generation Transpiration? Chemistry? The Titration Generation? At least they rhyme. Let’s face it, to most people, math is slightly more exciting than listening to Bob Dole debate a dead person. For the record, I’ve got my money on the dead guy.

Oh sure, X stands for unknown, a variable, and ever changing. Who cares? We got stuck with X because it was too much effort to pin down a better name. The marketing stiffs needed something to show their commanders in chief and we got stuck with X because of it. Thanks a lot folks!! I’ll be thinking of you during the next break between commercials. I think the next Generation should be called “Generation Too Difficult to Think Up a Better Name” or “We’re Just Too Damn Lazy to Name This Generation”. Either one of those would be better than X and it would be our revenge upon those least deserving.

Now, if X stood for exotic entertainment, then it would make sense. My generation has helped to spawn the World Wide Web of Smut, e-mail sex, and more Communications Decency Acts than you could shake thirty highly uninformed United States Senators at.

You see the problem here? Nobody was planning ahead and my Generation suffered. There was a big rush to meet deadlines in the marketing department and my Generation paid the price for the preceding Generation’s poor preparation. That’s why it’s time to heed my Scoutmaster’s warning and “Always look before you squat in the woods.” The Generations who follow mine are counting on us to give them catchy titles; phrases they can bandy about and use to help target advertising towards themselves.

Most of the good animal nicknames have been taken by sports franchises over the years. There are very few animals left that have no corresponding sports franchise. In fact, the only one that comes to mind is the Grouper, and a sports team named the Boston Groupers would invite more derision than respect:

    "Oh, look, it's the Groupies!"
    "Hey! That's Groupers to you!"
    "Oh yeah, what's a Grouper?"
    "Groupers eat little fish who travel in groups."
    "Wow, that makes you sound slightly more dangerous than margarine!"

So, we need to rule out animal nicknames, unless we use an inferior one like the “Spawning Salmon Generation” or “The Howler Monkey Generation.”

A natural choice would be the “Beavis and Butthead Generation.” Let it be said, however, that I would not wish that name upon my second worst enemy. For those of you keeping score at home, however, write it down in the “Possibly” column.

Chances are however, that the next Generation will get stuck with some catchy title. Something like “Generation Wow!”, “Generation Now!”, or “Generation How?”. Or perhaps combinations of these like “Generation Bow Wow!” or “Generation How Now Brown Cow?” Personally, I’m shooting for a standardization of the naming scheme.

Standardization would proceed as follows. Generation X has seeped into the American consciousness much like radon into a home, so it looks like we’re stuck with it. However, as my grandmother once told me, “You break it, you buy it.” and “Every cloud has a silver lining.” Well, it isn’t broken but this name does have a silver lining. X has a solid place in a natural progression of letters. For those of you scoring at home, we call it the alphabet. Therefore, let’s standardize around this sequence.

• The next Generation will be called Generation Y. Please don’t ask why.
• The following Generation will be called Generation Z. They can grow big bushy beards and drive cars full of women like the members of an 80′s rock band. (Where have you gone, ZZ Top?)

Ok, Z is the end of the alphabet, so we start over at A, but with two A’s to signify this is our second time through the loop.

• Therefore the Generation after Generation Z will be Generation AA, the Battery Generation. They will keep going and going and going, ad nauseam.
• Then comes Generation BB, the air-powered gun Generation.
• Generation CC – The Carbon Copy Generation.
• Generation DD – The large breasted Generation.
• This will continue thorugh the double-letter Generations until we reach ZZ. This Generation can also grow big bushy beards and drive cars full of women like an ’80′s rock band (Where have you gone, ZZ-Top?)
• Generation AAA will be the first Generation on the third loop through the alphabet. They have a choice. They can either all become travel agents, or they can be the second, and last, Battery Generation.
• Etc, etc.

You get the idea? (If not, carefully back away from the monitor and seek professional help. Exposure to these radical ideas may be harmful to your health.) Such a standardized system would get rid of all the problems with the current system. No marketing folks need be involved. Everything would be predetermined and we could all rest easy at night.

This would be way to end one of life’s greatest unexplainable phenomena. With a standardization of the Generation Naming Scheme Generation X would no longer be seen as a Generation suffering from an obscenely bad name. Rather we would be trendsetters. Or as my Scoutmaster would say, “We are boldly squatting in the woods where no one has squatted before.”

That is how the Wisconsin State Journal titled a recent op-ed of mine they published today.

You (yes, you!) can read the op-ed below.Here is my dirty little secret. Every Friday morning, I walk my dog around
the neighborhood and peer into my neighbors' private lives. I am a recycling voyeur.

My neighbors will soon be able to hide their discarded recyclables in opaque
wheeled bins. When those bins are wheeled out to the curb, their contents
will be just as unknown to me as the future itself. At that point, I will
no longer be able to call myself a recycling voyeur and my dirty little
secret will be no more.

This is a story I wrote many winters ago for a now defunct e-zine/mailing list named Explosive Cargo. The story below was written and published in 1996. I’m presenting it here because I found it in amongst some old files today, and it never hurts to air out the old jottings.The Iced Tea Effect

by David Bogen

We are gathered here today with a single purpose in our minds. We are gathered with a single, all-consuming thought burrowing ever deeper into our collective psyche. We are gathered here to take action. We are gathered here because we just don’t have anywhere else to go, it is raining outside, our wallets are running on empty, and the only clean clothes we own are gaudy Hawaiian shirts. We are gathered here because we are concerned about (big, giant, gi-hugic kettle drum roll here)…the ICED TEA EFFECT!!!

While this phenomenon has yet to make front page news, it is as big a danger to life, liberty, and the pursuit of cool video games, as nuclear war, mandatory gym class, and video game rating systems. However, unlike many of life’s looming disasters, the Iced Tea Effect, is one hundred percent preventable. The easy, and often overlooked solution to the Iced Tea Effect, is (another big, giant, gi-hugic drum roll here, except on steel drums this time)…KILLING WHALES!!!

Now, before I get megatons of e-mail, hate mail, mail bombs, junk mail, and mail boxes, please allow me to explain why we are so concerned about this topic. We–those of us gathered here, in this place, at this time, and in gaudy Hawaiian shirts–are prepared to construct an elaborate, convoluted, and completely opaque chain of reasoning to support our ideas. Those of you who are government workers should have no problems staying with me, since most of government work seems to revolve around elaborate, convoluted, and completely opaque chains of command, as well as reasoning.

The beginning of the story (See, this isn’t so hard. It’s just like a television flashback. Did you notice the wavy lines at the beginning of the paragraph? Those were flashback lines…), starts with the 1950′s. Fortunately for us, absolutely nothing happened before 1950 of any note, so we can safely begin there. Some misguided historian types will probably try to convince you that things like “The Crusades”, “The Fall of Rome”, “The Reign of the Mongol Hordes”, and “The Industrial Revolution” actually occurred before 1950, but these are obvious and easily dismissed lies. Simply ask one of these self-styled “historians” to produce a single episode of any televised sitcom from any given time period before 1950 and the lack of hard evidence to support their claims will become apparent.

So, it is the 1950′s, the world is starting fresh, and it smells just like a new car. So, to get rid of the New Car Scent that permeated throughout the world, concerned citizens banded together to form grassroots action groups called “Mega-Huge Industrial Chemical Concerns.” These heroes of the olfactory realm decided to make bunches these things called “chemicals” to try and get rid of the new-car smell. (Notice that their efforts were not entirely successful, even today. Any new car still has this strange odor permeating throughout it. Apparently places like Detroit, Japan, and Germany are breeding grounds for this mutated strain of New Car Scent.) The MHICC’s decided that they would try to neutralize the scent by producing tons and tons of smoke and by-products, which they would then vent out giant smokestacks, and into the atmosphere where New Car Scent lives and breeds and cooks little tiny microwave dinners.

The problem with this approach is rather obvious, however. What on earth should the MHICC’s be burning? First they tried things like dry wood, wet wood, painted wood, and wood with nails and screws in it. While this did produce varying levels of satisfyingly black smoke, the New Car Scent was merely being overlaid with Campfire Scent. So, it became clear that a new approach was needed, we couldn’t just overlay the New Car Scent, we needed to kill it.

Enter the Wonder Chemicals. These chemicals included such all-time classics, as DDT, any member of the chloroflourocarbon family, Yellow #5, and the self-replicating TupperWare. You see–you being those people not dressed in gaudy Hawaiian shirts–these chemicals could serve mankind in many different ways. Most importantly, they were able to rid the world of New Car Scent without simply covering it up. They also served to kill worthless plants like vegetables and fruits, dye candy interesting and bright shades of yellow, and propel other chemicals out of spray cans.

The real bad chemical in all of this was, of course, TupperWare. This particular creation spawned an entire series of “TupperWare Parties” where women would gather and help the TupperWare to spread to every kitchen on the face of the earth. Once entrenched in a kitchen it forced entire families to eat leftovers at least twice a week. But I digress, other than TupperWare, the second worst chemical was obviously DDT. This chemical’s name was soon adopted by a professional wrestler (Where have you gone, Jake the Snake?) and turned into a devastating body throw/decapitation/Swedish massage maneuver. However, once again, I digress. Obviously, the worst chemical in the bunch, after TupperWare, DDT, and Yellow #5, Red #2, Chanel #5, and 25 or 6 to 4 (Where have you gone, Chicago?), was the CFC (or Completely Forgotten Chemicals) group.

This was the group on which the blame for ozone depletion was blamed. Scientists claimed that these particular chemicals were being spewed forth into the atmosphere, and though ridding the world of New Car Scent, they were also destroying the substance called Ozone. The CFCs would enter the atmosphere, mercilessly seek out the small, cute, defenseless ozone particles and then consume the ozone in massive chemical orgies in the sky. Then, once the CFCs reached a point at which they could no longer float through the sky, due to their uninhibited consumption of ozone (usually with a professionally-cooked polonaise sauce), these chemicals would fall back to earth, in the form that scientists called, “crud.”

Now, we are getting to the heart of the matter, so those of you who are getting antsy in the back of the room, sit down and let me finish, or I’ll feed you to some CFCs. The problem with CFCs was not, as you might expect, that they fell back to the earth in the form of crud. It was actually that they were consuming ozone faster than the ozone was reproducing. (You see, ozone has a rather short period of time in which to have Ozone-sex and reproduce, much like many reactionary republicans I know.) So, the ozone is slowly disappearing from our atmosphere, but who cares, right? Well, in and of itself, this isn’t an all bad thing. People can’t breathe ozone and live, so if we get rid of ozone there is more room in the atmosphere for the stuff was can breathe, right? (The chemicals we can breathe are known scientifically as “Oxygen” and “The Air Found in All Potato Chip Bags.”) So, the ozone is going away, but the foreseen side effects are as follows:

1. Melting of the polar ice caps.
   
2. Rise of talk radio and television.
   

While the only sure way to kill off talk radio and television is to actually kill each and every talk radio and television host in America (which I’m not willing to just write off as an option), we can do something about the rising levels of the ocean. And this, (for those of you who have stayed with those of us in gaudy Hawaiian shirts through this long rambling escapade in loose sentence construction and even looser logical construction) is the source of the dreaded Iced Tea Effect.

The Iced Tea Effect traces its name, oddly enough, to an effect first observed in Ancient Germany (circa 1951). The Germanic Tribes were busy killing off the Romans, and on the weekends they would take the time off to build Autobahns and efficient train systems. However, before any of this got started, they invented beer and sausage. One day, a Germanic king dropped a bit of sausage in his beer, and before he noticed, the beer overflowed his cup and spilled in his lap. In retaliation, the king killed the man next to him, and got another beer. However, a quick thinking scribe noticed that the sausage had raised the level of the king’s beer. So, this scribe dropped a sausage in this own beer to experiment. Sure enough, the level of the beer went up, spilling beer in his lap, so this quick thinking scribe killed the man next to him, and got another beer, as well as a new pair of pants.

So, now that it was officially observed that dropping any object into a body of liquid raises that level of liquid, it became known as the “DrinkinÕ Beer, but Droppin’ Sausage in the Beer is a Bad Idea and Will Probably Lead to the Death of the Man Next To You Effect.” The Romans got wind of this idea and promptly tried to copyright the idea by simply translating it into Latin and gave it the name “Beerus Sausageus Spillus, Manus Nextus tous Youus Probablyus Dieus Effectus.” The name remained the same until the invention of Snapple in the latter part of the Twentieth Century, when it was renamed, in a rather clever marketing ploy, “The Iced Tea Effect.”

So, are you with me? No ozone. Polar icecaps melt (due to failure of International Air Conditioning Task Force). Oceans go up. The simple solution to this problem, accelerate the killing of whales. Since we already know that adding a mass or several to a body of liquid or water raises the level of that water or liquid, this solution seems obvious.

The blue whale is the world’s largest species of mammal, and many of its whale buddies are no contenders for the featherweight crown, either. So, if we can eliminate the whales from the ocean, it would be just like removing a gonzo amount of sausage from beer, or a similar amount of ice cubes from iced tea. Kill the whales, transport their stinking, rotting carcasses to an airbase for disposal (this is to be done by dropping the rotting, stinking carcasses from a great height on unfriendly nations like Iraq, Libya, New York, and Connecticut), and the problem is solved.

By removing tons and tons and tons and pounds of useless whales from the oceans, the world should enjoy at least a four foot drop in sea level overnight. The other advantages to this solution are obvious as well. First of all, when we call Libya or Iraq a “stinkin’ excuse for a nation”, BAM! we’ll be right on! Second, the Air Force gets to drop something out of their planes (they get antsy when they don’t get to drop stuff for a while), and third, those of us in gaudy Hawaiian shirts might actually receive some sort of scientific acclaim for our quick thinking actions.

So, join the movement and don that gaudy Hawaiian shirt. Soon the whales will see it coming and tremble in fear!!! Muahahahahahaha!!!

© Copyright 1996, David Bogen

Linux Journal just published a story I wrote for them about the recent release of ipfilter on Linux.

While we were gone on vacation, Daemonnews.org published an article I wrote about an application in the FreeBSD ports collection. The article is not necessarily an in depth treatment, but rather an overview. If you are not familiar with FreeBSD and/or RFC’s from the Internet’s point of view, the article may not be one of your favorites.

An Op-Ed I wrote about returning Cuban refugees to Cuba was published today by one of the local Madison newspapers, the Wisconsin State Journal. Of course, they spelled my name wrong (even though it was spelled correctly no less than three times in the e-mail in which I submitted the piece). Apparently Bogen just yearns to be spelled Bogan. Moving on… The article is not available on-line. However, it was a lengthened version of an article that I posted on this site.

OSNews.com has published an article I wrote describing OpenVPN.