Welcome to Gil Kloepfer's Home (Page)

Doing my part to contribute to shameless self-promotion on the Internet...

If you are looking for the AT&T UNIX-pc Hard Disk Upgrade plans, please see http://www.kloepfer.org/hdinstr.html.

Here are some links to people, places, and things that currently mean something in my life, and will hopefully say something about what I've been doing.

In no particular order...

Austin Humane Society - I've been volunteering here doing cat socialization.

NOTE: There is no longer a link to their web site here because the large Flash movie/animation/whatever obscures the menu and makes it hard to navigate. See below for my policy about web sites that require Flash.)

Here are some other sites with cat-related information:
- Before you get a new cat or kitten, please read The Cat Fanciers Association FAQ about Getting a Cat, which explains how to properly care for your cat! Also, there's lots of great information in the rec.pets.cats homepage sponsored by the Cat Fanciers Association.
- Siamese Internet Cat Club is a great site for those interested in all cats Siamese
- The Cat Fanciers Home Page is where you can find more information out about felines and other sundry things that humans find interesting about them.
- North Shore Animal League - One of my former cats was adopted from here a long time ago, and they're a very good organization.
Applied Research Laboratories - at UT Austin, where I work as a systems/network administrator
Austin CHILDFREE! - This is a childfree social group I've been attending regularly. It was previously known as Austin NOKIDDING! (and I and many of us still like to think of our group under the old name) but the name was officially changed due to some political issues.
CACTUS - The Capital Area Central Texas UNIX Society (we talk about all things related to UNIX-like operating systems (like FreeBSD, Linux, etc)).

You may also get information about presentations I have done at CACTUS.
The Gentoo Linux™ Distribution - This is the operating system and distribution that I have chosen to use on all of my primary home computer systems. It has turned out to be an excellent choice to date, and I have had few problems with it.

The change happened in May, 2007 when I reluctantly migrated away from FreeBSD. This was following numerous ignored bugfixes I submitted and FreeBSD's increasing issues with performance. While I still think that the FreeBSD folks do some stuff right, I'm tired of the frustration from ignored contributions to this group. Uniprocessor systems are not obsolete, particularly for embedded systems and appliances.
Lighttpd Web Server Software - Simple, fast, and lightweight, this web server software is ideal for sites that don't require all the bells and whistles that the Apache http Server provides (although the Apache web server is nice as well).
[no link available] - Wife/girlfriend (If you meet the requirements your web page could be linked here!)
The Weather Undergound - Allows me to keep track of this crazy Austin weather
Kloepfer Family Links - If you haven't had enough here, there's more links over there!

Note that I will no longer link to or acknowledge sites that are primarily Flash or require it. Why? First, Flash is a proprietary technology that Adobe controls. The Internet was built on open standards and I feel it must remain that way if the flow of information is to remain uninfluenced by corporate or governmental interests. Second, while I am now running Linux (Adobe does make a Flash player for Linux), I was running FreeBSD until recently. There is no Flash player or plug-in for FreeBSD (the only Open Source attempt is understandably buggy). I remember how frustrating it was to not be able to view web sites that required this proprietary technology.

By the way, if the information in the web site is what's important, what better reason could there be to remove all the bells-and-whistles that Flash adds and concentrate on clear, concise, and truly usable information. Utilize open movie formats to share multimedia items. Develop an Open Source interactive plug-in/player and contribute it to the web development community. You'll be thanking everyone who laid the groundwork for technology most people now take for granted.

NOTE: I am not anti-corporation nor anti-government, but I am opposed to either entity controlling how honest, considerate people peacefully communicate, interact, or move-about in their lives.