In his first life Fred Trotter worked at the Air Force Information Warfare Center, and was a spook. But, while the Air Force let him work on cool stuff, which was good, it paid crappy, which was bad. So, Fred quit working as a spook and went to work for Rackspace. And there was much rejoicing. At Rackspace Fred Trotter tried to protect the largest installed base of RedHat servers in the world, and often succeeded. Then that contract ended abruptly and there was wailing and gnashing of teeth, for Fred had been paid well, and had gotten used to bank. Then, Lo, exault was hiring, and Fred Trotter applied and was hired, and there was much rejoicing, and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths etc. Then after 40 days (more or less) exault was bought by VeriSign. Then 40 days (more or less) later the VeriSign stock price plummeted, and the beatings given it by Wall Street were not just, or holy. But, Verily, though his stock options were worthless, he still had a cool job with a cool company in a crappy economy; and there was much rejoicing.