Whew, it's been a while.
Research: Put on hold for a while, as real life is getting busier by the day. Eventually, I'm going to need to take a break, which luckily enough is already on it's way; a Carribean cruise in December. We're already counting the days...
Inventory control: I've put together what I think is a reasonable schema so far for a basic inventory control scheme, although it's got a lot of stuff that's specific to my environment in it. Once I've generalized it a bit more, I'll post the results.
Other stuff: In a fit of unbridled annoyance at the lack of functionality rlytest provides (it provides a reasonable basic test, but nowhere near the level of testing provided by the mail-abuse.org "telnet" test), I've begun working on a "work-alike" for the mail-abuse.org relay test, that an administrator can use themselves for the testing of hosts on their own network, either in an automated fashion, or with a quick command-line test. When I have something usable, I'll do the usual Freshmeat announcement thing.
Random: The IP-over-DNS article over at /. caught my eye. Interesting idea, but it seems to me that it's no more than just an academic pursuit. The only real application of it would be for circumventing the security of a particular network (presumably, since you can't create an IP tunnel using a different mechanism due to local policy, you're stuck doing so with this). Cool hack, nonetheless.
As always, more later.