Bio
This is my 4th TXLF. The great Chris Fisher and the Jupiter Broadcasting Community got me hooked on TXLF. I’ve been out of the Tech profession for many years. I have classic impostor syndrome when I meet all you smart kids. I’m just a fan and I’m pulling for y’all. We need YOU!
Anyway, I’m a handy guy and I can figure out anything. Learning to run Linux has served me well every day. I’m still pursuing small scale consulting relationships with my part-time business BigCoTech. I’ll be 60 in December. I dare one you young hot shots to hire me. Not many will but you’d be lucky to have me. I wish that I had a Jeff to help me. I’m a great helper. Ageism is the stupidest thing in our industry.
I grew up in West Fort Worth in the 1970s. My high school Class was 1984 and Orwell was right. The movie “Dazed and Confused” looks like home movies to me. I’ve been Linux-obsessed since 1998 and driving it daily as a Desktop since 2005. I wish that I still had that Red Hat box of floppies that I bought at Fry’s.
My favorite thing about Linux is BASH. BASH is wonderful. Anyone? Anyone? Well if you know, you know. You know? No? Nevermind…
I served 4 years in the Navy after High School. I won a Navy Achievement Medal working as an FA-18 Airframe Mechanic with VFA-125 at NAS Lemoore, CA. The GI Bill helped me attend San Jose State University where I majored in Aviation Maintenance Management. Aerospace and Defense crashed in the early 90s so I got my first 386 and taught myself “Computers”. I worked through 2003 at typical Support Tech jobs and even some rapacious Silly-Con-Me Valley corporate jobs that were EXACTLY like the movie “Office Space”. Highlights were Computer Operator at Oracle, Configuration Manager at Peoplesoft, Software Release Manager at Harland Financial. But the Y2K bust, the dot com crash, ENRON turning off the power to our pretty Peoplesoft offices in the middle of the work day, and 911 had me laid-off after they forced me to train my replacement in India. I went broke, sold my house, and moved back home to Texas.
My professional peak in tech was as The Systems Administrator at Arlington Cancer Center from 2005 to 2008. It was all mine and I did well there. Tech has always been a hobby. A labor of love. I was lucky enough to get paid for it at times.