[wuug-list] [wuug-forum] Dylan: Re: Introductions

[Windsor UNIX Users Group]

Author: Dylan
Username:  (bas2-windsor12-1128532580.dsl.bell.ca)
Subject: Re: Introductions
Forum: WUUG Talk
Link: http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,2,13#msg-13
Approved: Yes

I'm Dylan Herbert.  I started out using Mandrake Linux 6.0 about 5 or 6 years ago.  It's hard to remember now.  I started out installing it on a server and turning it into a firewall.  I remember lovingly crafting IPTABLES rules for the first time.  Made it much more complex than it needed to be, but it was fun as hell, and a definite learning experience.  I later switched to Gentoo, and used it until last year, at which point I became a whole-hearted Ubuntu convert.  I loved compiling stuff from scratch, optimizing for my specific architecture, but I just love the simplicity and ease of Ubuntu.  I can still get under the hood if I want to, but futzing with the operating system no longer gets in the way of my daily computing tasks.

I was born in New Zealand, spent most of my life in Ottawa (no cool accent), and have moved to the Windsor region this year.  I have bought a house near Tecumseh and Ouellette, a couple streets over from Victoria (but not quite at the train tracks :P), on the salary paid to me by the University of Windsor, Department of Social Work, where I am a Research Associate working on a cancer study.

I'm not a programmer, but I've enough familiarity with the concepts -- having read multiple "introductory" books for C, C++, Java, Ruby and Python... but never had much to program, or the ability to finish more than 75% of a programming project.  The only language I have any real proficiency with is python, and even that is pretty minimal.