User since: Oct 05, 2006 at 08:37 UTC (18 years ago) Last here: Mar 27, 2009 at 21:16 UTC (15 years ago) Experience: 291 Level: Scribe (6) Writeups: 28 Location: Moscow, Idaho USA User's localtime: Apr 18, 2024 at 07:12 UTC Scratchpad: View For this user: Search nodes

Black Brig

An old tin type of me when I was a younger man back in the late 1800s

Latest News

06-Dec-2006: I'm a Scribe, no longer do I have to bow my head in shame for being a Beatle.

Professional

Not much to say about myself. I'm a System Analyst and Lab Manager for the Dept. of Physics at the University of Idaho. I work with/on FreeBSD, Solaris, HP-UX, MacOSX, and even Winblows (I call it the PopUp OS because of the endless popup bubbles, and heaps of secret software.)

Specifically I manage the Micro and Nano Technology Cleanroom, sponsored by the Department of Physics and supported by ONR, NSF, DoD, Keck Foundation, and NSF's EPSCoR program. Until this summer I worked for Dr. Yang Ki Hong at the UofI as an analyst providing support for research databases and customization of the NIST's OOMMF software and an automated build -> post-process -> data reduction system for OOMMF. Currently I work for Dr. David McIlroy, Department of Physics, University of Idaho.

Ahhh, Perl

I don't know what to say on this... Thanks Larry? At the least. I came to Perl through C. I love C but C is a very low level language. Automated Data Processing is an important part of my job, and Perl provides a natural interface between my thoughts and a working algorithm. I can simply get things done quickly. I have never coded a killer app, or learned all the ins and outs but I have written hundreds of s‎crip‎ts that solved immediate problems.

I use the Unix userland quite a bit too, and I tend to mix Perl with Makefiles, sed, scp, ssh and other tools. Perl really breaks the paradigm of single purpose tools by being the best at many things. Like I remember Larry describing somewhere, it is like a whole bunch of little globs of magic all melted together into an irridescent jewel that far exceeds the sum of all of the little globs of magic.

Free Unix!

FreeTime

In my freetime I read history and watch selected movies and play guitar. I can't stand network/cable TV and find both to be numbing to the soul and the intellect. I read RSS feeds for news; I vote every chance I get.

Favorite Movies

1. Matrix (there is only one)
2. Logan's Run
3. 2001, A Space Odyssey
4. Blackhawk Down
5. Tears of the Sun

Favorite Books

1. Book of Mormon
2. Plutarch's Lives (or whatever you want to call it ;)
3. Collective Electrodynamics, Carver Meade
4. Knuth
5. Next, Michael Crichton (We miss you Mike!)

Athletics

I bicycle commute year round. My first bike trip was 238 miles up on the Saint Joe River in North Eastern Idaho in 1997. Since then I have ridden across the states of Arizona (June 1999) Utah and Idaho (August 2000). I have also been on many smaller trips. I find bicycling to be an outstanding form of exercise if you work it which doesn't tear your body up like running or jogging. During 2000 I was working at xuma.com in their Las Vegas office and bicycle commuted 36 miles round trip every day. My friends laugh at me when I ride to work in the snow and rain, but I laugh at them when we walk up 3 flights of stairs...

Music

I was once an accomplished hard rock guitarist. I can still play a bit and I do for fun. I have a 1996 Ibanez X Series Guitar which I run through a complicated pedal board and then into a Mashall JCM-900 tube amp and out through a rather largish speaker cabinet. Great way to burn off angst; there is nothing like shaking the walls and windows to relieve stress (IMO :).

Favorite Hobby

Currently my favorite hobby is using various tricks and contrivances to get my boss to let me telecommute from every coffee house, and nook and cranny I can find with Net access.

Community

Spreading the word about personal providence and individual responsibility.

Politics

I talk with people almost everyday and encourage them to demand accountability of their elected officials. I believe that our representatives are not our leaders but are in fact our representatives and that we are the ones that do the leading. I believe that the protections of the Constitution of the United States applies to all human beings world wide at all times no matter what horror they have perpetrated.

PerlMonks

Thanks to all of the people that drove this along before I decided to get involved. I have had the opportunity to tap collective wisdom and I hope all of the votes that I have gotten show that I have contributed to this store of wisdom. Sites like Perl Monks are what make Free Software so wonderful...