Samuel Johnson was sent a manuscript by an aspiring writer.

Johnson replied, "Your manuscript is both good and original but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good."

Feel free to skim.

I'm a convicted penguin fan

The summary

What do I look like? Picture a camel on roller skates. Now picture that camel dancing to jazz.

This is not what I look like, but if you see that then meet me later you will have a vague sense of the familiar.

I'm a tall guy, about 6'4" or so. Gangly. I don't own a scale and have no intention of getting one, but I'm around 200lb.

I have lots of body hair, and when I say "lots" I mean I should be able to claim a bigfoot somewhere in my immediate family tree. Actually I'm not that bad, but you should meet my cousin.

I am the proud parent of a red haired, blue eyed, two girl demolition team, born in 1997 and 2003. (Yes they both have red hair and blue eyes.)

I have developed a fascination bordering on obsession with Linux and GPL.

I am not bald
I am not a hacker

Beginnings

I was born in Canadian Texas in 1974 in their hospital, now the YMCA building (last I checked.) I started off life trying to approach it upside down and the good doctor was kind enough to grab my little skull with a pair of forceps and turn me right side up, simplifying my mom's life, getting me here alive and forever leaving a small scar on my head.

After this auspicious beginning I lived in a small house with my parents about 200 feet from my grandparent's house. It was a remarkably peaceful rural life considering that the in-laws were the only neighbors for a mile in any direction.

Rural Beginnings

My grandmother never could stand to not have something to care for and before I was born took in children and ran a sort of half-way house. By the time I came around she had focused on raising animals and my early memories include tame deer, raccoons, bobcats, rabbits, sheep, goats, ducks, geese, guinea chickens, regular chickens, turkeys, pigs, hounds (really Grandpa's arena), horses, cows, snakes, lab-rats, possums and later ferrets and an eagle. Hers was the place the game warden brought wounded animals to get back in the pink before re-release and he turned a blind eye to some of the more technical points of the law in favor of the spirit. I lived next door to her and helped her care for her country zoo until I was four then moved with my parents a whole seven miles away.

My grandmother passed a couple years ago. She passed pretty peacefully and I'm sure she is happier now. Still, we miss her.

My father was a farmer who ranched to make a living. He still ranches successfully and owns more land than he ever did when I was growing up. He runs about as many cattle as one person can handle and my upbringing includes experience working with cattle and horses. In my life resume I can include horse-breaking, calf working and agriculture among my skills.

My parents were and are deeply religious and until I moved at the age of eighteen we were all members of a small rural church called Gageby which is now Southern Baptist. I came to a saving knowledge of Christ at the age of nine. My parents had a relationship I didn't fully understand but desired and to them I credit my faith. It is fortunate that they did for in my adult life I cannot accept anything without careful logical examination and compare myself to "doubting" Thomas regularly.

My childhood was eventful in my eyes but pretty bland by Jerry Springer standards. Some events stand out to me so I'll cover them briefly here cause it's my page and I can.

Our house (and here I mean the house we lived in on property that belonged to my uncle) was situated about seven or eight miles from the nearest town of Briscoe or Allison, depending on whether you count 'nearest' by geographical location or travel distance. It was fenced in about an acre or two to keep the cattle out and whatever animals we might want in. Those we wanted in often included horses since it was more convenient to chase them round that area than over a section or two.

Hoof to the head

At the time of this particular incident we had a horse by the name of Jasper inside the home fence. Four or five year old me was tagging along with my father on some errands at the barn when he shouted some warning to me I didn't quite catch and my failure was quite instrumental in the following accident. As I was (and still usually still am) oblivious to my surroundings, I had failed to notice I had managed to walk behind Jasper who for some unknown reason wasn't particularly happy about my position. He reacted with typical equine understanding and kicked me in the back of the head. For those of you without experience with this type of thing, it can be fatal to be kicked in the head or neck by a horse and only luck and poor aim saved my young life. (At least in my mind.) His aim was sufficient to strike me a glancing blow behind the left ear where I bear a scar to this day. My father was quite alarmed by the development and my subsequent journey to the house in his arms is one of the fastest I remember ever taking.

We traveled to Canadian. Those of you paying attention may notice that this is neither of the nearest towns I mentioned but since neither supports a hospital it was the nearest real medical care. Normally it takes about thirty minutes to travel from that house to Canadian but I suspect that our trip was considerably shorter and my next memories are of a hospital room. There it was patiently explained to me that I would be receiving stitches. Stitches are familiar to me now but at that point in my life I had never heard of them and for some unknown reason the chains I had noticed earlier (why chains? who knows?) became the stitches referred to. Now I might not have reacted favorably even had I understood the term but thinking I was about to have chains put in my head did little for my equilibrium. I do remember quite clearly several people working together to keep me in a horizontal position as I gave my best effort to make myself absent. Still I was only five or so and five year old kids have little control over such situations and I got the stitches and they didn't even involve chains.

I assume I healed quickly since that is about all of the incident I remember other than the fact that they aren't nearly so unpleasant to have removed as put in.

As a healthy (and healed) young boy I was very fortunate to have further areas to explore. Our house was not quite a mile from a mighty river called the Gageby. Now some refer to it as the Gageby creek but they've never beheld it through a child's eyes and known the majesty that little trickle has for young minds. I spent quite some time splashing, getting muddy and mastering the various woodcraft, like climbing trees and falling out of them, that come with such opportunities. To make matters even more exciting I was blessed with a wholly average mother who climbed trees and hung ropes from them for her children to swing from. Now some might think that average moms don't do this but your own mom is always average until you become a teenager. I leaned to fish, swing on ropes like Tarzan, sneak up on beavers and even swim upstream in that wonderful water.

I was always quite fond of the river and anxious to take my friends along to share adventure. My mother says that the following type of thing happened regularly but only one in particular stands out in my mind.

Cute ain't I.

With friends like me

A friend my age named Travis came for a visit one day and of course I took him to the river to play. We had a rousing good time and other than one bad swing on the rope ending him partially in the river it seemed quite uneventful. Travis' mother, however, was not as happy with our fun as we were. She had dressed him to attend a wedding immediately following their visit and his attire was not in the condition she desired when we returned. I learned that day that Moms notice clothes even if they aren't more than a nuisance to little boys. She expounded quite liberally on this fact when we presented ourselves.

Love Hurts

At about the age of twelve I was visiting neighbors and riding horses with them. A younger boy and a girl about my age were riding their horses and I rode mine when someone suggested it might be more fun to ride bareback. With the bravado of youth I was quite sure this was a good idea though now I have a deep seated affection for saddles. I'm quite sure my burgeoning crush on the girl had nothing to do with the subsequent incident.

As we rode along at a full gallop I began to loose my seating. The horse I rode took a bad step and I approached the ground at what had seemed a reasonable speed but was now clearly quite extreme. After a roll and some unpleasant force fed grass I thought to get up and chase down my horse but something impaired my progress. Upon examination I noted that my right arm, quite ordinary most of the time, had suddenly taken on an interesting sort of S shape. As I was unaware of developing any new joints I found this development quite alarming. My friends returned to suggest that I catch my horse when I didn't do it myself and I pointed out that the new shape of my arm might be of some import and they dispatched themselves to get adult supervision.

At this particular time I hadn't given much thought to the signals my arm was sending my brain, again I'm sure this had nothing to do with the audience provided by the love of my young life, but my friends' absence gave me time for contemplation. I began to suspect that developing new shapes was unpleasant and by the time I reached Canadian with my parents, I had begun to extemporize widely on the subject.

Now most stories of broken bones near their conclusion at this point but this is really the beginning of mine. The doctors at Canadian began by asking me if I had eaten recently and I thought I had had a peanut butter sandwich earlier that afternoon. This meant that I didn't receive any good pain killers and I don't think I was very happy about that. I should point out that twelve year old boys have a metabolism that can handle a peanut butter sandwich in a matter of seconds but this medical truth must not have been included in their training. It also turns out that handling broken bones like mine meant that a bone specialist doctor would be required. In most cases this wouldn't be a problem but the nearest bone specialist was in Shadduck (don't know about that spelling) Oklahoma. So I was trundled off to Shadduck where we were assured a bone specialist would be waiting. I suspect that the ambulance I rode in was making fair time but I do remember complaining about the apparent lack of speed and a mere look at a speedometer reading about 80mph did little to appease me.

In Shadduck there was no bone doctor waiting. He would be here soon we were assured again and again but his materialization didn't actually happen until about 10:00 the next morning.

They were kind enough (or I was unpleasant enough) that I was put under for the setting and when I awoke it was with little improvement in mood. Eventually the cast was removed and we had a chance to see that my arm had managed to heal at a crooked angle. We were assured that it would straighten on its own in a couple of months but it could be re-broken if we insisted and you can guess how I felt about the second option. How well did it straighten? You can be sure to identify me by looking closely at my right arm, just below the wrist, where you'll notice an unusual slight curvature. I'm still not open to the re-breaking idea.

Welcome to where now? (pop. 11)

At the end of that summer my mother acquired a job at the school in Kelton Texas. Kelton is a very small town even by Texas Panhandle standards. Briscoe boasted a post office and sometimes a general store in addition to the school. Allison had a store, gas pumps, a school and pretty girls. Kelton had.. well sort of a gas station and a school. The population is counted by remembering who lives there. The school boasted about fifty to sixty students from Kindergarten to twelfth grade. I entered the eight grade and enjoyed a singularly personal education. When a student is absent teachers in most schools might not notice unless roll is called but at Kelton they not only noticed they could ask my mom where I was and send my homework home with her if they wanted to. At the beginning of my attendance the superintendent was Mr. Johnson who I still bear a great respect for. The principal was Mr. Coffee who I also respect, though he was more of a good ol' boy than was appreciated by a small town teenager. Never mind the fact that he was the person who disciplinary action fell to, I'm sure that had nothing to do with it. Both positions were later filled by a man named Crockett whom I can only now view without animosity. Still he reminds me of Bill Clinton but I'll let it go at that.

Back in the green screen days

Back in my day we had to chisel our bits into stone and have them shipped by mule train from village to village... uphill both ways in the snow.
I was introduced to computers back when green screens were just starting to be replaced and wrote my first program in GWBasic in 1988.

Those were the days when:

  • Floppy disks were really floppy and had to be put in right side up
  • Nobody had heard of the Internet.
  • Modems were a new technology and 9.6 kilobits per second was considered cutting edge
  • Cassette tapes were used as a digital storage medium.
  • Most computers didn't have a graphical interface
  • 512K was considered a lot of information

High School in rural America

I don't remember the exact numbers or student names of all my years there but some cannot be forgotten no matter how much I try. I won't attempt to do them justice by mentioning them all here (though it would take very few lines) because I'm afraid I might leave someone out and that person would invariably find this page and be offended. I will mention Gary who shared my adventures, scams, sports, trouble and was for a while, my supervisor.

In high school every organization and event you can be a part of is joined and participated in by canny students. Any might offer a legitimate excuse to get out of school so I participated in all that I could. Competition for offices isn't very heated so those who want to boast titles for their college applications don't have a hard time finding some place to fit in. For this reason I played basketball and baseball. I competed in track, cross-country, UIL (calculator, numbersense, computer, and varied others) and FFA. I also was a member of the National Honor Society and Gifted and Talented and Student Council. I held the offices of class vice-president, president, FFA vice-president, Student Council president, and at various times team captain of one or two of the athletic teams. It sounds impressive but it should be pointed out that it came with just enough extra responsibility that those who could have had the positions by running against me often avoided them. Out of a class of seven I graduated Valedictorian. It was one of the few honors I really had to work for. Everyone in the class was far above national averages and even the most challenged were exceptionally well educated.

Remember that game when...

Everyone who participated in sports in high school has a game or event they remember, and their friends usually hear them enough times they remember them as well. For me there are a couple that stand out. The first was probably when I was a freshman on the basketball team. Our big rival was Wheeler who was just large enough to fluctuate between a 1A and 2A rating. When they were qualified as 1A (small enough school to compete against us) they were big enough to be threatening. At this particular time they were 1A and competing against us in a very important game for ranking. It was a close game and very exciting up to the very end when they led by a single point. One the opposite end of the court we gained possession of the basketball and one of our players threw the ball most of the length of the court an instant before the buzzer rang to end the game. Such a shot is nearly impossible to make so is usually ignored and with the ringing of the buzzer the Wheeler fans leapt to their feet in celebration of their hard won victory and had just enough time to begin to yell as the impossible shot fell through the hoop to win the game for Kelton by two points. It was the best victory to actually watch the opponents and their fans deflate in shock as Kelton fans began the dance of victory that can only be inspired by fulfilling the unbelievable.

Another sport that stands out in my mind is cross-country. It seems impossible to me now to run a mile, unbelievable that I occasionally ran six just to train for a three mile race. Our team was usually small but then so was the competition. We always made the regional competition and never placed below fifth. One of my treasured memories is passing one of my cousins in just such a regional competition. I never won any of the races but always achieved my goal of placing in the top third. We clumsy people have our pride too, even if we have to search for a sport that requires little grace.

Now grades were important but not nearly so important as girls. The other reason I participated in many activities was to meet girls from other places. I met three that bear mentioning. The first was named Becky. She I loved even after she moved away. The second was Carmen. She was cute and very bright but not that impressed with me. The third was Julia. Beautiful beyond mentioning and bright but she was unimpressed when I drove two hours to deliver roses on Valentines day. Such was my luck. I did develop a good friend named Amber who wanted to introduce me to a girl at her school. It was to be after I began attending college that we actually met, totally without her interference. I am glad it happened that way since I don't get to blame her for much of the trouble it caused.

I could have been an engineer (TXPrep days)

During summers I was accepted to Amarillo College's Texas Pre-freshman engineering program. I studied math and physics and was introduced to a computer language called Turbo-Pascal. Still no Internet. There were, however, girls.

UIL during the school year, I competed in calculator and traveled the state with my team. There were girls there too. Basketball, Baseball, Track, Numbersense, Computer (Pascal, not turbo) and FFA, all got me out in the wide world.

I took another computer class, and I was the sole student. I studied QBasic for a while and learned a lot about DOS in the process.

Real Work Sucks - my escape into the world

The summer before my senior year I worked for a local man as part of the Helton Hay Hawlers. We moved a lot of hay around. I was given some supervisory experience and I learned that hard work out in the sun pays well but otherwise generally sucks. I weighed in at 155, and you could see my backbone standing in front of me... okay, that is an exaggeration, but I was as tall as I am now and I'm considered slim at 50lb heavier. I began thinking then that I might want to learn a trade I could ply indoors.

When I graduated I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do. I'd gone through the extra trouble to get an advanced diploma from the state of Texas but I didn't have a clue what to do with it. I traveled to Indiana and spent a year with my aunt and uncle as a car detailer in an auto shop. Later it was time to come back to Texas. Sometimes you just know when it is time. I've ignored the voice a few times and always regretted it when I did.

College, career and marriage, repeat

I began attending WTAMU in 1994. There I did quite well for a while then got sidetracked by that strange illness called love. I married and fully intended to live happily ever after.

Another picture of me, this one from in front holding Tux's picture taken September 2001

Meanwhile I'd stopped thinking I wanted to be a nurse as I'd gotten a job as a Certified Nursing Assistant. It was good work I'm glad I did it. I was promoted with a pay raise to manage scheduling and did a lot of training. It was good work to be doing and good experience, but after a while I couldn't take the repetition of making a friend and watching them die. I transitioned to being a phlebotimist for a local plasma lab and took on training responsibilities there too. By this time I was starting to think that I was suited for teaching others. I dropped out of the nursing program, though, as I didn't see myself staying in the field.

I went back to college, Amarillo College this time, and got a job as a manager for a little restaurant.

The restaurant did not do well, and despite enjoying my job and being well thought of, it didn't look like it was going to make it. I resigned and took a regular waiter job at Bennigan's where I made a lot of friends, became a trainer and shift leader and maybe was the worst bartender in all of Amarillo.

Eventually a high school classmate said that he was working for a software company and they might be hiring part time and would I be interested. Yes. Yes I would be interested. I was out of the medical field but didn't want to stay in the food service one and very fond of computers. He was my new supervisor but he handled it well. He's now the senior programmer for Texas Tech University, so you can guess what kind of environment it was to cut your digital teeth on.

I had a beautiful new daughter and married life had seemed to settle down after some initial turbulence.

I thought everything was going smoothly. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. I was dumped and divorced. She moved to Dallas, but we split custody evenly. Every three weeks I drove to Vernon (three hours there and three back) but I got my daughter for three weeks at a time and to work on learning more about my job and Linux in the meantime.

I bundled up my emotional baggage over the divorce and went on with my life. For a couple of years I lived quite peacefully in my little house with my poor paying job and absolutely unremarkable car. The car was paid for though, and the job was a tremendous learning experience. I understand computers, in fact I seem to have a knack for them, probably as a result of learning to use them at an early age and programming before we had a mouse.

Not quite Microsoft...

I was working for DRS Enterprises, first as part time, then as full time, then as a supervisor. I learned an awful lot about trouble shooting software as we transitioned from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 and I was introduced to Linux. Red Hat Linux 7.1 It took a long time to get by modem. Red Hat 7.2 was faster to get because, by then, I had an extra phone line. Imagine, two phone lines! It was awesome. I also learned a lot more about how to manage people, not as much from my own experience, but mostly because the owner of the company was both a good man and an ex navy chief. I didn't get in with Microsoft in the early years, but this job was the place when computers became an active part of my life.

I had a beautiful daughter, a simple life (two phone lines!) and an enjoyable job. I was learning about Linux, web servers, programming for ASP with different drivers and databases and an honest to goodness manager in an IT job.

Except for the celibacy thing I was happy with the thought life would pretty much stay the same. But, of course it didn't.

Along came my future second ex-wife. Not realizing that at the time, we became intimate and later married. I know, wrong order on that, no excuses.

Moving to DFW then back to Amarillo

My oldest daughter was starting school in Dallas so we moved here to make sure we would get more time with her, and we did. I worked for EarthLink. It was good for a while and seemed stable, but the powers that be decided to close the Dallas EarthLink center and at about the same time they laid me off, we found out that my wife was getting laid off too and she was pregnant. After some discussion and finding out my ex (and thus my first daughter) were moving back to Tulia (she was also pregnant?) we decided to move back to the Amarillo area. We moved into a house in Canyon until our renter's term was up and then moved in there with our new daughter. In the meantime I found a new good job and she started raising the next in the clan. We then lived in Amarillo for a couple more years where I worked for an ATM transaction processing company.

I think when they hired me they were looking for somebody that could answer the phone and fix problems. I did that. I also wrote tools to make it work better. I trained new employees. I took one of the Xenix boxes and put Gentoo (more Linux) on it with Apache Tomcat and JSP to build an instant messaging system. It was painfully slow. I moved to Red Hat and PHP and it performed much better. I liked it so much I wrote a CMS (Content Management System) from scratch for it. It was essentially the same thing as a wiki but I hadn't really used wikis at that point so I was doing it from the ground up. I trained, I wrote software, I answered the questions nobody else could answer. It was a good job.

Standing over the paintless wondercar

I did some heavy reporting and honed my Perl skills. I don't think anything I did would be protected by an actual confidentiality agreement, but I'll respect the idea anyway, but oh there are stories to tell. I will hint at one though: not everybody loses in Vegas.

In the mean time, ex-wife number one moved back to DFW, had a baby and new husband and seemed to settle down a bit.


Back to the metroplex

I knew the time was coming when I'd need to move back to the DFW metroplex, and I was hearing that voice again. I took a job working for a Credit Union and we bought a new house, both in the DFW metroplex again. Time passes, and things change, things you think are stable turn out not to be. I was dumped (repeatedly, reconciled and dumped in a nasty cycle) divorced (again!). 

 *sigh*

To (misquote?) Douglas Adams: I may not have gotten where I wanted to go, but I think I ended up where I needed to be.

Lets get back to things I like, lets see...

I enjoy the Simpsons, though I rarely watch them anymore, love xkcd.com, ice cream, my computer, rare splurges on beer (the expensive stuff mind,) chess and love the Library. I mentioned Douglas Adams. The man wrote like nobody else I've every read. I enjoyed reading his books over and over and over.

Jokes

I have heard them all. I love humor, and especially the joke form of it. Here are a couple of humorous bits I liked when I heard them:

A little boy had been pawing over the stock of greeting cards at a stationery store.

After a few minutes the clerk became curious and asked, "Just what is it you're looking for, sonny? Birthday greeting? Message to a sick friend? Anniversary congratulations to your Mom and dad?"

The boy shook his head, "No."

"Then what kind of card is it that you want?" asked the clerk.

The boy answered wistfully, "Got anything in the line of blank report cards?"

On special occasions, When you shave yore armpits, Well, I'm in hawg heaven, I'm plumb outta my wits.

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." --Mark Twain

A U.S. Postal Service mail carrier was making his rounds. He had a special-delivery package that had to be delivered in person, so he went up to the door. A woman answered, signed for the package, and took it.

The mail carrier spotted a snail on the ground near him. He stomped on the snail, yelling, "Die, snail, die! and ground the snail with his heel.

The woman asked, "Why did you just kill that snail?" The mail carrier replied, "That sneaky snail has been following me around all day!"

Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I have forgotten this before.

What is up with the penguins?

Software is like sex; it's better when it's free. -Linus Torvalds

Mr. Cool pengin, aka Tux

Penguins are the mascot of Linux. (See "So what the heck is Linux?" below.) The story goes that Linus Torvalds was once bitten by a penguin and developed Penguinitis. This terrible disease makes him love penguins and put pictures of them on everything. Worse yet is that it is extremely contagious. Using Linux may in fact infect YOU with penguinitis so extreme caution is in order. The good news is that people infected with penguinitis tend to live enjoyable lives despite a lack of social interaction. Some infected people even turn their disease into a money making proposition. Normal people might use some time to talk with friends or go out or even watch TV. The infected tend to avoid these activities and instead turn this time toward programming, studying reading manuals.

So what the heck is Linux?

Linux is the Operating system that is going to replace Microsoft Windows eventually. (In 2007 Walmart offered a Linux desktop and sold out of stock remarkably quickly.) It is free, easy, stable and powerful. Did I mention FREE?. I'm a big fan of the idea. In actuality it is probably something that won't capture an unfair share of the market for another five to ten years but it is already endorsed and in use by some big names like IBM. On a slightly more technical note it is Unix-like and distributed under the GNU General Public License. (GNU is usually pretty much just applied to Linux software and stands for GNU's Not Unix.. where the G stands for GNU which stands for.. well you get the picture. Penguinitis I suspect. Short version: Usually completely free.) It is used for servers around the world and is probably nearly as popular as Windows in that area. It is used for desktops in some companies but that requires a little more know how so isn't quite as common. The good news is that you can probably use it right now on your home computer without having to know anything special or spend a lot of time learning. For most people it looks and acts a lot like Windows. My friends are always kinda disappointed to find out it is point-and-click like they're used to. If you want to make life hard, you certainly can and there are some good reasons to, just visit www.slackware.org or www.gentoo.org for some complex Linux versions but most of you will probably be happier with something like Mandriva or OpenSUSE since they are easier to use.

Last update: 06 Nov 2007