Initializing….complete.

First post on the new blog site, and I’m stoked. I have been posting in several forums around the different environments, and decided I really just need a repository for the various ramblings I’ve got. My spectrum covers technology in personal and enterprise computing, portable electronics, communications, photography, aviation and aerospace science, and politics. I know, quite a diverse spread there that seems unrelated, but those topics all have stations in my train of thought.

Why?

• Aviation: My first love. I started flying single engine planes at 15, with a Cessna 172 SkyhawkII. My first major at Purdue was Aerospace Engineering, and I was a helicopter crew chief in the Army.

• Technology: I have a family history here, and an aptitude. I got my first computer in 1986, and was hooked. By time I had left for the Army, my father opened a computer retail and service center in our hometown, which is still going. I out-processed from the military to go back to school and double majored in Computer Programming (….and Political Science – hence the next topic). My professional experience ranges from telecommunications (working for Sprint/MCI/Telocity for connectivity mediums), personal computing (supporting the family store, Sprint and IBM/Lenovo), enterprise computing (IBM/Lenovo, Nortel Networks, Fidelity Investments.)

• Linux: especially, has been my forte. I have worked in M$ environments, and not been terribly fond of paying good money (or even bad money, or even someone else’s money) on something I can do within the community. The Linux community has provided a platform that does everything I need and then some. The only cost hast been time and energy in implementing and developing it, which in turn contributes to the community as a whole. The whole open source community is really self sufficient, if given the hardware. 🙂 I started running Linux with S.U.S.E. 4.2 around 1996( yes, it was an acronym before it was SuSE- and I didn’t upgrade it until 6.0/6.1). I didn’t use it as my main OS until 1999 or so. Since then Red Hat, Canonical, Debian, and others have gone viral, and being an early adopter made me valuable as an engineer.

• Android is simply a subset of Linux. I don’t particularly like Mac, for the same reasons I don’t particularly care for MS, so I was not a fan of the iPhone.  Android was the obvious step for me. I had been a Symbian fan before, but it has not been developed like Android was and I grew rather tired of waiting for the next version, only to find I couldn’t upgrade. Bah.

• Politics: okay, I’ll admit, geeks really don’t fit well in politics in general, however I enjoy technicalities that political and legal realm make their dwelling in. Legalese is essentially no different than coding: you just have to know what you’re looking at and think in abstract processes. Geeks rule there. During my years at NC State, I was able to intern at a Lawyer/Lobbyist firm for state government (no K Street stuff for me.) I was able to see a lot of interesting issues and how things work. How does this relate to other interests? My Political Science major was meant to work towards a law degree, and specifically IP, Technology and Telephony law. So far, my legal aspirations have been put on hold, since my Computing career has held sway more than I expected it to.

• Photography: I’ve been a shutterbug since my sixth grade Science Fair. I made a pinhole camera, and turned my closet into a darkroom. It’s stuck ever since.

• and finally, Gadgets. How can one be a geek and not geek out over the new toys? I think that explains everything. 🙂

So…that’s the premise in a nutshell. I hope to post daily, if not more often. I’ll see how that works out for me. In all honesty, I’ll be surprised if I can post once a month. Thanks for reading!