loadedmind intro

[loadedmind]

Hello all. After seeing how the last Linux User Group in Huntsville went dark (luna.org), I decided it was high time to try and drum up some more interest. I thought, surely with a technology town like Huntsville, there'd be more than a few who already knew Linux and quite a few others that would be interested in learning more.

I spent almost 6 years in the Navy as a hospital corpsman (glorified nurse) and, upon learning of the rate of pay for an EMT ($8/hr), decided it was time to switch careers and get into the computer industry. I received a degree from Virginia College here in town as a Network Engineer. I received various IT certifications and started out as the typical tech support guy - refining my craft. Started with Linux around '96 (Slackware) and it grew from there.

Nowadays, as a sr. systems admin, I babysit servers & network equipment in a server room - most of which has been virtualized (VMware vCenter, ESXi hosts, etc.).

I dig kayaking, fishing, most any outdoor stuff, motorcycling and flying - still working on my pilot license.

I'm a firm believer in whatever tool gets the job done most efficiently. This carries over into computing. For some things, such as web servers, database servers, etc, Linux does the job nicely. For flight simming, and niche tasks where programs only exist on Windows for business apps, Windows 7 works fine. For Desktop computing and about everything else, I have a Mac laptop I use.