Hi everyone,
My name is Dexter Graphic and I just joined your mailing list.
I live in the Eugene area and stumbled upon the EUGLUG web site
last week while following GNU/Linux links on the Internet. I
missed the last two Thursday meetings (did you even have one
yesterday?) and the monthly Saturday meeting, but hope to meet
some of you this week at the PC Training Center on West 7th.
I started using Debian GNU/Linux about 5 months ago after I
stumbled upon the Free Software Foundation's web site and
read all about Richard Stallman's crusade against proprietary
software. Before that, I didn't take the Linux phenomenon
seriously. My background is in IBM PC and Microsoft Windows
technical support and custom database development using dBase
and Access. I know Visual Basic but I don't know C very well.
I have been working as a computer consultant for the last 15
years. I'm completely self educated in computers. I started
out as a delivery driver who wanted to figure out a way around
hand typing all those box labels and delivery receipts. So I
brought in a Compaq "luggable" with two full-height 5.25 inch
floppy drives and a Diablo daisy-wheel printer (on wheels) and
started building label and packing-list templates in Lotus
Symphony. The company's owner's were impressed when they saw
what I had done. Within four years I was the CIO and managed
a 14 user network, trained all the new hires, and was writing
code in DBLX-LAN to build a company wide information system.
This was all on 286 computers running DOS. Windows 3.1 was
just then arriving on the scene. Our company's file server
was a brand new 386 with an awesome 200MB hard drive. We paid
over $4,000 for this thing--the hard drive alone was $1,600.
All that was in San Jose, California, by the way. I moved to
Eugene in 1989 and ended up going to Lane Community College
and the University of Oregon. I ended up with a Bachelor of
Science degree; not in Computer Science though but in Fine
and Applied Art. I found out the hard way that the U. of O.
Computer Science Department's undergraduate program really
sucked. I figured that they didn't deserve my $3500 per
quarter tuition, so I switched to the Art Department which
had a bunch of cool subjects that I wanted to explore (like
digital photography, the Internet, graphic design, sculpture,
nude figure drawing, and landscape painting. I enjoyed this
time spent developing my creativity. There are lots of good
(and cheap) books available for teaching oneself programming.
Well, now you all know a little bit about me. I hope this
introduction helps break the ice when we meet in person.
Best regards,
Dexter Graphic
