Computers

When I was 6 years old, my parents bought me a computer for Christmas. At the time, it was awesome, sporting an Intel 8088 processor at 4 MHz with dual 5.25" floppy drives with MS-DOS as the operating system and a CGA screen. I could program in BASIC for hours. IYKYK. Since then, I've continued to be fascinated with computers and their utilization in improving many facets of our daily lives. These days, my interests include free (libre) and open source software development, contributing to crowd-sourced knowledge platforms and data science.

I'm pretty platform agnostic, known for running consumer operating systems such as Microsoft Windows for gaming and the Apple consortium (macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS) for entertainment, but my operating system of choice and my daily driver is none other than Debian GNU/Linux. With Debian, I run my own web, email and instant messaging servers from my home Internet connection.  As of late, I've also becoming more interested in comparative operating system analysis and have delved into the BSD world, running FreeBSD on a extra laptop computer as a learning tool. My current projects are (1) deploying WordPress on this website to better chronicle my efforts (2) compiling my own Linux kernel using the Linux from Scratch book as a guide (3) reading the entirety of the FreeBSD Handbook, (4) deploying a NAS on my home network for my family and guests to use, (5) finding publicly available data sets to hone my data science skills with R and last but certainly not least (6) promoting my local electronics club, VCATS.

My programming skills could always use improvement, so I try to also stay language agnostic and use the best tools for the task at hand, but I have an affinity for object-oriented programming languages such as C++, Java and Python.

I'm not involved in activism per se, but do support the following movements: (1) transitioning the United States from using United States Customary Units to the SI system as the official system of measurement (2) abolishing Daylight Savings Time (3) deploying Coordinated Universal Time globally (4) deploying a single emergency number worldwide such as 911 while keeping local numbers in place and (5) using Esperanto as the de facto international language.  These movements nurture the spirit of global collaboration and break down barriers to entry for anyone no matter where they live. As we evolve into a global community, the crux of development is standardization. I see these movements as accomplishing this task while still respecting local culture and customs.