At a pinnacle time, I was sitting in front of a Vax VT100 mono-chrome dumb terminal when I asked "Can I do this for the rest of my life?". Little did I know the advances that were practically around the corner. If I had, I may have answered "yes", but I didn't, but that didn't stop me from using this interest and experience to help me in whatever I was doing.

I have largely been a self-taught computer user as a means of pursuing something that interested me professionally which has moved me out of my former career path of Accounting.

I started off with utilizing Lotus & Excel Macros (VBA) and Microsoft Access databases. This led me to being hired by the IT department which opened up using a Microsoft SQL Server and developing ASP (Classic) web pages written in VBScript. I was also given the chance to learn some VB6 as well as PICK-BASIC. Most of my learning came from books, online and self-taught experimentation.

Most recently I have been learning Crystal Reports, expanding my knowledge of Microsoft Access, extending use of SQL Sever and have gone to classes for (VB).NET and related technologies (ADO, ASP.NET, VB.NET, SQL Server) for my current employer.

Personally I have begun fooling around with PHP & MySQL, Javascript and CSS and keep trying to convince myself to foray into Mono and C#.

In 2003 I threw caution into the wind and installed Red Hat 8 Linux on my computer as dual-boot. Since then I've been watching, reading, breaking, fixing, apologizing (to my spouse) and learning about Linux. I worked on my personal experiment of replacing Windows in the house with Linux. I have largely been successful.

For Linux I have gone through Red Hat 8 and 9, Gentoo, Ubuntu , CentOS, openSUSE, Fedora and Edubuntu. Currently I have been settling down on Ubuntu though I will admit I am a distro-hopper at heart.

I am also a Board of Director member of the Danbury Area Computer Society (DACS http://www.DACS.org) in Danbury Connecticut and formerly the SIG (Special Interest Group) Leader for the Linux SIG.

~Drew