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<H1><A NAME="answer">
<img src="../../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif" alt="(?)"
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<font color="#B03060">The Answer Gang</font>
<img src="../../gx/dennis/bbubble.gif" alt="(!)"
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</A></H1>
<BR>
<H4>TAG Bios</h4>
<p>These are some of the people who answer your TAG questions every month.</p>
<p><em><font color="#990000">You can join the Gang too!
</font></em></p>
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<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../../gx/note.gif" WIDTH="65" HEIGHT="39">
Andrew Higgs</H4>
Andrew started out with a book called "Slackware Unleashed" containing a copy of
Slackware 3.0 on CD around 1996. He has been using Linux as a server at work
pretty much since then. Recently he took the plunge and now is happily working
on a Slackware workstation. Andrew helped start the Eastern Province Linux User
Group, which is based in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, where he lives.
<BR> <A HREF="mailto:ahiggs@ps.co.za">ahiggs@ps.co.za</A>
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<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../../gx/note.gif" WIDTH="65" HEIGHT="39">
Ben Okopnik</H4>
Ben was born in Moscow, Russia in 1962. He became interested in
electricity at age six--promptly demonstrating it by sticking a fork into
a socket and starting a fire--and has been falling down technological mineshafts
ever since. He has been working with computers since the Elder Days, when
they had to be built by soldering parts onto printed circuit boards and
programs had to fit into 4k of memory. He would gladly pay good money to any
psychologist who can cure him of the resulting nightmares.
<p>Ben's subsequent experiences include creating software in nearly a dozen
languages, network and database maintenance during the approach of a hurricane,
and writing articles for publications ranging from sailing magazines to
technological journals. Having recently completed a seven-year
Atlantic/Caribbean cruise under sail, he is currently docked in Baltimore, MD,
where he works as a technical instructor for Sun Microsystems.
<p>Ben has been working with Linux since 1997, and credits it with his complete
loss of interest in waging nuclear warfare on parts of the Pacific Northwest.
<BR> <A HREF="mailto:ben-fuzzybear@yahoo.com">ben-fuzzybear@yahoo.com</A>
<BR> <A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/ben-fuzzybear/">http://www.geocities.com/ben-fuzzybear/</A>
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<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../../gx/note.gif" WIDTH="65" HEIGHT="39">
Chris Gianakopoulos</H4>
I do embedded software for a living. I work at Motorola in Schaumburg,
Illinois, and I design and implement RF networking protocols for a living.
<P> My schooling is a BSEE at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago,
but I was a nondegreed engineer during most of my career. I have been
doing embedded software for about 20 years, and I'm 48 years old.
<P> Networking protocols are what got me interested in Linux. For example,
after reading <I>TCP/IP Illustrated</I>, Volume 1, by Stevens, I had a yearning
to experiment with the protocols. Also, I got tired of using Microsoft
Windows software on my 486 machine. A 66MHz 486 is sort of fast when
running DOS -- Windows 95 brought it down to its knees. Also the Windows
games require so much resources! Linux (I use SuSE 6.4) brought new life
into that 486.
<P> So I love Linux. I have lots of computers in the house with three of them
running Linux (one of them with no keyboard or monitor -- just an
Ethernet). I have another machine that runs FreeBSD because I like to see
how the various systems (Linux, FreeBSD, even Windows with its protocol
stack and Exceed) interoperate.
<P> Physics, electromagnetics (fields and waves), and protocols are the things
that I study most. I know the IrDA protocol, I have studied its specs,
and I have ported a commercial IrDA protocol stack into more than one
embedded system.
<P> I am married with three kids, and I actually see them. When I am not
hobbying and working, I actually get some sleep now and then.
<BR> <A HREF="mailto:pilolla@gateway.net">pilolla@gateway.net</A>
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<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../../gx/note.gif" WIDTH="65" HEIGHT="39">
Dan Wilder</H4>
Dan was born in the late Pleistocene before mortals were permitted
access to computers. Raised on a diet of grilled Wooly Mammoth, he
wrote his first program in high school, for an IBM 7090 in a language
called MAD. Following a meandering career as a sound technician, auto
worker, offset pressman, mechanic, roustabout and journalist, Dan went
back to college to study Forestry. There, he met his doom in the form
of the keys to a room in the cellar of the forestry school containing an
IBM 1130, given him by an evil lecturer who became his computing mentor.
<P> Following completion of a degree and extended sojourns as a real-time
embedded systems programmer and UNIX sysadmin, Dan gravitated to
<I>Linux Journal</I>, where he helps edit
<A HREF="http://www.embedded.linuxjournal.com"><I>Embedded Linux
Journal</I></A>, and plays with Linux systems all day (and more of the night
than his dear and patient wife Jacque would prefer).
<P> Dan spends his spare time hiking, reading to his two children, and doing
volunteer gardening at their school.
<BR> <A HREF="mailto:dan@ssc.com">dan@ssc.com</A>
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<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../../gx/note.gif" WIDTH="65" HEIGHT="39">
Faber Fedor</H4>
Faber runs <A HREF="http://www.linuxnj.com">LinuxNJ.com</A>, a Linux
hacking, er...consulting company in New Jersey, USA where people pay
him to practice his hobby. Besides teaching Linux around the
country, writing code and setting up networks, Faber <EM>does</EM> occasionally
walk away from the computer. During those times he's either sleeping or
watching reruns of
Star Trek or Babylon 5.
<BR> <A HREF="mailto:faber@linuxnj.com">faber@linuxnj.com</A>
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<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../../gx/note.gif" WIDTH="65" HEIGHT="39">
Guy Milliron</H4>
Guy grew up in SillyCon Valley (San Jose/San Francisco Bay area) where frequent
road signs say Intel, HP, Apple, etc...
<P> Starting at an early age of 10, when Guy took the 27" console television
apart one afternoon when the parental units were busy elsewhere, they learned to
keep him at bay with his own personal electronic components. It started with a
Radio Shack 200 in 1 electronic test kit. Quickly he grew into computers
(Apple ][ series - TTL chip sets). Guy entered into an electronics course at
school, but was more capable of teaching the course than the teacher. So he
was given run of the class to do whatever projects he came up with.
<P> After high school, Guy joined the working people. He worked in IT/MIS for
such companies as Adept Technologies (Robotics), Micro Focus (COBOL), Apple,
Ibm... His interests in hardware quickly grew into interests in software too.
Reading any technical book about any OS, he quickly learned about DOS, Win,
OS/2, MacOS... Taking him to a new job title, OS Tech. He heard about
Slackware Linux. Obtained a copy, never really thought it would take off and
shelved the project.
<P> Guy operated a FidoNet based BBS for many years. Always trying to get more
out of the computer by trying different operating systems. Connectivity really
interested Guy.
<P> Continued life working for various Microsoft based companies (QualComm,
Stac Electronics). Until one day in the late 90's, he heard about Red Hat
Linux. Once again, obtained a copy, installed it... and promptly deleted
Windows (much to the annoyance of the people in his household). Ended up
buying more computers, one specific to Windows for those less apt at Linux, but
kept playing with Linux.
<P> Today, Guy runs Red Hat Linux on several systems offering dns, webhosting,
email services... to small businesses. (He also has one Windows machine,) He
also also, operates a taxicab and karaoke hosting business in Las Vegas,
Nevada.
<BR> <A HREF="mailto:guy@vegasleather.com">guy@vegasleather.com</A>
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<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../../gx/note.gif" WIDTH="65" HEIGHT="39">
Heather Stern</H4>
Heather got started in computing before she quite got started learning
English. By 8 she was a happy programmer, by 15 the system administrator
for the home... Dad had finally broken down and gotten one of those personal
computers, only to find it needed regular care and feeding like any other
pet. Except it wasn't a Pet: it was one of those brands we find most
everywhere today...
<P> Heather is a hardware agnostic, but has spent more hours as a tech in
Windows related tech support than most people have spent with their computers.
(Got the pin, got the Jacket, got about a zillion T-shirts.) When she
discovered Linux in 1993, it wasn't long before the home systems ran Linux
regardless of what was in use at work.
<P> By 1995 she was training others in using Linux - and in charge of all the
"strange systems" at a (then) 90 million dollar company. Moving onwards, it's
safe to say, Linux has been an excellent companion and breadwinner... She
took over the HTML editing for "The Answer Guy" in issue 28, and has been
slowly improving the preprocessing scripts she uses ever since.
<P> Here's an autobiographical filksong she wrote called
<A HREF="../issue67/misc/tag/filksong-programmers-daughter.txt">The Programmer's Daughter</A>.
<BR> <A HREF="mailto:star@starshine.org">star@starshine.org</A>
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<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../../gx/note.gif" WIDTH="65" HEIGHT="39">
Huibert Alblas</H4>
Huibert Alblas is my real name, but everybody has been calling me Halb
since the day I moved from Holland to Germany. After spending 5+ years on
University (mostly hanging around on campus) "studying" math and physics to
become a teacher, I was finally asked by a small .com to work for them, doing
what I was doing all day anyway (programming, Linux, Windows, hardware
support (a little bit) and overall messing around with computers). In the
evenings I teach Wing Tsun (kung fu) 3 times a week or sit in my
favorite cafe, drink Weizen (2 times a week), or practice playing guitar
and writing a songbook with campfire songs in LaTeX.
<BR> <A HREF="mailto:halblas@weos.de">halblas@weos.de</A>
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<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../../gx/note.gif" WIDTH="65" HEIGHT="39">
Jim Dennis</H4>
Jim has been using Linux since kernel version 0.97 or so. His first
distribution was
SLS (Soft Landing Systems). Jim taught
himself Linux while working on the technical support queues at
Symantec's Peter Norton Group.
He started by lurking alt.os.minix and alt.os.linux on USENET
netnews (before the creation of the comp.os.linux.* newsgroups), reading them
just about all day while supporting Norton Utilities, and
for a few hours every night while waiting for the rush-hour traffic to subside.
<P> Jim has also worked in other computer roles, and also as an electrician and
a crane truck operator. Jim has also worked in many other roles. He's been a
graveyard dishwasher, a janitor, and a driver of school buses, taxis, pizza
delivery cars, and even did some cross-country, long-haul work.
<P> He grew up in Chicago and has lived in the inner city, the suburbs,
and on farms in the midwest. In his early teens he lived in Oregon--
Portland, Clackamas, and the forests along
the coast (Brighton). In his early twenties, he moved to
the Los Angeles area "for a summer job" (working for his father, and learning
the contruction trades).
<P> By then, Jim met his true love, Heather, at a
science-fiction convention. About a year later they started
spending time together, and they've now been living together for
over a decade. First they lived in Eugene, Oregon, for a year, but now they
live in the Silicon Valley.
<P> Jim and Heather still go to SF cons together.
<P> Jim has continued to be hooked on USENET and technical mailing
lists. In 1995 he registered the <A
HREF="http://starshine.org">starshine.org</A> domain as a birthday gift to
Heather (after her nickname and favorite Runequest persona). He's participated
in an ever changing array of lists and newsgroups.
<P> In 1999 Jim started a book-authoring project (which he completed
after attracting a couple of co-authors). That book <I>Linux System
Administration</I> (published 2000, New Riders Associates) is not
a rehash of HOWTOs and man pages. It's intended to give a high-level
view of systems administration, covering topics like
Requirements Analysis, Recovery Planning, and Capacity Planning.
His book intended to build upon the works of Aeleen Frisch
(<I>Essential Systems Administration</I>, O-Reilly & Associates) and
Nemeth, et al (<I>Unix System Administrator's Handbook</I>, Prentice
Hall).
<P> Jim is an active member of a number of Linux and UNIX users' groups
and has done Linux consulting and training for a number of companies
(Linuxcare) and customers (US Postal Service). He's also presented
technical sessions at conferences (Linux World Expo, San Jose and
New York).
<P> A few years ago, he volunteered to help with misguided technical
question that were e-mailed to the editorial staff at the Linux
Gazette. He answered 13 questions the first month. A couple
months later, he realized that these questions and his responses had
become a regular column in the Gazette.
<P> "Darn, that made me pay more attention to what I was saying! But I
did decide to affect a deliberately curmudgeonly attitude; I didn't
want to sound like the corporate tech support 'weenie' that I was
so experienced at playing. That's not what Linux was about!"
(<A HREF="http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=curmudgeon">
curmudgeon</A> means a crusty, ill-tempered, and usually old man,
according to the
<A HREF="http://www.m-w.com/">Merriam-Webster OnLine dictionary</A>.
The word hails back to 1577, origin unknown, and originally meant miser.)
<P> Eventually, Heather got involved and took over formatting the column,
and maintaining a script that translates "Jim's e-mail markup hints"
into HTML. Since then, Jim and Heather have (finally) invited other
generous souls to join them as The Answer Gang.
<BR> <A HREF="mailto:jimd@starshine.org">jimd@starshine.org</A>
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<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../../gx/note.gif" WIDTH="65" HEIGHT="39">
Karl-Heinz Herrmann</H4>
I'm a physicist. Right now I'm working in a research center in Germany, and am
enjoying my good fortune in having mostly Unix machinery around me. I started
out with Linux as it made the leap to 2.0.0 and have been running my home PC
under Linux since then.
<BR> <A HREF="mailto:k.-h.herrmann@fz-juelich.de">k.-h.herrmann@fz-juelich.de</A>
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<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../../gx/note.gif" WIDTH="65" HEIGHT="39">
Mike Ellis</H4>
Mike works as a Research and Development Engineer in Surrey,
England. His first experience of Unix was in 1990 at the University of
Kent in Canterbury (UKC) where he also came across Linux in 1992. He has
been running Linux systems at home and at work since 1996, starting with
Slackware 96, although he now tends to prefer RedHat. He spends as much
of his work time as possible writing code for Linux and Solaris, although
unfortunately most of it is commercially confidential. Having learnt a lot
from other people, Mike hopes to repay some of the debt by contributing to
the Linux community through TAG. He also regularly contributes to C-Vu,
the bi-monthly magazine produced by <A HREF="http://www.accu.org">ACCU</A>.
Non-computing activities include Juliet, flying light aeroplanes and target
shooting.
<BR> <A HREF="mailto:mike@miju.demon.co.uk">mike@miju.demon.co.uk</A>
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<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../../gx/note.gif" WIDTH="65" HEIGHT="39">
Mike ("Iron") Orr</H4>
Mike is the Editor of <I>Linux Gazette</I>. You can read what he has
to say in the Back Page column of each issue. He has been a Linux enthusiast
since 1991 and a Debian user since 1995. He is SSC's web technical
coordinator, which means he gets to write a lot of Python scripts.
Non-computer interests include Ska/Oi! music and the international language
Esperanto. The nickname Iron was given to him in college--short for Iron Orr,
hahaha.
<BR> <A HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com">gazette@ssc.com</A>
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<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<H5 align="center">This page edited and maintained by the Editors
of <I>Linux Gazette</I>
<a href="http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html"
>Copyright &copy;</a> 2001
<BR>Published in issue 68 of <I>Linux Gazette</I> July 2001</H5>
<H6 ALIGN="center">HTML script maintained by
<A HREF="mailto:star@starshine.org">Heather Stern</a> of
Starshine Technical Services,
<A HREF="http://www.starshine.org/">http://www.starshine.org/</A>
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