Who am I?
I go by many names, Andrew, Andy, Drew, Farley and various other pseudonyms. I’m a computer geek, about as hardcore as they come. The first time I laid eyes on a Mac II lc I was in love. Before you know it, I had a computer of my own, a mac at first. Next thing you know, I built my first PC… a over-clocked Celeron (typical eh?). Soon I was fixing computer problems for my parents, my friends, and my friends’ parents. I knew from a very early age I was going to do this for the rest of my life. I mean… what 12 year old child tells their parents “If you take away my computer you’re destroying my future”? Well, that’s me.
Eventually I made the jump from the mainstream operating systems to various flavors of Linux and have never looked back. I’m still a “best tool for the job” kinda guy, and I try to keep all my tools sharp. I’ve experienced some awesome things in my time and I’m still young.
A website…? WTH, I thought you were a privacy freak!?
If you know me you would definitely ask this question… and yes this is true and I realize it. I am a security and privacy nut, but I have gained all my knowledge from the internet… so think of this as me giving back. :) I’m planning on posting only hardcore computer-related topics and nothing extremely personal. If you’re trying to stalk me, well, hopefully you won’t find too much here.
What occupies my time currently?
Nowadays, I’m a passionate Systems Administrator and PHP programmer for CouchSurfing.org. I’m a battle-hardened veteran in both areas having been in the ditches for years dealing with and programming insane applications and environments. I also have a penchant for databases, first playing with Oracle and MySQL, and currently preferring PostgreSQL. On the side, I contract architecting websites and databases, managing servers, programming iPhone applications [1] [2] [3] [4], designing physical or wireless networks, and the occasional technology advisor or systems architect for various startups. I also am pretty passionate about Zabbix, a open source monitoring system.
What other things I’m interested in…?
I could go on for hours on this list. But my top 10 current (December 2009) technologies I’m passionate about are Linux, Macs, PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, VOIP (Asterisk/FreePBX), Encryption/Security, Microelectronics, Load Balancing, and Clustering Technologies.
Whats with all the dragons?
The dragon is a symbol which I can relate to various aspects of its mythology in my existence. I live my life from the hip, figuring out what I want to do at the spur of a moment (chaos). There’s a never-ending need to immerse myself with the latest and greatest technologies (striving); always making an effort to learn more (achieving goals), know more, be more (powerful). I like to donate my time to similarly aligned organizations and share my knowledge where I can to be a positive and collaborative influence in this world (positive force/good luck).
The dragon is a divine, mythical creature that is a positive force that represents power, excellence, striving for and achieving goals and good luck. The dragon is also symbolized as the source of great evil and/or chaos in certain mythologies.
Anything else…?
I don’t really have anything else in mind, but if I do, I’ll put it here.
