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My previous company was
primarily Windows based, which is quite sad indeed. Luckily many here at the
university are finally moving away from Windows to the Linux and Mac worlds.
I definitely prefer the Unix/Linux and Mac sides of things myself.
For system programming I love Perl.
There is no substitute. For web programming I use
JavaScript and
PHP too,
and prefer the Apache
web server. I have written Active Server Pages too, but I try not to admit it.
Home computer History:
- 1987: 10 MHZ 8088 Clone, 640KB, DOS 3.30, 30 MB Hard Drive,
1200 baud modem (upgraded to a 14.4K that fried, and then a 2400 that didn't)
- 1991: 12 MHZ 80286 Zenith Laptop, Win 3.0, 2MB RAM, 40 MB drive,
2400 baud modem
- 1996: 60 MHZ PowerPC 601 driven Macintosh Performa 6116CD,
40 MB RAM, 700 MB HD, 33.6k modem, 14" Color monitor, Iomega Zip drive and
MacOS 8.5. Now simply in storage in the university as it is supplanted by the G3.
- 1998: 233 MHZ PowerMac G3, 64MB RAM, 2GB HD, Yamaha 4x4x8 SCSI CD-RW
(boy is it noisy!), MacOS 8.6 (upgraded!) Now retired to the university.
- 1999: Dell Inspiron 7500, 450 MHZ Pentium III, WinXP SP2,
256 MB RAM, 25 GB hard
drive, 56K modem, DVD-ROM (my old company paid for it, sold them cheap
after their collapse, and I gave it to my mother-in-law, but we got it
back after the LCD screen died). Now the bottom half (I removed the dead
panel) is connected to my son's 19" LCD monitor and works just fine as
a desktop! My son loves it!!
- 2001: 1 GHZ Duron on ASUS A7VL-VM, 256MB PC133 SDRAM, WinXP Pro,
40GB & 12GB hard drives, GeForce4 MX440 graphics card, 56K modem,
from Simplified Computers in Urbana-Champaign, IL. Great
company! (Thanks, Dan!) I got my 20x10x40 CD-RW from Jim Humphrey at
Dimension Computer, a
great low-cost place to buy a PC system or components in St. Louis. Now
retired to a new home in the university.
- 2006: Our
business school was unloading a Dell Optiplex GX1p for $10,
so I bought it. I added some more memory, a second hard drive, and
a copy of Xubuntu, and now it lives on online as my Linux ISO Mirror site.
- 2008: Another Olin purchase, this time for $20 was a small Optiplex
GX150 (1 GHz P-III, 384MB RAM, XP SP2) which has replaced the old
Duron which was making some weird noises after 7 faithful years!
List of the computers in my departmental space at the university
Yes, I know I am running a Microsoft OS, but I have fought it as hard as
possible. My kids games just won't run on Linux! At least I can easily dual boot to Linux using
Ubuntu.
How cool! Here is my personal Linux ISO Mirror site.
Here is my collection of Windoze freeware, as well as a
list of my favorites.
Where I buy stuff online
My
completely worthless blog
My son's
video gaming blog
Yes, My Cat even has his own blog
My American Idol Season 9 blog
I really don't live in St. Louis City, but actually in
St. Louis County in
Richmond Heights in the
Ladue School District.
We attend
Mt. Zion United Methodist
Church where I teach the Good Shepherd program to little kids and sing in our praise
band,
Mount Zion Joyful Noise (as well as the infamous "Contemporary Choir").
I am not very interesting really, but my
brothers sure are!
Free Church
Plays - Site containing church service playes written by my wife, Penny.
Room Parties Web Site- Site for
craft and game ideas for elementary school room parties compiled by my wife, Penny.
Reviews of Science/Children's Museums
we have visited
Schools I have attended:
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Suncrest Elementary School, Morgantown, West Virginia
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Suncrest Junior High School, Morgantown, West Virginia (now Suncrest Middle School)
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Morgantown High School, Morgantown, West Virginia - One year
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Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts - Two years
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Cornell University, Ithaca, New York - Bachelor of Sciences in EE,
while there I was a co-op student at
IBM
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Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio - Two classes one summer while at home with the folks
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Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri
I was a graduate research assistant in the CCRC,
and graduated with a Master of Sciences in EE. I planned on staying to finish my doctorate, but
left to work at a large local corporation who later shut
down my department. I then
came back to work at Wash U where I was able to work for two different
departments in three different colleges within the university:
Biology in
Arts & Sciences, and the defunct Institute for Biomedical Computing (IBC)
(now the CCB) in both the
School of Engineering and the
School of Medicine
But again I left to work for a biotech
company
who later shut down their entire St. Louis division.
I finally came back to work here at Wash U in
Earth & Planetary Sciences.
! Corporations beware --
I am bad luck!!
(Is there a pattern, or what?)
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