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PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: jake721 |
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As told to YouCanToo  How old are you? Currently I am 80 years young and will soon add 1 more to that. Are you married, single? I am married. My wife Patty and I have been married for 25 years. How about Kids, Grandkids ? Between the two of us we have 3 sons and 6 grandkids, 3 boys and 3 girls ranging in age from 13 to 33. Do you have pets, what is your favorite? We have no pets, mainly because we have traveled a lot but if we were to get one it would be a dog. Are you retired, still working and if working, what do you do? I have been retired for nearly 21 years after a long career with a pharmaceutical company. I was in the research area, involved with biological testing of potential new drugs and later in the quality control laboratory, doing micro-quantitative analysis. Most of my last several working years were spent setting up, maintaining and sometimes troubleshooting analytical instruments while trying to help others solve those inevitable glitches that crop up from time to time. Where do you call home? What is it like? IE: weather, scenery I live in Evansville, southwestern Indiana where we have all 4 seasons of the year. We get some snow in winter and in summer it is hot and humid. Spring and fall are usually pretty nice. The terrain is somewhat flat with low rolling hills and adjacent to the Ohio river. The rural areas are farmland, mostly producing corn and soybeans.  Reflection of the city skyline on the Ohio River. Where did you go to school and what is your education level? I graduated from Bosse High School, spent one hitch in the U.S. Navy and enrolled in some night classes at the local university, but never completed a degree. What kind of things you like doing? hobbies, travel, fishing, camping? We enjoy traveling and in our 25 years together have been busy visiting all 50 states. In addition we have visited Australia, England, Ireland and Scotland, with a 1 day junket to Paris while we were in England. I am a licensed, Extra Class, ham radio operator since 1971, with the call sign N9LJ but I am not nearly as active as I once was. I also enjoy bowling which I have done for many years.  Taken while on tour in Ireland with the Cliffs of Moher in the background. Why and when did you start using Linux? My first experience with computers was with an IBM PC at my workplace in 1982. I later had my own Timex-Sinclair 1000 and then graduated to an ATARI 800XL before the PC era really bloomed. My first interest in Linux was spurred by Leo LaPorte and his TV shows on the old ZDTV channel. I have always been a bit of a DIY, tinkerer type and Linux loomed as a new adventure for me. Over the next few years I tried a number of distros, the first being Red Hat on a disk I copied from a CD in a library book. Then I began a quest for a version I could better understand but I honestly didn't give most of them a fair chance. Mandrake Linux, I think version 7 or 8, was the first one I found that I got into at all. That was my very first actual Linux install to a hard drive. Then I came across PCLinuxOS and downloaded P.93 Minime, which I played with for a while but never really got going with it. All this had been experimental rather than progressing toward a goal. I had been reading the online PClinuxOS magazine since its beginning. When I went with PCLinuxOS 2007, it all began to make more sense to me, and my interest grew. Even so, with all the improvements, it took the 2009 distro to finally pull me in. Now, here we are today. Plus, I want to say how much I enjoy the forum with all the knowledgeable, friendly and helpful members who are so willing to assist anyone who asks. Also a big THANKS to Texstar and the gang for keeping us up to date and running with PCLinuxOS. What specific equipment do currently use with PCLOS? My main computer with KDE is built on a Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P, AMD Phenom II X2 550, 4GB RAM, ASUS GeForce GT 440 (Silent), 500 GB Seagate HDD and ASUS DVD/CD burner. Patty's machine is similarly equipped, built on a Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3, AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8GB RAM and dual boots Win7/PCLinuxOS KDE while I try to win her over to the Linux side. There is also an older Toshiba laptop with Mate 32bit, which will be replaced very soon due to its obsolescence.
PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight is an exclusive, monthly column by YouCanToo, featuring PCLinuxOS forum member. This column will allow "the rest of us" to get to know our forum family members better, and will give those featured an opportunity to share their PCLinuxOS story with the rest of the world.
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