![[FSF Associate Member 5783]](/images/fsfmember.png)
I was raised Mormon, but left after a successful, but disillusioning, mission to England and Wales, ending in 1995. I am the webmaster for St Stephen's Episcopal Church and am a member of the Confraternity at St Gregory's Abbey.
I play percussion instruments of various types, including drum kit and middle eastern drums. I love the band Rush, and enjoy listening to Mozart, Jazz, and New Age music. I have a passion for books, literature, and the humanities. My favourite authors are Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Tolstoy, Bernard Malamud, and Edith Wharton. I enjoy the game of chess and snooker. I also enjoy golf, soccer, baseball, and fly fishing.
I met my wife Tonya at the end of 1997, and in February of 1998, she asked me out for a movie, which we went to on 22 March 1998. On 1 May 1999 we were married at the Hotel Utah and have been happily married since. Tonya's passion is belly dancing. She served over 11 years in the US Army Reserve. She served with the 200th Medical Detachment (PM) in Kuwait/Qatar/Iraq, 10 March 2003 to 19 April 2004, and during the Salt Lake City Olympic Games. Tonya was honorably discharged 13 May 2008. We have three pets: two Senegal parrots, Lux and Ury, and a brown, pure bred chihuahua, Caru (KAHR-ee).
I am a hacker for the GNU project, and was Chief Webmaster for the Free Software Foundation. I am also an examiner and instructor for Red Hat, a GNU/Linux instructor for Oracle University, and Hewlett Packard Education and Training, and an instructor, courseware author, and hacker for Guru Labs LC. I love AWK, and I'm interested in C and Scheme. I don't like JAVA. I have a passion for XML.
I choose to use free software over non-free software, because I believe that free software promotes knowledge and learning in a way that non-free software cannot under current copyright and patent law. The purpose of copyright and patent law, according to the US Constitution, is to promote the arts and science (learning). Unfortunately, current enforcement, and the obnoxiously long terms (70 years beyond the life of the author), give power to the copyright holder to suppress knowledge, not promote it, and enable censorship, or in more recent times, laws have been passed that make copyright a way to control your computer. I don't believe it is theft, or piracy, to make copies of copyrighted programs, but feel I must respect and follow the law I am governed by.
I've been using computers since I was eight, learning BASIC programming on an Atari 400, 800, and 800XL, the latter of which was the first home computer my father bought. He purchased two Atari BASIC programming manuals so I could learn to program. When I tried to copy some games, he told me I shouldn't, because it was prohibited by copyright law. At the time, I objected, but agreed to obey the rules. I professionally entered the computer industry in 1996, working for Packard Bell NEC/Zenith Data Systems, and purchased a NEC Pentium workstation with Windows 95. After about two weeks, I was fed up with it, so purchased a license to BackOffice 2.5, which I ran for about a year. At the time I was looking for this alternative to Windows 95, my friend Lynn showed me a copy of Red Hat 4.1. Another friend I worked with (Mike) later introduced me to Slackware, with which I finally replaced my BackOffice software. These days, I use Red Hat.
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