My basic stats are: 31 years old, married, a fan of chocolate, classical music and the guilty pleasure of a cheesy murder mystery. I'm a first class grammar freak and a second class coder. But anything worth doing is worth doing right, so I want to improve and learn while giving back to a system I really believe in. The generosity I've seen in the Linux community in general greatly impressed me, and is worth putting my time and effort into. I'm not fluent in any computer language, but I've been hanging around the fringe since the mid 80s. However, my day job is as non-technical as it gets, so I've had to learn in my spare time.

     I'm a fiction writer from Missouri. I've been published a few times a long time ago, but am just now getting back into the game. I write everything, from travel reviews to flash fiction, and will soon tackle my first serious novel attempt. I have always enjoyed volunteer activities, my most recent was working behind the scenes (mostly) for our city's newspaper, contributing my opinions and working with the editorial staff and taking on new responsibilities with a writing group that helps and encourages beginners. I code for a MUD, and also help the admin tweak and uphold quality standards on code submitted by fellow volunteers. It has been a great outlet for me, as a chance to tell awesome stories in a different style, and I have learned LPC along the way. It's been years since I coded my first file, but I have come a long way. Sometimes I read over the old stuff just to giggle at where I've been.

     I imagine my contribution to the geek world will surely come from my editing skills. I am friends with some of the most brilliant and prolific geeks around, and I've learned they appreciate a good grammar check more than anything else. Apparently, computer geniuses often can't spell worth a damn. They are unusually prone to sentence fragments, split infinitives and run-on sentences. So be it, I have found my niche. What I lack in experience I make up for it by putting in the time and handling the grunt work so the Smarter Folks (tm) are freed up to do more important things. I'm most interested in helping with documentation, which works for everyone because I get to read the same help files I'd be poring over anyway.

     I have always been a computer enthusiast, but issues with previous Linux attempts kept me from making a permanent switch until Ubuntu came along. Part of this was a lack of friends who could help me when I got stuck and the man files didn't cut it, but also because the publishing industry is notoriously old-fashioned and unprepared for a world that doesn't use Miscrosoft Word. Yes. I rolled my eyes too, but what is one broad from the Midwest going to do about it? Ubuntu was exactly what I needed, a chance to learn and experiment while the things I really had to have ran smoothly. Openoffice finally caught up to MS Office in every regard, and I never looked back. Though I appreciate the effort Ubuntu developers put into making things work with minimal knowledge, I have made a point to make friends with my command line and study extra information on my own, because I want to better understand how things work. I am starting a blog with my discoveries and share my thoughts on different software I try while I try to find what suits me best, starting the first of September.

     The rest of 2007 I plan to spend completing projects and clearing my personal workload. 2008 will be a year of surging ahead on new and refreshing projects, with a much greater focus on my writing and coding. I have enrolled in a few classes this fall to help me be the best geek I can be.