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jonwHello,
This is a sticky post, so pay no mind to the date on it.
I live on beautiful Vancouver Island - the warmest place in Canada. I have now, and have always had, dogs. I am a Linux systems guy that has been working in cybersecurity for about 10 years. I am a GenXer and in late career that has worked remotely from my house, wherever that has been, for over a decade. I have lived for significant amounts of time in Ontario, Alberta, Nova Scotia, and now I intend to live the rest of my days out on the island.
My first hands-on tech was a Commodore Vic 20 that my parents bought in the early 80s. That lead to Windows 3.0 on 6 disks, then to running several BBSes in the 80's and 90's participating in several FTNs in addition to the grandaddy Fidonet. I still ocassionally fire up a BBS, telnet these days, to play door games I loved like LoRD and to check in on the seemingly never-ending bun fight in the Fidonet SysOp echoes. I even once wrote a bridge between Fidonet and forum software because that was so much easier to navigate than your typical BBS echo set up. I even got boingboinged (way cooler than slashdotted, imo).
I then went to college for a computer diploma which was the only option outside of "computer science" at the time, discovered ColdFusion when the web became functional and set up my first Linux server for my personal email in my basement using some early Debian. Laptops came on the scene then but wifi was not functional unless you could get the Windows firmware binaries running. At the time that was accomplished using ndiswrapper and the only distro I could get that to work with was Fedore Core 4. Ubuntu was yet to come out, and when it did I switched to it and have rarely looked back.
I landed my first actual full-time Linux sysadmin job around 2005 and that has been my career trajectory ever since. I grew up with the indie web because there were no Googles, Facebooks, etc. I have come back to it because living through the centralization of a decentralized system is both painful and terrible to behold. I do not know why humans view each other as prey, as things to be exploited, but we do and the surveillance aparatus that the internet has morphed into sucks.
I also have an addiction to motorcycles. Not a "I want to go fast and die in a fierey crash" addiction, I'm more into big cruisers. But I probably will die in a fierey crash regardless.
On a non-technical side, at various points along the way I became a Freemason, a Canadian Armed Forces veteran, and a very amateurish writer.
This is a sticky post, so pay no mind to the date on it.
I live on beautiful Vancouver Island - the warmest place in Canada. I have now, and have always had, dogs. I am a Linux systems guy that has been working in cybersecurity for about 10 years. I am a GenXer and in late career that has worked remotely from my house, wherever that has been, for over a decade. I have lived for significant amounts of time in Ontario, Alberta, Nova Scotia, and now I intend to live the rest of my days out on the island.
My first hands-on tech was a Commodore Vic 20 that my parents bought in the early 80s. That lead to Windows 3.0 on 6 disks, then to running several BBSes in the 80's and 90's participating in several FTNs in addition to the grandaddy Fidonet. I still ocassionally fire up a BBS, telnet these days, to play door games I loved like LoRD and to check in on the seemingly never-ending bun fight in the Fidonet SysOp echoes. I even once wrote a bridge between Fidonet and forum software because that was so much easier to navigate than your typical BBS echo set up. I even got boingboinged (way cooler than slashdotted, imo).
I then went to college for a computer diploma which was the only option outside of "computer science" at the time, discovered ColdFusion when the web became functional and set up my first Linux server for my personal email in my basement using some early Debian. Laptops came on the scene then but wifi was not functional unless you could get the Windows firmware binaries running. At the time that was accomplished using ndiswrapper and the only distro I could get that to work with was Fedore Core 4. Ubuntu was yet to come out, and when it did I switched to it and have rarely looked back.
I landed my first actual full-time Linux sysadmin job around 2005 and that has been my career trajectory ever since. I grew up with the indie web because there were no Googles, Facebooks, etc. I have come back to it because living through the centralization of a decentralized system is both painful and terrible to behold. I do not know why humans view each other as prey, as things to be exploited, but we do and the surveillance aparatus that the internet has morphed into sucks.
I also have an addiction to motorcycles. Not a "I want to go fast and die in a fierey crash" addiction, I'm more into big cruisers. But I probably will die in a fierey crash regardless.
On a non-technical side, at various points along the way I became a Freemason, a Canadian Armed Forces veteran, and a very amateurish writer.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-02-01 12:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2026-02-01 03:20 pm (UTC)Hello,
I found you, and others, by using the search feature for similar interests. I’m not sure which one turned you up as it’s not really clear how the searches match people and groups, but it seemed to work as we do have some things in common.
I had hoped to find some groups with like interests and get to know people there but there doesn’t seem to be a groups listing to browse that I can find so it’s a bit hit and miss using search.
I just really miss the days before the internet oligarchs. I definitely had a LJ account back in the day but it seems less fun over there now so I’m here instead. I’m not too sure of the culture here so I apologize it’s unusual to just follow someone out of the blue.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-02-02 03:49 pm (UTC)It has been so awful to behold. And I believe the answer you're looking for there is capitalism, with a sprinkling of patriarchy and a dash of religion. But it seems to be mostly capitalism trying to endlessly extract from everyone and the absolutely disgusting people stoking the resentment of that and helping to cathect it onto others, instead of people understanding the violence of the system. Ugh. It's not good but what you wrote here is such a lovely way to put it.
Anyway, I'm not a computer person, I'm a musician and an artist and have always been nerd-adjacent so I added you. If I'm not your cup of tea, no worries about adding me back.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-02-02 06:41 pm (UTC)Yes, capitalism is definitely the driving force. I am Canadian, so we are slightly less capitalistic than our southern neighbour, but not by much. I fully understand people need money to survive in this world we stupidly built for ourselves, but the collection of money for money's sake is abhorrent, sociopathic and anti-social. It would be far less possible to hoard so much wealth without social media, but here we are.
I approve of nerd adjacent. Tech people tend to all see problems the same way and I find that having artists in my life (including my wife) gives me better perspective and sometimes better solutions.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-02-02 07:15 pm (UTC)We are definitely at extraction ground zero, and it sucks that I feel like we've spread this toxic American capitalism throughout the world. It is all about the collection of money for money's sake here, and it's awful. And yes, social media has definitely had a hand in all of this.
It's true! Artists also need nerd-level tech support to pull off our visions. I've done a lot of successful intersectional collaborations with tech people.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-02-02 07:19 pm (UTC)lol...definitely. I try to be moderate about it. It is hard because Trump is such a breathtakingly huge dickhead with all his threats against us. I even lean to the "not so nice" side because I see that he won the popular vote in 2024 - his second run isn't some fluke of the electoral college. But, I am an old and have tons of friends and family in the US that certainly do not want this, so I have hope they will prevail and hopefully learn something about the importance of turning out to vote along the way.
I am always happy to help out artists so if you think I can help with something webby or payment processing or something like that, lemme know.