TOPIC:

Well I might as well introduce myself as well...

My name is David, Im 18 and I hail from the wonderful(ly) fat, arrogant, all in all the best darn bully of a country in the world.. the U.S... I currently live in Coeur D alene Idaho.. where it just so happens to be below zero and I absolutely hate it here.. (I'm actually from Arizona which is pratically one huge desert.) Im in my last year of high school and I currently go to a specialized tech school for the first half of the day called Riverbend Academy, and then I go to normal school for the rest.

Job wise, I'm still a teen, so I get stuck with the crappy jobs. So saying that, I work at a retail store called Hastings. Before or after when I have some freetime, I have an internship with the school districts network administrator, where he lets me configure *some* of the security for the main network building and lets me input ideas and help with troubleshooting problems. In the past year, I have passed my net+ A+ and security+ with relative ease, and now Im heading for my CCNA. I want a career in engineering network devices and/or end up with a security consultant compay as a network security monitor.

Little how I got started with computers:
When I was little, I had a decent compaq laptop that had win95 on it.. i started to tinker around with things here and there, and ended up cracking my first password at the age of 9 :-D I didnt know at the time that getting access to the system.ini file where it showed my Dad's login password would only define my desktop and other unimportant tidbits, I thought it would let me get on the internet... mainly because my dad gave me 30 mins of supervised internet time, which gave me enough time to log on basically. After AOL dropped that lame designated time llimit you had monthly, I was allowed to spend a few hours(supervised) at a time.. then I realzized my true obsession: information. The internet was a gateway to everything I could ask for, and as a little kid, I thought it was amazing... that led me to reading more and more and playing around more and more. At the age of 13, my parents gave me some money to buy a computer, on the rule that I had to build it myself.. it took me a while, but I managed to get a crappy pentium celly up with 64 MB of ram and a copy of win98 up an thats when I started messing with basic.. Aftter that my knowledge and curiousity raised exponentially.. next thing I knew, I was showing my introduction to programming teacher my freshman year how to make fork bombs in windows.

Vices:
Brand new linux distro's, arguing politcs, computer manuals, wardriving and mountain dew(Im slowly weening myself off it :-D)

Dislikes:
People who like to argue, but only get angry and can never defend their point of view
Linux and Windows fanboys
Linux 2.4.* kernel
WEP
America
organized sports
and the list could go on forever...

Likes:
European Metal(I mean the freaking hard stuff)
basically everything computers(except debugging)
open source and open information
women
arguing
eating healthy and *trying* to stay active.. :/ (its hard when you have three latops, two desktops and a load of freetime)
Star wars
Xbox(only darn thing that I support from MS)

basically thats it.. god I feel young on this forum..

[This post has been edited by Jack Burgess, Forum Moderator, profanity has been removed]

Hello , I am 37 and live in Lawton Pennsylvania, USA. I have been a building contractor for 20 years and just hate it. I spent most of my teens and twenties partying and and living a day at a time.
My computer history is short but I have made alot of progress. I turned on my first computer (386) in '99 and in less than a week was off to buy a new one. Of course not knowing what I was looking for< I knew within another week that I had gotton ripped off. From that point on I just can't seem to get enough. I learn so much everyday that at times it is intoxicating.
Being a contractor it seemed that every customer I worked with was having trouble with their PC and I was spending more time working on their PC's than working on their homes. So i fugured maybe I should be building PC's instead of houses. I t might sound strange, but it seems to be much more rewarding to me building an awesome PC than a state of the art kitchen.
After working with computers a few years I was still missing some basic knowledge, or in other words, how exactly a computer works. It was keeeping me up at night wondering . So I enrolled for some courses and earned my A+ and NET+ certs. I was a good place to start and it filled in the gaps I was missing. One of my instructors turned me on to FIREWALL.CX and that how I got here
I just got my first server a few months ago and am currently persuing a MCSA cert. I am going for the knowledge more than the cert but hopefully the cert will get me in the door for an IT job. I understand that having a cert means nothing if you don't know your stuff. I spend massive amounts of time on research and testing. I can't stand not being to understand and fix a problem.
I manage a few small networks as well as my home network customers. I really want to jump full-time into the IT industry but the competition is a bit overwhelming. Most of these people grew up with a PC in hand and have the college diplomas to go with it. I am mostly self-taught with little accountable experience. But thats not going to stop me. I just love this stuff.

Some of my favorites:
- all types of autoracing
- being a father to my teenage daughter
- talking computing with my guru brother
- watching "24"
- listening to blues and souel (NORA JONES mostly)
- solving problems that IT techs can't..........lol


I THINK THIS IS A GOOD IDEA AND GIVES ME SOME INSITE AS TO HOW SOME OF YOU GURUS GOT STARTED!!!


To answer a question that many have asked, NO I am not cold (username: glacier)

Thats it in a nut shell
Patrick Snow

It is quite impressive to read about our members and I too think this thread was a wonderful idea.

So, I guess its my turn to contribute aswell and let you know who I am and where I came from

Born in Sydney Australia, I moved to Greece along with my family back in 1986. After completing high school, I decided to head back to Australia in order to get the type of education I wasn't able to get here in Greece - not because the education system is bad, but because I failed to get into the sector I wanted (electronics at the time).

My trip to Australia lasted 7 years, and I managed to complete my degree in Electrical Technology along with two diplomas in Network Support and Administration. While studying , I was able to work in the electrical engineering field, which gave me the opportunity to work with computers and slowly come to love them.

While in Australia I worked for the largest manufacturer of IVR (Interactive Voice Response systems) and Internet Banking servers and that's where my career started to slowly plot its way:)

My job back then allowed me to also travel all over Australia and New Zealand, discovering new cities and towns which I wouldn't be able to ever do so at my expense and for that I am really grateful as I've seen most of the two countries have to offer.

During that time, I started working with Novell Netware and really came to love the operating system for it's stability. My first certification also happened to be Novell's Netware 3.12 CNA, and then 4.11 and finally 5, after which I started looking at other O/S's in order to get a good taste of what the sector had to offer.

In fact, when I was considering registering a domain for my party, I was contemplating between Firewall.cx and Netware.cx, but decided that the first would allow me to analyse a broad range of firewalls, something the 2nd domain name was not able to offer, so on the 20th of June 2000, I registered Firewall.cx.

After 6 months, and having completed my CCNA, which at the time was a great achievement for me, I wanted to help other people who were in the same battle, and started working on this site.

As time passed, I finished my degree and 8 (if I remember correctly) certifications, so I decided it was time to come back to Greece and complete my army duties

Enrolled into the Greek army on the 29th of January 2002 and completed my service after 6 months - Having been born in Australia and spending most of my life there, allowed me to qualify for a reduced service, so instead of 12 months, I only did 6 :wink:

Having the army behind my back, I started looking for a job and scored a good one for a company that worked on a contractible basis for Silicon Graphics, aka SGI. The technologies we used were amazing as we worked on SGI's latest projects to produce the well known super computers which contain graphics cards with 2-4 gigs of ram and upto 14 dedicated processors! At the same time, I also started working part time (in the afternoons) for an institute as a CCNA instructor.

Because the company was a bit too small for me and I wanted to explore even more the networking sector, I decided to grab a golden opportunity and work for one of Europe's largest aluminum extrusion companies - Alumil, which is also were I am at the moment [but not for long... keep reading].

My latest job was a real eye opener. I got to practice all my theoretical knowledge here, having to support over 350 users, 5 wan connections, 12 Windows 2000 servers, and a wide range of Cisco products which include VPN concentrators, Routers, Voice Gateways, Call Managers, IP Phones, Concentrators [11500 series] and switches ranging from 1900 to 3550's.

While I love my current job, I have decided to leave it and start my own business along with a good friend. The new business will be dealing with IT and Internet services but I won't get into any further details.

My hobbies include electronics, and especially LED's (I love them!), traditional Greek music (for those who are Greek - pontian music) and dancing. I am also a member of a local pontian dancing group.

I love going out to the movies and eating at our well known for their food, greek taverns.

While I listen to all sorts of music, I dislike heavy metal music because I can't ever understand what they say, plus I need a few panadol's after to ease the headache

My favorite artist is Yanni [www.yanni.com], I simply love his music and am a big fan of his. I also like Enya, Vangelis, Mike oldfield and a few more artists.

Oh, I also am a Star Trek fan - I use to attend the Star Trek conventions that were held in Sydney every year!

Closing, while I love to play games, I try to avoid it as I prefer spending my time in a much more creative manner e.g working on this site:>, but I do have a game or two on my laptop, which also happen to be my favorite time killers - Unreal Tournament 2004 and Empire Earth!

Cheers,

Really nice to see where everyone has come from and what their interests are. I encourage more people to post to this thread.

Chris, I just finished a mind-numbing 8 hours of UT 2004.. playing Onslaught mode.


Cheers,

Hahahah, unbelievable ..... I spent 2 hours playing UT2004 today and I must admit, Onslaught mode is my favorite !!!!! And just for your information ... my UT2004 dir is around 7.5 gigs as I've downloaded all the extra maps one could possibly get for the game

Hi everyone and thanks to those who have taken the time to share a bit about themselves.

Myself? Well I am 30 in March and have only recently gotten into the IT industry (2 years ago) but have had an interest in computers since I was 7 or 8. Never actually used them as more than an office tool or games console (I love Age of Empires) until a few years ago I decided to try and get a foot in the door of the IT sector and get a helpdesk job. Got it and then got solo frustrated that I didn't know why certain fixes worked or what made things tick under the case... I could get all the answers from Google etc though. SO started my certification-fest.

As Windows is the most widespread corporate desktop OS I have started focussing on that. I also love the idea of being connected that’s why Cisco was another certification. But it won't end there because I love the idea of open source so I plan to learn more about Linux plus security and networking in general really interest me. My biggest problem is lack of time to learn all that I want to know.

I can actually remember going onto the Internet and browsing BBS before the web and being thoroughly excited when I came across the Anarchist Cookbook. In some ways its a shame that the web is as corporate as it is today but I do feel it is probably a necessary evil. Without the money and business opportunities that the web offered there would not be the investment made and thus it would not be a sustainable and growing environment.

Its sites like Firewall.cx with our community that keep the Internet real. Look forward to many more chats in the forum and hearing your success stories.

Oh and gl0bal is because I was born in New Zealand, moved to the UK where I met my Slovak fiancée, we shifted to Australia for a year and now are back in the UK.…

Chat soon