I have been around computers for some time, having been a computer operator, application developer (both for less than 3 years total), and system programmer (doing mostly OS or network-related development). I have done network analysis, computer security, systems control, database development, embedded systems development, support, and consulting. Nowadays I do not consider myself a programmer anymore -- I usually find programming extremely boring (and still go through some long debug sessions, looking at the source code... perhaps this is not completely consistent on my part... so I love it: consistency is a finite phenomenon on the time axis).

Although by formation a mathematician, all the gory math details have been forgotten due to lack of use. If I were now to be presented with a differential, I would most probably wonder if I should hang it on the wall, serve it with ice, or carry it to bed. And... Abel, Galois, Cantor, Dedekind, and others, are now all together in a forgotten group (which, hopefully, is abelian).

I am from the time a good piece of code would end up being provided for free to whoever needed it, and algorithms were routinely published on the technical publications (and I specially remember the ACM Collected Algorithms, and seeing a new one -- for me, at least -- published on the Communications of the ACM).

I first started using Linux at about 1994 or so, when I was moving out of Windows into OS/2 and still playing with Minix. At this point in time Linux (and Minix) could not really be used for the type of work I did, so it was mostly a way of spending the nights when I was home alone.

(I was then working primarily with MsDOS, NetWare, the eventual OS/2, and OS/390, I missed my old times with UNIX and -- bless it -- the marvelous Burroughs 6000 and A series, with one fantastic OS, and -- Hah! -- sources for *all* code available. And written in Algol, or variants (DCAlgol, Espol, NewP), without any assembler language available! Finally -- a system that one simply could not use assembler... but, unfortunately, the only one I have seen to date.)

As far as I can remember, I have used base Linux, Slackware, Red Hat, Debian, SuSE, Gentoo, Mandrake, and Ubuntu (perhaps other distributions, but they are lost in the mists of Times Long Past. Blame my age). Until I found Ubuntu, all of the distributions came, stayed for a while, and moved off (except Debian, which I still use on my firewall). [please note that this does not mean that one distribution is better or worse than another, just that I felt more comfortable with Ubuntu and Debian.] Well, Knoppix is always with me, in a DVD...

Now I think it is time to pay back to the community that provides us with Linux and relatives. Unfortunately, my time is sort of restricted, with my family, dogs, and professional life (in this order, although my Significant Other has some serious doubts about the ordering).

So... I try to help on generic triaging, and on the Evolution* and coreutils packages (I cannot do Evolution-Exchange because I do not have an Exchange account, which makes it much more difficult to even understand the issues). It is basically bug triaging, lots of QA, and the eventual patches, test builds, and package updates. After an unfortunate incident with Usplash I decided not to help on those packages I did not have a good rapport with the developers/maintainers.

I am extremely private, Internet-wise. My real name should be of no concern on a virtual community, and might actually cause me some professional problems... And, following on privacy, my sex, religion (or lack of), nationality, colour (or lack of), etc, etc, are also completely superfluous.

Finally, my nick is my nick for two major reasons: (a) it is indeed a word in an old language [1] and means 'story', more correctly, perhaps, 'telling' -- you might look at it as a tribute to my ancestors; (b) it is *almost* a palindrome, which I find more interesting than a real one.

[1] (thank you, Micah!) הגדה
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