NIK TOWN: geek stuff

How I became a computer geek

Everyone has a different story about how they fell in to this crazy world of computers — this is mine.

My early experiences with computers were a means to one end: playing games. Everything I learned about computers was focussed on getting games to work. I learned to fix things whenever I broke something so I could continue playing. I wasted a lot of time playing games when I was younger. Not so much anymore. ;-)

I never really planned on making computers a career choice. I didn't take any computer science courses in high school. It wasn't until first year of university that I took a real computer science course, and only because it was a requirement for the general first year engineering program. That's when I found out I was pretty good at programming and stuff.

By that point I had become sort of familiar with DOS and Windows. UBC gave me the opportunity to become familiar with UNIX. The CompSci labs at UBC ran HP-UX and Solaris and the Elec labs used several different versions of Sun OS. I had to learn about UNIX to do my homework.

I've spent a lot of time in the labs, and after a while I found myself typing ls instead of dir and / when I meant \ (I guess UNIX grows on you). The longer I stayed, the more I was drawn in.

Ever since I took my first operating systems course at UBC, I've heard all about how UNIX is a real operating system, and how it's superior in so many ways. Now, I'm one of those geeks that run FreeBSD on a computer at home and read Slashdot. This is something that I would never would have even dreamed a few short years ago. This is my story... this is how I became a computer geek.

Programming

I've been programming in Java since the 1.0.x days and now spend most of my time in the Enterprise Java world. I'm completely sick of hearing about the stupid Java Pet Store application, but I have to admit the information in the Java BluePrints are pretty useful especially the design patterns. Aside from the Sun Java sites, I also check out TheServerSide.com from time to time.

I was lucky enough to cut my teeth on straight up, procedural languages like Fortran and C before moving on to object-oriented languages like C++ and Java. I don't think enough emphasis is given to the classical languages these days because everyone hypes up the hot, new languages. You have to crawl before you can walk, and progammers need to learn fundamentals before going into the object-oriented world.

Browsers and Email

I used to be a staunch Netscape advocate, but now I'm ambivalent to the whole browser war.

I use Netscape at home and I use Internet Explorer at work. For email, I use Netscape at home and Outlook at work. I like to keep things separated; it keeps me sane. I think I'd be a little more stressed out at home if I had to look at Outlook everyday at home too. It would remind me of all the work left to do at the office.

I use Microsoft products at work because it is easier, but I have to admit that Outlook is an excellent program (I wonder if Microsoft bought out some company to get the technology behind that program?).

As far as webmail goes, I have a Hotmail account, created when I signed up for MSN Messenger. I also have a Yahoo Mail account, which is much less prone to spam and offers as many (if not more) features. I use the Hotmail account as a way to receive offline messages from my MSN contacts and as a spam trap when signing up for things on various websites. I primarily use webmail from my ISP that gives me access to any messages on the server, which is really all I need.

Instant Messaging

I remember laughing at my friend Marty when he first told me about ICQ. Now, I use it more than he does. I still use ICQ because I've been using that the longest and I have a huge contact list that I would lose if I stopped using it.

I started using MSN Messenger because most of my friends use that at work. I like it's simple interface and quickness when sending messages. I also use Yahoo Messenger, but I only have a few contacts.

Lately I've been using Trillian. It's a multi-transport client program that lets you have a single contact list for all your different IM programs. I got tired of having 3 different instant messaging programs open at the same time.

ADSL

When I first got ADSL, it was still fairly new, and most people had not heard about it yet. My friend Jeremy told me to sign up for the waiting list just in case I wanted it. At the time, I was more than happy using my 56k modem. Now, I can't imagine going back.

DSL is hard to get, and I'm thankful that I did put myself on that waiting list because a couple months later when I really did want to get it, the phone company called and I was hooked up in a couple weeks.

I've been hosting web pages like this one on an old Pentium running FreeBSD for some time now. I wouldn't say it's been trouble free, but service has been really good and I can't really complain.

Free DNS

Domain names are nice things to have. Whether you are planning to serve web pages or you just want to be able to refer to your computer by name instead of IP address. I use Dynamic DNS for free hostnames for my computers like nikd.dyndns.org (one alias for this site). I also use XName.org for free DNS hosting for my real domain names like nikd.groop.ca (another alias for this site). I had to buy that domain name from the Canadian Internet Registration Authority. There are a number of registrars that will register a .ca domain for you including Webnames.ca based out of Vancouver, but I'm currently using domainsatcost.ca because they are cheap.

Internet Search

I use search engines a lot, but I don't need anything fancy. What I do want is fast results, and generally the fastest and most accurate on the web has been Google. When I'm looking for a specific site for a company, someimes I use Yahoo!

I usually use the fastest search engine I can find. If someone can show me faster ones than the ones I've listed here, I'd appreciate it.