Fat Jez
16-02-2004, 01:06
Since everybody else seems to be belatedly introducing themselves, and I don't ever seem to have done the same, I thought I had better make ammends.
My "real" name is Stephen Webber. I was born in Edinburgh in 1976, and lived there for the first 11 years of my life. My father got a job at the Sick Childrens' Hospital, and the whole family moved through there, settling in a small town called Milngavie (pronounced Millguy). I went to school there, and then onto Strathclyde university in 1994, graduating 4 years later with an upper second in Electronic and Electrical Engineer.
During my time at university, the internet was not as big as it has now become. The standard web browser was Mosaic, with Netscape 1 only just beginning to make an appearance. Javascript and flash were still just twinkles in their inventors eyes and to get an email address meant you had to use Unix, which I had to teach myself the basics of. Fortunately, I had been using an Amiga for some time, and Amigados is not so very difficult from Unix - many of the commands are the same, and both had a similar approach to system directorys - devs, c (bin), libs (library files), etc. It used to amuse me to see the younger students queuing for hours to check their mail on one of the few PC equipped labs when I could go straight onto a SunOS system almost immediately.
From Uni, I was fortunate enough to gain a position on Orange's graduate training scheme, forcing me to leave my native Scotland behind and move to Bristol. There were a number of culture shocks for me - being kicked out of the pubs at 11 o'clock being one of them. It is also a sad fact that I have probably become more Scottish as a result of moving down here, since outside of work there are sadly many bigotted people who look down on you (although the majority do not).
At the end of the grad training scheme, I secured a job in the Operations directorate, where I now look after and maintain the Unix based systems which run the services that many of you now use. Suffice it to say, that if you are an Orange customer and you do any of the following, you are using systems that I currently or have supported previously- switch your phone on, receive a call, send/receive a text message, make a prepay call, phone customer services, use gprs, etc. I could go on, but you would probably get bored very quickly. It may also surprise you to know that there are only 8 of use running all these systems, which probably number over 150 running HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, Redhat Linux and SCO.
I came into PC's relatively late, only having owned one for about 2 years now, but have always built my own. I have built 4 unique systems, 2 of which are now owned by other people. I'm also a serial upgrader, although the machines I now own have had a relatively stable config for a while now.
Right, that's pretty much all about me. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you all about on the forums.
Cheers,
Stephen
p.s. The real Fat Jez can be found here (http://www.fat-jez.myby.co.uk/me_and_jerry.jpg), being held by yours truly.
He belongs to neighbours of my parents, and his name is Jerry. As you can see from the pic, he is a large moggy, and so my mum started calling him Fat Jez, a bit of a micky-take of Fat Les who had a dodgy hit with Vindaloo a few years back. I needed an online name when I started gaming, and Fat Jez seemed as good as any.
My "real" name is Stephen Webber. I was born in Edinburgh in 1976, and lived there for the first 11 years of my life. My father got a job at the Sick Childrens' Hospital, and the whole family moved through there, settling in a small town called Milngavie (pronounced Millguy). I went to school there, and then onto Strathclyde university in 1994, graduating 4 years later with an upper second in Electronic and Electrical Engineer.
During my time at university, the internet was not as big as it has now become. The standard web browser was Mosaic, with Netscape 1 only just beginning to make an appearance. Javascript and flash were still just twinkles in their inventors eyes and to get an email address meant you had to use Unix, which I had to teach myself the basics of. Fortunately, I had been using an Amiga for some time, and Amigados is not so very difficult from Unix - many of the commands are the same, and both had a similar approach to system directorys - devs, c (bin), libs (library files), etc. It used to amuse me to see the younger students queuing for hours to check their mail on one of the few PC equipped labs when I could go straight onto a SunOS system almost immediately.
From Uni, I was fortunate enough to gain a position on Orange's graduate training scheme, forcing me to leave my native Scotland behind and move to Bristol. There were a number of culture shocks for me - being kicked out of the pubs at 11 o'clock being one of them. It is also a sad fact that I have probably become more Scottish as a result of moving down here, since outside of work there are sadly many bigotted people who look down on you (although the majority do not).
At the end of the grad training scheme, I secured a job in the Operations directorate, where I now look after and maintain the Unix based systems which run the services that many of you now use. Suffice it to say, that if you are an Orange customer and you do any of the following, you are using systems that I currently or have supported previously- switch your phone on, receive a call, send/receive a text message, make a prepay call, phone customer services, use gprs, etc. I could go on, but you would probably get bored very quickly. It may also surprise you to know that there are only 8 of use running all these systems, which probably number over 150 running HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, Redhat Linux and SCO.
I came into PC's relatively late, only having owned one for about 2 years now, but have always built my own. I have built 4 unique systems, 2 of which are now owned by other people. I'm also a serial upgrader, although the machines I now own have had a relatively stable config for a while now.
Right, that's pretty much all about me. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you all about on the forums.
Cheers,
Stephen
p.s. The real Fat Jez can be found here (http://www.fat-jez.myby.co.uk/me_and_jerry.jpg), being held by yours truly.
He belongs to neighbours of my parents, and his name is Jerry. As you can see from the pic, he is a large moggy, and so my mum started calling him Fat Jez, a bit of a micky-take of Fat Les who had a dodgy hit with Vindaloo a few years back. I needed an online name when I started gaming, and Fat Jez seemed as good as any.