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About Me

Prior to my junior year of high school, I attended an Into to Computers class at the local community college. Somewhat underwhelmed by state of the art Apple IIe's, I did not find them very useful. Most of class time was spent learning/programming BASIC.

PC capabilities changed rapidly, and a year later, I bought my own PC: a 10MHz Z80A, CPM based, luggable KayPro II. Though many applications were included, it lacked a programming language, so $50 Turbo Pascal by Borland filled the gap. (Back then, MS wanted an unreasonable $400+ for their programming languages and Borland's products were not only fraction of the price, they were faster and less buggy. Something seemed "dishonest" about the MS price and package but I did not yet understand why.) I spent summer nights after work, teaching myself Pascal from a book (internet connections were rare for home use, Google/Yahoo/etc had not been invented yet and my PC did not have a modem).

In college, I took a few elective programming classes: Fortan 77 on an HP mainframe and machine language for IBM 386 PC's. In the machine language class, we learned to write TSR's: terminate and stay resident programs-the pre-cursors to virus'.

After graduating (BS in Engineering Physics), I started my career at a small Idaho memory company, Micron Technology (fab engineer in the photo). As a photo process engineer who hates repetitive tasks, I automated many things:

• DCL scripting on the VAX for product processing
• Re-writing vendor software on automated microscopes (used for measuring circuit structures on wafers)
• Report automation also via DCL
• CSH, KSH, BSH scripting to manage job/recipe ftp file transfer to and from production equipment
• When PC's finally entered the fab and before the advent of html editors, our photo area information was managed on webpages via notepad (right click, view source, makes updates and save. Done!)
• Excel VBA scripts for process window analysis
• Excel VBA scripts for creating complex scanner recipes with a just a few mouse clicks and few number entries.
• Wafermap optimization software for identifying highest yielding wafer layouts.
• Now most of my time is spent in python and Java (and MS Excel VBA when absolutely necessary). I also work with Micron IS on fab automation applications.

I bought my first Intel based PC in the mid-90's and was constantly frustrated by the instability of the Window 95 and the other applications. A few colleagues and I dabbled with OS/2, but the industry went another direction. I then ran NT to avoid win98, followed by Win2k and eventually XP.

Linux did not catch my interest until fall of 2007. After re-installing XP for a 3rd time and applying "3rd party" ATI drivers, my laptop still experienced dreaded BSoD's. Frustrated, I explored/googled other OS possibilities. Later that evening, I "Live Booted" an Ubuntu 7.10 CD-ROM and created my first dual boot Ubuntu Gnome 2 machine.

• And the adventure began.

Using a PC was suddenly fun again. This open source stuff was amazing and I could not believe nobody in Idaho knew anything about it! I told/showed all my engineering colleagues, all my old OS/2 friends and anyone I could find that was remotely interested in adventure. Much to my dismay, nobody cared.?!!!

In 2008, I joined a monthly local Linux users group founded by Clint Tinsley. I attended when my schedule permitted and often presented on topics such as latest Ubuntu release, Compiz, Wine, GIMP, etc.

In 2009, I started teaching an Intro to Linux Class as part of the local community Education System. (Side note: Community classes attract a strange and diverse audience.)

Fall of 2011, Canonical made Unity the default desktop and the GNome devs decided to build GNome3. My community Ed classes typically started with a demo of several desktop enviros. With the 2011 session, I attempted to demonstrate KDE's sluggishness by installing it on my slowest laptop with the least amount of RAM. Though, I had tried KDE on couple occasions, I personally did not like it. It always seemed "sluggish" and all is of applications started with the letter K. However, after setting up KDE, Unity, legacy GNome 2.2 and GNome 3, I realized KDE 4.2(?) behaved quite nicely on older, slower hardware. Also, it was much more stable than the last time I tried it (anyone remember the early days KDE 4.0?) and much more stable and feature complete than Unity and GNome3. The best part: unlike the other desktops, I had "full control". From that point on, KDE became my desktop of choice.

Outside of computers, I also like mt/road biking, hiking, back packing, photography, wood working, home remodeling, travelling, and most things "high tech".

Kubuntu

Starting with Ubuntu 7.10 as a total Linux newb with almost no Linux friends, I appreciated Canonical effort to provide a simple Debian packaging environment. I have tried other distro and DE's, but I find Kubuntu is a good fit for myself as I can readily recommend it to potential new users and also say "I use it myself". The other distro's I have tried:

• Arch (still have it on one of my dual boot sessions)
• Fedora
• Opensuse
• A few flavors of Mint.

Future Goals

• Become a Kubuntu Member
• Become a Kubuntu Ninja
• Assist with fine tuning the Kubuntu ISO's by ensuring base packages are patched, installed and configured correctly.
• If ever my schedule permits, become a Kubuntu developer.
• Continue learning French

Testimonials

Note: If you have anything nice to say about this person, please do add it below along with @ SIG @ (no spaces). The @ SIG @ command will sign your name and date/time it after you "Save Changes".

Darin has becoming an increasingly necessary part of the Kubuntu team. His patience, kindness to confused new users, and his attention to detail as he learns to package are all wonderful to see. What I particularly appreciate is that he doesn't just do the easy thing, but the thing most needed. And if he doesn't yet know how to do that, he learns how. Darin is generous in the best possible way. -- valorie-zimmerman 2017-03-05 22:49:43

Darin has made himself known to the community in the past few months and is very keen to help out. He has been coming along to the weekly informal chats on Big Blue Button and is asking all the right questions He is also showing great promise and as time continues, will become an essential member of the team as his skills and confidence in those abilities grow and develop. I am very pleased to see he has decided to apply for Kubuntu membership and look forward to working with him in the future. -- clivejo 2017-03-05 23:41:31

CategoryKubuntu