KurtvonFinck

Revision 1 as of 2008-05-28 23:16:51

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Launchpad:

[https://launchpad.net/people/mneptok mneptok]

IRC:

mneptok (freenode)

Email:

kurt@ubuntu.com

kurt.vonfinck@canonical.com

Location:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal Montreal, QC, Canada]

Who?

My name is Kurt, and I won't bog down this page with unnecessary personal details. If you want to know more about who I am as a person and what makes me tick, there are some external sites that may interest you. Among them:

[http://www.mneptok.com/ My website]

[http://blogs.gnome.org/mneptok/ My GNOME blog]

I'm a longtime free software advocate, however with a significant streak of pragmatism. I promise to understand and respect your principled position if you promise to understand and respect my pragmatism. Free software is a big tent.

What?

I'm employed by [http://canonical.com Canonical] as a Senior Ubuntu Systems Support Analyst. It's a fancy way of saying I fix Ubuntu on servers and desktops, and I'm fortunate enough to be paid to do it.

I'm also an active [http://gnome.org GNOME] Foundation member, although perhaps less so than in past years. I serve as part of the all-volunteer sysadmin team, mostly handling account requests and changes. I've been know to futz with GNOME's Mailman instance, as well. I also run the bots for the sysadmin IRC channel.

In the Ubuntu community I'm most active on IRC, where I serve as part of the ops team in the official channels. You can find me using the nick "mneptok." I'm happy to help users when I can, I only ask for a little understanding of my professional commitments to Canonical's paying customers. IOW, I may not /msg back in the first 12 seconds. Grab a juice box. Or a nap.

If you're a GNOME hacker or user, you can find me using the same nick on GIMPnet, the GNOME IRC network. I can be found in #sysadmin.

My status in both communities gives me a unique position to facilitate both conversation and action between the two. I consider this my privilege to serve, not a shoulder epaulet denoting some perceived rank. Feel free to ask if there's anything you think I may be able to do to help either project's interactions with the other.

How?

If you're interested in my free software interests, I use [http://www.gnome.org GNOME], [http://icculus.org/openbox OpenBox], and [http://enlightenment.org/ E17] to get my GUI world running. I have a somewhat unhealthy deep affection for [http://zsh.sourceforge.net/ the Z shell], where I spend most of my day. I'm beginning to realize I have a [http://bazaar-vcs.org/ Bzr] addiction. My answer the the ancient Unix "what editor do you use?" litmus test makes most people squirm.

I use nano in the shell from years of pico keybinding familiarity (thanks pine!) and [http://jedit.sf.net jEdit] for a GUI editor.

You see, my favorite programming language is the one that results in the best implementation of the desired goal. I favor function over form, but will happily take both in equal measure. If it's light, clean, stable, and functional, I'm a happy man. I only wish I could demand the same of my own body.