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'About Me'

I am semi-retired and live in the north of England. My introduction to computers came in the form of a ICL ME29 mainframe in 1989. I had absolutely no computer experience. I didn't even own a personal computer at the time (and I didn't own one for another 15 years after). Within a year I was running the mainframe and writing small search programmes to cut down on the amount of "legwork" required to find accounts with a given set of circumstances. I bought my first pc (a laptop) in 2004 and started using Windows XP at that time. I've since moved through Vista to Windows 7, but along the way I became disheartened that a company the size of MS that had been writing operating systems for so long and yet could still be getting it so wrong. I tried Ubuntu in 2007, and although I liked what I saw, it didn't work very well with my hardware. I therefore persevered with Windows in its various forms. I finally had had enough of it and installed Lucid Lynx on my newer hardware (a Sony Vaio AR51SU) and was extremely pleased with how much worked "out of the box". I needed help at times and that help was forthcoming from the UbuntuForums - willingly and pleasantly, I might add. I was impressed with both Lucid Lynx and the community spirit offered at UF. I decided early on that I would try to help others in the same way that others had helped me. I have spent most of my spare time on UF giving help and advice where I thought I could. Most of my time has been spent in the Absolute Beginner, General Help and Installation & Upgrade forums trying to help people with booting problems/partitioning problems and with anything else that I thought I could give assistance. I have also taken part in the Maverick and Natty Testing Forums giving (but mostly receiving) help. I now run Natty Narwhal and am currently enjoying its new interface.

As I learn more I hope to play a greater role in taking Ubuntu forward to total world domination by means of bug reporting and testing new versions.