I, Roderick B. Greening, apply for MOTU.

Who I am

I am 37 years old, residing in St. John's, NL, Canada - the oldest city in North America. I currently work for a national Telecommunications company, as regional manager. I am responsible for ensuring the successful deployment and delivery of our various voice and data services, many of which I helped develop over the last 10+ years. Our internet services (mail, news, web, etc) all run on Linux based systems, which vary from RPM based to Deb based.

I have been a user of Linux since about 1993. I have used Slackware, Debian, Red Hat, Mandrake (Mandriva), Gentoo and Ubuntu (Kubuntu). Over the last year, I have worked to switch my entire family and friends to use Kubuntu. This has been a rather easy task, considering these are non-technical people. Having a well built OS to start with, however, made the transistion very easy.

I am a Kubuntu Member since October, 2008, having been approved as a direct result of my help in updating packages necessary for the Intrepid Ibex release.

I like to read, everything from technical books (programming Qt, Python, etc) to SciFi/Fantasy, especially anything Star Trek related. At any one point I have about 7 books I am in the process of reading (I keep one in just about every room in the house and the office).

I am also a hobbist photographer, and have a Canon Rebel Xt. I have taken pictures for weddings, portraits, and other photoshoots, all purely as a hobbist.

My Ubuntu story

Prior to coming to Kubuntu, I worked on an overlay for Gentoo, which provided KDE enhancements (qt-copy patches, compiz/beryl, etc) to the Gentoo user base. Also, prior to my switch I was working on obtaining my developer status (similar ot MOTU) within the KDE Herd.

I switched to Kubuntu as I desired an easier system to maintain and manage, both for myself and for my friends and family, and Gentoo was not suitable for that task. Given Ubuntu's popularity, I gave it a try and haven't looked back.

My first Kubuntu CD was ordered via shippit, and it was Dapper Drake (6.06). I immediately installed it on my Acer 4912, and kept it dual boot with Gentoo, until I got all my minor issues sorted. I opened a few bug reports and worked on fixing my issues. At this point, I never knew how to package deb's, but I knew how to patch from source, and eventually submitted a fix or two to the Kubuntu team.

It wasn't until much later that I got the real developer itch back. I was using Hardy Heron, and having some difficulties with Knetworkmanager. I decided to jump online and ask Riddell how I would go about attempting to fix it. The rest is history. From that point on, I was patching, fixing bugs, updating packages and even helped get qt and kde packages ready for Intrepid Ibex.

My involvement

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

Areas of work

Let us know what you worked on, with which development teams / developers you cooperated and how it worked out.

Things I could do better

Plans for the future

General

What I like least in Ubuntu

Please describe what you like least in Ubuntu and what thoughts do you have about fixing it.

Comments

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Endorsements

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TEMPLATE

== <SPONSORS NAME> ==
=== General feedback ===
## Please fill us in on your shared experience. (How many packages did you sponsor? How would you judge the quality? How would you describe the improvements? Do you trust the applicant?)

=== Specific Experiences of working together ===
''Please add good examples of your work together, but also cases that could have handled better.''
=== Areas of Improvement ===