Ubuntu Wiki

About Me

I am born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. I currently work as a Software QA Tester/Workflow Engineer (I help to define how software we develop should work based on how an end user will actually use it) for a major international corporation. My primary expertise is in audio/visual applications, with a very broad depth knowledge and experience with many professional video/film production formats, non linear editing applications, etc. I have used pretty much all of the major non-linear editing platforms including Adobe, Avid, Final Cut Pro, Edius and others. I also have a limited background in sound design and audio editing using applications such as Protools and Soundforge.

My schooling background is actually in film/video production - not development/engineering/computers, and although I am very savvy with applications at the surface level, I am also well versed in PHP programming (I'm currently developing a database driven Facebook application and have designed a custom CMS from the ground up in the past) and have touched on a variety of other programming languages including C++, Python, and several others. I'm definitely not experienced enough to go off writing my own apps, but I know enough to be able to usually troubleshoot code and figure out what is going on when something is wrong.

I am familiar with all versions of Windows, Mac OS X, and have been using Ubuntu increasingly more heavily since 8.04. I spend nearly all of my personal time nowadays in Ubuntu.

Interests

My bottom line interest is to help make Ubuntu better. I want my desktop working and looking smoothly without problems - getting bugs fixed so that things work as expected is a higher priority to me than seeing new features implemented which just add more bugs on top of existing ones.

My primary interests obviously would be to help triage in video/audio related areas. I would also like to start digging into the kernel a little bit, and other general usability issues with the desktop. I am highly adaptable, so I expect that as I learn more I will move into new areas where I was not previously involved.

Timezone

Being in Chicago, I am in the CST timezone, although I am typically most easily available from 10-11:30pm CST if I need to get on IRC or other modes of communication without interruption.

Availability

Right now I have a lot going on so I might only have an hour or two per week to be involved, sometimes more and sometimes less. I am also trying to spread my time between different Ubuntu projects, including Bugsquad, Chicago loco, and writing occasional patches for applications where I feel compelled to do so.