Gerowen

Personal Information

About Me

Me and Linux

I first started using Linux back in 2005 when I was a senior in high school transitioning into college. At that time I was introduced to Mandrake Linux, and a love affair with Linux began. Over the years I've bounced around using Mandrake/Mandriva, Fedora, Debian, and finally Ubuntu. I've never had a particular distribution that I didn't like, but over the years I've realized that whenever I engage with the Ubuntu community I seem to get more of a response whether I'm asking for help, or offering it. The operating system is easy to use and the code of conduct is fairly straight-forward and easy to understand. I've been running Linux exclusively for years, and regardless of what distribution I happened to be tinkering with, I've always had a place in my heart for Ubuntu after I tried it back in 2006. Lately, I've decided to run Ubuntu on all of the machines in my house exclusively because it offers the best of "out-of-the-box" functionality and ease of use for non-technical people such as my wife, as well as all of the regular Linux goodness.

Just Me

I'm just a regular guy. I live in the woods of Kentucky. I served in the military for a while and enjoy a variety of things. I take pride in doing most of the maintenance on my car myself. I'm a pretty good shot with a rifle, and enjoy working with firearms. I like video games and computers, and have a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. I cherish freedom and individual liberty above all else.

Contributions to the Community

Summary of Contributions

• Regularly convert Windows users to Ubuntu, and ensure positive results and support after the fact
• Hand out Ubuntu related literature and CDs
• Frequently leave the #ubuntu IRC channel open and watch for issues I can assist with, and offer my help when appropriate
• Make daily stops by the Ubuntu Forums to offer help in any way I can
• Share scripts and software I create that are of reasonable quality with online communities

• Original author of the Wiki page on "Recording System Sound in Ubuntu": https://wiki.ubuntu.com/record_system_sound

Online Communities in Which I Participate

Note: Some links in this section may go to non-Ubuntu websites

• Ubuntu Forums (http://ubuntuforums.org)

  • Username: gerowen

• LinuxQuestions (http://www.linuxquestions.org)

  • Username: dudeman41465

• Neowin (http://www.neowin.net)

  • Username: Gerowen

Explanation of Some Contributions

As a person with no real formal training in programming languages, I have always felt like I should give more to the Linux community as a whole. Since I don't have the skills to review and edit code, I've tried to be as helpful as I can in other ways. I've written walkthroughs, scripts to automate daily tasks, and I frequently visit various Linux forums including the Ubuntu Forums, Linuxquestions.org, and more so I can help newcomers to the Linux community as much as I can.

As an IT Specialist in a county of less than 12,000 people, I know a lot of the local people. I've worked on personal computers, and if reasonable for the customer, after conferring with them, have successfully converted quite a few people from Microsoft Windows to Ubuntu Linux with great success and good reviews after the fact. I have handed out Ubuntu Linux CDs and documentation when available, and let people use a guest account on my own computer to try it out before having it installed on their machines. I chose Ubuntu because, especially for the average user, it is the easiest for a normal person to sit down and start using.

Technical Experience

Work

From early 2007 until late 2012 I worked as an Information Technology Specialist with the U.S. Army. I served as the primary IT guy for a brigade size element. I deployed to Iraq one time for a year. During my time with the Army, I was attached to a brigade of combat engineers, which meant that if it had to do with computers, I was "the" guy. I also worked for a university, prior to my service with the Army, where my primary duties were to repair and troubleshoot laptop computers.

Hardware

I have run miles and miles of CatV/CatVI cable, terminated it both in patch panels and with RJ-45 connectors. I have built servers from the ground up including both the physical construction, and installing and configuring their operating systems. I have built PCs from the ground up given a budget, and I have replaced components both in PCs and in server systems.

Software

I have experience with Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Exchange 2003 and 2007, Microsoft SharePoint, RedHat/Fedora Linux, Debian Linux, Ubuntu Linux, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. I have some basic experience configuring software RAID, mostly on Dell servers I set up in Iraq using the pre-packaged Dell software. I have set up and configured Windows domain controllers, Windows and Linux webservers, Windows and Linux DNS servers, Windows and Linux print servers, Windows and Linux FTP servers, Windows telnet services, and Linux SSH services. I have configured switches, and was at one time awarded for troubleshooting and correcting a connectivity issue that prevented two networks thousands of miles apart from communicating. I have a good working knowledge of basic networking fundamentals and have experience actually doing a lot of it. I have built web-pages from the ground up using both Microsoft Frontpage (back in the day), Microsoft Expression Web, NVU, Mozilla Seamonkey, and with regular text editors such as Geany or GEdit. I have some basic knowledge of Python, BASH, and HTML. I regularly develop scripts/programs to automate everyday tasks for myself using these languages.

Software and Scripts Written

These projects are mostly hosted on sourceforge, so be aware that any hyperlinks in this section will take you away from any Ubuntu website. They're mostly just scripts that make my life easier, and therefore don't warrant a full blown project page on Launchpad.

CheckMD5

Description

CheckMD5 is a Linux/Unix Bash script that calculates the MD5 checksum of a file, and compares it to an original either by selecting an original copy of the file, or manually entering the checksum of the original file, such as when it is provided on a website from which you downloaded a file.

The purpose of this project was not just to tell you what the checksum is, but to quickly compare it to an original and give you a "Go" or "No Go" status so you don't have to manually spend time comparing the two checksums character by character, so you can verify that a file is or isn't good, and move on to more important things in your life.

The script depends on the programs "md5sum" and "zenity", which come standard in most flavors of Linux or Unix. It may also run in OSX since bash is available and it runs on a BSD/*nix kernel, but I don't have access to an Apple computer to test this.

PingChecker

Description

Note: I need somebody to test this on a Mac. It "should" work, but I don't have a Mac to test it out on. If you have time to test it, you can submit a ticket on the project page here with the results and we'll work it from there.

PingChecker is a tool I wrote to help myself with pinging multiple hostnames or IP addresses for the purpose of determining patterns. It takes targets from the user, stores them in a file, then pings those targets, exports the results to a text file and displays it to the user so they can save it somewhere else. There's a lot that can be done with this script(The version I actually made at work is different than this one), so I encourage you to open it up and edit it to suit your needs.

PyNuker

Description

PyNuker is a network stress testing tool written in python. Because it is written in python it should run equally well on any system that has Python version 2.x installed. It infinitely(until stopped) sends a string of text via a UDP packet to a target computer or network device in an effort to flood the target with so much useless traffic that it stops responding to valid requests.