About the Author

Family

My family tree is a little confusing, but let’s suffice it to say that I have a medium-sized family, of which I’m the youngest. My parents are James Sr. (Jim) and Jennifer, and I have six siblings, sorta. Not all of the siblings are physically related, but for the most part, we ignore that. I have two brothers, David and Chad, and four sisters, Melodie, Charity, Faith, and Laurie-Ann. That leads us to me, James Jr.

History

I was born in southern California, but spent my childhood in west Texas. While in Texas, I had many experiences that have shaped my life. I was one of those kids that was never really happy, always needing something new and interesting to do, but I couldn’t handle playing with other kids for too long. The private school I went to didn’t help my attitude much, but my parents were smart, and let me experiment with hobbies. They also had friends that taught me the basics of various trades (plumbing, electrical, framing, concrete, metal fabrication). The best things I remember about growing up are all centered around going to work with my dad, installing audio/video and telephone/paging systems. My mom taught me the basics of taking care of a home, but like most young boys, I didn’t much like it. In 1992, at the age of twelve, I recieved my amateur radio operator’s license - KB5UMQ, which I still hold. That was the same year that I met three of my siblings that I hadn’t ever seen before - David, Melodie, and Chad.

Halfway through my freshman year of high school, my family relocated to northern California. For the next three and a half years, I went to another private school, but this one actually made me work hard. After school and in the summers, I either worked for the local construction company, mostly hanging sheetrock, or for a local haying contractor, which also had a small fleet of transport trucks. I didn’t like the construction work much, but I learned a lot from it, so I can’t complain. Working on farm equipment and trucks was much more fun, and mostly, even harder work than hanging sheetrock. Five months before I was to graduate from high school, I was in an accident at work that put me on crutches for about a month. Fortunately, chronic arthritis in my right knee is the only permanent injury I suffered. Three days after graduation in June of 1998, I moved back to Texas to live with my brother David.

In 1999, I came up to Canada for the first time, and other than the snow and cold, it wasn’t bad. After my visit, I went back to Texas, but by then, I was talking reguarly to a woman I’d met in Ontario. By late 2000, I was back in Canada. In June of 2003, Gail and I were officially engaged, and I’m looking forward to getting married in the near future.

Update: Gail and I were married September 3, 2005, which you can read about in the Marriage entry.

What I Do

I’ve always been a techie, like my dad, and my brother. At the age of 7, I was writing BASIC programs on my TI99-4a, saving my code to cassette tapes. Not long after that, I put together an 8086 machine out of parts and got into DOS and batch programs. In the intervening years, I’ve learned various other languages: ASP (VBScript/JScript), PHP, JavaScript, CSS, (x)HTML, and XML in general. I’m not fluent, but I can find my way around Python and Java, and just barely do some C. I’ve learned the ins and outs of various operating systems from Windows 3.1 to Windows 2000, and various distributions of Linux, but primarily Red Hat.

I’m a geek of many trades, but generally, I develop web-based applications using mostly PHP and MySQL. Sometimes, I have to step back into the Microsoft world and develop something with ASP and Access, but I’ve managed to avoid that for most of the past couple years. Having gotten rid of all traces of Microsoft from my server farm, I now maintain half a dozen Linux servers.

Work

In 2001, Gail and I decided to start our own technology solutions business, Ticluse Teknologi. Since then, we’ve been building applications for organizations from both the public and private sectors. While I generally enjoy writing code, I find that the type of systems we are building are very similar, and the monotony rubs on me sometimes.

Update: Since January 2006, I have been operating the business under the name of Eidix Labs. I also do some renovation work under the name of Dereco Contracting.
Projects

Currently, I have the great joy to be able to work on my dream project, Open Genesis, around work, of course. Because Open Genesis is really an uber-project, I get to spend a little time dabbling in a lot of different things, like Project Gutenberg, FreeDB, the Open Directory Project, Wikipedia, etc. We’ll be getting an official site up for the project soon, and you can read more about it there.

A few friends and I have recently started the Eidix GNU/Linux Project, with the specific goal of creating a purely server-based Linux distribution. I’ve been running RedHat systems for years, but I’ve gotten tired of RPM and general bloat associated with generic distros.

Update: Eidix GNU/Linux development is currently on hold, but a beta release is available upon request for those interested in it.

Politics & Religion

When it comes to politics, I’m pretty middle of the road, but I do have distinctly formed opinions about some issues. Having grown up in a religious environment, I’ve been firmly steeped in various doctrines, but I’m not particuarly religious.