I am a native of Northeast Kansas and lived most of my life in the wonderful sunflower state. I grew up on a corn/soybeans farm near Hiawatha, KS (we farm about 1800 acres), went to Kansas State University and got a degree in Agriculture Technology Management. I also received minors in Agronomy and Computer Science at K-State.
In June of 2007, I took a huge leap of faith and moved to Oregon. I left my whole family and all my friends behind to take on a dream job at Oregon State. I’m currently the Lead Systems Administrator at the OSU Open Source Lab and help make sure important open source projects keep their servers running!
Professional Career
My professional career started at RHS, Inc. in Hiawatha, KS in 2003 as a security analyst and all around tech guru guy. Believe it or not, but I was also a farmer and worked with my dad while I had my IT job at RHS. It seemed quite strange being in IT and farming at the same time. In 2005 I moved back to Manhattan, KS and worked for the Enterprise Server Technologies group at K-State as a full-time UNIX Admin. Nothing like being in charge of the campus-wide email system to give you some experience. In 2007 I was blessed by the opportunity of getting my dream job at the Oregon State University Open Source Lab as their lead system administrator and have been there ever since.
Open Source
In the digital world, I’ve been involved with Gentoo Linux since 2003 helping maintain and design their server infrastructure. I haven’t been helping them as much in the last few years but I still help them out when I can. I also help maintain a few packages in Gentoo which is a lot of fun! Getting involved with Gentoo was the catalyst that got me really getting involved in online communities and open source.
Its actually because of my involvement with Gentoo that got me to where I am today. Gentoo was one of the first projects hosted by the OSL back when it started and I got to know quite a few of the OSL’ers back then. Its funny to think I went from being a client to the provider! It’s certainly amazing the networking connections you can attain via online friends.
Music
While I K-State, I was a member of the KSU Marching Band for four years and played mellow phone, flugel horn, and trumpet (not at the same time obviously). Being in the KSUMB was probably the most important decisions I’ve ever made in my life. It opened me up to a great group of friends, leadership skills, networking, and so much more. I also became a member of the Epsilon Pi chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi at KSU and did volunteer work to help support the marching band.
Jazz music has always been important to me and I treat it was a gift for me to express myself in completely different way than normal. I’ve been playing trumpet since the 5th grade and I have yet to stop playing! I had the pleasure of playing in several jazz ensembles at K-State. As a student, I was in Lab A, Concert Jazz Ensemble (the premier band), and the Latin Jazz Ensemble. When I returned back to K-State with my UNIX career, I returned to the jazz scene and played in Lab B for several years and helped mentor young jazz students. To this day I dream of being in a band that plays gigs every other week. Maybe someday!
Credits
The header image I use on my site is courtesy of Jennifer Bebensee who is a local Corvallis photographer.
