who am i

who am i

Now about me, I am 29 years old, and I love math, science, computers and my family. My maiden name is Earnest, and I grew up in Bradenton, FL. Kyle and I were wed on February 24, 2001. Here are pictures of the wedding.

I have two dogs Mister and Mojo. They were born June 5, 1999 and are male, fawn boxers. They are gorgeous dogs, and very sweet. Mister's nickname is Psyco because he's so crazy, and he likes to climb people. Mojo's nickname is Lover because he will sit with you and lick you until you're blue in the face. Here's a picture of them when they were puppies.

I run Slackware Linux on my computer at home, and we have a variety of different freenix flavors running on our home network. We have OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Debian Linux, Mandrake Linux, SuSE Linux, Red Hat etc. For more information about these Operating Systems visit BackWatcher, Inc. I installed Linux on my PC for the first time during the summer of 1996. This is when I started learning about Unix. Since then, I've used Solaris, FreeBSD, BSDi, and HP-UX on the job, and played around some with the home machines.

I work for Integralis, which is the leading security provider in Europe. Prior to Integralis, the company based in Connecticut was called Atlantic Computing. I was one of their first employees, and I've been there since August 1997. I've had the opportunity to play in the lab and work on numerous network configurations while supporting their customers. I enjoy helping other people and solving problems. I go up to Connecticut every other month or so to teach the Check Point certification courses to Integralis customers. I received my Check Point Certified Instructor (CCSI) certification in 2000.

When I first started for Atlantic, I was living in CT. Now I live in Florida again, and I'm working for them out of my home. I have a commercial cable modem account, and I use a firewall to firewall VPN to access internal resources. It took some time to adjust to working at home, but I think I've got the hang of it now. At first, I thought it would be all about discipline and making sure that I was working during working hours and doing other things during off hours. I would sit in front of my computer from 9-5 without budging except to eat and go to the restroom. It took me a few months to get used to this. But then I realized that if I was in the office, I would walk around the office from time to time and talk with coworkers for little breaks. And I would sit and talk to my boss for half an hour to waste time if it was a slow day. So, now I don't feel guilty about doing some laundry or starting dinner a little early if I'm not too busy. Sometimes, I even go down to the pool during my lunch break and get a little sun and swim. I find that it's easier to relax when working at home, so the day is not quite as stressful. I get more housework done during the week than I would working away from home, and I can be more productive because there are less distractions at home. In fact, whenever I go up to work in the office, I have a harder time concentrating now because I'm not used to having so many people bustling around me. It would probably take me some time to get readjusted to that type of environment again. So, I've come to appreciate working from home and enjoy it, and it only took me a year to get comfortable with it.

Another benefit to working at home, is that I don't have a commute to deal with. And it makes it easier for me to do things after work, when I don't have to leave the office by 4:30 to get home and eat by 5:30 to be somewhere else by 6:30. You get the idea. So, I started going back to school, and taking dance classes again. I'm taking one class at USF two nights a week, and a dance class occassionally. Part of the reason I started doing these things was because I had to get out of the house occassionally, and I'm really glad I did it. I'm hoping to get a BA in Math...although it may take me ten years at this rate.

I also joined the Hands On Tampa (HOT) organization in June 2001, which I think is a great way to volunteer for the community. HOT is a project of the United Way of Hillsborough County. I have been talking about doing something like this for a long time, and as soon as I found HOT, I was all over it. I spent a night surfing the web for the right group to join, and that's when I came across it. They make it really easy for busy adults to volunteer. They have a large variety of projects to choose from, and to keep getting their monthly newletter with the calendar of events, you only have to volunteer once every six months.

I've participated in five HOT projects as of March 2002. The first was for Meals On Wheels of Tampa, where we bagged 450 lunches on a Saturday. Over 800 people in Tampa receive meals each weekday. MOW of Tampa is private and community supported. It is not funded through federal, state or United Way monies.

The next project I volunteered for was the Pepper Patrol. This is a group that is trying to save the local ecosystem by removing foreign plants that were introduced into the environment that are negatively affecting native Florida vegitation which also affects native Florida wildlife. The day that I volunteered (another Saturday), we were removing air potato vines from an area near the shoreline in Ruskin. These nonindigenous, invasive vines were flourishing in this area, and choking the other native plants that were trying to grow there. It was a rewarding experience to save the strangled plants, and a great hands-on way to learn about the environment.

Third I volunteered for the Discovery Tutoring project in late September 2001. This was at the Egypt Lake Elementary School on a Saturday. I worked with a fourth grade class and we had a theme of The Three Little Pigs. We did some science experiments in small groups and build houses out of pipe cleaners, popsickle sticks or paper. There were three other volunteers and a fourth grade teacher working with about ten students in all. This gives the teachers the opportunity to try out various teaching techniques and provide a fun learning environment for the kids.

My fourth project was at the Lowry Park Zoo. We had about ten volunteers and we split up into two groups for the first part of the day. The first group cleared out an outdoor area to make way for a new aquarium sanctuary. I went with the second group, and we painted a room that houses the venomous reptiles of the park. Once these jobs were complete, we went to the camel stables and cleaned the stalls.

March 23, 2002 I volunteered for the Tampa Habitat for Humanity project. We spent six hours on a house reclamation, which means that we tore the house apart for any useful items for the Habitat store. These items are donated to the store then sold and the proceeds go towards building more homes for low income families. Tampa Habitat for Hummanity calls this their recycling program.

Return to my homepage.