Day 09 – What OS/distribution do you run?

My main computer runs Ubuntu. I haven't used it in months because I'm working on completely renovating my house and the house I'm renting while I do that has no internet (O_o) except for whatever my cell phone can provide, so I haven't set it up. My other main computer is a Toshiba M405 tablet laptop that dual boots Ubuntu and Windows 7. I use it the majority of the time nowadays and kind a go through spells where I only use windows or only use ubuntu. It also helps to have both when one of them feels crashing on me. I used a Powerbook G4 (aluminum 15.2") with OS X Tiger and it was great but, all in all, it got old. Windows XP, 2000, 98 are all junk in my eyes. I'd rather not have to touch them. Windows 7, with everything that Microsoft has copied from Apple and Linux and who knows who else, works rather well and as much as I hate to say it, I like using it....but don't get me wrong, I'd rather be in Linux.

Day 08 – Preferred method of communication with humans

It kind of depends on my mood and how awake I am at the time, but overall, I prefer text based communications most of the time. I'll call you if you have to, but I would rather text you or email you. IRC used to be one of my preferred ways of human contact but with less and less time, I don't get on at all lately.

Day 07 – Preferred smartphone platform. And which do you use?

I prefer android. I've been wanting to switch to it for awhile and haven't been able to because of the AT&T contract that I was in, but I finally paid the cancelation fee and switched to a no contract carrier. I've used windows mobile and it really didn't do anything for me, wasn't my style. I've used iphones for awhile and while they were great before android, they've lost my respect. The 3GS, to jailbreak, you have to plug it to a computer and run the software each time....it's horrible to have to pull out your laptop, hunt the proprietary usb cable down and run the software, while in your car, outside of a client, trying to get your phone running. Then you plug it in to the car charger, come out of the client and the phone used more power then it was getting and died again anyway.....
I used blackberry for under a month and it kept crashing on me and I ran out of space quick...but the camera flash was NICE.
So yeah, I'm on android now. Froyo and a phone that's in the middle of the specs spectrum but is as good or better as the 3GS that I had. It lets me do what I want, I'm not stuck to someone else's design ideas. Widgets, direct call and text buttons, direct link to a dropbox folder, all there. USB, Bluetooth and Access Point tethering without having to root it. I've been happy with it. The lack of a lot of space on the phone itself for data is kind of annoying, especially when I have 17MB left and it says I'm almost out of space, but oh well.

Day 06 - Primary geek fuel (snacks/drinks)

Water, Coffee, Tea.............Soda, in that order.
Pretzels, chips/salsa, pizza, ramen noodles (and the like (like that food where you peel off the plastic, poor some water, dump in the dried veggie things and heat it all up...that stuff)), in no particular order.
sleep. :-/

Day 05 - Quick nifty hacks you're proud of.

I once did a really crazy looking extension for a firewire cable in a computer using electrical extension crimp things.
I don't know, there's some things but I guess I'm not proud enough of them to remember them, and they are almost all hardware hacks.

Day 04 - Greatest application written to date

wait...what? I don't write applications...not *that* kind of a geek. I once wrote this really cool airline program in programming class that was pretty big and had a lot of options.....:-/

Day 03 - What does your day job involve?

I work for a small computer support company in Upstate, South Carolina. My day consists of working on computers in the shop and remotely (through RDP/VNC) and if all else fails, driving out to them and repairing or retreiving the computer.

I also quote clients on cost of upgrading or replacing anything from workstations, servers, media centers, networks, etc, etc.
I've had to replace laptop motherboards and power jacks before. There has been the occasional xbox and tivo. I've had to be under houses and in ceilings, running network cables, and just recently, worked with a company's maintenance department to install a wireless dish on their shop to extend the main buildings network. I manage an in-house asterisk server with one softphone and three hardphones connected to it (Calls come in to the system, ring all phones in the shop, after a timeout, they ring all phones as well as our cell phones, and after a further timeout, the call is forwarded on to Google Voice where the caller can leave a message and we receive text and email of the message to get back to them).
I'm more or less, give or take, available 24/7 but it's a lot better now then it used to be when it was just me and my boss.
Back then, I might have to spend all night working on a company's server, grab some breakfast in the morning at a McDonald's and drive 20 miles out to set the server up. Now we have someone else as well and it's not too bad.

Oh yeah, we handle email and websites but I don't get in to too much of that.
That's my business day in the life of me.

Day 02 – Preferred programming language?

I don't really program.  I really want to learn perl and python, and android.  Maybe one day when my life settles down I'll start learning.  I think half my problem is that I don't have anything I want to code,  or at least try to code.  When I was in high school, I was good at c++ and basic. 

Day 01 – Why do you consider yourself a geek?

I consider myself a geek because I have a desire to understand technology, how it works and how it applies to me.   I am a hardware geek and I am truly fascinated by older technology and it's use and repair.
To replace a couple capacitors on an RCA Victor tube radio and get rid of the minute long
buzzing before you hear music,  that is a great feeling.  Then do the same repair, replacing some capacitors, on an LCD screen and it comes back to life, you can start to see the similarities and differences between two completely different devices that are almost half a century old, and start to understand how it all works. 

When it comes to computers, I use Linux because we get along and don't step on  each other's toes as much as we used to.  I use windows because I have to, although I will give credit where it's due and say that I think Windows 7 is the best thing I've seen from Microsoft in a long while.  I've used apple before but we don't get along so well. 

I used an iphone 2g for a while before upgrading to an iphone 3gs (there was a brief stint with a blackberry but we won't go there) and now I have upgraded to an android device (lg optimus v).  The 2g, after jailbreaking it for tethering, was a  good but slow phone.  The 3gs was very fast but the interface's limitations were starting to wear at me.  Couple that with the need to connect it to a computer after every reboot  or shutdown (jailbroken) and the iphone was losing my respect, as a cell phone user and as a geek.  Android has been amazing.

I manage a self installed asterisk pbone server and am gaining more and more interest in telecommunications.  Programming languages have so far eluded me but I'll catch one sooner our  later.  Learning Cisco is my latest endeavor because I'm tired of not knowing what to do when I come across them.

I wrote this in bed , half asleep, on my phone....it still sounds good (to me anyways) so I'm posting it.