Me
I’m Edward Ritter, sometimes Khailin, Bananalope, or Teal Paine. I grew up in Northern Virginia and Memphis, Tennessee. My first computer was a Timex Sinclair, though I’d used Texas Instruments TI-99a’s at school along with Apple II’s. I’ve played Pong on a real Odyssey. I’ve played endlessly on my Atari 2600. I’ve owned several Commodore 64‘s,128′s and Amigas. I’ve run my own BBS, and know how slow 300 baud is.
How did I learn to program?
Mostly from school or from magazines, back when they had programs to type in at the back of the magazine. I’d enter it all and then tweak it and modify it. I never got into compiled languages. BASH and Perl helped me admin boxes, so those were the next to learn. PHP came in when I was learning to write web pages and wanted to make them more dynamic. I’ll probably hit Python and Ruby one day, just to keep current.
How did I learn to do system administration?
I’ve always been the guy at the office that knew way too much about computers. I was often asked to look at an issue before anyone called the help desk. Even when I started at AOL, I gravitated towards the department where I could keep learning and growing my skillset. I’ve worked on a bunch of different systems from Solaris, HP-UX to Tandem and Stratus modules. My first foray into FreeBSD was when my co-worker started a hosting company in his basement. After AOL, most of my jobs have been as a mixture of sys admin and web developer.
What languages do I know?
I know PHP, Perl, shell scripting, and some JavaScript (usually in relation to jQuery). I can probably bang out some Python or Ruby code if someone made me. I also am fairly good at LSL (a scripting language used in Second Life). I know and use (X)HTML and CSS very well.
What do I do in my spare time?
If I’m not hanging out with my wife and lovely daughter, I’m usually doing some sort of coding. I love to watch movies, build things with Lego. I play in Second Life, or sometimes in World of Warcraft. I love to read fantasy and horror novels (vampires, Cthulu, elves, etc.) I work on this blog when I get spare time. I love to cook and bake, and have my own stand mixer with attachments (it even makes great ice cream!)
