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About Me
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I am a late-20s early-professional hardware and software enthusiast. This
enthusiasm primarily extends to embarking on personal projects and sharing the
experiences generated by those projects with the larger community through proper
implementation and detailed documentation.


Linux
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My initial foray into Linux was in 2006 with a live CD of Ubuntu 6.06 I got from
a magazine at the library. Windows Millenium Edition was simply too much for my
lowly Pentium 4 and 512MB of RAM, and the immense OS size was doing no favors
for my 32GB IDE hard drive. I had to get out.

It was a wild time. I explored a lot of the differences between Windows and Unix
at the time, attempting to better understand what exactly I had uncovered. I
wrote a few tutorials on how to properly setup FTP and how to build a media
server - my first was a music jukebox I setup off a garbage Dell laptop with a
busted backlight I got for free from a family member.

It was fun, different, and exciting.

My transition looked like...
Ubuntu (2006)
Windows Vista (2007)
Mint (2008)
Windows 7 (2009)
Windows 8 (2012)
Arch (2013)
OSX (2014)
Arch (2018)
LFS (early 2019)
Arch (mid 2019)
KISS (late 2019)


As you can see, I left Linux in 2009. This was mainly due to my newfound
fascination with computer hardware and gaming - gaming on Linux was in a sad
state in 2009, and continued for several years after. But alas, the prodigal son
has returned. And with my Nintendo Switch in hand, I don't think I will ever
really return to PC gaming with the same vim and vigor as before.


Tech
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I have been a tech enthusiast since around early 2009 when I built my first
computer. The whole thing started because I wanted to play Civilization 4 and
the PC I had at the time was woefully inadequate for the task. LGA 775 still
holds a special place in my heart. I maintained multiple high-score records
boards on overclock.net, and built a few PCs of varying form-factors and price
levels. My time in the PC enthusiast community was spent mainly educating people
on the structure of a motherboard and CPU, how those pieces connected to each
other, and how their relationship could be exploited for improving performance.

I transitioned away from the community around 2014 to focus more on my
education.


Education
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I enrolled at Michigan State University in 2012, initially pursuing a degree in
Advanced Mathematics with additional majors in Physics and Astrophysics.

I quickly dropped Astrophysics in my third semester - it was simply too much
work for very little payoff.

I switched to a dual-degree in Advanced Mathematics and Physics my sophomore
year, and dropped Physics the following semester - it was unfulfilling and I
didn't appreciate the teaching practices of MSUs Physics faculty.

My junior year I dropped Advanced Mathematics after brutally failing the hardest
undergraduate course in mathematics MSU offered: Number Theory. To this day, the
entire field still baffles me. That class taught me one thing: I am terrible at
maths. So instead I picked up two philosophy classes.

Changed my life!

Considering I had what was mostly a first-year PhD student education in
Mathematics and most of the undergraduate program finished off, I tacked a
Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics onto my BA in Philosophy.

My mathematics experience extends across most of the major fields - I've done
complex analysis (a baby-course on the subject), knot theory (my capstone
course, a topology approach), partial differential equations (semi-theoretical),
algebra (extending through Galois Theory, Sylow p-Subgroups, etc). It was brutal
and not-fun.

My philosophy experience was informed mostly by personal interests - I was a far
more strict positivist for late-highschool and most of college (the Tractatus
was my favorite book, if that gives you some indication). I studied history
(Aristotle's de Anima, Leibniz+Newton+Spinza, Kant). Additionally, some
philosophy of mind (more-or-less an overview of the field's history and current
topics), and some metaphysics (again, a history of the field and current
topics). I didn't take a proper epistemic course (in the tradition of
epistemology). Most of my exposure to epistemology filtered in through what I
learned of 20th century philosophy. I was primarily educated on current topics
in the field through Critical Theory. More specifically, feminism and feminist
epistemologies. Far more fulfilling than the stuffy empiricism I scoffed at back
then, and still do today.

However, my primary focus was lanaguage and logic.

I took an advanced course on classical logic (we worked through all of Plummer,
Barwise, and Etchemendy's Language, Proof, and Logic), and a topics course on
non-classical logics (using Priest's introductory text). It was in these courses
where I honed my disdain for the classical logician and the law of excluded
middle.

I took several seminars and topics courses on philosophy of language - topics
spanned everything from ambiguity and relevance, intentionality, cooperative
communication, linguistic meaning, the reality of language, and so on. A
veritable feast, if you will. I attempted to develop a theory of  how precisely
communication should be understood - too large a project for a fledging
undergrad with no funding. But it was interesting and exciting to flesh-out a
theory I had been developing in the back of my mind since high school, which was
nice.

In @/papers you will be able to find a large number of the papers I worked on
for a variety of courses. Some of them are fine, most of them are bad. Good luck
and have fun.

I wrote my undergraduate philosophy thesis on unrestricted quantification.

As such, I hold a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics, and another in Philosophy.


Work
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My first 'real job' (one I held for longer than three months), was as a tutor
for the Mathematics Learning Center at Michigan State. This essentially spelled
disaster for me - I spent more time teaching than I did learning, and my grades
suffered for it. But I loved it! I tutored topics ranging from introductory
algebra/trigonometry/precalculus, up through multivariable calculus and
differential equations. I was a teaching assistant for algebra, precalculus,
calculus I & II, the latter for which I won an Excellence in Teaching Award. I
supervised three of MSUs six learning centers, one of which was housed in the
Engineering dorm - it had the highest amount of foot traffic of all the centers
besides the main one that year.

Due to poor academic performance (and overwhelmingly terrible financial
obligations and severe mental health issues), I was not accepted to any of the
philosophy PhD programs I had applied for.

I attempted to further pursue education - substitute teaching, adjuncting,
tutoring centers - and none of it panned out for me. I conceded my failures, and
took a job at Starbucks. After a year, I recommenced the job search, and six
months later got a job at major bank. It's fine, but I yearn for something more
productive, hands-on, and educational.


Current
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 Currently, I have a few projects I am working on. In no particular order:

    * The content in @/papers needs some revision so I can be more proud.
    * Learning C as a beginner - mostly to better support other work.
    * Improving documentation at $/kisslinux/wiki
    * Maintaining several packages in $/kiss-community/community
    * Benevolent Dictator For Now of $/dilyn-corner/KISS-kde
    * Former BDFL of KISS Linux, currently maintaining helping $/kiss-community


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