Intro (was Re: Who to buy from ? Replying to my own post.)

[Leslie]

KevinO wrote:

> It has been brought to my attention that I just totally blew off the 
> person that first brought bookpool to our attention, as well as the 
> work performed getting the math right.

I hope it didn't sound like I was making a big deal out of it - hence 
the winkey-smiley!  Lest you all think I'm a shill for 
buy.com/bookpool.com since 2 out of the 3 times I've posted (I've been 
lurking since January) it's been about them, let me briefly introduce 
myself.

I'm an unemployed Unix sysadmin - formerly employed by Intel doing 
mostly Solaris, MP-RAS, and HP-UX administration.  I took "voluntary 
separation" and was compensated quite nicely, so I've been taking 
advantage of this opportunity to do other things, and haven't really 
been actively looking for work.  I've also been a little scared off by 
the horror stories about the job market.  Are things really that bad?

I've been playing with Linux for about six years.  In May I took the 
plunge and made it my primary desktop (Mandrake 8.2/KDE3/Mozilla Mail on 
a home-grown box) and am on my way to living the Microsoft-free 
lifestyle - I rarely even boot my Win2k box, but there are a few apps I 
haven't found replacements for - I'm going to try to see if I can get 
them working with Wine. I've installed Slackware, RedHat, Debian, and 
SuSE in the past, but Mandrake was effortless to install so I've kept it 
on my main system.

This list has been very helpful to me.  I plan to become a more active 
participant and I hope to be able to be contribute more than just where 
to find cheap books!

-Leslie