Antionline Community

G'day all,

I have been looking at a lot people's profiles and reading what they are: as in students, sercurity experts etc. and their ages, genders etc.

I was wondering what type of people make up this great community we have here at Antionline? What you can state is some of the information like mine.

This information includes: I'm 17 and high school student in Australia. I love programming and sport.

Just a little information would be sufficient, just so newbies (like myself) and other people (like moderators and addits) at AO know a little about each person, and what is the mean age of people contributing to AO (just to see how broad the age range is for people interacting and helping each other).

It would be very interesting to see the results.

Thank-you for participating,

I am one of the very few over 40 members (old d00ds) here. I am part owner of an ISP in rural SW Missouri, USA. My partner and I are considered to be pioneers in computer telecommunications. Our development in in this area has helped form our Internet as we know it today. We were actively sending and recieving e-mail using a system we called Fido Mail in the early 80's. When I first became interested in computers and networking, a computer system that could handle the load that your PC does when idleing, was housed in a clean-room that would take up a full city block costing millions of dollars and teams of programmers and technicians to keep it running.

I'm 38 and I just steped out of the 19th Century a few years ago... My first machine was an Apple IIE and I didn't get another until 1997 when I got a P1 33Mhz with 8mb of RAM and a whoping 320 mb HD... A friend showed me the potential of even the old P1 and I got kinda hooked and have been building bigger, better, faster machines ever since... My next project is a dual Xeon machine... A broken back suffered during a drug raid (The suspect tossed my little ass out the second story window) stoped me from being able to continue on with being a SWAT medic and since I like 'puters it seemed like the field I should go into... I currently own and operate The Computer Medic in Ft. Lee, VA and am going to school to learn more about networking and network security...

Hi all,
Well like aealiason I am also one of the (old doods)40 turning 41 the 6th of this month.I have been working on computers for almost 10years, spending time just repairing,upgrading and teaching people win 3.1,win95 and win98.I only started getting interested in networking when I got my second pc , a Pentium 133 ,16 meg ram, 528meg h/disk.My first pc was a 486dx2-66 , 8 meg ram and 250 meg h/drive.It is now upgraded to (don’t laugh)pentium200mmx,32meg ram, 6gig h/drive and realmagic s/card(pci) with only 1meg video ram.

The interesting part was when my kids wanted to start playing games against each other, I had to put in network cards and get this lot to speak to one another.That sparked my intrest in networking and everything just snowballed from there onwards.
At the moment I am working fulltime as a millwright in the milling business(maize meal)

So now I am starting to get into security and I think it could only be worth it.

Regards
V/man :)

I don't feel so old anymore :D

Seriously, I am 27 and my first computer (I got to play with) was an Amiga 2000 (loved that thing!!) and did AutoCAD on it for high school. Then I fell outta the scene, then my mom bought me a 386/25(?) with Win 3.1, a whopping 50 meg HDD, Sound Blaster 16, and lots of games. I did QBasic programming (just a little...) for calculating the area under a Euler Bell Curve using Simpson's rule. I had that box until 1998 when I "upgraded" to an AMD 133 from a unreputable dealer who gave me no original software, support or nothing.... that's when I decided to learn.

Fast forward... I have taken 2 programming classes Visual Basic and C++ (hated both, no substance just history :p ), an A+ class, and MCP (never took any of the tests...I suck). Now after all of that, I decided to learn this stuff on my own and am learning at an alarming rate :)

In between all of this, I have worked for a small ISP that sells wireless broadband, web hosting and programming. I learned how to build boxes and do Windows hosting. I really miss that job. But for now, while my wife is going to school, I will continue what I have been doing for 11 years: homemaking.

Thank you,

albn

Nice post topic, thanks for submitting it :)


Anyway, I'm 31 years old. I've been doing IT work for 11 years now, and have been playing around with computers since I was around 9 years old. My first computer was a TRS 80 (Trash 80) and I too even had an Apple IIe that actually STILL runs (yikes!). w00t Apple DOS 3.3!

I've been in the "security" field now for about 5 years now and I don't see any end to it. I don't do any programming, although I can do basic scripts in a few languages, and most of my time is spent in IDS, firewalls and routers. I'm conversant in all the MS OS's, some LINUX and am learning both *BSD and true UNIX.





El Diablo

Whew, I missed the Old d00ds by a year since I just turned 39. My first computer experience was on a Star 80. Even then what hooked me most was the games (old Star Trek game where your ship was an E, Klingons a K etc.). Enjoyed the computer and used it during college to complete labs and reports. Got my degree in Mechanical Engineering, went to work for the navy designing missile systems (sounds fun, is boring). Moved into three dimensional modeling for Hardware In The Loop (HWIL) simulations which got me back into computers and unix in particular.

Left civil service and took a contracting job as a network engineer with no experience there. Learned it by doing it, designing, installing and troubleshooting networks. Moved to the company's Network Operations group and worked as an engineer there as well as their Unix administrator (Solaris 5 anyone?). With the new NMCI (Navy Marine Corps Intranet) I was put in charge of computer troubleshooting which I really enjoyed and learned a lot about basic problems, especially the dreaded ID10T errors.

Was asked to come to work for a bank by a previous boss. Moved to my new home, wife is going back to school to finish her RN degree. When she is done I am going back to school too to get my teaching certificate and fulfill a lifetime goal to work as a teacher. I do currently teach introduction to computers at a local community college and an hour teaching goes faster than 5 minutes working at my job (at least for me, students probably think differently). Hope this is actually what I want to be when I grow up.

Still love computer games and on-line gaming. Am an avid Anarchy Online player. If anyone else is look me up I am currently playing a level 71 Martial Artist named :eek: Sodamoca5.

Now for the important stuff. Married for 10 years. Have two kids (hers from a previous marriage) both grown and out of the house. Son married this summer, daughter getting married in February. Slated to be a grandpa around March :) Plan to spoil grand children rotten and buy them very noisy toys :D

hehe, this sounds like a support group thing, but I like it so here goes...

Im 19, though closing in on 20 fast. I first started with computers when I was 8, when I got a Compaq Proliena 66mhz with 8Mb RAM, a 500Mb HDD, and windows 3.1. To this day I still remember the feeling when I opened the box and first saw the machine. Since that day i've been hooked, and its only gotten worse. At first I started out with stuff like dialing up BBS's to browse text files, or modifying the .CON files on Duke Nukem to make the weapons fire differently.

Now adays my interest has gotten quite broad, covering computer security, web desing, repair and upgrading, networking, programming, and just about anything else you can immagine. I'm finaly moving to make my hobby and obsession more of a career by working on my Associates of Applied Computer Science degree at my local community college.

I'm 25 , my real name is Allen
I am just grajuated from univercity in mechanical engineering field and I am a member of ASME ( American Socity of Mechanical Engineers).

My first experince in computer goes to time when I was 15, but in that time I was not serious about learning computer. I started researching and learning about past 4 years seriously.

Cheers

Ok, I'm 28 and started out with computers at age 12. First computer was a Amstrad 1512 by Schneider. It was a 8086 box with 512k and 2(!) 5 1/4" floppy drives, and a 4 color CGA monitor. One year later, I got a hardcard (controller and harddisk on one board) of 20MB. Apart from getting to know the GEM (very early windows-like thing) layer on the DOS operating system and programming some GWBasic, I mainly used the Amstrad for games.
Second box was a Mitac 80286, 1MB ram and 20MB HD, EGA video card. This one was the last 'brand' pc I got. From then on I owned a 80486 clone, a Pentium 133 and now a AMD Athlon 500.
I used the 486 for my mechanical engineering studies doing the type of calculations that took all night. After that the Pentium 133 mainly helped me with programming projects.
For the moment I work as a programmer for a Belgian company that sells measurement soft- and hardware. I'm gaining some experience in C++ and NT platform programming.
I know absolutely nothing about networking, but I thought this would be a nice place to learn. It's not my goal to become a network guru or so, but it is my goal to protect my home connection as best as possible (maybe you need to be a guru to do so :-) ).