AntiViews - Mnstrgrl

Here’s the third one in a row of AntiViews. Just when you thought that AO members are interesting, I give you an AO admin!

Mnstrgrl’s profile on AO

Name: Heidi

Place and date of Birth (or age): age 30, born in Denver, CO

Current place of residence: Boston, MA

Marital status: divorced






AO: How did you get into computers?

Mnstgrl: My first computer was a Commodore 64. I played a lot of Jumpman :-) I tended to be the only person in my family who could make a computer do much of anything, so I had a limited sort of "local guru" status pretty early.

AO: What is your area of specialty?

Mnstrgrl: Web programming and webserver administration.

AO: What do you do for a living?

Mnstrgrl: Sysadmin/web dev for Jupm.

AO: How did you get into your career?

Mnstrgrl: I got offered my first job by a freelancer friend. He said, "Here's a book about HTML. Figure it out and build this site by tomorrow and I'll pay you." I freelanced for a while, and then got my first professional job doing web development for Lexmark.

AO: Describe your education and/or training?

Mnstrgrl: I'm almost entirely self-taught. I've had training at work for Vignette Storyserver and am certified in MySQL.

AO: Do you plan on staying where you are (career-wise) or are you still in school / working on certs to get into another area?

Mnstrgrl: I'm working my way into the sysadmin world, mostly through on-the-job training. I'd like to take a *NIX class. Sysadmin is the career I want though.

AO: What one piece of advice would you offer to others who may be interested in following a career path or educational path similar to yours?

Mnstrgrl: You can learn anything from the net. Certs are important to some employers, but really knowing your stuff is the most important thing.

AO: What skill do you think is invaluable in your area of specialty?

Mnstrgrl: Understanding all the ins and outs of web servers (apache, in my case).

AO: Describe one of your best / most effective security practices.

Mnstrgrl: Only provide services on a necessary basis -- close ports and disable services that aren't needed, only give users the level of access as they need to do their job.

AO: Do you have a little-known fact about yourself (personal, hobbies, tech-related) that you would be willing to share?

Mnstrgrl: My college degree is a BFA in lighting design for theater.

AO: How did you find Antionline?

Mnstrgrl: My boss dumped it on my desk :)

AO: Thanks! I dumped an AntiView request on your boss's desk!

Great! But now we want MsMittens! soda_popinsky! Thehorse13! How about one from you Negative?

<apologies to those of you I didn't list...can't remember everyone as it's an early 'choir practice' and I'm posting from the pub! Hooray for Starbucks hotspots next door!>

Thehorse and MsMittens are coming up next - and Soda's on my list, too :)

Hey Negative,

Don't you have my name at your list?... :D
I think Newbies alos must have something like this... kidding...
It is really nice to know about those gurues more and more...

I suggest to list one with zencoder, our new gurue... ;)

Keep it up..

I have a burning desire to read the coming AntiViews....

Cheers,

Any chance of grabbing some of the 'celebrity' members ?

John Draper aka Captain Crunch

Find out more of what they are up to nowadays ?

And not forgetting some of our more 'advanced' [old] members :D
For the whys and whatfors of the IT business that they have been involved in for more years than most here have lived.

How exactly do you decide who to interview?

You probably have to had sent a happy birthday card to Mathgirl :p. only joking. In any case they make for great interviews and yeah I cant wait to see Ms Mittens and The Horse spill their storys. Keep up the good work.

foxy > I PM'd John Draker about two weeks ago and haven't heard back - he's not really around anymore (and never really has been, actually).

Zombie > Dunno... I don't have a real policy... just randomly pick interesting/knowledgeable members. There's plenty more coming :D

what about nihil... he should be interviewed.

Good interveiw ! :)

Greate interview. Oh.... and yeah, like XTC46 says, do interview nihil as well.