Maria and Charles
Hello, I’m Charles McColm and the wonderful woman to my right (your left) is my wife Maria. Thanks for checking out our web log. As you may have guessed from the title of the web log I’m passionate about computers.
My beautiful wife is from Colombia (note the spelling, it’s not Columbia which is the state capital of South Carolina). This year we traveled to Colombia and I spent time in 5 provinces and around 20 cities. It’s an amazing country with beautiful scenery and beautiful people.
If you ever get the chance to go to Colombia with a friend or family I highly recommend it.
For the past 6 years I’ve been the project manager of The Working Centre’s Computer Recycling project. At the project we rebuild donated computers. Systems that qualify get Microsoft Windows through Microsoft’s generous MRR program (but these are only available to qualified low income individuals and not-for-profit organizations). We also build a variety of Ubuntu Linux systems. Systems we’re currently building range from Pentium 4 1.8GHz to Pentium 4 3.4GHz.
Like many of my generation my exposure to personal computers really started with the jingle “I adore my 64, my Commodore 64.” It was the C64 that was responsible for me getting bit by the computing bug. I learned a little assembly language on the C64, but programming was never very interesting to me (I guess because I spent too many hours entering code from Compute’s Gazette only to have to wait until the next issue for the bug fix). In school and through friends I also had access to the Commodore PET and Vic 20 systems.
About a year into my current occupation I was asked if I could write the A+ Certification exam. I wrote both exams and was certified shortly after.
- A+ Certified Technician
I’ve been a fan of Linux and open source software since the summer of 1997. My interest in Linux was sparked by my brother who brought home a Slackware CD to show me all the cool bulletin board software. I’ve used many distributions over the years including Slackware, Red Hat Linux (before it was Fedora), Mandrake Linux, Debian GNU/Linux, SuSE 9.2, and Ubuntu Linux to name a few. I have no favourite distribution and use whichever one seems to suit the purpose of the system I’m working on. For example, I used MythDora, a Fedora-based distribution, for the Myth TV box I had set up. Currently both my wife and I run Ubuntu Linux.
A simple screenshot from Ubuntu 11.04 (minus Unity)
I currently run 3 servers at home, a web, a game server, and a desktop that shares part of the file system by NFS (file server). Two of the servers are publicly accessible, see http://auldsbel.dyndns.org/ for details.
My wife works as a personal support worker in a transitional building, but she has over 20 years experience as a bacteriologist. She’s a smart cookie. So smart that she actually “wrote the manual” (Bacteria procedural) for a hospital.
We have one grown up son and no pets.
