38.2. About the Author

Who is this guy anyhow?

The author claims no credentials or special qualifications, [1] other than a compulsion to write. [2]

This book is somewhat of a departure from his other major work, HOW-2 Meet Women: The Shy Man's Guide to Relationships. He has also written the Software-Building HOWTO. Of late, he has been trying his (heavy) hand at fiction: Dave Dawson Over Berlin (excerpt). He also has a few Instructables (here, here, here, and here to his (dis)credit.

A Linux user since 1995 (Slackware 2.2, kernel 1.2.1), the author has emitted a few software truffles, including the cruft one-time pad encryption utility, the mcalc mortgage calculator, the judge Scrabble® adjudicator, the yawl word gaming list package, and the Quacky anagramming gaming package. He got off to a rather shaky start in the computer game -- programming FORTRAN IV on a CDC 3800 (on paper coding pads, with occasional forays on a keypunch machine and a Friden Flexowriter) -- and is not the least bit nostalgic for those days.

Living in an out-of-the-way community with wife and orange tabby, he cherishes human frailty, especially his own. [3]

Notes

[1]

In fact, he has no credentials or special qualifications. He's a school dropout with no formal credentials or professional experience whatsoever. None. Zero. Nada. Aside from the ABS Guide, his major claim to fame is a First Place in the sack race at the Colfax Elementary School Field Day in June, 1958.

[2]

Those who can, do. Those who can't . . . get an MCSE.

[3]

Sometimes it seems as if he has spent his entire life flouting conventional wisdom and defying the sonorous Voice of Authority: "Hey, you can't do that!"