[nycbug-talk] Brief Intro

[Pastor Mac]

Hi all--

I'm de-lurking for a moment to introduce myself as a very raw newbie in 
the world of *NIX-like OSs.  Indeed, I am a church minister although 
for the moment I'm not currently serving a church but on and off have 
taken a number of computer science/IT classes and I've been hoping for 
an opportunity in network administration one day.  I've been a Mac user 
for the past 12 years and last year acquired a Sawtooth G4 so that I 
could start using OS X.  I've installed/played with a few distros of 
Linux on x86 but a couple months ago I surfed to the FreeBSD site and 
downloaded an ISO and installed it just to see how it compared.  In 
short, I've been consuming any and all BSD related info/websites and 
have probably turned into zealot novice for BSD asking some fellow CS 
students at Calvin College to move to a more mature and secure 
environment:-).

I found this list via the user group listing on the main FreeBSD 
website and subscribed to get a sense of the community in the tri-state 
area.  I currently live in Grand Rapids, MI but will be relocating to 
Sussex, NJ in early June since the job market in west MI is simply 
awful.  My wife's family is from the N. Haledon/Wyckoff area so I've 
gotten to know the neighborhood reasonably well.  PTL for Hagstrom 
maps:-) What I'm hoping for is some kind soul on the list who has 
reasonable patience and lives in the northern NJ area who can mentor a 
newbie to craft a home server and learn how to do sysadmin work.  On a 
related note, I realize the organization is geared to the 5 boroughs 
and I would like to participate and come to the various gatherings but 
Sussex to Midtown might be a stretch consistently.  Is there a NJ 
sub-group?

I will say the BSDCan event looks most cool but about 95% would likely 
be over my head for now.  I hope I haven't interfered with existing 
discussions and I'll try to pay as much attention as possible to the 
discussions here so I can pick up a few nuggets along the way and try 
real hard not to be like the marketing guy in User Friendly.

back to lurking...
Pax,

Mike McDonald
Pastor Mac
On OS X