About

$ cat /proc/tommy

I’m a Sr. Linux System Administrator / Developer in the Dallas / Fort Worth, TX area. I do a lot of work with Linux, and a lot of play too. Often that involves scripting (bash, Perl, Python) and software development for Linux as well. I typically work with Linux in the enterprise, but even run Linux on deployments as “small” as my Android smartphone. People that know me well often say I’m part-computer 😉

For me, life with Linux is a love affair. I’ve been using it every day since the late 90’s. (I’m typing up this very page on a Linux workstation, and you’re reading it on a website powered by a Linux server that I set up and operate.) Sometimes I’ll moonlight as a Unix engineer when the current task calls for that skill, and even Windows administration too. In fact, I graduated from college with a degree in computer networking that centered heavily on Cisco and Windows-based technologies. Truly, during all my time at school they only offered one solitary course in Linux — and I aced it. So yeah, there’s a little bit of irony in the fact that a lot of my former college friends are Windows admins, while I am not.

In case you’re wondering why things worked out that way, it stems from my love and commitment to what Linux really means. It’s something that falls in lock-step with my personal beliefs that great software doesn’t have to cost a great deal, and that wherever possible it should be free…and open. I don’t just mean that in terms of the open source code created by others; those ideas also spill over into the software I write on my own time, for my own reasons, for the open source community.

Choice and transparency are founding principles that underpin FOSS and Linux, and they are what makes it all so fun. They say that you’re the most successful and happy when you do what you love, and love what you do. I think that makes me one of the happiest people out there because I love Linux and I get to use, develop, extend, administrate, derive benefit from, and share it every day.