deutsche Version
Work
I work for iXOS Software GmbH,
Grasbrunn. I am currently in the support department, and my main
task is to develop and maintain Intranet solutions for the support
department.
I have written a kind of trouble ticket system as a WWW application (implemented using Perl CGI scripts for a Netscape Web server on Solaris platform). Some data is held in files, while other is taken from various database tables (Informix 4) using remote shell invocations.
Not very technologically brilliant stuff, but main thing is that it works. No doubt I will get myself acquainted with Java when I get the time.
I also wrote a Know-How gathering system which is technically speaking a WWW based bulletin board with email notification.
Apart from this, I maintain the training course material for iXOS-ARCHIVE, our main product. So I am quite familiar with the working and internals of this product.
Right, while I was still a student, I registered a business as a hardware/software retail dealer, primarily to get my own computer more cheaply, and to be able to tax deduct it as a business asset. My turnover 1996 has been somewhat above 50000 DM, which is not too bad. Some of it was consulting, which actually pushed me into the profit zone! Since I am working at iXOS this is even more a spare-time activity than before, and I do my business almost exclusively with friends and friends of friends. Most business is custom-built PCs with good components in them, which are not easy to obtain cheaply otherwise.
Of course, being a very small business I always tell customers that service will be inferior, e.g. I can't lend replacement equipment, simply because I don't have any spare equipment lying around, and I will usually order things upon request only, which means I have to pass on any delay in component delivery I experience.
But on these terms, I can still deliver computers st competitive prices, and some friends have made use of that.
The computer I am currently using at home (Asus TP4 (430FX), Pentium-90, 32MB, NCR810, 0.7GB SCSI, 1.6GB EIDE, 230MB MO, CD-ROM, 17" CTX monitor) is the second serious computer I have had. I got it around Easter 1995 because I found that I couldn't finish my Diplom thesis at university because of lack of workstations and excess of distraction. Its predecessors were a WANG 2200B hard-wired BASIC computer built in 1972 which our school (Gymnasium Ottobrunn) got rid of at some point, and a tulip 286 computer which cost me a fortune in 1987 and still serves as a word-processing platform for my father.
At work we have PCs running Windows NT 3.51, which is probably the best Microsoft operating system, but my computer at home is Microsoft-free running Linux 1.2.5 (I am planning to upgrade soon, but I haven't had the time yet), with Novell DOS 7 for dosemu. OS/2 is also installed but I don't use it as I have geared all my ways of working to the software I've got under Linux (emacs and vi, LaTeX and various perl scripts (business: invoicing, accounting; address book generator from a plainfile "database" to latex, etc.). Also, this machine is my fax server, so it wants to be running under Linux continuously. I get quite a lot of fax traffic due to my business.
Of course we have Internet access at work, and I enjoy hanging around in IRC.
I also enjoy cycling, and swimming - preferably skinny dipping to avoid having to deal with a wet suit afterwards. There is a nice lake within cycling distance (14km = 9miles), the Steinsee, which has a de-facto CO area that I like to visit in summer.