Hi, my name’s Gregory Ruiz-Ade, and I’m the person behind Method.

Computing

I’ve been a computer hobbiest since my parents brought home an Apple ][e in 1983. I dove into it headlong, and insisted on getting Nibble every month, and dutifully experimented with the programs in the magazine. I learned how cool it was to make this machine powered by black magic bend to my will. I was hooked. Add in the fact that we had a printer (Epson RX-80), the 80-column card and the mouse, and I thought I had the coolest computer in town.

I’ve mainly used PCs since then, and have used a variety of systems over the years. I use Linux extensively both at work and at home for server and desktop applications, and dabble a bit in Web development. I’m quite fluent in Perl and shell scripting, and have allowed my skills in C and Java to decay significantly over time. I’ve used DOS, nearly all versions of Windows, all versions of OS/2 after 2.1, and Linux since the 0.8x kernel days.

These days I’ve “switched” from Linux to Apple’s Mac OS X for my personal use. My primary system for the last two years is a 15″ PowerBook 1.5GHz, which still serves my needs quite nicely. I’ve never looked back since going Mac, and plan to stick with it until Apple gives me a seriously good reason to go looking for something else. Windows, I knew thee well, but miss thee not.

Other Interests

Over time, I am involved with the Kernel-Panic Linux Users’ Group here in San Diego. I haven’t been able to make the meetings for quite some time, but I’m active on the mailing lists as well as the #kernel-panic IRC channel on FreeNode IRC Network, where you’ll find me as “Chef”.

I enjoy cycling, though I never seem to make it out on the bike as much as I would like, let alone should. I’ve recently started cycling to work, splitting the ride in and the ride back over two days every week. Hopefully, as I get stronger and have better endurance on the bike, I’ll be able to up that to four days a week. My goal is to ride in and back every day. One step at a time, though.

I’m a casual gamer. I play World of Warcraft sporadically, and mess around with games on the Xbox and PlayStation (note, not Xbox 360 or Playstation 2 or 3. I’d really love a Wii.)

I really enjoy music, and between my wife and I, we’ve managed to put together a staggering CD collection. Ripping this for use on our iPods is a monumental task, and I’m not sure I actually have enough disk space for it all.

Professional Life

I am currently happily employed by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at UCSD as their Senior Systems Administrator. Come July, 2007, I will have been there for two years.

More?

A more thorough treatment of who I am, what I do and what I like will likely appear somewhere on my main website in the future.