Self-Introduction: David-Paul Niner

Greetings! My name is David-Paul Niner. I am a 35 year-old "just returning to college" male presently residing in Orange Park, Florida (that's a suburb of Jacksonville in the very northeast corner of the state), in the United States. Although I am only presently attending part-time classes (I recently resigned from the local government arena, but enjoyed dragging them into the world of open source nonetheless), I will begin full-time studies in the Computer Science program at the University of North Florida in the Spring of 2006. I enjoy writing immensely. The idea of becoming part of something as important as the Fedora Project excites me; I feel I have much to contribute. My several years experience as a network/systems administrator and my independent studies of CS have allowed me to develop a certain level of comfort when communicating with others on a technical level. However, I also enjoy acting as a translator for those less inclined to learn the more arcane aspects of computer operations and the language itself. Have you ever met someone who was absolutely obsessive about writing and/or grammar perfection? If so, it was probably me. I'm the sort of person who reads everything over two, three, and occasionally four times before committing to it. It's both a blessing and a curse, but it's something I enjoy. I take great pride in attending to detail. I have no formal technical writing training (save for the usual grammar and literature classes taught in college), although I feel confident that I can "hit the ground running" in that area. The simplistic genius of the Gnome environment impresses me; It is that style of interface design--the enormous amount of function balanced against a nearly clutter-free layout--that I find attractive. Having the ability to fine-tune one's desktop environment is, in my opinion, not nearly as important to the average user as some believe; I believe that ease-of-use and intuitiveness will always be more appreciated. If this is a vision shared by you then perhaps I could benefit your team by doing some interface design work. As an aside, I enjoy creative writing as a form of stress relief, and have given serious thought to attempting to publish a work of fiction in the near-to-mid future. I have great respect for both the Fedora Project and for the individual members who compose the whole. Redhat/Fedora is the only flavor of Linux I've seriously come to study, and I've been using one form or another now for nearly eight years (and have used Fedora on the desktop since its conception). I'm now ready to give back in some way if anyone is interested! Below please find my gpg information for review: -------------------------- pub 1024D/215E3188 2005-11-02 Key fingerprint = AA92 20F2 DE95 49AA 860D 814B 6DB3 37A5 215E 3188 uid David-Paul Niner (I'm the real DP!) <dpniner(a)dpniner.net&gt; sub 2048g/48A8C44F 2005-11-02 ---------------------------- Your time and attention are appreciated, David-Paul Niner -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.