Quick and Useless Facts:
Work Location: Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Home Location: Tucker, Georgia, USA.
From: College Park & Fayetteville GA
Family: Married to the lovely and talented Heather. We have two cats who might as well be considered family.
Occupation: Graduate student, consultant
Height: 6 foot, 6 inches
Weight: Much less than I used to thanks to the Nigerian Eat-Nothing-But-Chicken-And-Jollof-Rice-Diet.
Likes: Travel, air conditioning, trivia (NTN!), chocolate, Linux, pizza (too much), frequent flyer miles, Stoney River Steakhouse, The Economist.
Dislikes: Traffic, spam, closed-minded people.
Current Rant: Governments, companies, cults, and organizations with overzealous legal departments trying to take away our rights.
Current Projects: Reading for class, research into the politics of Equatorial Guinea.
Books: Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. Since his new book is coming out this September, I need to finish his last set.
Hobbies: I'm a news junkie, or as Heather would say, I'm an "information collector". This means that I read a lot of books and newspapers and subscribe to gazillions of magazines. I also enjoy playing trivia.. I used to play NTN trivia, and then played some team trivia on Thursdays with the IIF folks at Park Bench in Emory Village, but now Park Bench is no more. I can sometimes be found at the Famous Pub playing NTN trivia, or at Fado in Buckhead playing pub trivia.
Music: I listen to everything except country or rap. And when I say everything, I really do mean it.

Consumerism: You could always buy me something: Robbie Honerkamp at Amazon

WORK:

I'm a full time student and part time entrepreneur/computer consultant. I used to work at

Since leaving EarthLink, I've stepped up my consulting work through Comtrends. We (Comtrends) still help ISPs in developing countries, but we don't have as much time to do it as we used to. No more long flights to Africa until after I finish my degree. :-( Right now I'm working with small ISPs in the US who need technical help, and offering hosting services to web designers and ISPs in developing countries who need them.

I've also done a bit of independant consulting, working with VA Linux Systems' professional services group, eAttorney, and other companies. I also got to experience working at a genuine, bonafide dot-bomb... a startup called FlexMedia that managed to burn through a ton of cash in a short period of time with absolutely nothing to show for it other than Really Nice Office Furniture.

Prior to my freelancing, I worked at Netsurfer where I ran their servers and network. Netsurfer is a great place to work- if you're a geek looking for work, check out their jobs page. I'm still bitter about being lured away from my job here to work at the previously-mentioned dot-bomb. Recruiters really are evil (though this one apologized profusely afterwards).

Before Netsurfer I spent time at Digital Equipment Corporation as a consultant in their Internet Practice. I worked to set up a high-end Internet service hosting facility in Alpharetta, GA.

And before that I worked for MindSpring Enterprises, which was a top-notch Internet Service Provider and one of the largest ISPs in the world. I started out as their first support engineer back when there were less than ten employees and everyone worked in the same room. From support I moved to Network Operations, where I installed some of the first dialup POPs outside of our original Atlanta site, as well as set up the company's first Network Operations Center. From there I moved into a management position back in Technical Support, which was going through some growing pains at the time, and helped reorganize the department. After that, I was promoted into the systems engineering group where I helped manage the servers and services for dialup customers. They've since merged with Earthlink, a dubious move, but one that will hopefully help them grow into a bigger and better company. We'll see what happens..

But I was 'birthed', so to speak, at GC EduNET, an online service for educators that was housed at Georgia College (now Georgia College and State University). I did a bit of everything there including network wiring, server maintenance, and online content management. It's sad to say, but GC EduNET has now been retired from service. That department now manages the college's online services (web site, mailing lists, etc..). If you're a GCSU student looking for volunteer or coop work you should check them out- the people are great to work with, and you'll learn a lot.

In a moment of insanity, I started working on a Linux/Open Source software show that would tour Africa. I eventually came to my senses once I realized there weren't enough hours in the day for me to do it. I still think it's important for people in developing countries to be exposed to Linux and free software. Commercial closed-source operating systems and software are doing more harm in developing markets than good.

Prior to this, I got my BA in Political Science from Georgia State. I also took some classes at Georgia Perimeter College and some online classes at SUNY Empire State College.

I attended Georgia College in Milledgeville, GA from 1992-1994. I didn't finish my degree- like all true geeks I learned more outside the classroom than in it. While at GC I got my first real taste of the Internet via a shell account on GCNeXT, a machine that is near and dear to all Georgia College geeks. Until I moved from Atlanta, I had the honor of having this computer colocated in my computer room. This is also where I got my start at administrating Unix systems and became the Evil BOFH that I am today.

While at GC I set up a gopher server (remember- gopher was the 'in' thing on the Internet then) called The Internet Compass. At the time I was spending an obscene amount of time online and I visited many, many gopher sites. I decided that a gopher site that organized gopherspace content into different classifications would be very useful. So I started organizing links to different gopher sites into different classifications on Compass. At first, it was only used by friends. But word quickly spread, and before I knew it I was getting tens of thousands of hits a month (this is before the Internet became hugely popular- 'the good old days' as it were) from Internet users around the world. Compass quickly found itself in the limelight- it was one of America Online's default gopher sites, it was used to introduce new users to the Internet in many schools, and even the subject of a student's thesis on information providers! Unfortunately, it also raised the ire of a few college administrators who were unfamiliar with new technologies and uncomfortable having anything new, useful, or innovative on their campus. Before being relocated, Compass became Georgia College's very first WWW server (and one of the first in the state!).

I went to Fayette County High School, Fayette County Junior High School, Fayetteville Elementary School, and Hood Avenue Elementary School in Fayetteville, GA. I went to GW Northcutt Elementary School in College Park, GA.

I used to have a section here saying that when I'm not at work you might find me at TGI Friday's playing trivia, running amok with my friends, etc. That's no longer true. Here for your reading pleasure is what I'm up to these days. Please be warned- the excitement may be too much for some readers..
When I'm not at work you'll find me either at home asleep or at school.
I've moved my schedule to my academic page, which gives my class schedule and what I'm taking.

Other Stuff:

My recreational time online used to be spent in USENET newsgroups. I used to be the Official Usenet Kook-Of-The-Month vote wrangler and the unofficiial caretaker of the alt.usenet.kooks newsgroup. I tried in vain to find a replacement when I just didn't have the time to execute my duties as vote wrangler anymore, but nobody wanted the job. So I just abandoned my post. Since then the job has been taken over and has been running quite well (I haven't read Usenet in... geez, I can't remember the last time I read newsgroups.) While I had the job, I met quite a few online psychopaths and nutjobs (greets to Timmy "Letterboxed movies are CENSORSHIP!" Brown, Steve "I hang out with Grubor because he makes me look sane" Boursy and John "I'm not really under a restraining order" Grubor). I'm also not an official member of the non-existent USENET Cabal (There Is No Cabal). I don't know where these rumors get started. (Ewige Blumenkraft) (Fnord) Any crazy/disturbing/nasty things you see associated with my name in Usenet almost certainly comes from revenge attacks from kooks.