Wednesday, April 8, 2009

10 years no clue

Exactly 10 years ago, early in the morning of the April-08-1999 (according to my perception at that time, it's been 8:30 AM), I entered a room with some 25 or so boys and girls, most of them between 20 and 30 years. My task was to act as a Unix trainer for a professional development class. I didn't know any of them. In particular, I had no idea that, just 7 months later, I'd be married to the girl sitting on the 6th chair in the left row.

It wasn't exactly love at first sight. As for my side, I thought "nice girl" immediately. But, to be honest, there's been more than one nice girl. As for Anja ..., well, read on.

Being a Linux and Unix devotee, my intention was to start with a little Unix history, with the exciting times of people like Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Alfred Aho, or Peter Weinberger at Bell Labs who managed to contribute both operating systems, programming languages, and other practical tools as well as new and exciting ideas and theories in the field of computer science.

I do not know, whether I managed to share some of my feelings with the other boys and girls. As for Anja, I failed completely: At some point, I managed to confuse Ritchie and Kernighan, naming the latter as one of the Unix inventors. With the experience of lousy trainers before me, she settled on her opinion about me and wrote, after one or two hours, to a friend that I had "absolutely no clue of Unix".

With my experience of 10 years or so of Unix administration and programming before, I can only assume that this hasn't changed in this following 10 years. So, todays my anniversary of having no clue.

To Anja with love,

Jochen

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