A new day dawns, maybe it'll be a false dawn maybe not. As I write my eldest son, Anthony 2.5 years, is lying in bed with a temperature and I'm checking him every half hour or so to see if he improves. My youngest son, Thomas 9 weeks, is being nursed by his mother downstairs infront of the telly. Too much information I know but it'll put you in the picture as to why I'm sitting infront of my machine thinking and maybe doing something about the future. I've been considering a lot of things recently, like where am I going and what am I doing, probably a case of mid-life crisis. Still I'm only really examining my situation and thinking about what I'd like to be doing from here on in.
For a couple of years now I've been increasingly aware of and making use of open source software, I'm fairly familiar with RedHat, Debian, GCC, CVS, ICU, and Xerces-C from a user's perspective and have an interest in Faq-O-Matic, MySQL, and cpptools at home. The trouble is I don't see how I can best approach anyone to offer any services I may have.
I've recently bought the Feller and Fitzgerald book, Understanding Open Source Software Development, and found a link to this site from their support pages. On first look, 2 hours, this seems to be just the kind of place I have been wanting to find, without really realizing it.
I'm going to certify myself as an Observer for the forseeable future because I can't rightfully say that I've knowingly contributed anything to the community so far. There are a couple of bugs I'm planning to report in CVS but I'm going to do some more research before possibly entering a duplicate.
I'm also about to update my personal details to provide a little more detail about myself incase anyone is interested in what I do and where I've been.
I won't guarantee to come back here too often, it depends upon the family situation, but I will endeavour to check back once a week to update my diary and make it more relevant.