User:Frob23

frob23

Often known in real life and in virtual life as Eric Fenderson, although neither of those are included in his actual given name. Eric Fenderson is obsessed with Unix in all its forms. He swears each night before falling off to sleep that he will, one day, port V7 to modern hardware.

Frob is an action of mindless fiddling with something (usually physical). This is the root word from which I take my user-name. I've used it for a long, long time mainly because a lot of my computer activities were mindless fiddling. Stuff like adding a password to command.com or changing the commands DOS used. Mindless stuff which I continued to do when I moved on to real operating systems. The wonderful thing about frobbing is that often you learn a lot by playing around without intending to learn anything from it.

I spent three years working towards a computer engineering major before I realized that it was not for me. Surprisingly (to myself at the time) my experience with Linux benefited me in that major because all of the work was done on *nix machines. I found FreeBSD during that time and have been using it steadily ever since but I still have an affection for Linux... she was my first.

I like the wiki and would add more but most of the areas where I could add information would be in the Jargon definitions. And, as it has been pointed out, it is important to not allow them to overwhelm the real information this wiki contains. There are good online sources for the Jargon file.

I have been obsessed with Hacker jargon and information ever since I found a hard copy of The New Hacker's Dictionary (version 1) at a local library. This was many years ago but I remember it gave me a vision of something deeper in the mindless tooling around with computers I was doing. I have since obtained hard copies of it and the two subsequent versions for myself. And, when the library moved across town, I was even able to purchase the worn original for $4.00 from the library because they were going to throw it out.

Almost accidentally, I have found myself fitting the description of a Hacker from the appendix. Right down to being a Theater Technician -- which at the time was something I decided to do to avoid the stereotype I saw myself fitting.

So, anyway, clearly I would love to share the source with those who are coming behind and don't know the joy. When I first heard the -P convention in real life it brought a smile to my face. It made me realize that I am part of a tradition that came before me and will go on beyond me. I want to share that with others.

Well, that's a rambling user page.

--Frob23 22:26, Jan 20, 2005 (EST)

Recent Update: Okay, all the old attributions on Jargon Entries have been changed to the new template. Hopefully I didn't miss anything and people will use the new format. I also spent a little time trying to ensure a somewhat consistent format with the placement of the attribution -- I am sure I have failed. But, in general, I have tried to keep it toward the bottom of the article (unless it more clearly belonged right below the block of text from the Jargon file) and above the STUB notice -- as I think the stub warning should be the absolute last thing in an article. Frob23 02:29, Feb 14, 2005 (EST)