About Me - Biography
Me - The Early Years
I was born in Cape Town, South Africa, on June 14, 1974 (yes, I'm a Gemini).
School
My primary schooling was at Westcott Primary, which celebrated its centenary in 2006. It's a great school and the teachers pretty much gave me free reign and didn't force me to stick rigidly to the standard curriculum. I spent my high school years (1988-1992) at SACS (South African College High School), the oldest school in South Africa. I guess I was an underachiever for most of my high school career, but I still had some fun (and managed to get an A in my final exams).
University - Undergraduate Years
I started at the University of Cape Town in February 1993 with the intention of becoming a lawyer (yes, you read that correctly), although perhaps as a nod to my true intentions I registered for a BBusSc degree instead of the traditional BA favoured by most law students. The BBusSc is quite an interesting degree - it's a four-year degree with a broad choice of majors - from accounting to actuarial science, computer science, industrial psychology and law.
During my first year I had my first encounter with the Internet, in the old Goldfields computer lab on the ground floor of the computer science building (which was full of XT clones running DOS connected to a NetWare 3.11 network). I was hooked and through some judicious wangling managed to get myself an account on UCT's VAX system (uctvax.uct.ac.za). It was my first encounter with a multi-user operating system and I had a lot of fun (and a number of run-ins with the administrator due to my, er, exploration of the system and my discovery of loopholes that let me bypass my disk quota).
In late 1993/early 1994 I first heard of GNU/Linux and in December made the decision to install it on my home system. I seriously considered FreeBSD as well, but at the time it wouldn't install correctly on the disk layout I had (I was an OS/2 user at the time and didn't want to disturb my installation). More of my computer experiences are filed under computers.
Around this time I started assisting as pro bono system administrator for the Energy and Development Research Centre. I continued assisting them until their mail infrastructure was incorporated in the central UCT infrastructure in 2005 (when the name phantom.eri.uct.ac.za passed into the history books). In around September 1996, Marc Welz, Craig Balfour and I co-founded the UCT Linux Enthusiasts Group.
Meanwhile, I had decided that a legal career wasn't what I wanted and I started making a few changes to my curriculum. It cost me an additional year of undergraduate study, but in 1997 I finally graduated with a BBusSc degree majoring in Law, Economics and Information Systems.
University - Postgraduate Years
By the time I completed my undergraduate degree, I had already registered for a MBusSc - I still had some full-time studying left in me yet :-) I spent 1998 and 1999 living the life of a grad student - earning peanuts working as a teaching assistant, hacking away on thesis proposals and abusing my office mates with my strange taste in music and habit of stealing hardware from their machines.
I also did some part time work during this time, working as Unix system administrator for the Surveying Department and teaching a number of modules in the Department of Information Systems.
Oh yes - my thesis focused on open source software maintenance techniques, an area that interests me a great deal.
Get a Job!
While I was an undergrad, I first encountered SAP enterprise software. I did two research projects on SAP implementations and while a postgrad worked as system administrator of the department's teaching system. I also lectured some course modules that used SAP ERP software for their practical component. When the time came to leave university (after seven years!), a career involving SAP software seemed like a natural choice.
In February 2000 I joined the professional services organization of a large consulting firm specialising in SAP implementations and am still employed there, working as technical consultant and architect focusing on the NetWeaver business process platform.
Love and Marriage
I'm not one to publicly discuss deeply personal things, but suffice it to say that I met the love of my life Niki in early 2002 and we've been happily married since July 7, 2003. We have two beautiful children and they have given me a different perspective on the things that matter in life and what it means to love and be loved.