About Stix
General
Where I call home
I live with my wife and bouncy 10 year old son, in a two bedroom apartment in Dalgety Square, Ultimo, NSW.
Employment
I work as a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) for Google Australia.
Education
Graduated with Bachelor of Computer Science with First Class Honours in 2001 from the University of Wollongong, completing the degree part-time starting 1993.
Prior to Uni, I completed 6 years high school at Nowra Technology High School, finishing 1992.
Contact Details
Work
Started a new job, December 2007, working in Sydney CBD. I guess it could be called UNIX System Administration, although it is unlike any systems administration I've ever done before.
Home
Email: mailto:stixpjr@gmail.com
Mobile: +61 419 432 517
Instant Messaging
| Facebook: | http://www.facebook.com/stixpjr |
| Google Talk: | stixpjr@gmail.com |
| Skype: | stixpjr |
| Twitter: | http://twitter.com/stixpjr |
GPG/PGP Public Key
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Interests
Music
My tastes in music are eclectic, to say the least. At any time, my CD player is likely to contain anything from Enya, Endorphin, Gatecrasher, Enigma, Live, Veruca Salt, Ganggajang, Air (the French band), Everything But The Girl, the Corrs, Ben Folds Five, Stone Temple Pilots, modern jazz with Marc Moulin, or straight classical (Bach, Ravel, Mozart, Handel, Strauss, Rachmaninov, Vivaldi, Schubert, ...). And as for radio, there's basically only four stations worth listening to in Aus: ABC Local Radio, ABC Radio National (for news and sport (think cricket)), ABC Classic FM and ABC's "youth radio" TripleJ. You can even listen to the J's on the 'Net. In case you hadn't guessed, my radio's usually stuck on JJJ.
At home, I have a nice Yamaha RX-V757B receiver/amp (upgraded from an RX-V2092), with 5-channels worth of Aaron speakers - a pair of ATS-5 speakers at the front, a pair of ATS-1 speakers for the rear, and a CC-240 centre speaker. Very happy with the setup, a very clean, natural sound. The room is small enough for the ATS-5s to pump out enough bass, without annoying the neighbours too much.
The rest of the components are Yamaha CDC-765 6 disc CD turntable, Yamaha DVD-S796 DVD player, Sony SLV-X822 VCR and a Sharp 32" Aquos LC32GA4X LCD TV. I originally purchased a DGTEC DG-HD804 set-top box, but due to problems and a fairly crude interface, I've swapped to a Strong Technologies SRT 5400 which appears to be a far better, if more expensive, unit.
I also have an 80 GiB iPod Video, after upgrading from a 3rd Generation 40 GB iPod, which is still surviving well, after being used cycling, in the car and hooked up to the rest of the gear above. I originally filled my iPod using NetBSD and gnupod, later gtkpod, but now I've migrated to Rockbox.
Sport
I'm not overly athletic, but I do play tennis around three or four times a week, playing in the Wollongong District Mens Wednesday Night Comp, and the Saturday Afternoon Mixed Comp, and often Sunday afternoon social game at my home courts at Wiseman Park, in Wollongong. I'm almost a B-grade player, but a shoulder injury (rotator-cuff partial tear) has held me back somewhat.
I also try to get some cycling in, with the cycleway only a few hundred metres from my unit, there's no excuses. During the summer months I'm more keen to ride, my goal being to ride to work at least a couple of times a week (only 11 km each way). A goal that hasn't been realised.
As well as these, I was introduced to skiing at an early age, with my parents both being ski instructors at various times. Although during high school, downhill skiing wasn't quite in the budget, so I enjoyed some cross-country skiing (traditional, not skating). Now, with a good job, I try to get a weeks downhill skiing in each year, with some cross country skiing on the side. Being a member of the Illawarra Alpine Club (IAC) means I get great accommodation.
Computers
I'm a regular lurker on the NetBSD, Darwin and TSM (Tivoli Storage Manager) mailing lists, mainly learning and questioning, but responding when there's time.
Also, I'm a part time hobbyist programmer in a variety of languages, my current choices being C, Perl, Objective-C, C++ and Java, probably in that order, although as in my Résumé, I've touched a great deal more over the years.
As would be expected, I've collected a fair bit of hardware. You can read up on some of my active Systems.
If you see any of the following email addresses floating out there, yes, they are, or were, all me. Please update your address list to one of the current ones!
| Sep 2004-> | mailto:stixpjr@gmail.com |
| Nov 2005-> | mailto:stix@stix.id.au |
| Dec 2007-> | mailto:stix@google.com |
| Jan 2005-> | mailto:stix@exemail.com.au |
| Jul 1999-> | mailto:stixpjr@yahoo.com.au |
| Jul 2003-Apr 2014 | mailto:stix@stix.homeunix.net |
| Jan 2006-Oct 2007 | pripke@csc.com |
| Oct 2000-Jul 2006 | pripke@csc.com.au |
| Nov 1997-Apr 2006 | stixpjr@ozemail.com.au |
| Dec 2003-Jan 2005 | stix@swiftdsl.com.au |
| Feb 2002-Dec 2003 | stixpjr@bigpond.com.au |
| 1998-2000 | paul.ripke.pr@bhp.com.au |
| 1998-1998 | paul.p.r.ripke@msm.bhp.com.au |
| 1995-???? | paul.p.r.ripke@msmail.bhp.com.au |
| 1993-1995 | paul.pr.ripke@bhp.bhpmel04.telememo.au |
| 1996-2002 | pjr02@uow.edu.au |
| 1993-1996 | u9352236@cc.uow.edu.au |
