An Interview with Brian

September, 2000

By BiJae

BiJae: "Several people visiting my web pages have been asking about you. They are interested in learning more about you. One thing they have noticed, you don't have many pictures of you. Why is that?"

Brian: "Well, I guess I am a little camera shy. I don't like  to have my picture taken. Often I am the one that is taking the pictures so it is easy for me to hide behind the camera."

BiJae: "Yes, you do have a lot of pictures from the years we have been together. Are you going to publish more pages?"

Brian: "Absolutely! I have a few thousand pictures that I have taken with my Kodak DC240 and I want to get them out on the web. I have plenty of web space, but I just don't seem to make the time. After working on computers all day, I don't like to come home and work on my own."

BiJae: "Ah, work! People are wondering, what do you do for a living?"

Brian: "I am a Network Analyst. I am working for Travis County right now. I am running a Novell Network with close to two hundred users."

BiJae: "That's a lot of people. No wonder you are so wiped when you get home! What type of stuff do you do at the office?"

Brian: "It varies from day to day. I have set projects that I am working on. Right now one of them is documenting procedures for a new database program that we are running. I include a lot of screen shots and text, it's a lot of fun. I have enjoyed working on these types of projects for the various companies I have worked for. I seldom have time for it when I am answering use calls."

BiJae: "What type of user calls do you support?"

Brian: "All kinds, every thing from the quirkiest software to the biggest of hardware. I have to cover it all and I have to be quick about it. You don't want any user to have down time. My recent large user calls have been diagnosing a bad network card causing a whole line to go down sparatically, to an individual computer that decided to choke up and die. It's very challenging and uses several parts of the brain. Even though we know how computers work and we understand the network as a whole, there is always the element of surprise. I guess you could say I am a digital Sherlock Holmes, always trying to explain what has gone wrong, and then try to fix it."

BiJae: "Interesting, that's a far cry from what you were doing when we met."

Brian: "Yes, it is. In the nine years we have been together I have held some interesting jobs."

BiJae: "Tell us about them."

Brian: "Well, when you and I first joined our lives, I was working as a handy man for a orthopedic surgeon in my home town, Sonora, California. Shortly after that we moved to Medford, Oregon where I worked as a truck tire repairman.

BiJae: "A truck tire repairman? Weren't you too small for that?"

Brian: "No, but all the truck drivers thought I was. I had several get out of their truck and ask me to get the guy to fix it. When I told them I was that guy they laughed. I was only 115# at the time and not much bigger than the tire. They all had to watch to see this scrawney kid wrestle the tire. I showed them! Not only did I fix the tire (without using the automated machine) but I got it done faster than they had ever seen! I won quite a few tips/bets that way!"

BiJae: "I bet they were impressed. How long were we in Oregon?"

Brian: "We lived there for six months. It wasn't the length of time that we were there that was important. It was who we met. While living in Oregon we met my best friend Salome (sol-oh-may). That was an interesting meeting and life."

BiJae: "Yes, let's get back to that a litte later. What type of work did you do after leaving Oregon?

Brian: "After returning home, I started my own business. I was doing landscaping for several doctors around town. It was a great way to work a schedule around school. During that time of my life I was working 60 hours a week and taking a full eighteen unit load at the community college.It was tough, but at least I was able to take you to work with me!"

BiJae: "Unlike now! I am going to ask that we take a break here. We have to go do our morning walk. However I would like to ask our readers to submit questions they would like to ask of your or what direction they would like to see this interview go. If you have a specific question or would like to know generalities, please drop me a line at the address below. I will try to include all questions in our next segment. Thank you."

Mail Questions or comments to bijae@att.net