My name is Valdis.
I am a computer hobbyist (my day job is an accountant/
financial analyst at a fortune 200 company, but that
is less important here).  I play with *nix OSs,
including linux, bsd, and (at work) mainframe unix.

I like doing geeky things like trying every program 
in /bin, /usr/bin, etc. and reading configuration files.

I also like programming (once again, as a hobby, not 
as work; I worked in an IT department for 15 months
and did not like the bureaucracy) and have written 
little programs in C, C++, Java, Perl, and Python.  

Back in 2005, I created a small Java program and 
released it through Sourceforge.  It is the 
"Personal Cash Flow Forecaster" at 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cfforecaster/
(gee, at the top of this page I said my day job would
not intrude here, and yet, when it came time for me
to try to write a real program, the kind I wrote was 
for accounting purposes).  It was a fun project, in 
part because I was enamored with Java at the time.  
Today, I shudder to remember how much effort I spent 
on the gui rather than the core logic and calculations.

If I put my head into the right mindset, I
can think in terms of object-oriented 
programming, but I am more comfortable in 
procedural programming.  Functional programming
is a neat idea, but I really only do it on
spreadsheets (i.e.: many linked formulas).
Most of the time, I like to see the state
of variables and other objects change :)

Most of all, I thrive on solving puzzles, whether 
it is troubleshooting operating system installs,
figuring out how to do things on a new system,
or programming (or, of course, puzzle solving at
work).