Patrick’s Musings

I am a 27 year old professional geek. I am happily married to Nikki, and have a 5 year old son Ash. I live in the Sydney suburb of Ashfield. When I’m not nerding it up in my inner sanctum otherwise known as nerdland, I can be found irish dancing, Reading, studying or sleeping. I a Greens Councillor for Ashfield East Ward & the NSW Director of Communications & Promotions for Engineers Without Borders

I am currently studying a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Politics and History. I am doing this through Open Universities Australia though my course is exclusively drawn from Macquarie University. I am enjoying this immensely and look forward to finishing it in a about a decade with the limited free time I have and moving further into the political arena.

I am quite concerned about our environmental state and I am a member of the Conservation Volunteers Australia, Green Fleet the New South Wales Greens & Oxfam In 2007 I was the returning office for the Lowe pre-selection which whilst not taxing was a valuable position and one that I enjoyed. I feel passionately about several issues, including:

1. Human Rights, as laid out by the United Nations
2. Adequate medical and dental facilities for all.
3. An Australian Bill of Rights amended to our Constitution.
4. Preservation of historically significant sites.
5. Preserving our environment and ensuring an adequate water supply to ALL Australians.
6. Ending poverty throughout the world.
7. Reliable, efficient & cheap public transport for all population centres.

I used to work for EMC Australia, a global leader in information lifecycle management, IP and SAN Storage and virtualisation. Or so they tell me. I was in the role for 4.5 years as a Senior Software Solutions Engineer. Fancy title you say, yes it is, doesn’t fit well on business cards, but that’s ok, I worked in a call centre and never saw a customer in months. Specifically I supported EMC Celerra NAS equipment, which is challenging and rewarding. I am currently consulting on a freelance basis to Australian not for profit & non governmental organisations.

I have written dozens of short articles on technical issues, many of which can be found at Shipyard, Anchor Systems’ developer site. Though the site appears to have not been updated since I left Anchor, you can still find my articles there; for instance, Why your business needs a website, How to stress test a computer, How to install Linux on your old computer and have it running well and many more on web technologies such as htaccess. A few other articles were published in the now defunct internet.au magazine published by Next Media.

In case you are curious what else I do for fun. I am an AFL fan, I support the Hawthorn Hawks and the Sydney Swans, a byproduct of having lived in Victoria for the first ten years of my life and tenaciously gripping onto my old team, whilst accepting that to really enjoy every match in Sydney, I’ll have to support the Swans. I don’t really follow those other football codes, though I used to be partial to the Canberra Raiders.