I am a programmer and singer-songwriter on guitar . I am born on April the 4th of the year 1966 .

After High-School (mathematics) I tried a year for master mathematics, speciality programmer : It was an enormous difference between High-School mathematics and their mathematical learning packages . So I didn't get through the second exams at the end of the year, and in the retrials in september I managed to pass the Physics second exam ánd the Algebra exam, but the exam of mathematical study of infinity was too hard for me, so I stopped the following exams too and got out of University .

The next year I started the study of Programmer in a non university school, and had my diploma in two years (now it's three ...) . But there was still military service, so I didn't find a job before because of that service duty, which I did from the 1st of January until the 31st of December of the year 1988 .

Afterwards it took me until May of 1989 to find my job : As a programmer of the IBM mini-systems S/36, later the AS/400, programming was in Report Program Generator (RPG), a very weird, column-based programming language . But I didn't like the job very much : It was in a software house called N.V. Computer Support . I didn't like to do it, because of the deadlines, the absurd time schedule in the customer quotes : E.G. I had to expand a computer night communication program to get it working for any number of connections (sell points to the main office) : my boss of production made a customer quote that it would only take me 15 days to make such a huge and complex algorithms based on one computer talking to another one at night to exchange data : It took me 6 months to write and test it !!!
So in the end , I really got bored with all these miscalculations of needed working days, that I didn't do the job very good anymore, started drinking too much and taking calming pils, not being able to reach any deadline anymore and they "had to let me go" ! After some months of unemployment, I tried to commit suicide ... But luckily I still lived with my parents, who heard me fall upstairs and called for emergency ambulance . I have had a large number of hospital admissions ... But today I can proudly say : I am 12 and a half years sober ! But since I get an income from the Belgian Social security for illnesses which is not much, I found Linux Ubuntu 9.04 being a totally new and FREE operating system and I was submerged in the power of Linux .

Today I run Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on a small, second hand 64-bit PC, and I am doing a course called "Linux Essentials" from NDG at Netacad . The final exam must be finished before mid April !

And here I rest my case, and it was a pleasure for me to write it all out, so, see you guys one of these days here at Ask Ubuntu . It will be my pleasure to help one of you out sometime, who knows huh ?

With regards,

Henk Vanneste, Gent/Belgium .