Autobiography (abridged)

My name is Morgan Aldridge and I’m an addict.

I’m addicted to technology and information. Unfortunately, it’s tearing me apart as there’s this luddite voice in the back of my mind that says that everything that is wrong with our society and the current state of the planet which we co-inhabit with other species (flora and fauna) is due to our technology and our ravenous hunger for it.

Because of this inner turmoil, I have always been a proponent of reusing existing technology a opposed to blindly creating new devices which don’t offer a significant benefit. I used to run the Classic Mac Workshop, a site designed to help support those still using quite elderly Macintosh computers. I still have a Macintosh Color Classic which I use regularly and an Apple Newton MessagePad 2100 which goes everywhere with me.

In the past few years I’ve become somewhat of an efficiency geek as well. I struggle with my personal efficiency as I’m quite disorganized and easily distracted; mainly due to my constant quest for information as well as my numerous and broad areas of interest.

I’ve pursued both software development and Web design/development professionally over the years:

  • I was a summer Intern at NewsBank, Inc. for a number of years as a software engineer working on the back-end for their dynamic news search sites.
  • I ported applications to the Mac (including NeHe’s OpenGL Tutorials and the initial work on Egoboo) and wrote a few OpenGL demos.
  • I got into Mac game development scene and ended up as a staff member for iDevGames.com.

I attended WPI as a Computer Science major, but dropped out after two years for medical reasons and disappointment with the guidance I was getting. While attending classes at WPI I worked in the Computing & Communications Center Helpdesk, played too much Counter-Strike and Quake III Arena, played pool in the Campus Center, listened to punk & ska music, and started makkintosshu.

Originally I was going to produce Mac OS X software, do web design & development, and provide web hosting under the “makkintosshu” name, but it quickly became my blog. My server was a PowerMac 7500 running Darwin 1.4.1 (thanks to XPostFacto) hosted out of my dorm room. Once I dropped out, it was hosted temporarily at USAExpress.net, an ISP started by a friend.

After I dropped out of WPI, I joined the work force as a Macintosh repair technician and consultant at Brown Computer Solutions. When I moved, I picked up a job at Small Dog Electronics, Inc., first in Telephone & Web Sales, then moving on to Retail Sales, and eventually getting offered the “Data Plumber” position (i.e. IT staff, web developer, and in-house help desk) when the former IT Manager left to pursue other interests.

And that’s where I currently stand: Data Plumber for Small Dog. You can see what I’m up to there by reading Barkings!, the Small Dog blog.

Elsewhere On The Web

Other web sites I run or contribute to include:

You can find further information about me on various social web profiles, so feel free to dig through additional details of my life:

Colophon

The markup and styling for this site is hand-coded in SubEthaEdit and all graphics are created pixel-by-pixel using Pixen. Textpattern is used for the content management system.

Currently, I use the following techniques and web standards:

And the following TextPattern plug-ins:

The site is hosted on an Apple Dual 2.0GHz Xserve G5 running Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) Server. An Adelphia PowerLink Comcast cable connection provides approximately 1Mbit bandwidth and DynDNS keeps my Gandi -purchased domain available 24/7.

Of course, Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) Server uses the now-standard collection of Apache, MySQL, and PHP.

Wish List

Honestly, I don’t need anything, so don’t feel obligated to get me anything. Aside from my health, life has been good to me lately and I have more than enough stuff. With that in mind, I do my best to keep the items on my wish list pared down and would appreciate any of the items being sent to me.

Visit my Amazon.com Wish List.