Hi there. I'm scarface from New Zealand. I'm pretty new to BBS's, mainly just been playing the games (poorly haha). I've also been lurking the message board a bit and thought I should take the time to introduce myself.

I'm a child of the late 80's, brought up with a mix of DOS, Debian, and various window's starting from 3.11. I've gotten to know a lot more about computers ever since, but always know there is heaps more out there to learn.

In recent years, I mainly use linux, but dabble in other OS's in VM's. I've also made a decent effort at my own OS for the x86, purely for the learning opportunity of learning x86 assembly.

For work, I started off a sysadmin at my dad's work, then did university and whatnot. After uni I've been a web developer, security consultant. On the side I do various projects in a bunch of languages. I like trying things out, even "esoteric" stuff.

I'm probably a bit younger than the average age, but is nice to see there are even younger folks getting engaged with this sort of technology. I worry sometimes about the direction of the software industry. I'm not so sure it is always going forward haha.

Anyhow, that's me. Using SyncTERM from ubuntu. Happy for recommendations of other clients to enjoy this though!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

Hello scarface!

Hi there. I'm scarface from New Zealand. I'm pretty new to BBS's, mainly just been playing the games (poorly haha). I've also been lurking the message board a bit and thought I should take the time to introduce myself.

Thanks for the intro, and welcome! Nice to have you here!

I was born in the late 70s -- almost early 80s! -- and also started off with MS-DOS and Windows 3.1. Later some OS/2 2.1, OS/2 3.0, Windows NT4, Windows 2000 Professional, and then finally some Linux (mostly Debian), which I use for the BBS stuff (still using Windows for my desktop, but a bit tempted to try out MacOS any year now...).

Working as a Linux/UNIX sysadmin since the early 2000s to this date, and just spent a couple of days of wading trough config files and whatnot after a Debian 13 upgrade. =)

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2024/05/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)

scarface wrote to All <=-

I'm probably a bit younger than the average age, but is nice to see
there are even younger folks getting engaged with this sort of
technology. I worry sometimes about the direction of the software industry. I'm not so sure it is always going forward haha.

Welcome! BBSing benefits from people of all ages, I know I've had
callers who weren't born when I put the BBS up! :)



--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)

I'm probably a bit younger than the average age, but is nice to see
there are even younger folks getting engaged with this sort of
technology. I worry sometimes about the direction of the software industry. I'm not so sure it is always going forward haha.

Welcome to bbsing! I suspect that most of us worry about the direction of
the software, and general tech, industry, too. ;)


* SLMR 2.1a * No viruses detected. Must be a pair of Nanites.
--- SBBSecho 3.28-Linux
* Origin: capitolcityonline.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/HTTP (21:1/175)

Re: Hi all!
By: scarface to All on Sat Aug 30 2025 12:23 pm

Hi there. I'm scarface from New Zealand. I'm pretty new to BBS's, mainly just been playing the games (poorly haha). I've also been lurking the message board a bit and thought I should take the time to introduce myself.

Welcome :)

I'm a child of the late 80's, brought up with a mix of DOS, Debian, and various window's starting from 3.11. I've gotten to know a lot more about computers ever since, but always know there is heaps more out there to learn.

That's cool.
I grew up in the 80s & 90s and mostly used DOS and Windows (starting with 3.0), and it went from there. My schools also had Apple 2 and Macintosh computers, so I was familiar with those too. I was also curious about Amiga computers but had only seen them in a couple places when I was growing up.

I'm probably a bit younger than the average age, but is nice to see there are even younger folks getting engaged with this sort of technology. I worry sometimes about the direction of the software industry. I'm not so sure it is always going forward haha.

I'm a software engineer, and lately I've been hearing people who are worried that AI might take people's jobs. I'm not sure if that will happen, or to what extent, but I'm hoping it won't have much of a negative impact on the job market.

Nightfox

which I use for the BBS stuff (still using Windows for my desktop, but a bit tempted to try out MacOS any year now...).

Haha, I too believe that I will try out MacOS any year. Some of my school friends had macs growing up, but just seemed foreign to me. I had some in the music lab at high school, which I just promptly got the software (Sibelius from memory) used on it onto my computer (I recall this was through a very legal purchase ;) ), which at the time was likely either Windows XP (for gaming), or debian/ubuntu with XP in a vm (for gaming, my friends always let me know how ridiculous it was that I used a vm, sometimes at the lowest resolution, just to join in at LAN parties haha)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

with 3.0), and it went from there. My schools also had Apple 2 and Macintosh computers, so I was familiar with those too. I was also
curious about Amiga computers but had only seen them in a couple places when I was growing up.

I hadn't really even _heard_ of amiga growing up eh. a few friends had apples which seemed rudimentary as I had already explored DOS and linux quite a bit. In hindsight, I likely just haven't given it the chance to explore it at the time, but I can still do today!

My high school had a couple of mac's we used in music class. the big colourful CRT unit all in one things. iMac's? Basically only used one piece of software on it, so I just .. acquired .. a windows copy. Majority of my software on my windows machine in that day would have been open source, soon to make the switch to full time linux.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

I'm a software engineer, and lately I've been hearing people who are worried that AI might take people's jobs. I'm not sure if that will happen, or to what extent, but I'm hoping it won't have much of a
negative impact on the job market.

ah I meant to reply to this as well. In my experience so far I doubt it will replace any intermediate and above level programmers/developers/engineers/scientists/whatever title you pick. For juniors potentially it will make a cohort which is less likely to understand the foundations/fundamentals. We've already seen some of this in recent years with the lower end reaching toward google/stackoverflow/etc more often and just copy pasting rather than understanding. I've seen some of this flow on into higher roles in some of my roles. Makes it hard when you kinda expect a colleague on the same level as you to understand something that they seem to have no knowledge of :shrug:.

I read something recently showing that kids/adolesents are growing up in a world where things "just work" to some degree of "work", and are less curious about the _how_ it works. I can't recall what journal that was in, but I guess it shows that people are studying the effect, but that sort of research is sadly slow, and lagged behind the actuality of the present. Best we can do is talk about the effect as how _we_ see it, and what trends _we_ have seen play out etc. Otherwise ppl will just keep being sheep and ignore it all. Humans are made to do the easiest thing. Best dopamine to effort reward :)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)