User:74s181

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While waiting for guidance on a page I'm working on I decided to update my user page.

My user page contains some strong POV. I think that is ok for a user page, but if not, please let me know on my talk page and I'll edit it again.

My name is Les, I am a heterosexual male. I live in the Midwest (the real Midwest, not the one over by Chicago). I have a family, four children, three living, two are grown up and married, the youngest is away at college. I work in the computer business, my business card says "Senior Network Consultant" but I do very little true consulting these days, mostly I actually work on computers and networks rather than talking and writing about it like real consultants do <g>. These days I prefer to focus on networking, Cisco firewalls, routers, switches, etc. I also install and support VMware and I work on Microsoft Windows servers in my spare time. Currently I know nothing about Vista and I hope to keep it that way, at least until it finishes its post-beta testing period, or in other words, until the first service pack is released.

I enjoy writing, especially sharing ideas. I discovered Wikipedia and made my first contributions in December of 2004, anonymously under my home net static IP. Like many things I do I dived in without fully understanding the process and rubbed a few people the wrong way. Now that I have a bit more experience I still occasionally rub people the wrong way. This is not intentional, I try to follow the 'rules', but there are so many of them, especially for what claims to be an 'open' or 'free' environment, it's hard not to get irritated sometimes.

As an aside, I sometimes feel like the banker, who, when he first heard of socialism chuckled and said, "They want to eliminate money? Poor fools, they'll re-invent it soon enough."

I enjoy a good debate, it's built into my genes. I grew up disrupting class and arguing with my school teachers until they transfered me to the 'bad boy' group, they would have a different solution today. I was a SYSOP on the CompuServ NetWire forums sponsored by Novell back when CompuServ was the primary online community for PC users, and was heavily involved in the NetWare / NT4 flame wars, taking the NetWare side. I drank from the skull (see Temple of Doom) around 1996 and have been an MS zombie ever since. I now occasionally get involved in the Windows / Linux debates, taking the side of Windows. I really think that Bill Gates is a benefactor of humanity for homogenizing the IT landscape. Don't get me started on this as I strongly believe that if you're going to call something 'free' it should in fact be free, without any restrictions attached to it. And no, I do not now, and have never worked for Microsoft or any of its subsidiaries, although I have been accused of such in various discussions.

I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the one headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. I have been a member all of my life, my parents joined the church when I was about one or two years old. I went thru a rebellious period in my late teens and did not serve a mission but have been active since then and held many callings, most of them involving teaching. For the last five years I have taught the Gospel Doctrine class in my ward, I also taught it previously for about three years. This doesn't mean I think I have any particular authority to speak on the doctrines of The Church, but I do feel that it gives me a clearer picture of what is official doctrine vs "Mormon Myth". I try to live a Christian life, but I have difficulty with meekness and humility sometimes. Ok, most of the time.

Like most people who regularly edit Wikipedia, I have an agenda. Unlike some, I freely admit it and state my agenda right up front.

The goal of my writing is to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Before you panic and reach for the 'block user' key, I promise I won't try to 'convert' anyone by argument or logic, partly because any such attempt would be against the 'rules' of Wikipedia, primarily because I believe that true conversion only comes by the Holy Ghost.

But I believe that one must be "good ground" not "by the way side" (Mark 4: 2-20) before the Holy Ghost can testify of the truthfulness of a particular church or doctrine. Or, in other words, if you already think you know a certain thing is false, there is no way that the Holy Ghost can tell you it is true.

I hope to protect the seed of truth from the "fowls of the air" that "devoured it up" before it had a chance to sprout, and help others overcome some of the "thorns that grew up" and "choked it", preventing it from bringing forth good fruit.

What does that mean in English? It means that I will work to ensure sure that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its doctrines and beliefs are fairly and accurately portrayed. I want to do this within the spirit of Wikipedia, so if you think you have seen an example of where I have violated the spirit or rules of Wikipedia please bring it up on my talk page.

I am a believer in citations. Whenever possible I prefer to let citations speak for themselves, pasting excerpts inline rather than taking the risk of injecting my own opinion by summarizing. There have been times when I have made contributions in the past that I thought were true, and on being accused of original research removed my contributions after failing to find a citation. So, now I cite everything and quote whenever there is room for it.

You may be wondering if I am a true believer in Wikipedia. I guess it depends on how you define the term, 'true believer'. I think that Wikipedia is a noble experiment and provides much useful information about many topics, but I am still trying to understand how it is supposed to work with controversial topics. To borrow a Christian metaphor, it seems to be a house built upon sand. Usually, the storm doesn't come, and the winds don't blow, but when they do... I'm still here, I'm trying to assume good faith, I'm trying to contribute in a NPOV way. But I'm also digging in the sand looking for some kind of bedrock to build on.

Anyway, that's who I am. If you're wondering why I use the handle '74s181', it is because the first computer I spent a lot of time on was the Data General Nova 3 which was based on the 74181 bit slice ALU. Years ago when I first started registering at various places on the Internet I used 'bitslice', so did a lot of other people. So I switched to '74s181'. Most people haven't even heard of that one, but those who have, know what I'm talking about.

Feel free to leave comments on my talk page. 74s181 22:46, 19 March 2007 (UTC)