[Linux4christians] Hello all!

Tue Apr 22 16:41:52 EDT 2008

Just wanted to say hi to all...

I'm Gary Whittaker, from Saugerties, NY.  I'm the Director for Information
Management for Columbia County Dept of Human Services.  I've been reading
and (very) occasionally contributing to this list for quite a while now.  My
wife and I use Linux on our desktops and one laptop at home.  I now use a
MacBook Pro for most of my home office and church work, like a couple others
of you.  (And I haven't installed Linux on it yet, but sooner or later, I'm
sure I will.)  At work I use three Linux servers, running Red Hat
Enterprise, Ubuntu 6.06 Server, and Debian sarge.

We developed our church website (http://vineyardchurchny.com) on drupal...
we're working on a  major overhaul now that'll come out in a month or so.  I
love working with open source software, and--as more than one of you has
pointed out--I agree that it's a matter of responsible stewardship of the
resources we're blessed with.

I'm heavily involved with Kairos Prison Ministry, and I run Special Olympics
programs in Ulster County.  God is SO good!

That's all for now...   God bless you all,   --Gary

On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 11:41 AM, Josiah Ritchie <josiah at ritchietribe.net>
wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 10:10 PM, John R Puhalski
> <john.puhalski at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >  Hi all,
> >
> >  I think it would be great to see it get going a little more too.  I
> kind of
> > forgot about it since there wasnt much going on anymore.  I remember
> when I
> > first found the website and mailing list i was excited about using linux
> > from a christian standpoint.  One of the things I've been working on for
> > some time is content filtering and parental control.  I posted on here
> late
> > last year and got some ideas but still have area's that need to be
> > addressed.  So hopefully there will be enough interest to get things
> going.
> >
> >  I like Todd's idea below also about email introductions, it would be
> good
> > to see who's out there and we could also find out what others interests
> are,
> > disto's being used and other and levels of expertise to help in
> answering
> > questions and solving problems.
>
> I'm Josiah Ritchie. I moved to the Lehigh Valley of PA about a year
> ago to start my work as a missionary with Fellowship International
> Mission (Allentown, PA) where I have the great privilege of being
> responsible for anything that plugs in at the home office, but also
> supporting over 150 missionaries in 30 different countries. Actually,
> I just released a video that gives a 5 minute overview of my job:
> http://missions.ritchietribe.net/node/349 Prior to that I worked at
> Washington Bible College for 7 years in their IT department. I've been
> using Linux as my main office & home desktop OS for many years.
> Started with RedHat back in the years before Fedora was anything but a
> hat. I moved to Gentoo when I saw incredibly impressive performance
> improvements and then moved a few years ago to Ubuntu because it was
> just so easy to maintain, but I could still get in and tweak when I
> wanted to. Gentoo still rocks, but I can't justify the time spent
> compiling anymore. :-)
>
> I was recently gifted with a MacBook Pro to which I enjoy, but there
> are things about Linux that I really miss. My wife won't let me
> install Linux on it because my last Mac notebook (an old Lombard w/
> 4Gig HD and no wireless never recovered from my attempt to install
> Gentoo, details available upon request). I've been finding a number of
> our missionaries moving to Macs. They fit their needs more effectively
> as they try to do newsletters and media presentations.
>
> I run Samba, IPCop, LAMP and various other Linux/Open Source solutions
> to needs here at FIM. I'm convinced that the open source model of
> software development is a matter of Christian stewardship. I recently
> wrote a blog entry about an opportunity within the world of mission
> software called Centrallix. http://missions.ritchietribe.net/node/346.
> I'm not a coder, but I've been known to write documentation for
> projects like this. I'd like to mobilize more coders, testers, and
> documenters to get under projects like this. If this idea catches your
> attention, I'd love to meet you at ICCM this year
> http://iccm.gospelcom.net. The money spent of software that Centrallix
> can/will be able to replace each year in the mission world is in the
> millions (and often enough that software does a poor job of solving
> the problem without any chance of making it work better).
>
> After reading Linc's testimony, I'm reminded of one of our
> missionaries. http://www.christiananswersforthenewage.org/ is a
> ministry teaching the church about the dangers of new age philosophy.
> I've been working to slowly encourage Marcia to break onto the
> Internet more, but she doesn't have the time to really invest with her
> travel and speaking schedule. I've managed to get Google Analytics
> setup on their website and the volume of traffic they get for what is
> a static and rarely changing website with no marketing of any kind
> aside from word-of-mouth has been pretty incredible to me. I could see
> someone running a corollary site as a full-time faith-based
> missionary, cultivating a community around the materials and having a
> seriously effective ministry that changes lives.
>
> JSR/
>
> --
> Our Mission
> Technology and Hospitality for God's Workmen
> http://missions.ritchietribe.net
> _______________________________________________
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> Linux4christians at thelinuxlink.net
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>
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