Who is that Jeff Lane character, anyway?
This is the eponymous website of Jeff Lane, Linux Guy, Warrior Poet, Biker, Gunslinger and amateur Chef and Photographer. But who exactly is this Jeff Lane person anyway?
On the day I was born, the nurses all gathered ’round…
Jeff was born some time back in the drug crazed days of the Disco Era to a pair of recovering Hippies in a little town called Roanoke, Virginia. He spent his formative years learning and then honing the craft of Bullshit at the tutelage of his Father. He was a Cub Scout, a Boy Scout, and was often being punished by one form of authority or another, yet never, ever managed to actually get himself arrested. One lesson he learned early on was “Be smart enough to not get caught.”
Greetings, Professor Falken. Would you like to play a game?
No thank you Joshua.
Jeff gravitated early on to computers. His first experience with computers came at an early age in the early ’80s with the ubiquitous Tandy / Radio Shack TRS-80. Armed with a 13 inch TV, the TRS-80 and Disney’s Space Probe: Math, an educational game based on the rather horrific movie “The Black Hole” (Remember when the robot killed that guy using its Razor Robot Spinning Hands of Death?) he learned the basics of computer programming and eventually took a couple courses on BASIC programming with people about 20 years older than he was at Roanoke College.
Rampart, this is Squad 51. I’m sending you some EKG
In 1994, Jeff joined the now defunct Fort Lewis Volunteer Rescue Squad. That fateful event would lead Jeff to 6 years of life in Emergency Medical Service. During that time, our intrepid hero served as Sergeant, Lieutenant, Assistant Chief and Chief of Rescue, trained as a Fire Fighter, worked in the Lewis Gale Hostpital and Roanoke Memorial Hospital Emergency Departments for kicks, and worked professionally in an Orthopaedic Clinic and as a medic for United Ambulance Service.
I’m sorry Dave, but I’m afraid I can’t allow you to do that.
The star of our story had fully planned on a career in EMS, and likely would have done so, had several things not happened. First, most people in EMS struggle to make ends meet which goes against our idiot savant’s lazy nature. Second, EMS is stressful and when you’ve been an EMT pretty much 24/7 for 6 years, you get pretty burnt out. So this led to the Great Diaspora in which the exhausted and emotionally void Jeff packed up all his shit and moved to North Carolina to dive back into computers at Red Hat in what would become the first Dream Job. At Red Hat, Jeff performed a lot of different tasks, from Enterprise technical support to running the Hardware Certification Team as well as managing the Pacific Support Team. He also taught Intro to Red Hat Linux as part of Red Hat’s Employee Orientation and Training. Jeff is an Red Hat Certified Engineer and at one time an active Red Hat Certified Examiner.
Burning down the house!
As all good things must come to an end, so did the Dot Com bubble. Tech companies were folding all around and in Research Triangle Park people were losing their jobs in droves. Now Red Hat never folded, but they did cut a large portion of their support staff, and thus Jeff became another Dot Com Statistic. But not one to sit idly by, Jeff did two important things.
First, he jumped right into Plan P, involving a year and a half managing a Pizza Hut while starting back to school Full Time. Eventually, he ended up at IBM while he finished a degree in Computer Programming, graduating with honors at a 3.93 GPA. Jeff stayed at IBM until 2009 when he was once again the lucky recipient of a severance package as IBM System X stopped hiring and started cutting people left and right. Luck, however, was just around the corner.
I’m BACK… I’m back in the saddle again…
After a 6 month hiatus, Jeff spent anohter 6 months at IBM as a contractor until he found his current position at Canonical the company behind Ubuntu a Linux distribution aimed at making Linux usable for everyone, not just the elite few. A Linux for the masses.
Today, Jeff is still at Canonical and serves as the Hardware Certification Team mouthpiece, fielding questions and playing umpire when a call has to be made. He manages certification labs in Lexington, Massachusetts; Montreal, Quebec, Canada; and Taipei, Taiwan. He’s traveled the world, and visited some really amazing places like London, Oxford, Prague, Bruges, and Taipei. Jeff is one of the maintainers and developers of Checkbox, the Ubuntu System Testing tool.
Ghost riders in the sky
But that’s not all there is. When not working in front of one of many computers sitting around the house, Jeff enjoys several hobbies. He drives a Miata and ventures to Miata gatherings and enjoys some “spirited” driving on twisty mountain roads. He rides a Suzuki Intruder VL800. He has taken flying lessons and still hopes to be able to realize his life long dream of being a pilot.
Jeff is also a photographer, chef, writer, explorer. He loves the out doors, hiking, camping and fishing. He runs, sometimes, and rides a bike too. He lives on a small farm in Central NC with 4 dogs, 4 cats, 3 immortal goldfish, a snake and one wife who, for some reason, puts up with all this foolishness.
