Hello from Northern Illinois

   Hi Chad,  I just started listening to your podcast last weekend.  I downloaded all of the episodes a listened to all of them while at work this past week.
    I've been using Linux full time for about three years now.  Before that, I was a customer engineer for company that was owned by AT&T in the mid 90's and was sent to a week long UNIX course so that I could support a server that was being installed at a new business that I lived in at the time.  Around 2000, I downloaded a version (off of a dialup connection) of FreeBSD that I installed on an old 486SX system that I had built in the mid 90's which I tinkered aroud with from time to time..  Just before I switched, I took a linux course at the local community college.  The course covered using mainly the command line.  In the book for the course, there was  a CD for Fedora Core  1.  I decided to try that on my computer. BINGO! That was when I decided to switch completely to Linux.  The best part was NO MORE BLUE SCREENS OF DEATH!
    Since that time, I have used the various versions of Fedora, several versions of Ubuntu, at times as a dual boot with Fedora.  I tinkered around with OpenSUSE and Mandriva for a little bit, but didn't care for them to much.  Then last year, I saw that Debian 4.0 RC 1 was out.  I downloaded it and installed it on my system.  I loved it!  I used only that until at the beginning of december when my motherboard crapped out on me.  It was an old AMD Duron motherboard that ran at 900MHz.  I ended up buying a system with a Pentium 4 1.8 Ghz processor with built-in video.  I installed Debian 4.0 back onto my system, but it had trouble detecting the built-in video and monitor and set it up as the old standard VGA settings.  I tried installing various distros then to see what would properly detect my video controller and monitor.  The only 2 that would are Fedora 8 and Ubuntu 7.10.  I was having problems with Fedora 8 at the time so I went with Ubuntu 7.10.  The things that I don't like with Ubuntu 7.10 is that it doesn't show you what it is doing while booting (sort of like Winblows) and the workspace switcher was not showing on the bar at the bottom of the screen.  I usually have several applications running on my system at the same time and I like to have each on a separate workspace so I don't have to keep minmizing and maximizing for the application that i am wanting to use.  Finally, on Friday I decided to load Fedora 8 again on my computer and have it working right.
    My computer that I am using now is an IBM NetVista with a Pentium 4-1.8GHz processor, 1 GB RAM, 2 - 80GB hard drives, Ensoniq sound card, DVD multi recorder running Fedora 8 with the GNOME desktop.  The reason why I have a differnt sound card than the built-in sound is because I collect albums (vinyl) from the 60's, 70's and 80's.  I needed a sound board with a line-in port so that I could connect my old turntable to it so that I can record from my albums and convert them to OGG and MP3 files.
    Chad, I have suggestions for topics that you could cover in future seasons.  They are: 1) audio/multimedia applications and 2) databases.  I know with your interest in music, you have probably experminted with several differnt packages such as Audacity, Ardour and Jack and other applications.  I like to use Audacity, but haven't to it's full extent because I not really sure how to use many of the features in it.  And with my music collection (I have around 800 albums on vinyl, 300 on CD and 200 on cassette tapes) I want to keep track of not only the albums that I have, but also all of the songs contained on them.  A lot of people cover other office applications like word processors and spreadsheets, but not databases.  I know in your first season, you covered mySQL a little bit for setting up a web server, but there are probably many people out in the linux community that would like to set up databases for keeping track of collections and other items.
    Around the time I found your podcast, I discovered one from the UK called LugRadio.  That show is hillarious and covers Linux.  It is not for the feint of heart, though.  On the first episode they Richard Stahlman's Free Software song.  Maybe you should perform that for the closing song on one of your episodes.
    I know that this post is a little bit wordy, but I thought you would like to know about my background.
     Keep up the good work with the podcast.
Tim a.k.a. tmecs