Eric Real Name:  Eric Age:  34.4411 Resides:  California Occupation:  Byte Monkey

Favourite websites:
www.slashdot.org, www.dilbert.com, www.cnn.com

Favourite application, game, and program of all time:
emacs
 
What are you playing and working on  right now:
BattleField 1942

What is your current screensaver, background, or wallpaper:
xearth

What's so special about your computer:
My gaming PC looks like the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

How many computers do you have:
Nine. 2 Sun workstations, laptop, 2 PCs, 2 old PCs, Commodore 64, Mac SE/30.

What was your first computer:
Commodore 64.  The first one I ever used was probably my uncle's Commodore PET, with the "chicklet" keyboard.

Do you remember the first program you ran on it:
A lame game I wrote after 20 hours of reading Commodore manuals.  My family was extremely unimpressed but I thought it was sooooo cool.

Geekiest moment of your life:
When I was twelve, figuring out how to set the clock on a calculator in a few seconds after a bunch of Stanford grad students and professors where stumped and finally handed it to me to try. 

When did you first realize you were a geek:
Probably when I used to play on my uncle's computers and my grandma would step out for an hour and when she came back I would say "oh, you were gone?" I know this isn't unusual today, but this was before the age of Nintendo.

If I was a program I'd be:
Apache webserver.  Because you never know what I'll serve up next.

What is your favourite quote:
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." 

What do you do when you're not at your computer(s):
Play ultimate frisbee, walk, bike, be with friends & family, listen to music, go to the movies, go to the symphony.

What is the funniest/most bizarre computer/Internet experience you have ever had:
Probably the time one of my coworkers was "trapped" in the company bathroom in the middle of a night of hacking and ended up breaking through a wall and a ceiling to escape, writing a long e-mail about the whole process to the entire company.  Of course, it turns out he just wasn't using the badge card reader properly and wasn't really trapped at all.

You have a time machine that can only be used once. If you use it you will not come back. What date would you set it to, and what ONE thing would you take with you (not a computer):
2 weeks ago, I had a nice Saturday.

Eric, who wishes you to visit http://www.csua.berkeley.edu, is always on his computer. Eric has the unique ability of figuring out people's problems at work before they finish their first sentence. Eric can can actually read the error message details when a Windows program has a problem.