I'm kind of a big deal.
I don't know how to put this, but I'm kind of a big deal. People know me. I'm very important. I have many O'Reilly books, and my house smells of computers.
Every once in a while, you just have to google yourself. I tend to do it while I'm alone - but sometimes I do it at work. I just finished googling myself a few minutes ago, and was happy to find that I am 10 out of the first 10 google hits for "kent cowgill" (without the quotes, even).
Even better, I am 39 of the first 50 google hits.
The other three Kent Cowgill's've got nothin' on me, even though one's a marginally popular medievalist author, one doesn't even have Kent as his first name and has written (or reviewed, it's not clear) a journal article or two, and the last is (or has been) apparently an english professor at WSU.
Don't be fooled, though. Even though meetup.com makes it look I'm from Lombard, I'm not. (I'm still in Chicago).
I also didn't attend the Chicago Hackathon in 11-06. I wanted to, but I was out of town that weekend :(
If any CPAN links show up, make sure you're looking at the most recent version of a module.
That's really my wishlist on page two. Feel free to get my anythingon that list. Or an iPhone. It's not on the list, but I won't mind if you go "off-list" for that.
I do have helpful advice about out-of-towners sharing cabs from O'Hare to one location, specifically when a bunch of perl geeks converge on Chicago for YAPC::NA::2006.
I was linked to from Sun's BigAdmin portal for my article about chrooting sftp on Solaris 8. I was really proud about that. Even though at this point it's completely out of date. UNLESS you happen to be nursing along an old Solaris 8 box.
I'm starting to give talks at my local perl mongers meetings. I'll probably post more of those types of things.
That's me at UniForm Chicago. My first meeting I'm presenting at, too.
I gave a lightning talk a year or so ago golfing perl, and David Romano wants to see it sometime. Now anyone can.
I helped Andy Lester a little with perl101.com. Just a little CSS if I recall correctly.
I also helped Andy with the name for his wiki, xoa. I just threw out a name or two, and one of 'em stuck.
I registered at the TWiki dev site. And gave some helful advice. And promptly lost all interest, as I no longer has a job requiring me to admin and/or work heavily with TWiki.
It appears Marcus Ramberg linked to my blog (this one!) on del.icio.us. A nod always feels nice from one of the core developers of the framework this very blog runs on.
I participated in a Catalyst BOF, and a Hackathon after YAPC::NA::2007 in Houston. I didn't do much other than help a lot with logistics - arriving early, procuring the room, finding network connectivity, hooking it up, figuring out why it didn't work, helping to rig up an intermediary solution... etc.. Did a little QA work with Marcus Ramberg and Jon Rockway on the mojomojo project - a catalyst based wiki.
I sought help trying to run linux on a handhelp ipaq (which I apparently posted shortly after I came back from my bike ride - having raised $7,080 for a worthy cause, and a heck of a physical challenge - hit the ride tag to the right for more info on that).
And the rest of the hits for kent cowgill either point to this blog, or variations on the themes above.
I recall the good old days (more like a year ago) where the primary things google turned up were 10-12 year old emails I sent to a MacPerl mailing list for a job many moons ago, about topics that frankly at this point, are a little embarrassing :)
