IMAGE: Silly staff photo of Pete

Peter McGarrigle

Who is this Pete person anyway?


Motto: "He who dies with the most toys wins."

Most likely to say: "Sorry, we don't do rocket science here."

Least likely to say: "Supercalafragalisticexpialidocious"

Least likely to be able to spell: "Supercalafragalisticexpialidocious"


Pete is employed by (deep breath) the Department of Medical Computing and Statistics at the University of Wales College of Medicine.

He was emplyed until very recently by the [Department of Electronics and Information Technology] at the [University of Glamorgan] where he tried to bring some form of order to a lot of diverse computer systems ranging from single board microcontrollers and networked PCs to a network of HP 9000 series 700 UNIX workstations (big & fast toys). He was the WebMaster for his department (by default) and still thinks that the web is the thing the internet was created for.

Pete likes creating code and still can't believe that he has actually been paid for muttering mystic runes at computers. He can program in a handful of assembly languages (6502, ARM, 68000, 8086), BCPL, C, C++, Pascal, BASIC or even COBOL (FX: spit) if someone threatens to feed his sweaty bits to a pit bull terrier.

Pete thinks that he has lots of interesting ideas about lots of good stuff, like computers, the internet, science, technology, space & time, physics in general, politics, culture and things like that and if given the merest encouragement or given only a small volume of beer will happily bore for Wales (see storms) on any or all of the above topics.

A picture of a Yamaha XV535
Pete is an enthusiastic motorcyclist, he owns and maintains a Yamaha XV535 (fast, blue toy), despite this, he has been seen accepting a lift in a car during wet and cold weather (see Wales).

He is a vegetarian and keen cook. He feels that these two go hand-in-hand as it is quite difficult to live off supermarket junk food if you are truly determined not to eat real, dead, burned animals. I mean, how many packets of Findus vegetable lasagne (for one) would you have to eat through before bovacide became an attractive option?

He spends far too much of his leisure time reading, mainly Science-Fiction (Greg Bear, William Gibson, Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams are enjoyed by normal folk) also, perversely, computer text books (which bore most sane people rigid).


Toys

Pete likes toys, bigger the better, I mean he won't play unless his toys are the best on the block and he will sulk until someone buys him the biggest and brightest painted toy in the shop.

His favourite toy at the moment is a something called the World Wide Web. It is certainly big and very colourful and does lots of really neat things. What a good boy he must be.

His second favourite toy is his Acorn RiscPC 600. His own personal RISC workstation. On which the departments web was created.

Beer

He quite likes beer too. He is especially fond of a pint of Brains SA (the local evil brew, for those of you who are unfortunate enough never been to South Wales). Pete thinks that this brown frothy liquid is the very stuff of life itself. He is, of course, gravely mistaken.

Wales (see storms)*

Wales, the land of song, the home of lavabread, formally the residence of deep coal mining and now the lodgings of Japanese inward investment. Wales is perhaps the most moist part of the U.K. and no place for motorcyclists who like to keep their trousers dry.

Pete lives in Penarth, a victorian seaside resort town on the South Wales coast. Penarth is within spitting distance of the Welsh Capital City, Cardiff (pronounced key-ard-if).

* In case you missed the reference, Pete is a great fan of the DUNE sequence of books by Frank Herbert and of course, the film by David Lynch.


© Copyright Peter McGarrigle 1995. All Rights Reserved.
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