Personal bio - short version

I was born in 1963 in Hamburg, Germany, and I still live in this city.

Like most german children of my generation, I was kept at the nursery school while I was little, because both of my parents worked. Later I went to the primary school and then to a grammar school. After school I had a two years vocational training as a laboratory assistant which I finished successfully... yet I have never practised this profession, and I'm not really sad about that.

Then, I studied food chemistry at the University, but I dropped out after a few years. Chemistry was absolutely not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

When I finally realized this, I made up my mind about my future and decided that it was time for a change. So I ignored all books and lectures about chemistry and attended computer courses instead. It was not too difficult.

At the grammar school, I had learned to write little programs in BASIC. Now I taught myself dBase IV and Microsoft BASIC, even learned C, and installed Minix on my Atari ST because I wanted to gain some experiences with Unix.

My first job as a programmer was very frustrating. They gave me a project on which two other (much more experienced) programmers had failed before. So did I - how predictable!

In january 1992 I found a job at the HWWA Institute. Today I'm not a programmer, "only" a system administrator. Until the end of 2006, "my" systems at the HWWA Institute were Linux (our mail server) and Windows Server 2003 (all the rest). We had about 200 users, and my job was managing their accounts, their access rights, login scripts, and stuff like that. Meanwhile, the HWWA has been closed down. Fortunately, this doesn't mean that I'm unemployed now. I just don't know where my new office will be and what kind of work I'll be doing in future. Most certainly, everything will be new and different, and I'm really looking forward to it.

In august 1994 Jacques and me have married. Living with him is the best thing that could ever have happened to me. We have been together since I had studied and I hope we will grow old together... :-)