andykeefe Goto Github PK

I'm Andy, but not the goose. In fact, I am what experts call an "Anti-Goose" in the sense that I rarely honk at others and I cross the street very quickly.

My favorite thing to do is read. I just read A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean, and now I want to try fly-fishing. I promise to pursue this newfound passion relentlessly, with an as yet unmeasured tenacity that would make any training Olympian quiver with fear, loathing, and admiration. If, however, I am not immediately good at it, I will discard my rod in the largest burn pit on this side of the Mississippi, unless there is a larger burn pit on the other side of the Mississippi, in which case I will lay my rod to rest there.

I also love to languish. There is nothing better than spending gragantuan amounts of time rotting in one position and growing weaker by the hour, wasting what little energy I have preserved swatting hungry flies off my feeble limbs as they await an ample supper upon my demise.

My final favorite thing to do is experiencing joy, kindness, and morning sunlight. It is rare to experience all three of these at once since nobody is joyful or kind as day begins.

I went to University of Illinois for International Relations and Russian Studies. As such, I speak a decent amount of Russian, barely enough to be useful, and am fluent in pretentious. A fantastic skill I picked up after years of tenacious study was the ability to announce, "Well, it's complicated," when queried about any political and international issue.

Really though, I had the time of my life studying that subject, and it imbued an insatiable thirst for reading and especially critiquing the veracity of an author's citations.

Currently I'm trudging through a Master's in Information Security. I'm doing this because I strongly dislike myself. It's been a lot of fun, and I mostly gravitate towards cryptography and access control stuff. I'm working on getting better at coding, but in the most diplomatic terms, I still kinda suck.

I have two laptops that I use, and I call them by beautifully constructed, loquacious names.

1. Older laptop:

Mainly used for coding and for general Linux learning. Used to run Windows 10, but after getting sick of my CPU running at 99% at all time I installed Arch and it is now a criminally smooth machine despite the older CPU and meager 4 GB of RAM. Linux 4 lyfe?

2. Newer laptop:

Mainly used for practicing PowerShell and other Windows tools, this is my default e-reader for my USB. This laptop runs, you guessed it, Windows 11. It's a decent system when it's not begging me to make Edge my default browser and to "finish setting up." I'm already set up, laptop, and I won't acquiesce to your whining no matter how annoying it is. Keep it up and I will destroy your existence, and then install Linux. Most likely, I will not forget your pestering. Most certainly, I will not forgive you for it. In the words of an infamous and very real gunslinger, "People don't forget. Nothing gets forgiven."

I work in the IT department of a public library. Working in the library is great because my coworkers care about helping people rather than squeezing dollars out of them. You say, "But Andy (not goose), how do you live without the motivation to extract value for shareholders? I am very stupid and only exist to make money and then die!" First I smile at my neighbors, then we listen to a record together, and finally I recommend a free library program for their children to learn about the horrors of reptiles.

Do I wish the money was better? Yeah! Do I wish I would've bought $5000 of NVIDIA like I nearly did in 2020 but held back because I thought I'd need that money to pay for college but then my parents graciously paid off my last semester and by then NVIDIA was doing numbers and I thought, well the stock's a little pricey now, it'll probably drop soon but then it kept going up and up and up and now I definitely won't buy it but maybe I should but maybe there's an AI bubble about to burst and then I'll buy it after? Of course!

Either way, library IT is great!

I have a book list on here with lots of tech books, and some not tech books that focus more on history. Most of them are open access. Give them a look.