Dean Michael Berris

So before I think I've written talked to some of my friends about netbooks and how silly I think these devices are. I think I made fun of the little keyboards they have and that I would never buy a netbook myself. But guess what, I gave into the urge to write on the go and do my reading and live my podcasting dreams by buying myself an Acer Aspire One. No unboxing here, but I did shoot and upload my first YouTube video. Now my hands are starting to get used to typing on a small keyboard. And guess what, looking at a tiny screen without having to move my eyes much seems to be a good thing!

One other thing worth mentioning is that my lovely wife just got a lovely new device in an iPhone 3GS. Now I get to play with the iPod Touch too.

So what do I intend to do with this device? Well one thing is I'll try my hand at 15 minutes of fame and see if I can sustain living an online life. Heck, I'm going to blog more often, read more blogs, react to more posts, and Twitter+FriendFeed my way into stardom. Or I'll just do everything there and not be a star. I don't really care about the fame, as long as this move allows me to go do what I love -- live life and write about it -- and give back to the community -- open source development on these little critters, maybe do some cloud computing experimentation, evangelize about the benefits of going on the cloud and liberating ourselves from the clutches of local data and just bulky devices.

I still am working on getting myself a "real" opensource development machine that I own -- not one that the company I work with has provided. Hopefully opensource development allows me to do the same.

Help contribute to "Help Dean Get a MacBook Pro Fund"! Leads and referrals for a freelancing opensource developing C++ enthusiast would be most appreciated.