My name is Steve Bridges (aka VooDooStevie), I'm from Western Mass, and I am what you would call an intermediate Ubuntu user right now.
I have been using a computer since I was a kid. First machine I "played" with was a Apple II machine in 1983, then the family bought an 8088 with a monochrome monitor and daisywheel printer. I talked them into upgrading the machine as I got more into using the old DOS machine. I stuck with DOS until 96 when Windows 95 hit the market and the computer basically was no longer able to perform what we needed a home computer to do.
I worked for RCN in Springfield, MA where I got my first taste of working with Linux based servers for the cable modem internet support team. Of course this was still command line based stuff. At home I dabbled with Mandrake (7.1 I believe was the release back then) then when Ubuntu came out a friend of mine told me to check it out. This was back when Warty Warthog was released. I played with the distro here and there but never really took the plunge into using it as my primary operating system.
August of last year I began a personal "30 days of Linux" where I removed Windows entirely from my laptop for 1 month and used purely Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope. After the 30 days I pulled a dual boot of Windows Vista and Ubuntu because I needed Windows for gaming mostly, but also I had issues getting WINE to work with other things I wanted to use on my machine.
I used Karmic after it was released and loved the changes in that. And I still hung on to the Windows side because I was still finding myself wanting to play some games that were not compatible with Linux under WINE (Game Guard Games primarily), but now I have returned to using Lucid fully on my laptop because I really have gotten away from gaming and enjoying the one's available under Linux (Humble Indie Bundle, etc.)
I have been trying to "convert" people that are using Windows to "join the light side" and some have given it a chance. My own parents would be running it if it wasn't for the stupid printer they have. And if they had just a little more RAM on their machine (Lucid choked on some things like Evolution) they only have 512MB at this time.
As far as what I use Ubuntu for aside from the gaming. I am a podcaster (
http://www.voodooradio.org if you care to check it out) and I am re-learning Audacity so as of late I have not put out a new show in some time. I previously used Audition for my show.
Basically everything an above average user would be doing I am doing.
I try to post things in my own tech blog I called GoGoGeekBoy (
http://www.voodoostevie.net) mostly it's been about Linux topics and personal reviews with software I have tried out.
I need to sit down and work more on the graphics for that site. I need to teach myself Gimp and Inkscape I guess. :)
Basically I am a quiet dude but I am trying to get more involved in the open source and Ubuntu communities. Feel free to contact me on or off list. Cheers!
Steve Bridges (a.k.a. VooDooStevie)
Twitter / Identica / AIM: voodoostevie