Meet Zane Bowers, Server Support Engineer

 

What do creamed corn, bad science fiction movies, and FreeBSD have in common? They all make the personal likes list of Zane Bowers, a member of the FastServers.Net server support team. An obvious optimist, Zane even has his own algorithm developed to classify bad science fiction movies. In addition to movie watching, when he is not hard at work supporting FastServers.Net customers, Zane is contributing to FreeBSD ports and maintaining a photographical archive of his life experiences.

Zane first became interested in FreeBSD during the 4.3/4.4 release, enjoying the easy-to-find documentation and large pool of ports and packages that were readily available. Zane’s fascination with FreeBSD has also led to his involvement in maintaining a nice list of ports and providing community based support for the operating system.

Ports that he has contributed to include the following:
 

• dns/ldnsm
• mail/p5-Net-Server-Mail
• mail/p5-qpsmtpd
• mail/qar-bufo
• security/p5-Net-Server-Mail-ESMTP-AUTH
• shells/shell-include
• sysutils/comiccron
• sysutils/lugtools
• x11/roxbg

When Zane is not supporting servers or participating in open source development, you can find him tuning into science fiction movies. As an avid sci-fi fan, Zane developed an algorithm for determining if the movie meets his "not so high" standards. When asking for his top secret formula, Zane replied, "The criteria I use include a bad plot, lack of quality acting, attempt to clone another movie, amount and sort of techno babble, actor/actresses, low budget, and bad research." Upon pulling together the ratings, the lower the score, the more likely you will catch Zane watching the movie.

While taking a scientific approach to operating systems and movie evaluation, Zane satisfies the right side of his brain with culinary creativity and artistic photography. In discussing some of his latest creations, it was soon discovered that his dishes have included such items as the Creamed Corn Pizza. Chef Bowers comments on his creative side by saying, “I came up with using beans and creamed corn on a pizza a few weeks ago when I was hungry, making a pizza, and realized that I was out of pizza sauce and the nearby grocery store was closed. It worked out rather nicely.” When not establishing his improv culinary skills, Zane can be found snapping pictures and building his online personal photo gallery. As an amateur photographer, he enjoys architectural and outdoor pictures that contain a variety of hues and angles.

As a member of the FastServers.Net server support team, Zane provides hands on solutions to customers around the world. While his day to day activities might not include the creation of 'A LA PIZZA DE CREME' or watching Dr. Strangelove; they do involve invoking the various regions of the right/left side of the brain to provide creative and sound solutions.