Here at Contegix we take pride in the superb team of technical engineers we have on staff.  We have a great team of dedicated engineers who truly enjoy the work they do each and every day for our customers.  We have a team of superstars, and we thought some of our customers might be interested in learning a bit more about what makes our engineers really tick.   Therefore, we give you the opportunity to “Meet the Contegians” through Q&A sessions with our engineering staff.

First up, Mark Rogers, technical support lead.

Mark, where we you born?

St. Louis, MO

What is your favorite open source project?

Pylot, www.pylot.org.  I’m pretty biased though, considering I’ve contributed code to it in the past, and I am listed as a contributor.  It is a sweet load testing application that works in Windows or Linux though.  It is definitely worth checking out if you ever need to do some load testing.

What is your favorite Linux tool?

There are a few items in the land of Linux that firmly cement me in my operating system of choice.  Some I can get elsewhere I suppose, but I can’t live without Klipper, Grep, and BASH.  Sure, I can get most of these in OSX, except for Klipper.  I know there are knock-offs available, and that I could install the KDE stack if I had to, but it’s just not the same.  Klipper managing my clipboard is the best tool I’ve ever used.  With how much copying and pasting I do in my day-to-day life, it’s nice to see the last 300 or so items that I’ve highlighted on a whim.  It comes in handy just way too often.

What is your favorite operating system?

I’m a big fan of Ubuntu.  It’s stable, has deep repositories, and has a ton of community support.  At work I need a distro that is stable, but I also need to be able to install random, off-the-wall packages at times for the various needs I have at work.  Plus, I love to play with new applications all the time as well.  The chances of finding an RPM seem to always be small, but finding Debs is generally easy.

What do you like to do in your spare time?

Well, I blog www.f4ntasmic.com and like to write code.  My personal language of choice is Python, and thus I’ve been playing with Django a LOT lately.

Any personal projects you are currently working on that you would like to talk about?

Well, when I was learning Python I decided to write an application that wraps the Confluence Remote API’s xmlrpc calls.  It is actually handy at times since just about anything you can do in Confluence; you can do via this application remotely.  You can add users, remove users, update posts, add new posts, and so on.  This can all be done without ever loading a browser.  You can find it at Confluence Remote Manager.

What are you currently running system-wise?

I’m running an Acer Aspire right now.  Specs are as follows:

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHZ
3GB of RAM
250G hard drive
Nvidia GeForce 9500 (I think.  I could be wrong, but its’ nice.)

What books, magazines, and journals are you currently reading?

I’ve had a subscription to PC Gamer for about five or six years now, so I’m always reading that.  Even though it’s recently jumped the shark in my opinion with this new EIC.  Bring back the editorial columns please!!!  Not really reading any books right now.  I have a stack of Ruby books I need to read, along with some stuff on PyGame.  They’re just staring at me, begging to be read.  If only I could just suck the knowledge out via osmosis or something.

What was the last book you read?

Python Web Development with Django.  It was a decent read, and it got me rolling with Django.  The online docs for Django are great and all, but I learn so much better from books.  Plus, this was one of the few books already updated for Django 1.0.

What is your favorite book of all time?

Fahrenheit 451.  Amazing book, terrible movie.  I personally feel everyone should read the book at least once, so that they can see the dangers of law by opinion and censorship in general.

What music and movies do you enjoy?

I enjoy all sorts of music genres like rap, death metal, hair metal, anything from the 80’s, a bit of country, some pop, and other random stuff.  My favorite bands in rotation right now though are the White Stripes, 3OH!3, and Mindless Self Indulgence (only their first CD.)  Movie –wise I enjoy most of the David Lynch films (Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway), and other movies that tend to make me think.  That’s not to say I don’t love mindless comedies and action flicks though.  I’m a huge fan of parody movies like Scary Movie, Airplane, Naked Gun, etc.

What was the last movie you saw?


Yes Man with Jim Carrey.  Pretty funny overall.  It’s Liar Liar, but this time he has to say, “Yes” to everything instead of not lying.  Incredibly original and creative.  ☺

What is your favorite movie of all time?

That’s tough.  It’s one of three:

SLC Punk
The Jacket
Pulp Fiction

I don’t think I could pick just one.

What was the last concert you attended?

It’s been awhile since I’ve been to a concert.  I think the last one might have been Nine Inch Nails like eight or nine years ago.

What is your favorite band of all time?

If I had to pick just one, it would be Nine Inch Nails.

What do you like most about working at Contegix?

I get to play with random cool technology just about every single day.  I never know what the day has in store for me, and for the most part, no two days are the same.  It helps keep life rather interesting.

What do you like most about our customers?

That’s a tough question.  Customers are so unique, that it is hard to find a global reason on why I like all of them.  We are home to some major open source projects and players, and I love that.  I love to see customers building a business with open source software, and to contribute to the open source community in the process.  We also have customers that are building applications that you can see the potential in, and that I find myself browsing at times.  I guess I just enjoy that a lot of our customers are very creative and seem to be living the dream of doing what they enjoy.  I’m glad to be a part of that in whatever capacity that might be.