Welcome to a brief portrait of Franz-Josef Wirtz from Düsseldorf

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fjw 15.7.2003

15.July 2003

Abstract

Often the persons in the web remain quite anonymous pictures in the heads of the readers. Maybe, I can give you some landmarks on the map to pin up your picture at some realistic hooks.

Read about

My family

which I don't have, because I don't have wife or children. ;-). But anyway, I'm part of a really big family, with four brothers and three sisters. Nearly all of them, and my mother too, live in the small village External link Grevenbroich-Neukirchen, where we grew up. Most have their own family. And me, I'm living on my own, somewhat abroad, with a loose contact to the other members of the family.

There is some more information available about some members of Internal linkmy family as well as Neukirchen.

The place where I live

Since 2007

With 2007 I started a new period in Düsseldorf, the capital city of federal state Northrhine-Westfalia, closer to my place of birth, to cologne and an easier way to reach other places.

Until 2006

The most western town from Germany, External linkAachen (latitude 50.77, longitude 6.10, around 200m altitude), with a population of about 250.000 had been my hometown since 1992. The things I like the most in Aachen are the many sculptures and fountains all around the (inner) city. Aachen had been founded due to hot (up to 72centigrade) artesian springs.

If you want to see Aachen with my eyes, you should check out Internal linkmy personal impressions of Aachen.

Until 1992

Formerly I lived in External linkCologne for a while, where I visited the university.

My profession

Born in 1960 in a External linktown at the lower rhine (Germany) I finished External linkschool in 1980 and left External linkuniversity in 1992, graded as a doctor of science, after some years of work there. A new kind of work as a software engineer followed thereafter for a two years period, at a medium size engineering company and software forge. So I worked on database applications for river water flow and quality control and lead-in control for sewage treatment plants. Later on I continued on software engineering within an environment protection context by working in another small local company - until April 2003, since this company unfortunately closed business. The main part I had been working on there was a specialists GIS (geographical information system), used to manage sewage nets. So, it relates database information with geographical contexts. Other tasks had concerned waste water related information systems with much database interaction needing SQL-programming, my prevailing skill.

Meanwhile I'm working as a contractor for a big international software and hardware company. That project covers software quality assurance and management. The main part is the migration of data from various legacy systems for bug tracking, test management and customer support into a new one. Other parts in the project are the creation and maintenance of an infrastructure for web based reports for metrics within software development, one source in a data warehouse.

I'm still open for a new challenging as well as fullfilling job in NRW. Especially areas of software development and information management touching environmental, geographical or scientific topics sounds very interesting to me. Feel free to contact me if you have any valuable information into this direction.

My primary profession as a physical chemist layed the foundation stone for my software engineering skills, although that's not obvious. During the time at the university in the Department of Physical Chemistry I had been heavily involved in using the upcoming personal computers as well as mainframe machines to help solving various computational or controlling tasks. Physical chemistry is close to mathematics, and chemists must have analytical skills within complex areas and be able to create and follow recipes, just another word for a series of instructions, like software is. Finally, I'm still hanging on to this approach of finding new solutions.

Besides the professional work I cover a honorary post since 2004 within the admin team of fotocommunity.de, a special interest social community for non-professional photographers.

My favorite interests

Many arts can catch my attention. I like

I really admire those people who can cast their ideas into so various personal but shareable things or immaterial and volatile expressions (music, stories, motion). A common thing in lots of artists work mentioned above may be some distinct sense of humor and warm hearted attitudes which attract me.

Personally I try to be creative myself by making External linkfotos. Besides this I like to stay outdoors, both hiking or biking (bicycle), especially together with friends. Nature is a real source of fascination for me, although the action of man endangers it in so many respect.

Hopefully you got a small glimpse on who I am. So, enjoy to continue your journey.