This blog is essentially everything about me… but there’s a lot more to me then what will get posted on a day to day basis… I plan on updating this area to be a summary of my interests and key life events..  My plan is to update it over time to add new things and fill in some of the missing parts. I’ll probably have to restructure this a bit, but for right now, its just one big blog of text… enjoy!

Intro

So.. you wanna know more about me? Where to start!? Most people reading this will be kinda surprised to find out some of these things, as I tend to have several disjoint sets of friends…

Computers

At my core.. I’m a nerd… I’ve been programming computers since I was about 7 years old, when my dad brought home a computer from work. In an afternoon, I wrote my first program in C for tracking a car’s fuel economy… it could take a date, gallons purchased, price paid and odometer readings… and would save everything to a comma delimited data file… not bad for my first day with a computer! It also had a modem and I was able to dial into my dad’s work (AT&T Bell Labs) and accessed sales graphs and projections that my dad didn’t even know he had access to!

Linux

So yeah, I’m a programmer… I work in a Microsoft shop, which allows me to appreciate open source things even more… Thankfully, I’ve managed to incorporate some open source tools there to make things a little bit more sane. Personally, I run Linux and have been running it nearly exclusively since 1994 when I went away to study Computer Science at the University of Illinois. Yes, I first installed Slackware from 2 3.5″ floppy disks… eventually moving on to Red Hat, then to Gentoo… then to Foresight Linux…

Games

Everquest

The only reason I have Windows installed at home is to play one computer game… EverQuest! I’ve played it off an on since 1999 when the game first launched… Initially with some co-workers, and then with random people I’ve met through the game (and eventually met at Sony’s Fan Faire convention for their online games when it was held in Chicago in 2002). Once other games came out (Dark Age of Camelot, Everquest 2, World Of Warcraft, Vanguard) there was some cannibalisation of the player community… plus the life changes that prevent people from playing (families, military service, loss of interest, etc)… there have been periods of time where there was little reason to log in. Currently, I’m playing a Shaman and SK combo (i play both charecters) and now that you can hire computer controlled players… I don’t really need to work around other people’s schedules. I’m on the Xegony server currently… so drop a line to Porb or Fawwr if you happen to play there!

Other Games, early years

Speaking of Games… I’ve always been an avid gamer… My first game system was Intellivision (Dungeons & Dragons game was my favorite!) but I didn’t spend much time playing games until I got the original Nintendo Entertainment System… Spent many many hours playing the Zelda and Final Fantasy games and Metroid and Contra.. as well as other lessor known games like Dragon Warrior, Ikari Warriors  and Advenutres of Lolo… Before long, I had discovered games on the computer… while i had friends that had other consoles (Atari, ColecoVision, Super Nintendo) so I got to play a lot of those games… but I had already been absorbed into the power of the personal computer. One of the first games I sunk a lot of time in was Micro League Baseball… I actually ran a league with a friend on my street… we each managed our own team and played games between computer controlled teams while keeping track of the statistics since the game didn’t… yes… like i’ve said.. i’m a nerd!

Most of the computer games were sport oriented… (Epyx’s Olympic Games.. both summer and winter… soccer and hockey games that centered around building and managing your teams as well as an optional arcade mode where you got to play with your team)… but before long, I discovered Ultima III… It was very primitive, but it was the first real role-playing game I played (this predated the NES, i believe)… I sunk many many hours into the game… and even went back and found Richard Garriot’s older games.. Ultima and Ultima II… incredibly primitive and I would have never have played through them if not for the connection to Ultima III. It wasn’t long after when Ultima IV was released… and wow… what a game! I probably spent months playing and solving every little part of that game… likewise when Ultima V and VI came out.. I split my time between my aging NES system and the Ultima Games… Ultima VI started to feel somewhat tired, and it came out during a time when advances were being made in personal computer graphics so Ultima VI was a bit different and made it difficult to play. For that reason, the spin off games that used the same engine, Martian Dreams and Savage Empire, almost killed Ultima for me.. but i struggled through them.

The pinnacle of PC gaming (other then EverQuest) came with the release of Ultima VII: The Black Gate… (as well as The Silver Serpent expansion)… memory management issues aside.. it was the first game that really used sound well… You started investigating a murder in a small town, and once you figured out enough to leave town, you heard a voice speaking to you through the computer… it was the main evil guy who was controlling the people in Britannia through their thoughts… manipulating them into building a portal so that he could come into their world and take it over… he manages to build trust and he tries to manipulate you… a trully engaging game experience! The 8th game in the series, Pagan.. took place in a world that was already taken over by that guy… and he was finally destroyed in the finale to the series… Ultima IX: Ascension… a game worthy of concluding the series.. but its always bittersweet.

Recent Gaming

Enough nostalga… sometime around 1998… i realized that while computers were more powerful then consoles… their configurations are not standard.. and that standardization that consoles bring is a HUGE benefit for ensuring a good game experience. (Final Fantasy VII was the straw that broke the camel’s back)… As a result… I played few games other then Everquest since then.. until the release of the ps2 slim peaked my interest in 2004… I’ve been a Sony fan for a long time.. starting with EQ.. progressing to the PS2.. and now the PS3… all other platforms are inferior in my opinion. Xbox may have more users, but that’s fine with me… I’m used to be a user of minority technology (Linux, for example.. clearly surperior, but not mainstream).

Portable Gaming

For portable platforms… I had an original GameBoy… yes it was black and white… and it tore through batteries fast (the rechargeable battery thing was the best thing ever!). I skipped  most portable game platforms.. until the Nintendo DS game out… I also picked up a PSP for its integration with the PS3… but sadly.. both were stolen in the summer of 2008 and I have only replaced the DS and some of the games… not sure if the PSP will ever get replaced, even thought its great for watching movies while travelling… laptops are way more cumbersome.

Sports

Me as an athlete

Growing up.. I’ve always been active in sports.. I played soccer from age 6… all the way through high school. In grade school, I played basketball… However, I wasn’t that tall so i was a guard.. could dribble well and had a decent shot too… however, i ended up growing a bit too tall to effectively play that way and being one of the bigger guys in the center never appealed much to me… So, I abandoned basketball when High School rolled around. First year, I only played soccer. Second year, I added water polo in the spring. Really a fun game! My high school’s pool wasn’t regulation size for water polo (it had a shallow end, not supposed to be able to stand up in the water), so I played goalie in the deep end at home, and full time when we traveled. I’m a natural swimmer and i could tread water keeping my waist out of the water without using my arms for about 3-4 seconds… enough time to guard nearly the entire goal with my long arms and slow down an opponent long enough for a teammate to disrupt their shot. Its a brutal sport, but its fun! Junior year, i added swimming and I was lazy then for Senior year and quit all three sports…

Fandom

Growing up in Chicago… it was really hard to not be a Bull’s fan in the 90′s… I witnessed just about all of Michael Jordan’s career.. and sadly i was just old enough to follow sports and wasn’t able to really appreciate how special it is to win championships… even started to take them for granted after the first couple that they won. I’m really not a big fan of the NBA… college basketball is a much more interesting game to me, but even that I can’t spend too much time watching. My favorite pass times are Baseball in the summer and Hockey in the winter. The Chicago Blackhawks are the team that I’ve followed, but i abandonded them in the mid-90′s after some really stupid decisions in airing their games on TV and refusing to pay their players enough to keep them… And when it comes to baseball.. there’s really only one team in Chicago worth watching: The Chicago White Sox! Yes, the Cubs are more popular, but again… i don’t care about what’s mainstream. In fact, my whole family are Cub fans and until I was about 10 years old (I like to say when I reached the age of reason), I wasn’t even aware there was a second team in Chicago! I grew up without cable TV and the cubs were on WGN. It wasn’t until FOX aired a White Sox game that I happened to catch on TV.. it was 1985 and I had missed the ’83 White Sox and the ’84 Cubs… Both teams were horrible, but it was a great game and I was hooked from then on.. checking the paper for the scores and stuff. 2005 was a dream season, and I was finally able to appreciate winning for the rare event that it is.

Work

High School Years

My very first job was working summers at a Park District pool in the town I grew up in. It is quite possibly the best job for kids growing up as its seasonal. There were many days I was outside in the sun from 9am to 9pm and even got to save a bunch of lives! Ok, most of them weren’t critical, just jumping into a couple feet of water to pick up a toddler that stumbled in the kids pool… they likely would have figured out how to stand up on their own… so I can’t take credit for them too much. There was one kid I had to save though.. it was late in the day and there weren’t many people in the pool on a colder day near the end of summer. A 9 year old kid wanted to try to do a backflip off the diving board. There were two diving boards… a 1 meter spring board, and a lower much firmer board that doesn’t give at all. He was on the firmer board and didn’t jump out far enough and cracked the back of his head on the board. After a few moments, I was in the pool retrieving him from the bottom of the pool (12 feet) and carefully bringing up to the surface whlie immobilizing him so there wasnt any further damage. Turns out he was ok, but that was the extent of the excitement there.

Once I was able to drive myself, I took a job at a small software store and before long I was repairing people’s computers for people. Often I could fix them in about 10 minutes, while they would charge $50 for a full hour of labor and pay me only $6/hour or whatever wages were back then. So, they would make $600/hour while paying me $6 for some of the trivial problems… and most repairs were trivial. Sadly, my efforts were one of the few things keeping the store open, as they were struggling with the advent of large stores like Best Buy that were moving into the area. Most of their sales were shrink-wrapped software… mostly games… so their days were numbered anyway.

They eventually closed their doors, and I needed a job during my senior year of high school.. I ended up taking a job where a bunch of my friends worked to cover the couple months before the pool opened which would keep me employed until I went away to school. I started working as a cashier at a local McDonald’s, and in the 3 months i was there, i got promoted twice and three pay raises. I was shocked at how easy it was to do the work, and how difficult it was for most of the people there. I’m glad i was only there for a couple months as I would have gone crazy there, but there also were lots of funny moments.

College Years

Once I got to school, I worked for the University to help get people connected to the internet from their dorm rooms. Illinois was one of the first schools to build a large network infrastructure that included the student dorms. Initially, in 1994, very few people had computers in their rooms to get on the internet and our systems were quite primitive. By 1999, nearly everyone had them and we had automated much of the setup process. But, it was there that I really honed my troubleshooting skills.

The other job I took at school was by sheer luck. In the basement of the dorm I lived in was the student radio station, and I happened to run into a few people that worked there and before long I found myself on the radio… working overnights and hanging around the studio when big name bands came through as well as getting to see all kinds of shows and having VIP access to all sorts of events. The list is very long, but my favorites include Live, Weezer, Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails, and Tori Amos.  Sadly, I only stayed there for a year because the time it took really interferred with my classes and my other interests.

Other college stuff

While not really a job as I didn’t get paid for it, I was also an officer in the student athletic support group called, “Illini Pride”… We ran the group of crazy students down near the court for Basketball games and other sports, as well as organizing road trips that involved renting a bus, buying food and a lot of BEvERages so that we could enjoy the drive and be able to really enjoy the games. My job was to run the women’s volleyball cheering section… My greatest contribution came when, on a dare, one of my friends suggested that we took one of the HUGE flags that the cheerleaders used at Football games out from under the bleachers (the cheerleaders used that same gym for practice) and run around the court with the flag after we won.  I did it and it quickly became a popular fixtures at the games and was even embraced by the team! By the end of that season, our cheering section would line up by the door the team came in from and i would lead them out onto the court whlie the band played the fight song… it all just kind of fell into place. Some games were even televised on national TV and somewhere I have that on tape. I should really try to get that in a digital form and put it online. Amusingly, people often would come up to me on campus and say, “You’re the flag guy from the volleyball games!”. I was pretty easy to spot as I had been growing my hair longer while I was in school.

The other really interesting thing from the college years was the opportunity to take Avation 101 and 120… These were two classes taken over two semesters and at the end, you earn your Private Pilot’s Licesnse. Its a lifetime liscense that needs to be kept current (mine isn’t) by getting regular medical exams and going on a check flight with an instructor to demonstrate that you can safely fly an airplane. At some point, I hope to have the time to fly again… but it is somewhat time consuming and can be an expensive hobby.

Career

Music

Magic

Running

Homebrewing

Software Projects