Social profiling

[Blake Hutchins]

Awright.

1.  Former criminal defense attorney and public school teacher, now fiction writer and entrepreneur.  On maybe my fourth or fifth career.

2.  Dad was in the Foreign Service, so I spent much of my childhood in Sweden and Finland.  Fluent in Swedish.

3.  Marathon runner and macrobioticish health freak.

4.  Father of a beautiful little 3 year old girl - Shaughnessy May Galadriel Hutchins - and parenthood is the BEST thing I've ever done.

5.  Dilettante of things historical - specialties so far include the Crusader Kingdoms, the Battle of Britain, the Persian Wars, the Battle of the Atlantic, the Raj, the Opium Wars, urban development in Western Europe, sixteenth century France, and the Thirty Years War.

Best,

Blake

[Jared A. Sorensen]

1. I play the bass guitar. Not well, but I play. I currently own two electric basses (a Fender P-bass and a bee-oo-tee-full Fender America Jazz bass).

2. On December 12, 1996 I packed up three bags and got on an airplane bound for San Francisco, CA to work at the Union Square Borders bookstore. I was homeless for 13 months -- but I made friends quickly and had a job so I wasn't bumming for spare change on Haight or Market Street.

3. My favorite animal is Bradypus Tridactylus, the three-toed sloth. I'm a sloth fanatic.

4. I like to ride my mountain bike during the warmer months. I recently re-discovered my fondness for cross-country skiing.

5. I'm a heavy metal fiend. I especially like the more obscure (to Americans, anyway) German power metal bands.

[Matt Snyder]

I'm a lover of literature. Like Clinton, my favorite work is Heart of Darkness. I named my dog Marlow. People always spell it wrong, though.

I'm a raving rock fan, with favorites including Hendrix, Zeppelin (new release soon, yay!), Cream, Neil Young, Floyd, Dylan, Jethro Tull, and many others less "classic". Like Jared, I play bass -- a lovely Fender Jazz, ivory colored. I play for fun in a trio garage band with Flash (who hangs out here occasionally) and our "real" musician friend, Jason, who plays drums like a motherfucker. I sometimes sing, badly.

I often don't care much for seafood.

I think minutiae are usually wastes of time.

Rarely do I not enjoy sarcasm and irony.

[szilard]

1. I have a law degree, but I've never taken the bar exam.

2. I moved to Illinois from Washington, D.C. in August 2001, and planned on getting a job in September. Unfortunately, I didn't get one before the 11th. I was unemployed until March.

3. I work for a very small non-profit that focuses on helping children involved with the child welfare system. Most of our funding disappeared last year, and the organization may not exist after June.

4. I live with my girlfriend and two cats, and we (my girlfriend and I, not the cats) volunteer at the Humane Society often (when my car works and we can make it there) as adoption counselors.

5. Apparently like everyone else on this forum, I enjoy fencing (I started in college). I haven't really found a place to fence here in town, though, which is mildly frustrating.

Stuart

[Hannu Hurme]

Dumdidum...

1) I'm pretty young, 23 years old. Schools don't agree with me, no hope getting into university.

2) Two A's, Acting and Acrobatics, my two most important hobbies at the moment. Very much hoping that acting will be my profession one day.

3) Living with my girlfriend, out of job at the moment but my third hobby, as graphic artist should land me something soon enough. Meanwhile I have lots of free time to do some rpg design. :)

4) I read less than I'd like and I like what I read less than I should.

5) I'm living proof that antisocial-shunned-by-others-person even in nerd-standards, can rapidly evolve into something quite different.

There,
I really feel young compared to the lot of you grey beards *runs away*. :)

[Alan]

1.  I visited more than twelve countries before the age of 12, including Iceland, Morocco, and Iran.

2.  I am a citizen of both Canada and the USA.

3.  I've worked as fireman on a steam locomotive.

4.  I was a leader in the employee unionization effort at a major dot com.

5.  I've stayed for five days at the main L. Ron Hubbard center in Hollywood,
but I have never been a Scientologist.

[Tim C Koppang]

1. I'm finishing up my undergrad degree as we speak.  I'm double majoring in English and Rhetoric (Creative Writing), with a minor in Computer Science.  My honors English thesis is on the role of memory and Holocaust representation in contemporary postmodern fiction.

2. I love camping and backpacking—and all of the environmental activism that sometimes accompanies these activities.

3. I'm desperate to experience life in another country/culture, but could never picture myself living anywhere outside of the northern Illinois area.

[Rich Forest]

1.  I currently teach Composition and English as a Second Language (ESL) at Central Michigan University...

2. But not for much longer.  Departmental cuts are looming, and I'm only temp faculty, so I'm heading to a PhD program in Linguistics at City University, Hong Kong.

3.  I grew up poor in rural Michigan, but education has allowed me to make my own life pretty international—I've studied in Germany, I've taught in Japan, and this fall I'll add Hong Kong to the list.  

4.  I've been happily married for over four years—my wife Leng is Chinese, born in Vietnam, and I met her in Germany, where we were both taking a Japanese class at Heinrich Heine University.  We got married in Las Vegas.  We speak German at home.

5.  I'm a coffee nut.  I buy green coffee beans, roast and grind them at home, and make my coffee in a press to get the best flavor.  But I don't drink more than one cup a day because I don't want to become so accustomed to the taste that I forget to enjoy every cup.

Rich Forest

[kregmosier]

1) I served in the U.S. Army for 5 years, including 8 months in Southeast Asia during Desert Shield/Storm with 3rd Armored Division.

2) I have a BFA and absolutely love Art, yet i hate the pretention often associated with it and the 'Gallery-Crowd'.

3) The two biggest loves of my life are my Wife of 10 years and my Dog.

4) I have an IM Rod in my right Tibia...the result of a Compound Fracture due to a hit-and-run in Germany.  I survived the Gulf War without a scratch, go back to Germany, walk across the street to an Imbis for a Gyro and *BAM*.

5) If i could have a Mariachi band follow me around at all times, i probably would.


-k

[Brian Leybourne]

Why not. It's interesting reading these small slices into everyone else's lives.

1. Although I have no problem with religious people, I am generally anti-religion in all its forms due to the hatred, lack of tolerance and constant wars and strife it generates. Interestingly, I often play religious types when I roleplay, and use that to explore the concept of faith (which in principle I have no problem with).

2. I was a championship fencer in college and ranked fairly highly, but a badly shattered ankle means I have to take it easy these days and it's likely I'm not that good anymore. Thanks to the ankle, weight can often be a problem these days as I'm not as active as I used to be/should be.

3. For a couple of years I worked as a youth councilor (trained and all) but stopped after I dealt with a very young girl who had been raped and I couldn't really make myself go back to it. Sadly, I have something of a history of quitting like this, I was a scout leader when I was 18-20 but I stopped after the other leader I worked with (who was a good friend) died, I couldn't seem to "get into it" after that.

4. My wife (fiance then) and I were almost killed by a drunk driver in June 2000, he was doing 180kph on wet roads at night, spun out and wrote off our car so badly they had to use the jaws of life to cut me out. According to the accident investigator, if our car had not spun away as much as it did he would have driven the engine through my stomach and killed me, but if we had spun out any more he would have slammed right into the drivers door and killed me - I managed to hit the 5 degree either way angle of impact where the driver survives this kind of accident in a Barina(!). Thanks to New Zealand's pathetic legal system, he got what amounts to a small slap on the hand and walked free. To date he still has not paid 1c of the reparation we were awarded by the court.

5. Although I'm not in the SCA, I am a medieval buff to the extent that my wife and I had a medieval wedding, complete with a "use your fingers and pull meat off the bone" feast, ale and mead in abundance, a medieval 4-piece band, and vows from the 13th century (which were the earliest vows I could find. Neither of us are religious, but it didn't seem right doing a medieval wedding without a religious service, performed by a celebrant and not a priest, of course). Every single guest except one got into the spirit of things and turned up in full medieval garb. The one who didn't said he "didn't want to look stupid", and as the only person not in costume, he looked stupid.

Brian.

[Gordon C. Landis]

I had the joy and excitement of witnessing my "not a dot com" high-tech employer experience complete upper-executive/investor breakdown, a theoretically-impossible limbo (where there was literally no one legally entitled to run the company, but we kept running it), and an eventual profitable purchase out of bankruptcy - and basicaly kept doing the same sort of job through it all, and to this day.

At the tender age of 10 or so, I was (one of) the guy(s) who snapped the football to Steve Young (yup, when he was around 10 as well).  Taught him everything he knows :-)  

I've attended at least 6 different institutions of higher learning, but never did manage to get a college degree.  If I had it to do over again  . . . one of biggest mistakes I ever made, not just focusing and sticking out four years (ANY four years) and getting it done.  Not that I'm complaining - but I didn't want this to come across as "no degree and proud of it."

I've spent a fair amount of time on horseback in the "wilderness" of Alaska, Belize, Idaho, and a few other spots.  I find it an amazing experience - both in terms of comunicating with another species (the horses, duh), and in getting to some really extraordinary locations, flora and fauna (bears, man - ain't nothing like a bear).

I have been shot at, stabbed, and "marked" by a (kinda light-weight, but still scary) urban gang, and managed somehow to survive despite all but the most minimal MA or other combative training/experience.  I mean to imply nothing particular by this, it's just an odd fact that few people would guess by looking at me.

That's my five,

Gordon

[Nick the Nevermet]

I might as well...

1) I'm a sociology grad and I'm evidence for something a professor told me once, "tell me what your hang-ups are, and I'll tell you what you research."

2) I've been studying a martial art (aikido) for about a year and a half now.  I'm horrible at it, I have never been in need of it, and yet I have a blast with it.  It is helping me with things like awareness, body ownership, and stress relief (getting thrown 5 feet is oddly fun)

3) I'm ridiculously in love with my cute GF.  For some reason, I wasn't interested in her at first, but she basically clubbed me over the head and dragged me to a cave.  I'm not complaining; she's cute, smart, and sane.

4) My father was the principal in the Elementary School I attended.  This made me quite aware of things like privilege & intrigue, along with my lifelong distaste for them.

[lumpley]

So here's me, okay, a repressed, gawky fourteen-year-old Mormon boy living in suburban Provo. It's a high school halloween costume party.  One of my cousins, gorgeous, a senior, blonde like we all are, tall, athletic, a nationally ranked cheerleader no less, right, picture it, she comes dressed as a pig.  In a pink bodysuit, a plastic nose, a pipe cleaner tail, and EIGHT RUBBER BABY BOTTLE NIPPLES.  Two placed just so and the rest in rows down her ribcage.

How many taboos is that?  It's 16+ years later and I'm STILL messed up about it.

-Vincent

[Jürgen Mayer]

1. I own a fair number of musical instruments, and I can make a lot of noise with'em, but nothing I'd dare to call music. I can play bass guitar best, like playing drums most (lots of noise - go figure), don't know how to play saxophone & clarinette anymore and the most recent addition to my collection, 2 months ago, was a Epiphone Les Paul Gothic electric guitar. In the early nineties, I played bass in a band called "Turn Off Your Vibrators."

2. I can't sing, but I can juggle.

3. I was an ambulance driver for 15 months, now I'm a software developer (in the mid eighties, I wrote the unofficial game to the movie American Ninja on my C64).

4. I own about 90 Frank Zappa albums.

5. My martial arts experiences include some weeks of judo training, some months of aikido (ki-aikido, bokken and jo) and years of Tekken!

[Andy Kitkowski]

Cool! An opportunity to cram my life into five bits for all to see. I'm always a big fan of these icebreakers, as I like to hear about others, but for some reason love to talk about myself. :)

1. Japan. Dunno why. Always been interested in it, in college I got a chance to study Japanese and go over there. Spent 4 years there in Tokyo and a prefecture called Gunma, and wouldn't mind returning someday. I'm nearly fluent in spoken Japanese (having a Japanese wife for four years helps), and while I love discussing issues of culture, language and society, Japanese history (feudal era Japan, historic weapons, etc) bores the crap out of me.

2. Nature. Counting all the days that I've been camping equals over a year. Yep, that's right, by the age of 20 I had lived in the woods for well over a year and a few weeks (in the summer in HS I often went on month-long hikes and the like).

3. Education. Love talking about education and development. I double-majored in Philosophy and Sociology (my BA in Phil is the equiv of an MA at normal schools). I love 20th century philosophy, American Pragmatism and dudes like Dewey, Rorty, and Campbell. However, I'd rather slam my hand in a car door than discuss any non-contemporary philosophical issue (like the "Mind/Body 'problem'") that originates from before 1920 or so (save for the Enlightenment, which is always fun). But I always make an exception for Buddhism. I consider anything else "spinning ones wheels" :)

4. I love to dance and move my body. I was like the one guy who always went to raves for the dancing and not the drugs. I was even a DJ for a time. I love Dance Dance Revolution, even though it's not what I call "real dancing". I also do martial arts (almost exactly 10 years), currently Wing Chun Kung Fu- But I think it's just because I like to move that body and exercise, but yet hate lifting weights and running.

5. The Dune novel series has had a profound effect of shaping my psyche. I've learned as much from this modern manmade myth as I have from, say, the Tao Te Ching or Art of War.

Keep 'em coming, folks!  I'm really enjoying this "Very Special Episode" of The Forge.