Social profiling

[Fabrice G.]

Okay, here's myself in five broken parts...(ouch!)


1. My great-parents'familly being parked and murdered during WWII had a very profund impact on me. So much as to define my view toward religion and racism (not that I consider the two at the same level, you troll !)

2. I've been a student all my life, yep I'm 28+ and still loving it. My bachelor's degree was in biology and I have two university degree: in history and in educational engineering (?) and planning on a master in the latter.

3. I'm living with the woman I love for two years now, and those two years have been as hard as they proved self-improving and maturing.

4. I'm a film buff, mostly osbcure artsy and strange directors... and japanese movies and anime. My all-time favorites are Lynch, Cronenberg and others like that.

5. I enjoy gothic and noir litterature to the point that reading take precedence over my studies... of course, my gaiming experience actually derive from the story I like.

Fabrice.

[Chris Passeno]

-I was born and raised a military brat, living in many places for short periods of time, including Okinawa.  I think it made me part Gypsy.

-I'm 32 years old and have been married for 11 years, resulting in one Son.  We may have another if the Fates are kind.

-I've been a Printer for around 16 years and can't imagine ever leaving it.  I'm even getting used to being a Print Sales-Whore.  I'm a Print Geek.  I just can't get enough of it.

-It took many, many years of stressed band teachers and wasting money on a variety of musical instruments to realize that I have absolutely NO musical talent.  I've accepted that.

-I started on Atkins Diet (Carb Control) the day before Thanksgiving last year. I know, what a stupid time to start.  I've lost 47 lbs.  That puts me within 3 lbs. of where I wanna be.

[Jason Lee]

I practice Aikido (Shin Shin Toitsu - Rocky Mountain Ki Society), have some cross training in Jujitsu (Dan Zan Ryu), and was a high school wrestler.  I've never had to use them in a combat sense.  Though, breakfalls prevent skateboarding injuries and the right presence avoids many conflicts.  I've been in 3 fights in my life, all dismal defeats.  In elementary school the kid who stabbed me in the face with a pencil was victorious.  In junior high the bigger kid on the bus won.  And in high school the five guys with baseball bats won.  I was robbed, I shoulda won that last one.

Speaking of high school, I dropped out.  If I'd have known at age 14 the GED was only going to take four hours, I would have saved myself some misery.  I tried to return and finish after being out in the real world with a couple jobs for a year or so.  I may have hated the institution while I was there, but returning with an adult perspective showed me just how much kids are treated like pets instead of people.  It was a real eye opener.

When I was about 7 we lived in a tent in the upper peninsula of Michigan while my parents relocated a log cabin piece by piece to their land (I helped too, but it didn't extend much past stepping on a nail).  Our adventures in tent-hood ended when a bear ripped through it to steal our 5 gallon bucket of goverment aid peanut butter.  Being the end of the tent, we moved into the pick-up truck.  We weren't in the tent, and we never found the bucket.  Once completed the house had no running water, the outhouse was a hundred feet away, and we kept having to relocate the porcupines who wanted to eat the house (apparently wood houses are delicious).  It was the happiest time of my childhood.  Treehouse, a backyard that is a forest full of ferns and maple with little creeks, deep scary pits (most likely full of giant snakes) where the foundation was originally going to be, wild animals that get the privilage of being an 8 year boy's pet, fresh maple syrup, wild gooseberrys, crazy old native american up the road who steals your wheelbarrow and can somehow turn a branch into a flute in under a minute, deer you could walk up to, new baby brother, etc.

I wonder how my mother and brother are doing, yet I never call.

[J B Bell]

This is a fun thread.  I see some trends but will honor Ron's request and not comment on them here.

Almost gaming:  I too play Go.  Don't have an official rating.  I'm "tquid" on the various servers.

Subculture:  Geek, passionate about capital-F Free software and IP issues, like to dance at S/M clubs just 'cause I dig the music and the sexy people (and I can do my one-man mosh pit!), queer in a variety of ways, religiously went from Discordian to Occultic strands of various types to Buddhism and have more or less settle down to Unitarian-Jodo-Shinsh/Zen-Buddhist.  Seriously considering going into the ministry as a Unitarian.  I don't think any other even vaguely mainstream church would put up with a polyamorous freak such as myself.

Violence:  Did a couple years of Karate, and can fence with foil and rapier passably.  Carried a gun in self-defense for a while, never drew it, but missed a home invasion by one week by expediently moving out.  I seem to have a knack for talking myself out of bad situations.  Not hanging out with people who are one remove from unstable drug dealers has made my life a lot less tense.  I still think that personal firearms are a reasonable form of defense for people with proper training, something I keep my mouth shut about in Canada, since I hang out mainly with foaming lefties.  (And consider myself to be such in many, but not all ways.)

Nationality:  I'm a dual Canadian/American citizen too.

Education & employment:  A college washout, I collect weird degrees, and have a ministry from the universal life church whish has seen me perform three weddings, as well as a degree in advanced locksmithing from a correspondence school (I re-key the locks for my housing co-operative).  I did tech support for many years, and systems administration (unix mainly) for a few, and now find myself hitting people up on the street to join a monthly donor program for Unicef.  I also do some computer contracting and run my own home server.  (Debian Linux, but thinking aobut setting up Gentoo on the spare machine.)

Trivia:  "J B Bell" is my full, legal name.  People call me "JB", though I've also been nicknamed Habeeb, Jaybe, J'b, and other cute variants.  Border bureaucrats seem to have a problem with it.

--JB

[Zak Arntson]

- Big fan of pulp fantasy, especially Karl Edward Wagner. My first fantasy novel ever was Lawrence Watt-Evan's Lords of Dus books, which introduced me in a back-handed way to Lovecraftian gods, the King in Yellow, and the old Howard stories.

- Avid Star Wars LEGO fan, but mostly the original trilogy sets. I find the combination of films and toys that shaped my youth to be very, very awesome. That and they're LEGOs, so I can do whatever with them.

- I turned 26 last week. I share a birthday with Aretha Franklin, and it's the same day that Liv Tyler got married. I spent the day home from work, and the evening playing games with my wife and friends.

- I'm a database programmer, currently seeking employment in the video game industry. Part of my plan to start enjoying life.

- So far, I'm the first in three or four generations (on one side, at least) to not finish college. I dropped out after disgust with the computer science department's inflexibility and the art department's general attitude that "illustration isn't art."

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Hell, Ill play.

I was born in 1971.

After my parents split,I moved around a lot. Not as much as some, I have found, but enough to make me feel rootless.

I've been involved with roleplaying since 1983, but it seems I prefer thinking about it to actually playing.

In fact, I seem to lack any real drive. I talked about this with my brother once and we came to a concensus that I had always gotten acceptance from our father no matter what (lucky junior me) and he did not. So I've been bouncing from job to job with no real marketable skills while he got himself a career a wife a kid, another on the way...I dunno. I may make this the basis of a screenplay that I'll never finish.

Now I'm getting depressing. I'd better stop before it gets worse.

[RobMuadib]

Here's my five

1. I was born in Germany, the Emelia Earhart hospital in Wiesbaden, Hessen, Germany. I am a US citizen though, an air force brat, my dad was career airforce, serving 20 years, he did two tours in Vietnam, and was in Nam when I was born '72.

2. I'm single, which may have something to do with the fact that I seem to have a penchant for falling for lesbian women. I did some stalker like research about my childhood sweetheart, found out where she lived, what she was doing, tried calling and got an answering machine that indicated she was living with another girl (who is also from here.). She is like 30, has a good job, and is like totally hot. So, I think it may be some kind of genetic thing, an evolutionary reaction to overpopulation, I'm like a reverse fag-hag or something. sigh.

3. I'm a fat bastard, though not quite gigantic, I'm 5'8", and wear a size 14 shoe, and weigh 325lbs. So like I am pretty burly, broad shouldered, and fairly muscular, so you wouldn't imagine that I am THAT heavy. I mean, I can crush furniture, and exceed the engineering tolerances of ladders and stuff.

4. I am a college drop-out, like most of my friends. First not having in degrees in engineering and liberal arts, and then not having a degree in english, creative writing. Somehwere along the line i learned a variety of useful computer skills, mostly PC hardware tech, and interenet/web design stuff. I think my ultimate calling is writing, but first to finish my damn game.

5. I have a little formal training in martial arts, lots of fighting when I was a kid, wrestling in juniour high, a year or so of judo, and general streetfighting type training with a friend, including informal instruction in Tae Kwan Do, Aikido, and study of ninjitsu stuff through Steven K. Hayes' books. Speaking of ninjitsu, used to have some fair stealth skills, during my juvenille delinquent phase. Have some skill in sword use, mostly kendo type stuff with katana, knife stuff. Have familiarity with a fair variety of fire arms, thanks to my friend, who was a sheriff's deputy, who was also the guy I did the juvenile delinquent stuff with, go figure. He had an AR-15, 12guage combat style shotgun, Sig Sauer .357 shortneck, Mac 11 9mm with silencer (Suprisingly accurate from the hip), .357 revolver, and like a .38 semi-auto. He was also guy I sparred with alot. I have a healty interest in combat, weapons, and other militaria stuff now, and being that I am old and fat these days, would rather just shoot someone than try to fight with them. :)

[Christoffer Lernö]

1. My full name is Christoffer Malcolm Lernö, born (in 1973) and raised in Uppsala, Sweden. I've got two younger brothers and two younger sisters. I'm currently living in Tunghai Village in the outskirts of Taichung, Taiwan.

2. At the university my specialization was into quantum field theory, general relativitity and such things. I stopped just before graduation though (not finishing my thesis), deciding I wanted more perspective on what I wanted to do with my life before I committed myself to a life of doing research and teaching. I quickly ended up as a programmer, which I'm decently good at I think. However, right now I'm not working at all but spending my savings to stay in Taiwan learning Mandarin Chinese.

3. As for the M-A thing, since you're all bringing it up. Judo and Shotokan karate for a semester each when I was little but that wasn't very serious. Kendo, which I took up in '93, on the other hand I've been doing very diligently but I only have a shodan to show for it. I've been exclusively practicing nito (two swords) since some years back.
Anyway, in Taiwan I decided to make a pause with the kendo to concentrate on practicing traditional Long Fist (-kung fu). I've been doing that for a little over a year now and I feel more fit and flexible than ever. Yay!

4. I think everyone needs to encourage their uniqueness. I'm a strong non-conformist and hate to be herded. And did I mention I'm a Goddess worshipping pagan with a strong touch of zen-buddhism and taoism thrown in for good measure?

5. I haven't had a nightmare since I was three. That nightmare was about going around and discovering I was in a dream with everyone in the dream telling me "no, this is not a dream" and I couldn't get myself to wake up.

[talysman]

1. I compose and perform experimental music as "krisTal marimba lounge" and have played the Northern California Experimental Music Festival for the past three years, and I am included on three comp CDs; my previous music experience was with a medieval consort (tabor drum, recorder) and a light jazz improv group (digital horn). I don't read music and don't consider myself a musician.

2. I am experimenting with video and animation and half one semi-pro credit (recording and digitizing an Uberkunst performance) and a couple short animate music videos I've recently made, one of which is machinima, the other is in Bryce. I can't draw or paint.

3. I like lots of classic movies and just bought tons of '50s space sci-fi on DVD as well as a couple Nouvelle Vague films. I go to the theater about 4 times a year.

4. I am in the middle of changing my career from tech support to gods-know-what, probably some form of graphic design. I am 39 years old and don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

5. I used to be a druid, now I'm a lazy pantheist.

[Trevis Martin]

I have an M.F.A. in Painting/Drawing with heavy concentrations of Printmaking (etching mostly) and Photography.  I was hoping to teach but so far that hasn't panned out (in this market?)  I make art on the computer as well and am recently teaching myself how to use various 3D programs.

Needing money while my wife finishes her Masters in Counseling Psych, I, in a strange twist of fate, became a tech support rep for a major PC manufacturer.  At home I use a Macintosh.

My lovely wife and I have been married for 10 years.  Our only child so far is a small Bichon Frise.

I moved out on my own when I was 17 to avoid the emotional fallout of my parents divorce.  In another strange twist they recently began living together again after being divorced for almost 13 years.

I'm an avid reader of...well...just about anything:  History, comparitive religion, philosophy, poetry.  I have a special interest in divination systems, particularly the Tarot and the I Ching.

[Maurice Forrester]

I spent the summer of 1978 hiking the Appalachian Trail.  Didn't get the whole thing done, though.

I'm a card-carrying Socialist.

Married with two kids.  The whole family games.

I almost finished my Ph.D. in American history but decided to work for a dot-com instead.

That dot-com is still in business!

[Michael S. Miller]

Home Life: My dad served in Vietnam as a mechanic. Was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis a few years later and is currently bed-bound. My mom takes care of him. They live 1.5 miles from my house. My in-laws are a single mom, two sisters-in-law, aged 17 & 18 (one of whom we’re corrupting into being a gamer—she’ll be at GenCon), and, at the moment, 2 foster kids. They live 1 mile from my house. My house is my wife Kat. She’s a gamer, too, and is writing a fantasy novel that’s gonna knock the socks off of everyone this side of Tolkien. We’re adopting a 12-year-old girl who, ironically, hates to read. We also have a foster daughter at the moment. Did I mentioned I have a lot of family that I have to juggle every day?

Education/Work: BA in history, minor in English Literature, International Studies certificate. Did a year of grad school in history but dropped out due to academia’s obsession with minutiae, the politicking, and the bleak career prospects. Have never left the U.S. I now work for a book compositor and can use Quark Xpress like a fiend. No marketable technical skills beyond that.

Interests: I nigh-worship the Star Wars films, and Buffy, but loathe all the spinoffs. I’m biased against anything that’s too popular. I think 90% of any variety of Pop Culture is crap. Even badly-done Shakespeare is better than a night of TV. And I like Broadway musicals, especially Sondheim, but have never listened to Phantom of the Opera or Cats. If you think that’s bad, just wait for “Musical Comedy: the Role-Playing Game”! My game library has over a hundred titles at last count, and I’ve actually played over 20 of them.

Martial Arts/Music: Has become its own category by this point. Thankfully no personal experience with physical conflict of any kind, so far, and I’d like to keep it that way, thank you very much. On a good day, I can play exactly two songs on the harmonica, and I taught myself to whistle two months ago, at the age of 29. Won’t be quitting my day job.

What is is it with "Mike"s and their long posts?

I also suck at editing myself.

[Rich Stokes]

Er,

Hmmmm,

1) I'm 27 years old and live in Southampton, England with my Fiance, Naomi.  What she sees in me and why she puts up with me, I'll never know.  We have no pets due to our lease, but we have a Dyson which is practically part of the family.

2) I am one of the most cynical, miserable motherfuckers you'll ever meet.  You name it, I can hate it.  My particular pet hates are largely music and food related because those are two things which are very important to me.  In particular I hate mushrooms, cheese that hasn't been cooked, R&B, Brit Pop, outdoors, the 1980's and any food that lives or has lived in the sea.  I like Belgian Beer (and, yes, I'm sad enough to go on holiday just for beer), Star Wars, icecream and beef.

3) I'm a Secular Humanist.  We open our damn christmas presents whenever we want :)

4) I have two websites, and I work in the IT industry as a consultant of sorts.  I've been laid off 3 times in the last 18 months.  It's all a bit rock 'n' roll really.  Every time we plan an actual wedding and try to set a date, my employer goes bankrupt.  Speaking of Rock 'n' Roll, I used to dj at industrial/rock/metal/tecno events, but I got too old for that kind of thing.

5) I play videogames all the time.  I have pretty much every console since the NES, which makes my corner of our lounge look like a looney tunes server room.

I also drink more coffee that any other non-lawyer I know.  Martial arts is too much like physical effort.  I use a DVORAK keyboard, which is why my typos are so weird.  I'm in a band called "Worst Case Scenario" because it was always considered that dispite the fact that I can sing fairly well, it would be a truly terrible thing if I as ever to actually form a band.  My father was a cop for 19 years and a fireman for 9 before that.  I'm pretty much a career opposite, having studied Engineering and working in IT. My middle name is Kenneth.

[taalyn]

Here's mine:
4. Yes, I spent four years in the Army. Besides the resulting marriage and divorce, they were the best four years of my life. I was a Korean-language signals intelligence analyst, but enjoyed my time in the motor pool with my Hum-Vee much more.

Et moi:

1) I'm a grad student at Harvard studying Celtic Languages. When my masters is finished (2 more months...), I will have a reading familiarity with 12 languages.

2) I was in the Navy for 5 years, as a Chinese signals intelligence analyst, but enjoyed my time on WESTPAC much more.

3) I'm married, and he works for the city of Boulder, CO. yes, HE.

4) I love languages, cooking, and bad horror movies (Full Moon Entertainment, where are you?).

5)I was raised by a charismatic Pentecostal fundamentalist.  But Dad and the Incubator are divorced now and I have a decent Mom.

Aidan M. Grey (not my birth name)

[Stuart DJ Purdie]

Painfully single.

25, 5'10" and overweight at 11 stone.

Can't sing, can't play, can't strum, can't drum.  Can engineer.  Do.

ObSeriousGothCred:  Allergic to sunlight.

PhD soon (quantum physics).