[OT] Who are YOU and what do you DO?

[Psychotic Dreamer]

I'm a 30 years old. I live in Upstate NY, about 20-25 miles outside of Albany in a small town named East Nassau. I do Technical Support for a local ISP (Taconic.Net) and this company also does support for a few different ISP's (Pivot.net, GTCOM.net, EllTell.net, cecomet.net, hge.net, roadlynx.net and a handful of others). I have been gaming since sometime in the late '80's. Other than that I watch a lot of TV, sit infront of the computer and play console games (PS2 and GameCube).

 

[Sixchan]

School Office Worker in Glasgow, UK. I spend my time staring at spreadsheets, word processors, and class registers. I get a big holiday every summer.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

I'm 31 today-July 20th

I currently work for the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, VA. I am a Library Specialist, and have 2 very different jobs in the library. First, I am the tech support for staff members who have trouble sending email or turning their computers on (lots of them fit this catagory), and second, I'm the guy to see if you need to find anything on microfilm or microfiche. Someday I plan on going back to school to get my MLS and be a real librarian, so I can stop pretending to be one. I also have a second job in retail to support my book buying habit.
In the past, I worked for several years as an assistant editor at HarperCollins Publishers, where I worked for the SF/Fantasy division, HarperPrism. I worked on books by Clive Barker, Terry Pratchett, the various X-Files novels, and was the editor for the Aliens/Predator CCG, among many, many other authors & titles. I've also worked for a medical publisher doing layout & design, was a bookstore manager, built trails and conducted archaeological surveys at a state park in New York, was an Americorps volunteer for a year, and have a B.A. in Anthropology.
I'm engaged, and will get married on May 30, 2004 to a wonderful, supportive fiance who doesn't get my attraction to gaming, but puts up with it.
My hobbies include gaming, comics, music, hiking, and collecting legos. I'm a reformed DeadHead and PhishHead, although I can still be found wearing a tye-dye t-shirt, and I have far too many Dead & Phish shows on tape & CD than I'll ever be able to listen to.
I'm originally from upstate NY, and have been roleplaying since I was 10, with a break for a few years during college for some reason I don't really remember.

 

[Buttercup]

I guess I'm older than most (but not all) of the people who post here, let's just say I'm over 40 and leave it at that. I'm told I don't look my age, and I suspect that's because I don't have any children.

I've been married for going on 15 years, and lived with my husband for two years before that. Like Henry, we've gone through some tough financial times. We have also weathered our share of family tragedies.

We live in a medium sized city in the middle of the USA, in a white house with a green door and a fenced back yard. We are very attached to our dog, Sprocket; enough so that I suspect some people think we're a bit kooky.

Both my husband and I are librarians, but he works in a medical library at a local hospital and I work for the public library, managing one of the branches. I've had a life long interest in medieval history and prehistory, though I'm really more of a dabbler than an expert. I'm probably one of the few people you'll ever run across, or maybe even the only one, who can read Beowulf in the original Anglo-Saxon.

I love to read, especially science fiction and nonfiction, but I don't read nearly as much as I used to. I'm not sure why, but I just don't seem to have the urge to sit still with a book for hours. I've been playing computer games since around 1990 when we got our first computer, and I've been a usenet junkie for almost as long, though message boards have pretty much supplanted usenet for me. I came to D&D through computer games, though I had been secretly wanting to play since I was in college in the '70s. As for music, I like classic rock (I'm a bit of a head-banger), the blues and medieval music. We have a huge collection of music CDs, since my husband's and my taste only partially overlap.

I'm generally a social person, but I tend to get tired of people if I spend too much time with them. Well, except for my husband. I genuinely enjoy hanging out with him. Lucky me, eh? Anyway, I tend to not talk too much about myself and my feelings with friends, which is sort of odd for a female. I've never been comfortable with or interested in girl-talk or other girlie things like make-up, shopping sprees and fussing around with the house. I'd rather talk about books, or ideas, or hobbies.

I consider myself to be a highly moral person, and I am probably a bit too judgemental. Once someone has done something that I consider unethical, I have a hard time trusting them, or cutting them any slack. I try to live what I believe though, so at least I don't think I'm a hypocrite.

I'm told that I intimidate people, and I think that might be because I say what I think. I haven't ever been able to come up with any other reason, at least. I try to be nice, but I suppose I don't suffer fools gladly, and I think I sometimes have a hard time controlling my face when I think someone is an idiot. I struggle with this, but I'm not sure I've made much progress. Possibly this is because my husband's good opinion is the only one that really matters to me. Don't get me wrong, I don't want people to hate me. But as long as I can come home to someone who believes in me, and who I can laugh with, the rest of the world isn't so important. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

 

[Desdichado]

I'm probably one of the few people you'll ever run across, or maybe even the only one, who can read Beowulf in the original Anglo-Saxon.

You're my new idol! That's been a secret ambition of mine for years, but teaching yourself Old English is harder than you'd think.

 

[Decamber]

I'm 16 years old, (to be 17 later this year), and the words that would describe me best would be "computer freak" along with "that guy with the funny accent who always tells jokes and can't for anything keep his mouth shut and cell phone on 'no sound'".

I've been playing RPG's since I was about 11. By then I played the Swedish roleplaying games called Mutant and Drakar och Demoner (the latter is a loosely translation of Dungeons and Dragons; literally it means "Dragons and Demons"). I begun playing AD&D2E as some of my fellow players had been playing Baldur's Gate. Now it's D&D3E/3.5E.

I spend much time at the computer, where I'm running Linux (well, GNU/Linux to be correct). The distribution of choice is Slackware. Soon I want to be build my own Linux From Scratch (LFS) system, which basically means that you build your linux operating system from scratch... which the name implies.
I'm not too much into computer games, although a five-minute-game of Quake won't hurt twice a month. Heh.

While not on the computer or playing D&D, you could perhaps find me playing the guitar (given you'd visit my house, which you probably wouldn't, but anyway). I mostly play the acoustic guitar, although I have an electrical one. The music I play is different, ranging from classical to blues to video game soundtracks.

Well, that's my life story.

 

[Ravellion]

I'm probably one of the few people you'll ever run across, or maybe even the only one, who can read Beowulf in the original Anglo-Saxon.

It's easier for native Dutch speakers, who also happen to be English lit students (though I do not find it easy).

Rav

 

[Buttercup]

You're my new idol! That's been a secret ambition of mine for years, but teaching yourself Old English is harder than you'd think.

Heh. No, I can imagine just how hard it is. I was taking German the same semester I learned Old English, and that actually made it easier, since many of the words were so obviously related, and the sentence structures were similar. Nonetheless, it was hard going. And that was with a really good professor. Doing it on one's own, well, I'm sure it can be done, but yikes!

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

I'm just a 17 year old from Florida transplanted to Georgia...I'm an aspiring artist, working hard with it a lot of the time. I've been gaming since I was 10 or so...not sure exactly. I'm just waiting for my Senior year of High School to come and go. Planning a move to North Wales...already got the passport and working out a lot of other things. While some think its a bit young, and if situations were different, I'd be inclined to agree, I'll be getting married in a year and a half...known the girl for a good eight years now. Long story behind all that and it just kind of makes me nervous sometimes.

 

[hellbender]

I'm just a 17 year old from Florida transplanted to Georgia...I'm an aspiring artist, working hard with it a lot of the time. I've been gaming since I was 10 or so...not sure exactly. I'm just waiting for my Senior year of High School to come and go. Planning a move to North Wales...already got the passport and working out a lot of other things. While some think its a bit young, and if situations were different, I'd be inclined to agree, I'll be getting married in a year and a half...known the girl for a good eight years now. Long story behind all that and it just kind of makes me nervous sometimes.

Good luck on the art. I hope you aren't aspiring to be an rpg illustrator, probably one of the shakiest art jobs out there. I know people who moved to the Seattle area when working as WotC staff that were cut and left with a shaky situation, many moving back to where they had started from. Not too many companies pay that well in the rpg arena, either. Art sells products, but many companies (a portion through their situations) cannot or will not pay that well.

Nothing wrong with traveling young, good luck with that. I got out of the country at 20, bouncing around Asia, selling art and eventually being a very bad boy. Travel broadens the mind and exposure to other cultures makes your world a bigger place, and everyone can use that.

hellbender