Topic: [ARCHIVE] Get to know your fellow coder

[akitchin]

interesting that so many of you have children.  as ober said, i've no idea how you guys do it.

i'm 21 and girlfriended (thanks effigy), in year 3 of a chemistry degree program at the u of calgary.  no programming, but i'm enjoying it a great deal.  i'm hoping to go into grad school eventually, once i've had some time out of school.  i swim with a masters league, with hopes to make my final year at school a varsity swimming year.  i've been swimming for 13 odd years now, so i don't think i'll give it up anytime soon.  programming pays the bills, albeit sporadically, and i enjoy creating an application from a basic foundation and seeing it work.  it's a great sense of achievement.  i picked up PHP/MySQL in the summer after high school as an alternative to getting a job, and lo and behold, it became my job.

for anyone who knows chemistry, i'm mostly a fan of physical chemistry (in particular quantum mechanics and photochemistry).  i also really like polymer and bio/pharmaco chemistry.  i know, i'm a nerd.

finally, i dig camping, furry animals (have a cat) and the occasional alcohol raid so my liver doesn't get too high and mighty on me.  it may have enzymes, but i ultimately have control.  plus, i'm young - god knows how much longer i can avoid responsibility.

[cmgmyr]

girlfriended (thanks effigy)

Thats awesome, it sounds like some sort of plague or sickness or something. I've been "girlfriended" for a while but I got out of it a short time ago, and as I said previously I'm trying to make it out in the single world...luckily business is good


Another little side note: my first website was for my first "real" band in middle school and it was on Geocities. *Pukes* O well it was fun...but I learned quickley geocities was NOT the way to go...

[obsidian]

They tell me I got my start in the computer world when I was a baby - my uncle was playing a flight simulator game, paused it to go to the bathroom, and I hopped up on his chair and landed his plane for him. My parents swear it's true, but I'm sure they're exaggerating somewhere.

Wow. That's funny. If I went as far back as my first computer experience, it would be similar... When I was 4, we had a Texas Instruments TI99/4A complete with cassette backups and a few little games like Hunt the Wumpus and Parsec. Don't ask me how I still remember those details when the rest of my 4th year of life is a blur . Anyway, on my fifth birthday, I found a guide to programming games in basic, and my parents said I spent the better part of 6 hours sitting with the manual copying character by character (since I couldn't read very well yet) onto the TV screen. By the end of the day, I had a little stick figure kicking an ASCII football through the uprights.

I'm also a little surprised at the number of us with children on here. I guess I am guilty of falling into the typical mindset of the "bachelor geeks" for programmers lol. I also find it interesting how many of you have serious music interests. I actually minored in music in college, and I find every spare minute I can to tinker around on my guitar and piano, too. I wish I had more time, though. I have a few song ideas I came up with in college I've never been able to put entirely down on paper

[jcombs_31]

Ok, I'm 27, live in Fort Lauderdale, FL.  I have now been married just over 2 years and have a 17 month old boy. (was not a shotgun marriage ).  I never had a computer growing up, but was facinated by them and would sometimes visit my dad and play games on his computer.  After graduating High School I got my first computer and couldn't really get off of it. While in community college and working as a custodian/yardman for the school board, I decided to persue a career in computers.  I graduated almost two years ago with my B.S. in Computer Information Systems and have worked as an IT Specialist for the school board for about 5 years.  I recently started my own side business (http://www.multimedia-technologies.com) because I found that I love web development and sometimes get misc. computer related side jobs (networking, OS repair).  I was a good artist as a child and recently started to get the craving to learn graphic design.  I'm currently putting in lots of practice in creating baby #2.

[effigy]

...I grew up overseas...

Where? What did you like/dislike about it?

Let me know if you wanna chat music or gear sometime.

Have you tried electronic drums?

[cmgmyr]

Let me know if you wanna chat music or gear sometime.

Have you tried electronic drums?

Yeah I have tried a few of them. The problem is, is that do get a decent sound...you need to pay A LOT of money. The ones that I'm looking at now are Roland TD-12S: V-Stage Series (http://www.rolandus.com/products/productdetails.aspx?ObjectId=659&ParentId=60). These and the Studio series have the best feeling pads (get better bounce off of them) and the brain is a lot better. But all good things come at a price, the Stage series is about $3,200-$3,800 depending on where you find it. I think the studio is $5,000+ (which is way too much for me). Hopefully I can get the Stage series within a year. (Sometimes I want to practice at like 2 in the morning and I can't because I don't want to piss the neighbors off so the electronic ones would be good.)

For acoustic drum sets I have 2:
The first one (my baby) is a Mapex Orion Classic which is polished black with gold and silver hardware. It looks SWEET!
(old pics but you get the idea)
This is a 10+ piece kit (not fully set up in the picture)

The other one is a Tama swingstar that I picked up real cheap and use it as a practice/beater kit. This is just a normal 5 piece kit.


The pictures don't really give to 2 kits justice, but you get the idea. I love music! and there is nothing better then being up on stage playing! Plus it makes the girls go crazy...it's not even fair. It's like fishing in a stocked pond with dynamite

Later,
-Chris

[redbullmarky]

@obsidian - there's a strong link between people who have an interest in music (performance rather than listening) and maths/logic, which is generally what alot of programming/coding revolves around. also the fact that both are creative and involve serious concentration means they both have similar appeal. i read all that somewhere a while back.


also yeah i'm amazed by the amount of offspring us lot have collectively too. blowing the myth of "bedroom geeks" out the water 

[effigy]

Yeah I have tried a few of them. The problem is, is that do get a decent sound...you need to pay A LOT of money.

Aye, but I don't have an option in my case. I bought an entry-level Roland TD-3S set about 2 years ago and maxed the inputs with 2 extra pads; it's not shabby for apartment practice. In fact, it's quite decent for me since I've rarely played on acoustic sets. Nice sets How long have you been playing?

[cmgmyr]

Thanks, I'm glad you like them. I've been playing drums for 12+ years, guitar for 6+ years, and I've been dabbling with bass and piano for 4+ years.

[obsidian]

Where? What did you like/dislike about it?

Well, I grew up on the island of Guam. For those of you who don't know it, it's sort of smack dab between Australia, Japan and the PI (Philippines). What I liked: beaches, baby! Love them beaches! Also, just the people in general. The culture out there is so much more real than what I've found here in the mainland US since I moved here. Definitely more pros than cons to living out there. My biggest complaint: it's freakin' hot! lol

@obsidian - there's a strong link between people who have an interest in music (performance rather than listening) and maths/logic, which is generally what alot of programming/coding revolves around. also the fact that both are creative and involve serious concentration means they both have similar appeal. i read all that somewhere a while back.

That makes sense. I've always gravitated to performance, and while I still have nowhere near professional skills on anything, I love playing and writing music. My appreciation for techniques and actual makeup of music has skyrocketed since I began coding, so I can definitely understand the correlation between the two as you cited. Although, I probably do much different styles of music than most of you. I actually play acoustic/classical guitar. I've only been playing for a couple years, but I love it. I've actually been playing piano since sixth grade, but I didn't actually start practicing hard until I got into college. I absolutely suck at sight reading, but I have almost every piece I've played memorized to this day. I'm kind of weird that way with music: once I've learned it, it's like I can never forget it

[448191]

Well, I grew up on the island of Guam[/url. For those of you who don't know it, it's sort of smack dab between Australia, Japan and the PI (Philippines). What I liked: beaches, baby! Love them beaches! Also, just the people in general. The culture out there is so much more real than what I've found here in the mainland US since I moved here. Definitely more pros than cons to living out there. My biggest complaint: it's freakin' hot! lo

You are a lucky bastard! I would've sold my soul to live there. It's rainy and grim over here..

EDIT: as long as I've got a computer and a fast connection, I couldn't live without that, surely.

You couldn't tell if you met me, but I'll always be a computer geek. Always have been (though secretly) and always will be.

[businessman332211]

My name is Joyel, my website is www.freelancebusinessman.com
I launched my career a long time ago studying, now I try to make a living with it.
I play video game's all the time, any type of game I can get my hand's on, I spent 300 (more) dollar's on game's last week alone, batman begins, (playing tale's of symphonia), mercenaries, and some others.
I buy large volum'es of game's a lot, and play them, and would hurt anyone that stood in my way of game's (it's dangerous)
That's about it, I freelancer, I study, and I play video games.

Also I am married, I have a wife, and a daughter, I have been married for 4 years.

[KevinM1]

My name is Kevin.  I'm 26 years old, and I live in New Hampshire, which is not quite the redneck center of New England (that honor goes to Maine).

I was born with Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita, a non-progressive congenital condition that has severely affected my muscular and skeletal systems.  Bone deformaties and muscle weakness/missing muscles are the basic symptoms.  For example, tendon transfers are pretty common.  In my case, some of my pectorals were transfered to my biceps, so yes, if I want to flex my arms at the elbow, it's basically my chest doing the work.

Because of my condition, I've had 40+ surgical procedures, all pretty painful.  These include back surgery (two 18' rods), hip surgery (a plate in each), a ton of osteotomies, and others.  My mobility is dependent on my electric wheelchair.

I graduated from UNH a couple years ago with a degree in communication.  Given my condition, and my desire to not rely on the state to pay for all my expenses, I figured I had to get a job that would let me earn a respectable amount of money.  I've spent the last couple of years slowly learning what I figure I need to know.  Right now, I feel it's a lack of experience that is hampering my progression.  The various languages (XHTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, etc.) aren't hard to learn.  Knowing how to use them properly and efficiently is the trick.

Like Joyel above me, I'm a gamer.  Unlike him, I'm not a threat to society if I don't get a game.  I'm not sure what the last game was that I bought...I think it was Tourist Trophy for the PS2 months ago.  I spend most of my time reading my web development text books and frequenting message boards like this one.  Even though Sony is evil, I've been saving up for a PS3, and I should be able to get one when they come out (depending on avalablity, of course).  I also play WOW occassionally on a carebear RP server.

Quick Hits (because I'm so interesting ):
Favorite Band: Tool

Favorite Color: Black or silver

Favorite Sports Team(s): Boston Bruins (yeah yeah, don't laugh), New England Patriots

Favorite TV Shows: The Shield, Battlestar Galactica (the new one), Mythbusters, Extreme Engineering, Megastructures, Iron Chef (both the original and the American versions), Good Eats (because Alton Brown is great), Neon Genesis Evangelion, Robotech (cheezy 80's, baby!), Scrubs

Least Favorite Band: Any country music

Least Favorite Color: Any bright shade of purple/lavendar

Least Favorite Sports Team(s): New York Yankees, Indianapolis Colts, Fernando Alonso during this last F-1 season

Least Favorite TV Shows: Pretty much anything that I didn't mention above.

[.josh]

Long and boring details about Crayon's quirks:

First off, here is a picture of me. It's somewhere around 5 or 6 years old.  I'm too lazy to upload a more recent picture so I grabbed this off my profile from another website


Favorite bands of all time: Rage Against the Machine, Simon and Garfunkel, Enya, Cranberries, Poe, Trance (though I'm pretty picky on what I like on that. Mostly slower and just mellow. Tempo of no more than 90-ish, but no less than 80-ish and it has to be fairly complex).  Anything classical. Not too hot on piano though. I like strings mostly.

Least favorite Music Genre: Country.  Like nails on a chalkboard.  Every time I hear a country song playing, all I hear is some old dog howling.

Favorite color: Blue, lavendar. To me, blue signifies calmness and coolness, things which I strive to be.  I choose lavendar as more accurately my color though, because Even though I strive for the calm and coolness of blue, I have that hint of energy and..not so much rage, but impatience that goes with red. But I lean more towards the blue side of lavendar, because I've gotten tons better over the years.  Red and Blue make more of a purple than a lavendar.  Lavendar has some white thrown into it.  I like to think that the reason why I am leaning more towards the blue end of that, is because of God, thus God signifies the white.  That's also where 'crayon violent' derives from. The color violet is in the same family, but I chose it because I could do a play on words with it: violent.  It just sounded a lot cooler than Crayon Lavendar. 

I hate sports. For instance, football (american): Watching big guys get paid a lot to run around in tights just doesn't appeal to me.  Wrestling: legit sport or not, again, watching two guys in spandex grabbing at each other just doesn't appeal to me.  Overall, watching other people get paid a lot of money to play a game just doesn't appeal to me.  I'm down for playing some street hockey though - old school style where at the end of the day there's a 100% chance of going home with cuts scrapes and bruises, 75% chance sprained ankle etc.. 50% chance someone broke something It's just not cool any other way

Things I watch on TV: Lost (haven't watched any of season 3 yet. I'm waiting for the dvd because I don't like having to wait a whole week between episodes). It's not normally my type of series, but my wife likes it, and one day during season 1 she was watching it and I was in the room and saw some of it, and it's not so much that I *LIKE* it, but that I just wanna see what happens next/how it ends. 

I do like watching the new series called Heroes.  I mean, it's nothing all that *special* but it's somewhat entertaining enough to watch. 

I like Comedies, old Kung Fu flicks, and Anime.  Even chick-flick comedies, though that's pushing it.  As long as the romance part is in the background as some underlying plot, and comedy is the centerpiece, that's fine.  Acceptable: 50 First Dates.  Unacceptable: Sliding Doors. 

Some random favorite movies of mine: Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness, anything by Hayao Miyazaki (except Nausiica; I didn't really care for it) but especially Spirited Away.  His recent release: Howl's Moving Castle was thoroughly enjoyable, and to be honest, I think it might de-throne Spirited Away on my list of favorite Miyazaki films.  The debate is still open on that, though. Anything Kevin Smith.  What did you all think of Clerks II? I liked it, but man, I think they could have done better. I still liked it though. Office Space, Vampire Hunter D, Ninja Scroll, most of Jet Li's stuff, and the list goes on.

I also like watching Avatar.  This gets its own paragraph because I thought I'd share a particularly amusing (IMO) anecdote about Avatar.  About a month ago I was chillin' on the computer and suddenly I hear my 4 year old crying from the bathroom.  So I go in to investigate and he's sitting on the floor with a cup of water between his legs crying.  I asked him what was wrong and he told me that he tried and tried and tried but he just can't water bend.  I about shit my pants laughing at that, which would have been okay, cuz I was already in the bathroom.

I'm compulsively sarcastic.  I can't help it.  Someone says something or does something, and it just comes out.  At best, people call me an asshole for that; at worst, I keep getting into trouble.  Lol, I just can't help it.  It's like Tourette Syndrome where my 'tic' is sarcasm, lol.  Actually, I wouldn't necessarily call it sarcasm (even though people usually take it that way).  I personally like to call it bluntly pointing out the truth and/or irony of the situation at hand.  I will concede that I have no tact whatsoever, but that is not the same as telling lies or being an asshole.  Take for instance the provibial woman asking her man if she's fat.  Instead of dancing around the subject, I just tell her she's fat.  You aren't gonna really feel good about yourself unless you're honest with yourself enough to recognize things you don't like and then fix them.  Closing your eyes and listening to lies does not solve the problem.

I've been a smoker for about 12 years.  About 2 months ago I decided to quit (again, for real this time, I swear! ) but I still smoke about 2-3 cigs a week, which any smoker can tell you that that's nothing, and it is certainly a lot better than the pack a day I smoked.  But I should be able to stop even that much pretty soon, so hopefully this time it should be for really real.   I don't drink, as I don't like the taste of alcohol.  I used to smoke a lot of pot and do a lot of acid.  A lot. Not even gonna get into how much or even drug related stories.  But I've been sober of that for 7 years now.

My favorite kind of food is mexican food.  Enchiladas, fajitas, burritos, tortilla soup, mm...  even just plain old beans and rice will do it for me.  I'm pretty good at making enchiladas and fajitas, and people constantly harass me to make tortilla soup.  I also enjoy making breads (by hand, no bread machine), like french bread or ciabatta bread. mm...bread. I love the smell of freshly baked bread.  <drools>

I hate getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.  It takes me forever to go to sleep in the first place.  I feel I'm being gypped on sleep.  Stupid bladder. 

If I had to choose between pirates, vikings or ninjas, I'd go for the ninjas.  Well, I don't know... ninjas are cool, but come on, pirates! And vikings!  There needs to be an epic battle involving all 3. 

umm, My first born son's name is Exodus. People give me odd looks on that.  If this next Kid is a girl, we're naming her Genesis.  I'm sure we'll get just as many odd looks from that. 

I think i'm borderline obsessive compulsive.  For instance, If I count money, I have to count it 3 times.  First time because it's being counted, 2nd time to make sure it's the same as 1st, 3rd time to make sure I didn't happen to consistently mis-count twice in a row.  If I come up with a different number the 2nd time, I have to count a minimum of 4 times now.  The end goal is that I must come up with the same number 3 times.   If I turn something off, like lights or an oven, I have to go back and check it again to make sure I turned it off.  I don't simply do the off-on-off-on-off thing people do with light switches though.  I have to actually leave the room and come back a minute or 2 later.  The whole point is that I may have forgotten to turn it off.  I can obviously see that I turned it off when I'm standing there turning it off, so flipping the switch on and off is pointless and stupid.  But I don't really have germ issues or anything like that.  Although, my wife and I are both pretty adamant about taking showers before our bedroom adventures...does that count? 

Hmm..okay, I prefer to wear slacks and a t-shirt.  I don't really care for jeans.  They are too hot and constricting and heavy.  That's why I like slacks.  Nothing fancy; walmart brand will do.  I also like wearing "slipper" shoes - shoes without shoelaces that just slip onto your feet.  Less hassle in putting them on, and they generally aren't as hot or constricting.  I don't really care for dress shoes like that though, like loafers.  They are too hard and usually cut into the front of my feet, where the tongues usually are.  Although my 'favorite' colors are blue/lavendar, I generally prefer to dress in dark or pale earthtones.  I don't really like wearing shirts with logos/words on them. This includes band shirts, witty remarks, etc.. I refuse to be a walking advertisement, even for things I like.  Besides, even if the shirt is witty, the tackiness of wearing it overpowers the wittiness.  Maybe if I could get away with wearing something like "OMG Just Shut the F*ck up already you talk too much" (without the *) then I might go for that...kinda ironic considering how long winded this post is, huh? AhahAHaha..shut up.   

Umm..what else, what else.. well there really isn't a whole lot else to tell, I guess.

The End.

[obsidian]

Holy crap, that's a lot of writing

hehe