Post interesting facts about yourself....

[Geo]

10. I've always wanted to write fiction but never managed to work up the confidence to even begin trying.

Take a pen name. Less personal when editors tell some other fellow his stuff sucks. Not that you should take it personally anyway.

Find a writing group. They won't ever tell you you suck, there will almost certainly be someone (or possibly several) there that will SOOO much worse than you that it has to help your confidence, and you'll make some friends.

I've read slush piles, my friend. And I've read you in non-fiction mode. Guarantee your first fiction is better than 90% of what crosses the average editors desk. Hell, if it isn't in crayon and contains fewer than 20 ! you're already in the upper 50%. And, at the worse, you'll make some poor slush pile reader momentarily grateful.

Just don't do it if the plan is to get rich and famous. I mean if you do -- great. But the only real excuse to be a writer is because you just can't help yourself.

 

[Geo]

1. I met my future wife online before the advent of the www. Didn't talk to her on the phone for the first year. Didn't meet her in person for the first 18 months. Been married ten years. Have something like 10 megabytes of pure text from that first 18 months --probably be a good book.

2. We run the most respected website around on the American Civil War in Missouri. . .been published in Civil War magazines and a scholarly journal (well, when they get around to it). . .and neither one of us had any connection to the Civil War or Missouri before we got started. Fell in love with the story by accident, and here we are.

3. Also webmasters, and committee chairs, of the non-profit Heinlein Society (www.heinleinsociety.org), dedicated to paying forward the legacy of Robert A. Heinlein. Wife also webmaster for the Heinlein Prize (soon to be revamped at www.heinleinprize.com) Met some pretty cool people thru that. Even got Carmack to respond to an email.

3a. Cringed when someone wrote "sci-fi" above.

4. I like to play matchmaker and have several weddings and no divorces (yet, at least) to my credit. See note to MuFu above.

5. Had a deaf uncle that got me into computers in the Apple ][ days, in part because it was easier to communicate with him that way. So I was doing "IM" in 198-something-or-other on a 300baud modem. Or was it slower than that? It was sloooow. TEXT was sloooow.

6. Secret shame and blackmail material is that my senior high school yearbook says, not inaccurately at the time, that Barry Manilow was my favorite singer. Tho I still think "Weekend in New England" is very pretty.

7. Married a "Heinlein woman" (for those of you who know what that means). I sometimes kid her that she's not really a woman, and she sometimes looks oddly at me when I break spontaneously into show tunes. My wife owned more guns than I did when we got married. But I went way ahead when my step-father [since I was four] died and I inherited the guns I grew up with. Errr, "several". Make of all that what you will.

7a. Getting a bunch of guns into California is no fun. I mean legally [which I did]. Explaining that it is your heritage rather than a coup in the making doesn't seem to cut much ice. At least with authorities. Great party material tho.

8. Not good with faces and names --*great* with voices. If I see an actor on TV or in a movie that I can't quite place I close my eyes and listen to their voice. . and almost always get it.

9. Our library is 3,500 books. I know because we just packed it up and shipped it to Minnesota. I thought it was a frighteningly small number when I heard it the first time.

9a. Moving 9,000lbs of books 2,000 miles is not cheap.

10. Been known to be seen reading 1866 first editions that are falling apart in the company dining room at lunch. (see #2 above).

 

[Deepak]

Guys, I really did make a serious post over at the #Dev forums.

Doesn't anyone care?

You want us to take it seriously?

 

[Deepak]

I was born on 16th Feb 1980, it was total solar eclipse on that day.

 

[_xxx_]

9. Our library is 3,500 books. I know because we just packed it up and shipped it to Minnesota. I thought it was a frighteningly small number when I heard it the first time.

9a. Moving 9,000lbs of books 2,000 miles is not cheap.

Wow, that's a whole bunch of literature. Cool.

 

[sytaylor]

10. I've always wanted to write fiction but never managed to work up the confidence to even begin trying.

One of my dreams is to write a book. Ive tried several times to start, but that first blank page always beats me. But one day....

epic

Then make notes, make loads of lil txt files full of thoughts, thats not hard right? You dont have to format it, no caps, doesnt even have to make much sense. Just write stuff down, worry about how it reads later... the IDEA is the hard part and what would sell. The writing is just the tool.

 

[drspangle]

*Social Anxiety Disorder
*19 years old
*2nd year Computer Systems Engineering
*A been single for 7 years now
*Serious confidence issues
*I`d probably be pretty depressed if I wasn`t able to get on the net and be myself
*Also, I`d probably die if I couldn`t listen to my music any more. It`s the only way I can relax - gives me a warm fuzzy feeling all over.
*I have _no_ plan for my life. Take each turn as it comes to me

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

Guys, I really did make a serious post over at the #Dev forums.

Doesn't anyone care?

You want us to take it seriously?

Yes.

 

[_xxx_]

You'd like us to , hah?

 

[London Geezer]

Guys, I really did make a serious post over at the #Dev forums.

Doesn't anyone care?

You want us to take it seriously?

Yes.

Ok.

 

[Geo]

9. Our library is 3,500 books. I know because we just packed it up and shipped it to Minnesota. I thought it was a frighteningly small number when I heard it the first time.

9a. Moving 9,000lbs of books 2,000 miles is not cheap.

Wow, that's a whole bunch of literature. Cool.

Thanks, tho I did the math again this morning and it must have been closer to 8,000lbs for just the books (we moved everything, I was getting to book weight by estimating from the total).

And I thought of one more: I've been a character in a published fantasy novel by a mid-list author, and died messily.

 

[_xxx_]

How many of those have you actually read?

 

[Geo]

How many of those have you actually read?

At least 3,000. Some are ones of my wife that don't interest me. Some are reference books I would count as "read", tho "referred to" is more accurate (i.e. didn't read every page). But many I've read more than once.

 

[olivier]

- im a french canadian
- im not separatist
- had few gf but half of them was long term relationship (1yr and 3yrs)
- got a college degre (CEGEP here) in computer science and im getting a major in computer science right now
- Im sadomaso because i go to school and work 40hour a week at the same time
- I work in the wireless sector
- Im dating a girl tonight ( yes i found time for them )
- Im shy but not a lot better than before
- I prefer java to c/c++ and HATE vb
- I use linux because i like the choice of interface, program and legality ( i dont have to pay for it and ill never pay 200$ for windows) but i dont dislike windows i just dont use it

 

[Gollum]

1. I'm 27 years old, am half Irish / half German and have dreadlocks of about half a metre in length.
2. Both my parents died within a year when I was 17, both of different kinds of cancer and on different continents of our planet.
3. I have no other close family, which kinda sucks.
4. I've been with my first and current girlfriend for 7,5 years now and love her more than ever before.
5. Despite having studied for a while, I'm more of a self-educated person - both in regards to everyday knowledge, as well as professionally.
6. I think I'm pretty good at what I do (3D & graphics), but due to personal problems I currently lack the enthusiasm and ambition I used to have - I want it back!
7. I can be a bit shy, but once a conversation gets going I'm very open and easy to get along with and usually make friends pretty fast.
8. I'm not too good at staying in touch with people, which is kind of a problem if your're relying on contacts to survive as a freelance artist.
9. Sometimes my memory can be like Swiss Cheese, so many holes in it! At other times its very good, weird.
10. I read in bursts, sometimes nothing for a year or more, then 20 books in 2 months, mostly SF (been catching up on the classics lately: Heinlein, Bester, Clarke, Dick, Ellison, ...), but also always some non-fiction to keep the brain working.
11. I have been lucky enough to have traveled a lot even at a young age and still do so regularly. I've been on most continents on this world several times (Australia being the exception, hope to change that in the future).
12. I can't count anymore how often I've been on a plane.
13. I have plenty of ideas for books and movies, as well as concepts for games. But I always give up to soon when trying to bring them to paper.
14. I will never write fiction because my punctuation and grammar suck!
15. I drink very little alcohol, don't smoke and take no drugs (which is kinda hard to sell to people due to my dreadlocks, but true), never have and probably never will.
16. I love gaming, music and movies and hope the trend of dumbed down mass-market appeal dominating these forms of entertainment won't continue in the current downward sprial forever.
17. During the Olympic Games my girlfriend and I will always spend 14 days glued in front of the TV, I don't know how or why but we love it.
18. I've already said too much, that's often a problem of mine...

 

[London Geezer]

2. Both my parents died within a year when I was 17, both of different kinds of cancer and on different continents of our planet.
3. I have no other close family, which kinda sucks.

Man i know it's probably the last thing you want to hear, and that you must be sick of people telling you, but i'm so sorry to hear that.

 

[mito]

1. I'm 33;
2. Born in Toronto;
3. Been living in Brazil for the past 25 years;
4. My family is from Uruguay, italian immigrants;
5. Studied computer science;
6. Worked with networks (Novell/Windows) for almost 15 years;
7. Programmed in C some apps;
7. Three years ago I decided IT wasn't a challenge anymore;
8. So now I'm working in the restaurant area (I'm a waiter or maitre );
9. Don't have special plans for my life;
10. Let things happen as they come;
11. Married since 1999;
12. I like to drink beer;
13. Smoke occasionaly, really don't like it;
14. Do some pot, I really enjoy weed;
15. From 1997 to 1999 I sniffed cocaine every weekend;
16. It was a crazy experience, I don't regret it, but will never do it like that again;
17. Still do some coke, but not as much as before (quality nowadays sucks very much, they mix it with lot of shit). And I don't have contacts in bolivia/colombia in order to obtain the very pure stuff - perhaps in Rio I could get);
18. Was very shy in my youth. Now I'm not that shy.

 

[arhra]

1. 23 years old
2. Live in South London.
3. Born and raised in South Yorkshire (Doncaster to be exact)
4. Started university (in Leicester), studying physics, but had a total psychological breakdown halfway through my first year.
5. Switched to comp. sci. at the end of hte first year, but never got anywhere with that due to aforementioned psychological breakdown.
6. Diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome a couple of years ago.
7. I take an obscenely large dose of antidepressants every day (trying to reduce my dosage, though, with the eventual aim of getting off them completely - mainly because my memory sucks, and missing a dose really fucks my head up).
8. I'm a lousy conversationalist irl, and only slightly better online.
10. I met my first, and current, girlfriend via irc.
11. I'm bisexual.
12. So is my gf
13. My father is transgendered.
14. My parents are still together (and then some - they're two parts of a triad).
15. I hate summer.
16. I first started learning to ski when i was 3 years old.
17. I broke my leg skiing when i was 4 years old.
18. I started again when i was 5 years old.
19. I played ice hockey from age 10-14 or so. I still enjoy watching when i can.
20. I can't think of anything else.

 

[Sage]

1. im 20
2. had too many g/f's to count
3. the longest i managed to keep a g/f was two weeks
4. and that was when I was 13
5. and I'm still not over her, I thought I was but this week I've realized I really am not
6. for some reason tonight I decided to do some searching on the interweb and sicovered that she got married and has a kid already
7. I'm very VERY upset about that (like as in crying) although I don't know why
8. im very bipolar
9. i never went to college, probably never will (even though I have no doubt I'm capable of earning multiple Ph.D's)
10. ive only actually been with three women. two of them only once
11. the first one also got married recently
12. I really don't get along well with guys, all of my close friends (with the exception of the one I've had since I was 5) are girls
13. I'm trying to hijack this thread and make it about my most recent emotional distress because I dont have anyone else to talk to about it

 

[Crusher]

1) I like Ring Pops, which of course implies that I also like Push Pops, since they're basically the same thing.

2) When I was a kid I had this blue teddy bear: