I'm mostly your typical computer science geek, with an inability to accept being an adult, and (I'd like to think) a few surprises lurking in my personality.
This is a bit of a history of me, some thoughts about what makes me tick, my intreests, values, etc. This is the second revision of these documents, and should be slightly better than the first cut, but there's always room for improvement.
I was born on December twenty-eighth, nineteen seventy-four in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I spent the first five or so years of my life there, and then moved about an hour or so south, in Sarto, Manitoba. (Don't even try to find it on a map: it's got about 15 people in it. Really. There's this highway, and a small cluster of houses on either side of it. If you blink, you'll miss it).
Sarto is the home that I really remember. Despite having only 15 people, there were two churches, a Ukranian dance-hall thing, a combination liquor store / general store / gas station (the only liquor store in the municipality, go figure), and a school (which I think was deserted).
I went to Grunthal, Manitoba, for my gradeschool education, finally escaping to Steinbach for my high school (that's grades 10 through 12, in Manitoba, at that time). You might actually find Steinbach on a map. It's got 10,000 people or so. Not bad. It also has 67 churches. <shudder>
In high school, I did theater tech work (which I really like... but probably won't ever do again <sad>), lots of electronics and electrical stuff (including a cool robotic arm mass pencil sharpener thing: that was amazing), got good grades, and finally graduated. I got in the paper alot. I was that sort of kid. <shrug>
Due to lots of scholarships pushin' me in that direction, I went to the University of Manitoba for a while. It was a cool enough school, but I had the means, and the desire, to go to the University of Waterloo, where I attained a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science.
I met the most wonderful woman in the world, Lisa Wilder, we got married, and are currently living happily ever after.
I enjoy my job: that is important to me. I really believe that spending 8 hours a day on something that you dislike can really poison your life, and your dealings with everything. So I am lucky to have a job that I enjoy. And that pays well.
Well, first, and always, I love computers. Or rather, I hate computers.
I love and hate computers both, depending on my mood. They seem like they could do so much, if only we could let them. Unfortunately, people seem to be extremely bad at writing software, and so nothing ever approaches its potential. Nothing works like it should. It's the beginning of the second millenium, and so much has changed, and so much is as we'd hoped, but so much is missing, too. Whatever happened to immersive virtual reality? Computers that could talk? These sorts of things? I suppose they'll happen, but it just doesn't seem to be happening quickly enough.
So, I'm a computer programmer, doing computer sciency things, and spending lots of my free time on computers, or trying to deal with the rest of my life.
I have many hobbies. I phase in and out of them as I lose interest, and the list is constantly growing.
I program computers, read, write poetry, compose music, hope, philosophize, psychologically self-mutilate, stress, try to learn Latin, paint (but do not eat) lead miniatures, fence, cook, sew, play FRPGs, watch people, dream, build furniture, worry, lust, make chainmail, deal with life, and talk to people (and sometimes to other things). Mostly I'm happy, 'cuz I'm a neophile, and take pleasure in things like... birds and rocks, and streams, and new and exciting ideas, and the Outside, and free food. And feet. And small furry animals. And big ones too, like giraffes. Yes, giraffes. Always giraffes.
I used to have a giraffe, but it, along with nearly everything I once owned and considered important enough to bring to Chicago with me, was burned in a horrible inferno that gutted my Des Plaines apartment. :-) It was kindof neat...I was lying in bed, and smelled something burning. I tried to go back to sleep, really hard, and stuck my head under the pillow. I cursed people cooking yucky things in the middle of the night. Then, I heard an annoying sound. It wouldn't go away. Then, through my groggy mind came the realization that there was a fire. <sigh>... I got my clothes, and my laptop, and fled the burning building, and watched the firemen sit about while my apartment was being consumed by flame. I don't loathe firemen. I'm sure they had a good reason for doing nothing.
It was kindof neat...I got lots of sympathy. I get to tell this neato story to people, and didn't lose much, in the way of monetary stuff (and my parent's insurance covered me mostly, anyway).
So that's my fire story.
Of course, that's not everything about me, but it's some subset of things I'm willing to put here of the subset of things that I have the time to type up of the subset of things that I remember. So I guess it's an intersection of some sort. Gak. I need to be less malnourished. It's bringing out the bad math major stuff.
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Comments? Cramps? Mail me: svincent@svincent.com