I was going to waste everyone's time with a diary entry on part of my bio, but this saves everyone the hassle.
    Big picture stuff first: 40 years old, never married (not even close), have a Masters in English that's nearly meaningless, and am entirely too content being a big fish in a small pond. Worked as a dishwasher in a nursing home for ten years, and learned a bit about how folks face death-- their own, and that of family and friends. Relocated to Tucson, Arizona in 2001 (left town on September 11. Something happened that day, but I can't remember), and promptly got a job working at a book store of sizable proportion. (We recently made the local news-- I'm the gent two-thirds in with the green hair, trying very hard to ignore the camera on the other side of the counter.) Ironically, my reading has dropped as a result, but I've learned a lot about retail in the interim, and more about the Romance genre than is probably healthy.
   About the hair: I've taken to dying it various colors (one a week) for about 6-8 weeks a couple times a year. The faintest glimmer of celebrity status has come with it-- people come up to me and make comments, and I know co-workers have been asked about it in other places all over town. (Bookmans is it for used books in Tucson, so that's not so surprising.) I've developed even more sympathy for those with notable physical traits (scars, birthmarks, etc), because when I tire of the attention, off goes the hair; if you have a big mark on your face, though, this isn't an option. The kids are the best-- for a five year old, I can appear as amazing as a flying cow or talking dog. Yeah, it's a schtick, but if you've never had one, they can be a lot of fun.
    On other fronts: I'm a liberal, because Newt Gingrich says I am; I like all kinds of music, including old-style Country, but dislike new Country because it doesn't like me; I've learned, thanks to Plastic, that you almost never change someone's mind by arguing, especially if you're too pushy; I've learned, thanks to getting older, that it's very polite not to point out to folks where they are wrong-- because some day, that may be you. My intellectual pole stars are all skeptics (Robert Anton Wilson, Nietzsche, Samuel Johnson), and if I have a religion it would be Taoism.
    More if anyone wants it (PM me), but this is already too long. One last note, though: the sig comes from the Call of Cthulhu RPG, and is the letterhead of Miskatonic University's letterhead. Go Pods!

Ex ignorantia ad sapientiam; e luce ad tenebras

During a relatively brief time period, in two different discussions with two different people on treesandthings, I have been accused of failing to be as skeptical as my chosen user name would seem to require.  It occurs to me that this may become a continuing pattern, that everybody who disagrees with me will immediately accuse me of failing in my obligation to be skeptical.  The mistake that is made with these accusations is the assumption that I have to be skeptical about the same things you are skeptical about.  

Actually, it is possible to be skeptical about anything.  For example, I consider atheism to be perhaps the single most essential form of skepticism.  If there is one belief that calls for skepticism more than any other, it is the belief in God.  Yet, I recently read an article by Michael Shermer in which he expressed his skepticism about atheism.  Yet he is certainly among the world's most distinguished skeptics, and writes a regular column for Scientific American called "The Skeptic".   But the chosen target of his skepticism is not always the same as mine.  (Although I do tend to agree with him about 99% of the time.)

If I disagree with your skeptical comment, it just means that my own skepticism is directed at a different target than yours, it doesn't mean that I am not a skeptic.  Even so, it is beginning to seem that I have perhaps been unwise in my choice of name, which seems to create unrealistic expectations.  

I have also had to point out that being a skeptic doesn't mean that I am always right.  It is just as easy to be skeptical about the truth, as it is to be justifiably skeptical about falsehoods (for example, think of all those creationists who are skeptical about Darwin's Theory of Evolution).  I do think that I am often able to make well informed and even insightful comments, however, sometimes I screw up horribly (as I did when I recently asserted that Leonardo DaVinci invented scissors).  I suppose that if being a participant in treesandthings was a paid position, I might already have been fired.

However, I don't take these discussions all that seriously, they are just a form of recreation and they are not likely to change the world.

As for my personal life and history, while these actually might be interesting to discuss, I am not going to do that.  For purposes of these discussions, I am just a mysterious, skeptical person.

On Plastic I'm Gordon Shumway. I'm extremely right wing. This does not make me a fascist, such a conclusion is based on a misconcieved notion of the political spectrum. I think guns are fun. I'm not religious. People ask me if I'm joking or if I really mean it, and the answer is yes. I'm pro-smoking. I'm pro-drinking. I'm anti-pot. I have mixed feelings about cocaine. In the past ten-or-so years I've only dated one woman who hasn't had at least one tattoo. I think tattoos are barbaric. So did the ancient Greeks. I've read a lot of books, because I like reading books. I think civilized culture is going extinct. I hate nearly all new movies. I didn't hate the French until they banned smoking. I've lost interest in professional sports, but I still talk about them out of habit. I coined the word "glerd".

I am Logan from Plastic, Logan here. I'm a member of the Board of Directors and I've been here since before Day 1. I'm a Quality Engineer at a startup in Silicon Valley which has been eating up most of my free time lately. I'm 39, single, and I was a millionare for a few months during the dot.com boom. I am liberal, kind of a Daily Kos Democratic Libertarian.

I don't post as much as I should. Much of reason why has to do with the amount of time I spend combing through server logs looking for trouble. I'm a Mac zealot, so much so that I'm writing this on my iPhone.

In my last life I was a DJ in Eugene, Oregon. Since leaving that behind I've been looking for a hobby that doesn't directly involves computer. I also aspire to making a film or animated short if so can find a co-conspirator.

I have no idea if this will post successfully when sent from an iPhone, so fingers crossed.

-=Logan
Research, facts, a Republican needs not these things.

I took a look at my earlier post and I thought...hmmm, maybe a little over dramatic, eh?  Looking at the big picture, while I still hold some bitterness towards education administrators, my time has been freed up so that I finally pursue by two main passions:

Music (my c1 has black trim).  And...

Model airplanes (I'm the big feller in the red shirt).

Sometimes I forget that now that I'm not spending 16+ hours a day trying to hit a moving target, I get time (the greatest resource of all) to attend the things that really make me happy.

That and my cat, of course.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

Hi there. I've been lurking on Plastic and TnT for about as long as either have been around. Maybe not the very beginning, but close. First lured in by those ads on Suck, the ones with the guy pissing into the box, saying "Submit to Plastic." If I have earned any distinction during all this time, it might be as the only person to submit a story to Plastic that used rotten.com as a primary news source. It was the only story I ever submitted, and it actually ran. I am proud of that in some very strange way. While this site may not have the soap opera drama of Plastic, I do quite like these Trees and Things.

I grew up among the trees and things of rural Idaho, raised by hippie refugee parents who moved there when I was two months old. They were convinced that the economy was going to collapse, perhaps because things weren't looking so hot in the late 70's, or perhaps just because it was their natural inclination to believe such things. In any case, they built an underground house, started raising pigs and chickens, and began preparing to live off the land. At some point, they realized that the world was doing just fine, and perhaps they should get out more. We opened up a restaurant in town and lived above it. I'm not sure which side of the tracks was the wrong one, but the kids I hung out with came from all sides, and none of them were very good. After a couple incidents with homemade ordnance that would probably have put me on a terrorist watch list had they happened today, I straightened up, became one of the "smart kids" and did everything I could to get into a college far, far away. North Idaho* is a beautiful place to visit, but I wouldn't recommend living there to anyone between the ages of 18 and 35.

College in the Midwest was uneventful, but post-college was a blast. Weekends involved lots of trespassing and scattered acts of urban beautification. I worked as an underling in a lab that was involved in the Mars Exploration Rover mission. Not really what I wanted to do, but the main perk was that I got my name on Mars. Seriously. As one of the finishing touches on the rovers, NASA put a plaque with the signatures of everyone on the science team engraved in microscopic print. Now my illegible scrawl is out there on another planet. So I got that goin' for me, which is nice. Of course, I never wanted to work in planetary science to begin with, so I left for grad school in environmental science. Now, all that I have left from my NASA experience is a cheap little certificate of appreciation from the MER project (it reminds me of the diploma I got for graduation from kindergarten) and an abiding belief that manned space flight is a complete boondoggle (chalk it up to the narcissism of minor difference).

Since finishing my Master's in June, I've been living in a certain Southern California metropolis working as a conservation biologist. Kind of. My current gig as an independent consultant to a conservation organization pays peanuts, and rather sporadically at that. So now I'm applying for conservation jobs that will pay peanuts at more regular intervals.

Oh, and my nick comes from a cryptic saying I came up with long long ago when I was making electronic music, "There are no secrets, only secret paths." It would take way too long to describe the context in which this originally arose, so let it suffice just to say that I thought I was clever once. I like riding bikes in the city, taking photos at night, and lots and lots of tea. I sip tea like a motherfucker.

-secretpath

*Yes, the locals really call it "North Idaho," as if it were its own state or something. I guess that's what happens when the density of people who want to get away from society reaches a certain threshold. They all tacitly agree to form a republic that exists only in their heads.You think I exaggerate? My first day of high school was canceled because federal agents were using the gym as a base of operations for the siege on Ruby Ridge. It was a weird place to be a kid, 's all i got to say.

Everything that needs to be said has already been said, but since no one was listening, we must begin again. -Andre Gide

Male, San Diego from Wisconsin by way of Pasadena, 34.  I'm a computer programmer, but I'm useless at this "Internet" stuff because most of my work is with embedded systems where I write drivers and low-level app code in C.  I used to be bitter_engineer on Plastic, but by the time Plastic went down, I wasn't so bitter any more, so I got a new handle for TnT.  I'm also currently president of the BoD on TnT, but I hope to get things set up so that we can hold elections and maybe change that this year.

I've said before that I'm currently working on the Coolest Thing in the World, and I still am.  It used to burn me up that I can't really talk about it, but shortly after I threatened to write up a sub on it I realized how little I could really say about it:  Because my company is doing the design as a services contract and not our own product, anything I could say about the features we're putting in would be stepping on the toes of our client.  The only answer I could really give was "yep, I'm working on that all right".  So I'll just give that answer here, and maybe you'll see the thing mentioned in WIRED this year.

There's not much else I have to say for myself.  I like this place because the only way I get judged is on what I say rather than what I am or do.  It's a good sounding board for my own assumptions.  Of course, the result of this is that I sometimes become scared of saying anything because I might be inconsistent, so I end up lurking.  I'm currently acting like the TnT lobster:  I lag behind, digesting dead threads and diary entries, occasionally tearing out scraps to respond to, and only seen at the top late at night or when the queue is low.

(is 3fingerspointback)

I am he who is called 'Who Is' even though that deity happens to be female.

sierra tango foxtrot uniform

I am Degi on plastic. I tend to be a parasite on discussion sites. i will snipe at other's comments without contributing much content. Well, fuck it, here I am.

My Bio is not important.

Not too bright,
not too dumb.
Gonna die
'fore I get me some.
That's ok
that's alright
'cos I'll be curled up
with a quart of rum.

Am I a great person? Hell no - by most metrics I'm pretty much an asshole. -TSlothrop

Right, well, I guess the subject line gave away my youthful infatuation with IRC. Anyway, I'm one of TnT's editors, which basically means I check stories for typos and promote them to the front page if they get a reasonable number of yes votes. I also run the site's chat server, which is sadly under-utilized right now, other than for board meetings. Check in and say "hi" sometime. I probably won't actually be there, but I'll read it in the log files. Moving on, something for the folks. I'm a PhD student at a mid-size state school, studying International Relations. I'm about (hopefully) 5 or 6 months away from being ABD. Married, homeowner. My vices include expensive beer, cheap(ish - bottled, not boxed) wine, and the occasional espresso or absinthe.

Ce n'est pas une pipe. C'est une signature.

If I woke up in a Soho doorway, no one would know my name. I work repairing computers in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I was born in Minsk, Belarus, when it was part of Soviet Union. I have fiancee (I think that "fiancee" means she lives with me and that I would marry her if she wanted) but no children. I will be 43 in February. I find international affairs fascinating and avidly follow politics in several countries. My English has gotten much better over last ten years since I wrote for intellectualcapital.com (we used to call it IC), my last multi-year online home.

I wrote lots of stories for Plastic since June when old internet friend from IC prevailed on me to become active, but then I upset him making fun of his religious beliefs (I was just teasing him but he didn't see it that way, and he takes his religion much more seriously than he takes politics) and he came up with elaborate plan to make fool of me. He can be amazingly devious, and IC was littered with his victims, each of which he trashed in different and imaginative ways even as he maintained reputation as Mr. Nice Guy. I still like and admire him and hope he eventually forgives me. Plastic's Humberto was very encouraging, but most people there seemed to find me more annoying than worthwhile.

I came here because I got used to doing stories for Plastic and went cold turkey when site went down. This time I told myself I wouldn't have my fiancee looking over my shoulder or try to make myself look better by having her edit my stuff. I have found arguments here that I was looking for, most people here seem to be willing to let me be, and some seem to outright like me, so I figure I will stick around here and let my offended friend "save" Plastic himself. I may experiment with weaker stories (fewer links, less verbiage) just to see what happens, but find that more interesting than getting sniped at over there.

Was that what you wanted to know?

I am in the 21st grade with several more years to go. A scientist in training, I have the benefit of going through a metric buttload of schooling and education before my career finally starts at some point in my early to mid-30s. In the interim I will probably relocate several times as specialized higher level science jobs tend to be located in disparate areas of the country and often in high cost of living areas.

Of course, at that point you will probably see me begging on the streets due to the continued nationwide reduction in spending on the Life Sciences. I figure I'll be okay because I keep getting mail from ITT Tech to transfer into their VCR Repair or Gunsmithing certificate programs, and unless I will be too old for them at that point I can make a career change before my first even started. If that doesn't work, I plan to become a Notary Public and start hanging out at Pharmacies. Good times. Good times.

I live on the outskirts of a high crime area in a semi-major US metropolitan city. There are lots of hookers and people who like to throw malt liquor bottles on my lawn. Occasionally I will write angry diary entries (possibly while under the influence) about the decline of respect for property rights in this country (or at least in my neighborhood). The past two times this was triggered by a) my neighbor and I paying over a thousand dollars to redo the cement in the sidewalk and driveway and then having a gangbanger walk through it while I watched [he was rather polite -- he kept the number of F words to a minimum as he explained that I better fix my problem myself and "get on it" before the concrete sets] b) waking up to find random bottles of Hennessy dumped on my front lawn. I like to think I am helping a transitioning urban area by living here, but deep down inside realize that due to decades of mismanagement by politicians and lack of self-respect by poverty stricken city residents all I am doing is putting one finger in one hole of a very large, broken, dike. I was reminded of this a few months ago when I woke up at night to find two houses behind mine were torched with Molotov cocktails by local crackheads and the week before Christmas when a co-worker (who lives in a worse neighborhood than me, but refuses to move because she lived there for 35 years) stood at my workspace crying because a gang of crackheads had gone to her place home invasion style, stolen everything, destroyed what they couldn't take (including the Bible) and were apparently staking out her place to do it again.

I wish I could travel the world more often. Regrettably I have only been to 9 foreign countries, and I have forgotten all the French I learned in high school and college. I still kick myself for not taking Spanish. Sadly the most travel excitement I usually get is when I take Public Transportation every day to and from work. This is further depressing as I get to hear loud cell phone conversations/stories about people going in and out of lock down, who ain't got a job now, whats up with the baby daddy, and the best way to extract the most benefit money on a regular basis.

I have lived in 5 states in my life, though I attended the same school district K-12. The first home my parents bought was purchased at a deep discount because supposedly the previous owner shot/hung himself in my bedroom. They did not tell me this until after we had moved out.

When I retire I hope to attend law school at night and represent disadvantaged people pro bono and help them write angry letters to landlords. Until then I wish everybody in the world could shut the hell up, calm down, and live peacefully regardless of race, creed, sex, skin color, hair color, eye color or incontinence problems. My favorite musical groups include CCR, ABBA (you got a problem with that?), Journey and of course, Foreigner. I also enjoy non threatening Hip-Hop or rap that discusses 4th Amendment issues in a non offensive manner, limiting usage of the "n" word (which I find particularly galling). For some reason I self identify with Milton from Office Space and that Dwight guy from The Office (though I have only seen that show twice), but very few other people see it. Which is A Good Thing. My favorite drink is a Cuba Libre. My strangest Christmas gift I received this year was a large case of ammunition, although I do not, and never have, owned a firearm.

I have the worst handle, and in fact picked it only because I thought I would not be around here very long. This was after I got sucked into TnT by an old friend of mine during a drunken camping trip while we were trying to hide our liquor from the cops (against state law to have booze on public campground even if over 21). If a developer is reading I would like to request a name change feature.

As you can imagine, since 'growing up' my politics have changed radically from liberal as hell to crazy libertarian. I blame the inability of the Democrats to set a decent agenda, President Bush and living in my city. Ironically, my sister "came out to me" as a closeted libertarian the other day, although in her case I blame the economic policies of Milton Friedman. We're going to get matching shirts.

I enjoy writing stories here, as they tend to be more constructed and better thought out than my posts in the threads (like this one). This has to due with mostly typing from work, which is a bad thing. But I have a lot of free time.

Any questions?

I came here when Plastic went down for awhile...I don't remember now how I found out about it.  Come to think of it, I may have gotten a message on Plastic prior to the outage.

I live in a smallish city in the South with a disproportionately high crime rate.  I just finished my second year of law school, and am either looking at federal law enforcement or public interest practice (with the former being my preference right now).  All in all I'm pretty boring.

Spent most of my time in undergrad ignoring my (history) major classes and taking languages (I speak Spanish, and bits of Russian, Mandarin, and Ancient Greek).  The latter three have gotten pretty rusty through disuse, and this displeases me.

I still wander around both TnT and Plastic.  TnT is much friendlier and less pretentious, to be sure.

Q: What do you think of western civilization? Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.

... and that's how I intend to keep it on TnT.  Translation -- anyone on TnT who doesn't know who I am and how I came to TnT has been doing some serious snoozing.

I am a husband of 33 years and counting.  Father of two daughters and grandfather to three bambinos.  I am a Vietnam Vet who celebrated his 60th birthday earlier this year.  I own my own business and do well enough to keep the wolves from the front door.  

I arrived at TnT the first day it came into being.  I like being here because I like to compose the odd story and the atmosphere is so much more conducive to an enlightened exploration of the stories posted than at some other points in the internet.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

I once lurked on plastic.  Now I lurk here.  My desire to comment and debate waxes and wanes on a schedule with no discernible pattern.  

I am a member of the Board of Directors, that august body that decides what color a visited link should be, among other (possibly more important) things.

For my day job I develop websites and other web-related technological glue - usually corporate stuff, not consumer facing.  I fell into programming at the start of the dot-com boom.  I was, at the time, studying for a PhD in physics.  At some point I realized I could leave grad school, utilize the programming skills I'd picked up, and make more in the next year than I would for the next ten years of my life as a PhD student.  I never looked back.  Though there is a little part of me that still wants to teach physics to woolly headed pre-meds in some small, out of the way liberal arts college.

I usually tend to need creative outlets other than grinding out code that crunches last year's revenue figures and displays them in a nicely formatted graph on the web.  Awhile back this was ceramics.  This was a costly hobby that resulted in a house full of beautiful, though not very functional pots.  I quickly found that there was a very small market among my friends for my pottery - even as gifts.  As I was unwilling to part with any of my objet d'art, this became somewhat of a self-limiting hobby.

So I eventually found my current obsession - photography.  Some recent samples here: http://www.everythink.org/pictures/Christmas%202007/index.html . It's a hobby that's cheap, portable, and my digital collection of 20,000 pictures takes up only a tiny fraction of the space of a single pot.  Wonder of wonders, I don't have to throw away anything.  All I have to do is buy a bigger hard drive every other year.

What do I like about this place?  What I liked about plastic.  The readers.  "The smartest readers on the web."  I do miss that certain edginess that plastic possessed.  I had a couple friends I tried to introduce to plastic who came away battered and bruised.  You had to have a thick skin.  Hopefully TnT is a bit more approachable and user friendly, and maybe with time, as we develop a stronger user base , the gloves will come off every once in awhile.

I'm 46.  I drink too much...I weigh too much.  I'm an educated idiot.  I had always dreamed of being a teacher and worked hard towards that goal.  Until January of last year I worked at my dream school...the school paper even quoted me as saying this was the school I wanted to retire from.  The principal and I butted heads about how things in my classroom should be run and that culminated in my resigning (or being fired-tomato/tomahto).  Since then I have been selling insurance.  It's not hard and it doesn't demand too much from me.  I never saw myself as a salesman, yet here I am.

-I don't have health insurance (but I get plenty of irony in my diet).

-I don't have a family and I live alone

-I have been divorced now for almost 15 years

-I don't and probably will never own a home of my own (see irony)

-I have a 17 year old cat

By any rational measurement, I am a loser.

That is all.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

I'm in my early forties, married, and have a couple of very cute and very wonderful daughters. I'm a Penn State grad with a degree in Health and Human Development that remains unused - I worked part-time at UPS while going to college and just never left, mostly because the money and benefits were too good to pass up.
I'm very fond of good Tequila, good IPA's and good Shiraz.
I love music (and spend way too much time and money in pursuit of cool tunes) and can put together a kickass mix CD upon request :-)

I'm the same person here that I was on Plastic, where my major claim to fame was writing music subs and harassing the Asian sex-fetishist and all-around assmonkey known as chlim01. Ahh...good times, my friends, good times. I came here 'cuz I got tired of all the Plastic shenanigans regarding multiple sock puppet accounts, AI sniping, and Carl's continuing ambivalence about keeping the site from devolving into a shell of its former self.
I like it here. I like the transparency and the immediate application of privileges this place provides its user base upon arrival. I'm one of the editorial staff, which is pretty cool, though I wish I had a little more time to devote to it. My fellow editor, port1080, has taken on the bulk of the editorial duties, and for that, Ace and I, as well as the daily participants here, owe him a debt of gratitude for continuing to shoulder the workload.

Somewhere in my soul, there's always Rock -n- Roll... Joe Strummer

I've been here since near the beginning, but I only read it on occasion. Haven't seen a need to post here until more recently. My plastic handle is an Engrish dimunitive of my old Usenet handle.

I guess I can be considered a classical liberal, but I dunno if anyone outside of a American political science class uses that definition.

And I'm not a girl. I just seem to be one on the internets.

- derumi (del-me)
"Bobby Fischer? Man, that guy is crazy!" - Mike Tyson

But i played one on Plastic, and now here.  I comment occasionally, and even submitted a few stories to TnT when it was new.  I've spent the last 15 years working on U.S. air traffic control system improvements, and despite what you read and experience, there have been some.  No, airport security is not an improvement, and I had nothing to do with it.

My current project (#2) is about to wake up and demand a bottle of milk.  Which is why, instead of working on a research paper, I'm reading TnT.

I thank the proud few including pO157[*] who submit the majority of TnT stories.  I enjoyed my time on Plastic, but am much happier with a slower, well-thought-out, and non-anonymous discussion.

* stupid poll, though.  :)  

I post very infrequently, but I've been at TnT since the beginning, and was reading Plastic from around the time that started as well.  I read both almost every day now.  Most of the stories I read on Plastic or TnT are stories I would not hear about through other channels (I don't read a lot of news) and I find the comments to be very interesting and insightful.  Unfortunately, I usually don't feel like I have much to contribute, hence the infrequency of posting.

My handle here is the same as at Plastic.  I created it back when I was programming video games professionally.  I don't do that anymore (mostly because the game industry tends to abuse their employees), I program much more lame things now, but for 50% more money and no overtime.  I still write games in my free time.

Mid 40s, Anglo-Irish Canadian, dual citizen (triple citizen if you include netizen, ha ha), xTrapL8 over on Plastic where I rarely post despite being damn near a veteran of that place. I like it there, and here, but struggle not to waste time, especially now time seems so increasingly precious (encroaching mortality, family loss, midlife navel-gazing, etc.).

I love music and writing. And alcohol. And mountains. And what I call football but many of you will know as soccer. Kittens and wolverines are pretty awesome, too.

All my life I've been searching for something. The only problem is, I have no idea what I'm searching for and even less idea of whether I'd recognise it should I find it. Which makes things awkward. And desperate, sometimes. Despite everything, I still have a disconcerting amount of hope and optimism. Or, to put it another way, as some wise person once did: "be joyful -- though you have considered all the facts".

I am nmiguy, I haven't posted on TnT in a while and I can't explain why.  

I'm a Bostonian, and I love music, blues and rock, specifically.  I also love sports (why not, got great teams in Boston.)

I'm of Irish Catholic descent, and I spent a good deal of my younger life as a somewhat liberal activist.  But I have a strong conservative side too, so politically I am often split, troubled, bi-polar.  

I graduated from Harvard Extension school in 2004, got a bachelor's degree in liberal arts.  I have worked in health care practically my whole adult life.  I am married with 2 kids.  

What I like about this place is that it is more civil than Plastic.  The write ups are nice and the people are friendly.  

I don't smoke, but I drink moderately.  I am for marijuana legalization and I am in favor of gay marriage.  My wife is from Europe and I often get immersed in her culture.  

I often get depressed, but i am not too proud to realize and admit when I am wrong.  I am often self-deprecating.  I try to be honest as much as I can, but I also find value in holding back on opinions and keeping them to myself.  

I have been working on my first CD with my best buddy for the past year.  I am proud of the songwriting, but still working on getting good performances.  

My only brother if fighting a deadly cancer, and we are supporting his recovery from a dreadful surgery.

I have one pet, a chinchilla named Speedy.  

I believe if you have one great friend in life you're lucky.  

I'm fairly new here, but some of you might remember me from Plastic or a half dozen other blogs that I frequent.  Always the same moniker, always the same sig line.

I'm 54 years old, a recovering oral cancer patient, and currently unemployed.  Previously I had worked as a medical technologist, systems analyst, and contributing editor at PC Magazine.  A little bit of everything, I guess.  

My roots are grounded in Bohemia, my political leanings are toward the left, and my religion is somewhat of a Christian, although I generally only go to church for weddings and funerals.

My hobbies include photography and target shooting.  Before my health went south on me, I used to like motorcycling and golf as well.  

Now that I can eat solid food again (tube feeding is the pits), my passion is in the kitchen.  Right now I'm on a baked potato skin kick.  The week before it was bean sprouts (I grow my own).  Next week it will probably be something else.  Some people like to cozy-up with a good novel -- I love settling down with a good cookbook.  

Oh, and I'm single, sort of -- I'm owned by three cats.  ;-)

there's only one way to find out...

This is an interesting thread. I've been reading some of your writings for 6 years - it's nice to know something about you.

To echo joshv, I used to lurk on Plastic, now I lurk here (too). I read selections from both sites pretty much every day but rarely get around to posting anything. Watching TnT create itself has been pretty neat. rs. 3 years ago we (girlfriend) moved to a small farm in central Wis

I'm 36 and support myself as a software engineer. I took the money and quit Physics grad school in '95. The job was great for a while but has become very corporate and stifling in the last few yeaconsin. That's about the only decision I've ever made that I don't regularly second-guess, which is the personality trait which keeps me from posting, I suppose. We raise most of our own food, heat with wood and generally enjoy the country lifestyle. Before we made the move we spent all of our vacation time canoeing and camping in Canada, but that's fallen off as our local day-to-day responsibilities have increased.

I'm a fan of bourbon, poker, photography and the public library and would love to make the transition to gentleman farmer, but I'm not sure how I'd keep up with the bank. I'm liberal and very, very agnostic, which doesn't put me in the majority out here, though pretty much everyone I've encountered puts being a good neighbor above supporting the war or hating on the evolutionists. Inside the house we have 2 small dogs (it's SuperActionDog's birthday today - he's 17) which serve as our surrogate children and 2 cats which don't.

I like the friendliness of TnT and the posts have become more informative and erudite as the site has grown. My hat is off to the folks to made, and continue to make, all this possible.

Live in LA. Dog and a gf. Work for the man. No, literally. Self-published a novel once upon a time. Tbola on plastic claims to have enjoyed it and he wasn't even one of my socket puppets amazingly enough. Goal is to make my first short films this year and either have a career or go back to school. Interests: photography, poker poker poker, alcohol, hiking, sports memorabilia, raw/organic/native foods. Outside of alcohol and fruit don't eat sugar, dairy or wheat.

Originally from the east coast, went to college in the south. Football and track in high school. Student government, activity planning and some theater and journalism in college. Long thought I was a liberal. Since turning the magic 30 have begun discovering that I'm not. Currently supporting Obama and Paul. Believe in the power of religious communities but not religion, partly because I don't see much difference between the major religions so I find little reason to pick one. Typically let the facts fall where they may and don't form an opinion unless I have to and feel informed. That hardly prevents me from engaging rhetorically. Wish I had more time to be into music.

Username comes from a nick I was given one evening in college while watching the David Letterman Prime Time Video special. Other nicknames have included "Kareem" for my hook shot on the hardwood and "Mad Roany" for my bowling "prowess." Betrothed to attending burningman for the first time this summer but am concerned with the impact that could have on my fantasy football draft.

Still have my Christmas decorations up.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.