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The Gopher: Real Name: something nobody cares about Born: 1971 Height: 2 meters Weight: 232lbs Primary Hobbies:      Collecting Anime/Manga      Learning Japanese      Surviving financially in a monetary world      Depleting the world's soda supply.      Music      Learing about Victorian London   To most of the world I'm known as The Gopher.      My real name doesn't matter (besides the fact that I can't stand it), so I usually go by 'Gopher'. It doesn't really mean anything, it's just a nickname. (I used to be known as 'AlberCrombie - the Hentai Space Gopher', but that's another story) Unfortunately, I have to sign papers, checks, emails, and other assorted crap on a day to day basis, it gets hard to change your legally recognized moniker due to a personal whim without a lot of legal harrasment. (yeah, right - like anybody actually compares signatures anymore beyond looking to see if your scribble slants the same way as the scrawl on your driver's license.)      Since you've come to this page, you obviously were curious enough about me and my background, so as to not disappoint all five of you, (or am I overestimating here?) here ya go.      I usually survive on minimal foods which, unfortunately, are loaded with fats, and thus, are not good to my general shape. However, I've recently started to learn healthier recipies and I've started rollerblading. I try to avoid wearing anything that resembles 'good/work clothes' because it goes against my beliefs that a person shouldn't be judged upon his appearance. (I think you should be judged by what you say and do). My general appearance is usually jeans, t-shirts, denim jacket, and sneakers. Occationally I break out the cowboy boots to add a few more inches to my rather tall frame.       I was born in Lousiville, Kentucky in March of 1971 much to my dismay (I was not thrilled with that city, and I don't really think it cares for me much either). I grew up in your standard baby boomer household, Mom, Dad, me, and the dog. No dysfunctions, no skeletons hiding in the closets (well, if there are, nobody told me), both sets of grandparents alive for a long time; it was as close to 'normal' as I can image that word means in reference to the stereotypical American Family. In other words it was flat and boring, and was as safe as could be. I still wonder what life would have been like had I been born into a family with less of an income or a hell of a lot bigger one. We were straight middle class, with seemed to be just enough of everything we needed to survive.      Some where along the way I got weird and decided to stay that way. I was really odd when I was a kid because I read Doonesbury, knew jokes that only the older folk understood, didn't think on the same wave length as everybody else, and I thought a lot of the world looked/acted like it did on T.V (I was a mondo couch potato, I hardly touch the idiot box now). I got in to computers when I was in 4th grade - I got lucky there, nobody else I knew got in to 'em that early. Basically I just was where everybody else wasn't. It wasn't that I was ahead of everybody else, no, it was more of - I was just doing my own thing, in my own way, and it was really just screwed compared to what everybody else was doing and how they did it.      I discovered music around the 7th grade and I never looked back. I started to collect music all over the place and in a VERY WIDE variety (the only things I really don't care for are Reggae and Techno/Industrial) although I'm partial to 80's New Wave, Blues, and Metal. Now, I'm the proud owner of a complete musical mess that consists of over 14 feet of vinyl (stacked end to end), almost 400 cassettes, and just under 400 CDs, 20 8-tracks (remember them?), and about 3 gigs of mp3s (but, we won't discuss those, because Big Brother of the Record Industry might be watching). Do I have anything really worth anything? Any monitary jems? For the most part, no. But I have pretty much most of everything I have ever really enjoyed listening to, and that's what's important. And should I want to impress a music fanatic by pulling out Captain Beyond or Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, I can do that, too. (I went to see the Allman Brothers once in a Megadeth t-shirt, that was fun.)      After looking back over the bulk of my life, I see that I've ended up spoiled. I have hardly ever finished anything I've started on my own if I had to set the dead line. I just had too many opportunities to change projects and hobbies on a whim. So, I'm more of a jack of all trades, and master of none. I like things these days that involve clear deadlines, or finish lines. It helps me figure out what I'm doing and what needs to be done. I see myself as more of a behind the scenes kind of guy. Somebody has to do it, and as much as I like to take the spotlight occationally, that's not where I'm at my best. I'm better behind the curtain, in the engine room, making sure that it all works. I want to keep the wheels turning. I'm just not much of a leader, but that's cool because not everybody can lead.      Besides, if you piss me off enough, I'll make sure your project doesn't work.      The only things that really have been stable in my life are my collecting comic books since the 4th grade, collecting and enjoying music, hacking on computers, a love of the four basic food groups (hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, and coke), and bitching.      Yeah, bitching. I bitch all the time. It's a bad habit, but somebody's got to do it. If this world was full of optimists, we'd all be dead-heads, Kurt Cobain wouldn't have decided to suck on a 12-gauge, and Scott Adams (a la Dilbert) would be out of a job. I was a natural born pessimist, why should I see the glass is half-full, it's gotta get emptied or filled sometime down the road. Actually, I see my self more of a realist.      I did finish one big thing in my life - College. What a crock that was. I wasted seven years of my life on a degree I will never use, Mechanical Engineering. I thought I wanted to be an engineer - then they started to suck the creativity out of my brain, forcing me to think in their accepted ways and using only their methods to solve problems. There wasn't any concept of looking for new answers, only how to prove that existing methods are still good and valid in this world of feather light, ultra strong metals and plastics. No, I wanted to think more, and this wasn't the place to do that. Also, there were my fellow engineers, their idea of a good time was finishing homework, going to a club, or playing golf. The only time I've ever played golf, there were windmills on the course. My idea of a good time, usually involved role-playing, watching a movie with a bunch of friends, playing hearts (because Huggles doesn't like Spades - but that's her problem :), checking out flea markets, or just generally goofing off.      No, I needed something else - I did the geek thing in college; I worked at the computer centers. From there I talked myself into my current position: System Administrator for Web Hosting at America Online. Yeah, I'm the dweezle that's responsible for keeping the hardware that hosts www.aol.com up and functioning. I don't have anything to do with the content on the site other than to make sure that it gets put up on time. I also don't have anything to do with the mail, so, NO!!!, I can't tell you why mail is slow or sucky on AOL today.      As for why did I finish college? Well, I was of the firm believe that you needed a college degree (and I just wanted to finish it!). WRONG! When I got to AOL, I found out that most people here don't have one, and I'm usually anywhere from two to six years older than everybody else. What's really depressing, is they've been there a hell of a lot longer than I have! I don't wanna be the old fuck of the group at age 26, damnit! That's life I guess. However, I did finish it, and I'm happy about that. Not happy that it took seven bloody years of hell, but happy it's done and gone. Right now I'm interested in going back to college. This time for something I know I really want to do. In this case, maybe learning Japanese or something with communications.      I am glad that there seems to be a slow movement away from the concept of 'a college degree = experience enough to get you in the door of a company'. That's the biggest load of BS I have ever come across. When I was job hunting, I just *loved* to find somebody who wanted to know what my GPA and SAT scores where. WHO GIVES A DAMN!?!? Can you do the job or not is the important thing. As much bad press AOL gets about its service (which if you really think about all the stuff that goes into it, is quite scary and amazing from a technical point of view), I will whole heartedly defend that AOL wants someone who can finish the job right. Thus, they hired me (remember what I said about wanting to be behind the scenes?)      About the Japanese thing: I fell in love with Japanese animation (anime) and comics (manga) right about 1987ish, but it took me until 1994 before I got my shit together and really started to collect stuff. Now I've got a rather extensive video collection, a growing collection of original manga, and a job as the webmaster of Studio Ironcat. Back in 1995, I decided I was nuts over this stuff to try and learn the language. Now I still take lessons from a wonderful lady twice a month and have slowly started to even make a friend or two in Japan. I'm actually hoping to get to visit the land of the rising sun in 1998. We'll see.      Right now, I'm fairly happy with life; I'm almost at my break-even point on salary and debts. I just have to learn to budget just a bit better and I'll be there. I have a good job, but no clue where I want to go next (that's a standard human flaw, I can live with that for a little while longer). Overall, I don't have too much to complain about. On the down side, I've learned that I became extremely bitchy (and yes, whiny) in the past few years and I closed off parts of my existance here and there. I lost a lot of social skills. No wonder I don't have a girl friend! I'm trying to fix that. I'm seriously trying to learn to keep my mouth shut and listen more. I think there's hope. As for the social skills, I'm working on it - I just don't know what the hell I'm doing yet. (I used to, and still do to a point, be able to interact with pretty much anybody on the planet - I like to think I still can; that I'm just way the hell out of practice.) I've forgotten what fun it could be to learn new things from different people.      After moving into Northern Virginia a little over a year ago, I'm really starting to feel comfortable about where I am and what I'm doing. Things could be a bit better, but I'll survive - that seems to be the only I really do well.      bleah,      Gopher