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lyonesse; I'm not tagging anyone back because I don't. But feel free. (If you're on Facebook, I changed out some things from being tagged there.)
Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you.At the end, choose five people to be tagged, plus the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.
1: Apparently, I'm a musician now. I don't know how that happened, really, and I have no idea what I'm doing. (This isn't some sort of fugue-state-awakening thing, I'm just all lulz wut at it.) I've been spending the winter improving my sing-and-play-at-the-same-time/performance sk1lz, because I can hear how these things are supposed to sound, in my head, and when I can't do it on a stage, it sucks. A lot. I think I'm making real progress, particularly in late January and February. It's a steep learning curve, in particular because of item 4, below.
2: I've done research science, in kind of an accidental way; I have a couple of papers, one on which I'm lead author. Both come out of the same entomology lab where I was hired to run the computer systems but, well, "o hay this is math rly" and ding! papers.
3: I love Japan and miss it terribly. I've never felt more than very-begrudgingly-tolerated in the United States, and have been fighting well-funded national political opposition to my existence my entire adult life. I like Canada better in part just because I don't have any national political parties where not being "soft on sodomy" is a leadership requirement. Yes, I felt much more at home and much more accepted in Japan than the US, or, even, Canada. (Of course the legal situation is better in places like Vancouver than Yokohama.)
4: I have a lot of throat damage - the EN&T people are all "we can't figure out how you talk" - but, well, you know, I open my mouth and sounds come out, so it works for me. I've got okay pitch and reasonable control - I'm genuinely okay in chorus - but I don't have the quality of vocal instrument I really want. And tonality gives me nightmares. That said, I figured out something important in December, and I'm a lot better now.
5: I have nightmares in batches, usually spanning a few nights in a row, thanks in large part to a severely abusive childhood, almost none of which I can remember. Then I'm all sleep-deppy but don't want to sleep.
6: I used to be a small-press publisher. I published a fanzine (arguably two separate ones in succession, but I didn't start the numbering over) and what was by any sane standards a semiprozine, with circulation in the very low 4s over a very large area. (We were in comic shops throughout most of the Anglosphere.) Nobody really remembers these.
7: I made a decent bit of money at Microsoft (mostly in dev, but starting in test) but wrecked my arms for typing doing it, and the largest block of code I've written since leaving the company is around 400 lines in Livejournal's weird S2 style system language to make an LJ journal function as a database backend for http://uplake.org - and I actually kind of enjoyed that. But then I couldn't touch keyboards for days after. I really seriously can't do keyboard jobs for a living anymore; I have to tightly control the amount of time I spend on econ posts, for example, because I can really screw up my arms doing them.
8: I played hockey in high school, and was team captain senior year. We were, um, not good. Not even a little. And I was no exception, except for the part where I was typically the best skater on the ice. (Passing: okay. Puck handling: kinda iffy. Shot: terrible. Not such a good combination for a left wing.) But I enjoy being able to say that I had a rep for violence on a team with a rep for violence in a sport with a rep for violence.
9: I'm just good enough in Japanese that I can fix bus ticket screwups, navigate the train system (as long as I write out the kanji first), buy things in stores, get directions, translate between tourists and vending machines, figure out how we got lost and get us un-lost (with a map, anyway), and find out that I can't order a book at a Japan Kinokuniya and have it delivered for pickup to a North American Kinokuniya because the distribution systems are different. Beyond things like that, I'm doomed. But I have sung anime theme songs with okatu in Yokohama - you don't have to know what you're saying to do that. ^_^
10: I am Elmer Fudd, Millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht.
11: I like frogs. No reason; I just think they're neat. Ribbit.
12: As part of figuring out what the hell I wanted to do after leaving Microsoft, I spent a couple of years doing glass sculpture. I had some shows and sold some pieces and I like the work that I did, for the most part, but it never really caught in my head. I thought it was going to, for a while, but then it just kind of... didn't. You can see photos of a lot of my glasswork friezes here. I like what I made, really, but the more I tried to do it, the more I just spent a lot of time in my studio staring at glass and getting nowhere. At least, after the first few months of pent-up ideas.
13: I tried writing fiction, too; short stories, novellas, novels. I wasn't very good at it; I'm a coherent essayist when I want to be, but my fiction... it is not so great. The only short story I ever published was a piece for a wannabe-literary-fantasy-pr0n publisher, for which I was paid a token payment of $10; I got a couple of nice letters back from magazines on other work, but that was as far as I got. (Marion Zimmer Bradley wrote saying she liked the story but that it was actually SF and therefore not appropriate; annoying thing is she was right, and that was intentional on my part, but everybody else read it as fantasy. Stan Schmidt at Analog said he really liked "Whatever Happened to Zenith, Ohio?" but he'd accepted a similar story from Poul Anderson.) I write articles for computer magazines semi-regularly.
14: I used to work part-time in commercial radio; I'm told I got out right before it became awful, which is good, because thought it was great fun. I can still do radio voice, which makes people laff, particularly if they're in the industry.
15: I hate how poorly so many things are designed, and how little importance US culture places on design in general. I was glad Montreal won the Worldcon just because they showed elements of design clue, and it was such a shock when I saw it that I took pictures of their logos and such.
16: I like photography. I used to have a film SLR but sold off the valuable bits (I had some nice glass) when I realised I wasn't willing to carry around an SLR, but I was willing to carry around, say, a Canon G9, which is what I bought from the lens sale proceeds. No, the glass isn't as good, but it's reasonable, and more importantly, the best camera you have is the camera you actually use.
17: I think I'd like playing bass. I like playing bass in Guitar Hero, anyway. But I'm working most of the time on mandolin, bodhran, flute, and - off in the distance - violin.
18: I really like birds. I particularly miss my Quaker parrot, Zoe:
19: I dislike driving and loathe the commercial airplane experience, particularly the security theatre but not only that. I love trains (well, JR and Skytrain, anyway) and prefer commuter rail to driving. Busses are okay, but not as good as rail. I insist upon living within walking distance of Stuff.
That said, I think mid-60s British sports cars are kinda awesome. Possibly because there's some challenge to actually making them do things ("dim, flicker, and off") even though I'd never actually want to work on a car, and possibly because I like the TR-4/TR-5 era body designs and aesthetic.
20: I have much less actual confidence than people seem to think, particularly - particularly - in social situations. Humans are hard work, tho' I do work at the skills needed for it, and I'm sure I'm extra work for them, too. As a result, I tend to be pretty fringy, and generally very tentatively included, in social groups. (Not a lot of elves around, after all.) I don't like that, but, well, it is what it is, so I cope.
21: I used to play around with rebuilding tube-based audio systems and the idea of doing more of that is still interesting to me. But there's the "get all that crap back out" barrier, and also I have other things I want to do more. But I like the sound and it's fun.
22: I come up with new ways to do ordinary things all the time to keep myself from going insane with boredom at them.
23: I like cooking, but not every day. I keep a mostly Italian/Japanese mix of a kitchen, and I'd like to visit Italy for the art and the food, and it'd be fun to go say SURPRISE! tosans_souci.
24: I'm a transcriptive learner. I never buy the powerpoint-slide notes for classes, because I'd write down, and hence learn, less. Given my severe memory issues that I've had since ever - I take meds, they help, but only so much - I need all the help I can get. As a result, I can write really fast if I need to. It's sloppy and horrible, but legible, if sometimes barely.
25: I'd like to like to draw more than I do. I enjoy it okay but I never really doodled the way I saw other artists doodling. (I used to draw a lot more than I do now - there's only one 2008 thing on this page. I'm a decent illustrator, but I'm a terrible cartoonist.) I've always had the empty-page problem in a serious, serious way, with drawing. Relatedly, I do in fact "doodle" musically, which I hope means something.
lyonesse; I'm not tagging anyone back because I don't. But feel free. (If you're on Facebook, I changed out some things from being tagged there.)Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you.
1: Apparently, I'm a musician now. I don't know how that happened, really, and I have no idea what I'm doing. (This isn't some sort of fugue-state-awakening thing, I'm just all lulz wut at it.) I've been spending the winter improving my sing-and-play-at-the-same-time/performance sk1lz, because I can hear how these things are supposed to sound, in my head, and when I can't do it on a stage, it sucks. A lot. I think I'm making real progress, particularly in late January and February. It's a steep learning curve, in particular because of item 4, below.
2: I've done research science, in kind of an accidental way; I have a couple of papers, one on which I'm lead author. Both come out of the same entomology lab where I was hired to run the computer systems but, well, "o hay this is math rly" and ding! papers.
3: I love Japan and miss it terribly. I've never felt more than very-begrudgingly-tolerated in the United States, and have been fighting well-funded national political opposition to my existence my entire adult life. I like Canada better in part just because I don't have any national political parties where not being "soft on sodomy" is a leadership requirement. Yes, I felt much more at home and much more accepted in Japan than the US, or, even, Canada. (Of course the legal situation is better in places like Vancouver than Yokohama.)
4: I have a lot of throat damage - the EN&T people are all "we can't figure out how you talk" - but, well, you know, I open my mouth and sounds come out, so it works for me. I've got okay pitch and reasonable control - I'm genuinely okay in chorus - but I don't have the quality of vocal instrument I really want. And tonality gives me nightmares. That said, I figured out something important in December, and I'm a lot better now.
5: I have nightmares in batches, usually spanning a few nights in a row, thanks in large part to a severely abusive childhood, almost none of which I can remember. Then I'm all sleep-deppy but don't want to sleep.
6: I used to be a small-press publisher. I published a fanzine (arguably two separate ones in succession, but I didn't start the numbering over) and what was by any sane standards a semiprozine, with circulation in the very low 4s over a very large area. (We were in comic shops throughout most of the Anglosphere.) Nobody really remembers these.
7: I made a decent bit of money at Microsoft (mostly in dev, but starting in test) but wrecked my arms for typing doing it, and the largest block of code I've written since leaving the company is around 400 lines in Livejournal's weird S2 style system language to make an LJ journal function as a database backend for http://uplake.org - and I actually kind of enjoyed that. But then I couldn't touch keyboards for days after. I really seriously can't do keyboard jobs for a living anymore; I have to tightly control the amount of time I spend on econ posts, for example, because I can really screw up my arms doing them.
8: I played hockey in high school, and was team captain senior year. We were, um, not good. Not even a little. And I was no exception, except for the part where I was typically the best skater on the ice. (Passing: okay. Puck handling: kinda iffy. Shot: terrible. Not such a good combination for a left wing.) But I enjoy being able to say that I had a rep for violence on a team with a rep for violence in a sport with a rep for violence.
9: I'm just good enough in Japanese that I can fix bus ticket screwups, navigate the train system (as long as I write out the kanji first), buy things in stores, get directions, translate between tourists and vending machines, figure out how we got lost and get us un-lost (with a map, anyway), and find out that I can't order a book at a Japan Kinokuniya and have it delivered for pickup to a North American Kinokuniya because the distribution systems are different. Beyond things like that, I'm doomed. But I have sung anime theme songs with okatu in Yokohama - you don't have to know what you're saying to do that. ^_^
10: I am Elmer Fudd, Millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht.
11: I like frogs. No reason; I just think they're neat. Ribbit.
12: As part of figuring out what the hell I wanted to do after leaving Microsoft, I spent a couple of years doing glass sculpture. I had some shows and sold some pieces and I like the work that I did, for the most part, but it never really caught in my head. I thought it was going to, for a while, but then it just kind of... didn't. You can see photos of a lot of my glasswork friezes here. I like what I made, really, but the more I tried to do it, the more I just spent a lot of time in my studio staring at glass and getting nowhere. At least, after the first few months of pent-up ideas.
13: I tried writing fiction, too; short stories, novellas, novels. I wasn't very good at it; I'm a coherent essayist when I want to be, but my fiction... it is not so great. The only short story I ever published was a piece for a wannabe-literary-fantasy-pr0n publisher, for which I was paid a token payment of $10; I got a couple of nice letters back from magazines on other work, but that was as far as I got. (Marion Zimmer Bradley wrote saying she liked the story but that it was actually SF and therefore not appropriate; annoying thing is she was right, and that was intentional on my part, but everybody else read it as fantasy. Stan Schmidt at Analog said he really liked "Whatever Happened to Zenith, Ohio?" but he'd accepted a similar story from Poul Anderson.) I write articles for computer magazines semi-regularly.
14: I used to work part-time in commercial radio; I'm told I got out right before it became awful, which is good, because thought it was great fun. I can still do radio voice, which makes people laff, particularly if they're in the industry.
15: I hate how poorly so many things are designed, and how little importance US culture places on design in general. I was glad Montreal won the Worldcon just because they showed elements of design clue, and it was such a shock when I saw it that I took pictures of their logos and such.
16: I like photography. I used to have a film SLR but sold off the valuable bits (I had some nice glass) when I realised I wasn't willing to carry around an SLR, but I was willing to carry around, say, a Canon G9, which is what I bought from the lens sale proceeds. No, the glass isn't as good, but it's reasonable, and more importantly, the best camera you have is the camera you actually use.
17: I think I'd like playing bass. I like playing bass in Guitar Hero, anyway. But I'm working most of the time on mandolin, bodhran, flute, and - off in the distance - violin.
18: I really like birds. I particularly miss my Quaker parrot, Zoe:
Little birdie full of hate,And now you can also see my complete lack of comprehension of poetry!
Just what was it that you ate?
Was it chicken? Ovaltine?
Just what was it made you mean?
Little birdy full of hate,
How I wonder what you ate.
19: I dislike driving and loathe the commercial airplane experience, particularly the security theatre but not only that. I love trains (well, JR and Skytrain, anyway) and prefer commuter rail to driving. Busses are okay, but not as good as rail. I insist upon living within walking distance of Stuff.
That said, I think mid-60s British sports cars are kinda awesome. Possibly because there's some challenge to actually making them do things ("dim, flicker, and off") even though I'd never actually want to work on a car, and possibly because I like the TR-4/TR-5 era body designs and aesthetic.
20: I have much less actual confidence than people seem to think, particularly - particularly - in social situations. Humans are hard work, tho' I do work at the skills needed for it, and I'm sure I'm extra work for them, too. As a result, I tend to be pretty fringy, and generally very tentatively included, in social groups. (Not a lot of elves around, after all.) I don't like that, but, well, it is what it is, so I cope.
21: I used to play around with rebuilding tube-based audio systems and the idea of doing more of that is still interesting to me. But there's the "get all that crap back out" barrier, and also I have other things I want to do more. But I like the sound and it's fun.
22: I come up with new ways to do ordinary things all the time to keep myself from going insane with boredom at them.
23: I like cooking, but not every day. I keep a mostly Italian/Japanese mix of a kitchen, and I'd like to visit Italy for the art and the food, and it'd be fun to go say SURPRISE! to
sans_souci.24: I'm a transcriptive learner. I never buy the powerpoint-slide notes for classes, because I'd write down, and hence learn, less. Given my severe memory issues that I've had since ever - I take meds, they help, but only so much - I need all the help I can get. As a result, I can write really fast if I need to. It's sloppy and horrible, but legible, if sometimes barely.
25: I'd like to like to draw more than I do. I enjoy it okay but I never really doodled the way I saw other artists doodling. (I used to draw a lot more than I do now - there's only one 2008 thing on this page. I'm a decent illustrator, but I'm a terrible cartoonist.) I've always had the empty-page problem in a serious, serious way, with drawing. Relatedly, I do in fact "doodle" musically, which I hope means something.
