Introduce Yourself

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  • I've decided just now to stop saying I work at Adobe all the time. I started doing it in the credits of my first video because just giving my name didn't seem like enough for someone to get a real idea of who/where I was geographically, professionally, interest-wise, etc. I guess I wasn't comfortable with the true anonymity of the Internets yet and felt like I needed to include what would typically be the one thing a stranger would ask about you when you first met ("so Spiff, what do you do?"). But no one else does it, and I don't want to seem like an idiot (anymore than normal), so I'm going to shut up about that from now on, mostly.

    I did think of something else about myself that you guys don't know -- I'm a second degree black belt in tae kwon do. Fer reals. I was talking to a buddy about it last night, and was astonished to realize that it's been fifteen years since I started it and about ten since I stopped (how did I get so old?), but I've still got the belts to prove it. Maybe I should put that in the credits of my videos. "Mike Spiff Booth is an aging, out-of-shape former martial artists who thought this great song really deserved a video." ;)
  • Spiff: Haha! :) (Must've been five pretty intense years, to get to second-degree black belt -- I actually know nothing about martial arts, though.)

    What about leaving in the job description and leaving out the employer? It'd still let you give people an idea of who you are, and it might forestall problems like someone at Adobe wanting the company name pulled from all your video credits.
  • edited January 2008
    Yeah, I'll do that. And you ain't lying about the video credits. I put Adobe's name in the credits for "First of May" without thinking (copy/paste from previous videos), but luckily as near as I can tell, no one here has seen it yet (shhhhhh).

    Three years to black belt, another year and a half or so to second degree. I was teaching a little at the time and managing a bunch of the schools (my job was to work at karate all day. how sweet is that?), so it was pretty intense. It eventually evolved into a job working as a production manager on a kid's PBS television show ("Kanga Roddy" for anyone who's interested) when the school decided it wanted to reach out beyond just teaching kids in karate classes. I got to work with Jennifer Montana (Joe's wife) and Pat Morita (Mr. Miyagi from "Karate Kid"). When that ended, I somehow managed to wrangle my career around to software. It was quite a wild few years.
  • Don't forget that JoCo is 37 now. Maybe his songs are speaking to our generation in some sort of a subliminal way.

    I'm surprised at how many people are chatting back and forth on this new thread. I posted only a couple of hours ago and I had quite a bit of reading to get caught up again.

    Indigo - sounds like we are two peas in a pod. Too bad you are several states away or we could ditch the kids and get a cup of coffee.

    Jinx - good luck with the writing. I've currently taken a 10 year hiatus on writing, mostly due to the children who are born 9 months after the First of May (more or less). But I have high hopes for next year. If I do, I'll post it so you guys can throw me some constructive criticism.

    I like Bry, but I'm a secret Spiffaholic. Plus he says such nice things about the ladies around here!
  • Bry- thanks for the props :). Yup, I'm co-creator of this video. Speaking of which, we also recently posted some behind the scenes and outtakes.

    Spiff- wow, you've had a varied and awesome career. I'm actually going to be teaching a kung fu class for the first time this week, and have been trying to help my teacher get his school (currently a small but dedicated group of students) off the ground. I'm also jealous of getting to work on a kid's tv show. That seems like it'd be a blast.

    A couple random things I forgot to mention- I'm 27, live in Pittsburgh, and enjoy board games, dr who, firefly, and cheesy sci fi, horror, and (of course!) kung fu movies.
  • Holy SHIT. That is um, the most fantastic video I've ever seen. Wow.
  • Its half two in the morning and I've just woken my mum up by laughing at the bit where he's gloating that he's finished his work. Thanks.
  • Great movie, Sporksmith! :) I loved the outtakes.
  • I'm quite a JoCo n00b, so I shouldn't really have posting rights yet, but here's one more for the pot. Finished high school in 1990 as a hardcore geek (weapon of choice: assembler), did classical music degree, had a love affair with theatre on the side and graduated into starving musicianhood. After a year of starvation, I joined a band doing cruise ships, and ended up in the cruise industry for over 7 years, ending as music director. Married the crew doctor, moved to England (I'm South African, she's Filipino) and started a new life of starvation, whereby I got my first office job at age 33 as a temp. Three years down the line, and I have picked up the threads and am now working in IT.

    Not a gamer, but I did have a serious love affair with Second Life recently until my induction into fatherhood brought me back to reality eight months ago.

    The best testimonial I have for JoCo: he makes me feel like a target demographic, and I don't say that easily!
  • I don't know, I become really busy and don't read the forums for 2 days, and suddenly there is a huge introduction thread!

    I am Kerrin, online and in real life. I live in the original Cambridge (the one in the UK). I am 32, although that is a secret, so don't tell anyone. I'm a software engineer for a website development company, although my front-end skills (html, etc) are not the best (I do the complex stuff behind the scenes, it's more logical)

    I have been a fan for 2 years now. The second I heard Skullchrusher Mountain I was a huge fan. I am now even more of a fan than I ever thought possible.

    In my spare time I play a great deal of World of Warcraft. For those who know what this means...I am in a raiding Guild that has cleared Kara and now moving on to Gruul's lair.
    If I get any additional spare time, I like to make JoCo music videos, but that is a rare occurance. I don't play many other games, but when I do I play, RPG, god-games (Why is Spore taking so long?) and anything that involves thought more than reactions. I can't play fast action first person games, they give me motion sickness, it's really annoying.
  • Shruti: I don't know if I could have actually handled meeting him. He's just so intelligent and lovely. And I'm really bad at meeting people I admire. I was nervous to introduce myself to Spiff even... that's how bad.
  • Well, two friends of mine know Paul and Storm, so when they came with JoCo to perform here in St. Louis I was introduced to the three of them.

    Talk about a moment when every thought in your head that might remotely qualify as intelligent abandons ship. Sheesh. My friend introduced me as 'one of your mad fans', and he asked what I was angry about. I don't even remember what I said.

    They always say it's just better to react as if they're just anyone else. That makes every bit of sense objectively, and Mr. Coulton certainly doesn't act as if he expects to be treated as something special. But in a way, that's almost worse.. if he were more diva-esque, it would be easier to shrug dismissively and say, "Eh... show people." As it is, there's no grounds for that. If Jonathan Coulton and I had met in college or hanging out in a bar, I expect I'd still think he was pretty darned cool. So... enter the fangirl, "It would be so awesome to be your friend!" mentality.
  • it's getting bad. i don't even realize how many acronyms i'm using anymore unless i pay close attention. this is what i get for having a fairly narrow social circle online - we all know the same stuff so we all understand each other.

    2 lzy 2 typ stuff out would look mor like ths... u thnk im jking bt im not even. people actually type like that sometimes. it's depressing. it's just that in all the industry literature and stuff, you don't hear 'no one lives forever 2' very much. it's just 'NOLF2', or KotOR, or the like.
  • ET FTW TBQFH. The worrying thing is that is actually a proper sentence. OMGWTFBBQ. I remember a mate from uni failed miserably on an assignment as he'd been up for three days solid and he'd typed it up the night/morning before it was due whilst also spending half the time in IRC so the entire thing had all occurrences of two, to, too as 2, you as u and so on. Technically speaking the assignment was sound. Grammatically speaking it was as if the devil himself had come up and taken a massive dump on a piece of A4 paper.
  • edited January 2008
    Indigo you make an intersting point. I too think I would find Mr Coulton a cool guy even if we met under normal conditions. There are just people you meet that you think, they are cool, I would be happy to be friends with them.

    On the meeting you idol. I can completely understand where you are coming from, thankfully, I had conversed with Jonathan quite a bit before we met, so I felt more like I knew him personally than I would have otherwise. Of course it is very clear from the photo I had taken at the time, 'He was very pleased to meet me'....sorry couldn't resist a Red Dwarf quote, I was very happy to finally meet him face to face.

    I need more sleep, I relate to the guy that typed up an essay after 3 days no sleep far too much at the moment.
  • I know, it sucks though because there are all the people where I'm like, "s/he's really cool, I'd like to be friends with him/her" only then I'm like, wait, I'm somewhat obnoxious, a little too opinionated, a lot too blunt, unwittingly bitchy, and fairly uninteresting and unattractive. Which is a shame.
  • I can totally relate to the stammering fangirl thing. By comparison I've been a fan of my musical idol in the classical world for fifteen years, he knows who I am and everything, and every time I get a chance to meet him after a concert I go straight into stupid-mode. So I'm bringing a wingman along with me to JoCo's concert with instructions to quietly haul me away if I faint or start drooling or do something equally mortifying.
  • edited January 2008
    That's probably smart.

    Come to think of it, that's not a bad policy in any situation. ;) Attention All Friends: If I start to be embarrassing, please remove me from the situation. Thank you. ;)
  • I was just thinking how odd I still feel when I realize Jonathan Coulton is aware of who I am. (We're not in constant communication by any means -- I try not to bother him too much, really, since he's got enough on his plate already.)

    Welcome, BorbaSpinotti -- don't worry, I'm not going to revoke your forum credentials just yet. ;)
  • Yeah, um... the first time I actually got an e-mail from him, I, like... printed it out and stuck it on my corkboard where all my clients could see it. I'd have had it bronzed, but you wouldn't have been able to read it then.

    Top that.
  • Are you trying to make us compete for JoCo's love? *Sob.
  • Nah, I was just laying bare how pathetic I am. A cry for help, if you will.
  • Only the strong survive!
  • Hi, I'm Jade, both online and off. I'm 26 and painfully shy. I've been lurking about for a while but haven't built up the courage to post anything. Thank you Bry for starting this thread and giving me a comfortable way to get things started.

    I'm a bit of a magpie when it comes to interests. My doomed college years illustrate this really well. I went from focusing on architecture to design to physical therapy to anatomy and finally to chemistry before giving up on school to start my own line of jewelry. I'm a total craft nerd. Anything I find even slightly inspiring gets dissected and reworked in my living room. I have quite a few joco related crafts in the works. In addition to all of that, I'm a bit of a gamer girl (mostly tabletop rpgs), and, oh yeah, I listen to joco constantly.

    Anyway that's me. I just wanted to say "hi. you all seem really nice, and I very happy to have found a group of such lovely creative people."
  • This thread has been good for flushing the lurkers out of the shadows. Welcome Jade, and all the other lurkers who haven't yet said hi.
  • Jeez, Jade, now you make me wish I'd started this thread a long time ago. :) Welcome! (Did I catch you saying you made an indigo monkey? Wow.)

    Lurkers! I've been a lurker in many places for a long time, and please, come register and introduce yourselves!

    (Unless you enjoy posting derogatory comments on YouTube videos.)
  • Not all Lurkers are derogaters (is that a word?) but I think it is nice that this thread has provided a place-like Jade said-where they can feel a little more comfortable.

    BTW, Hi Jade-where are my manners this week? I blame the Fox hunt debates in school. Gotta blame someone, just like Jinx blamed Vegas and the Bossa...
  • the thing with me and acronyms is, among anyone who's known me for some length of time, i have a reputation for alarmingly high levels of skill and acumen with grammar and diction. there's another fun fact about me - i am an utter nerd when it comes to english. generally, it is safe to assume that any of my deviations from the rules of the language are deliberate. i also abhor using a single letter or number to stand in for a word (other than for demonstrative purposes, as above).

    so you can see why i'm cross with myself for inserting what are for all practical intents and purposes strings of gibberish throughout a post.

    maybe it's because i post here when at work, and the other forum i visit from work is gaymer.org, where "NOLF2" is no less cromulent a word than "pants". there we go. that's a good excuse.

    >.>
    <.<
  • Thanks guys for making me feel so welcome.

    bry: Yep, I made myself an indigo monkey, and I have a giant squid scarf in the works.
  • Wow. How much squid are you using?
  • Pardon the digression, but this needs to be mentioned.

    TLA: Three-Letter Acronym
    ETLA: Extended Three-Letter Acronym

    I now return you to introductions.
  • Sporksmith, that video kicked ass! ("Favorited!" (Must be said in a Strong Bad voice.))

    C4bl3Fl4m3, I find that copy/paste is the easiest way to type your name.

    I'm Joe: A serene philosopher who enjoys wry humor and self-mockery. I love Beauty, Truth, Happiness, Friendship, Goodness, Wisdom, Joy, Love, Freedom, and Music. And Food.

    I am in my early thirties, but suspicious of this "growing up" that some people claim should be done. (It sounds like sacrificing one's dreams and sense of wonder in exchange for the psychological security of settling into a societally predefined role. Or sacrificing personal growth in exchange for the psychological security of "having grown". Either way, I want no part of it.)

    I hang with a socially liberal, geeky, queer-friendly, poly-friendly and generally friendly crowd. It's a good sort of crowd to have.

    Forum profile, my ancient web site, Livejournal (and LJ profile from which I copied the description but not the interests, so click through if you care).

    I'll cook dinner for you if you're in the Albany, NY area.
  • So I have no idea what contra dancing means but all I could think of was like, a Contra-Sandinista Dance-off, and it was a really bizarre image.
  • edited January 2008
    I certainly love Wisdom. Some men are wise by nature; others must marry Wisdom. My wife's name is Sofia, which literally means Wisdom. I've long joked that this makes me a philosopher.
  • edited January 2008
    Wow.. I've been made. Guess I won't be a candidate on the next burglary run, eh? Oh well.

    All kidding aside, Jade you must post pictures! Most especially of the giant squid! :)
  • indigo: I plan on getting a bunch of pictures in line and at the show next month, so I'll post some then.

    bry: sorry, no actual squid will be harmed in the making of my scarf, but I'm hoping to make the tentacles at least 8' long.
  • That sounds like an awesome scarf! XD I have a certain fondness for oka-pi myself, bless their tentacly appendages. I might have to pilfer your idea!
  • Awesome! I am all for more people wearing squid apparel to JoCo concerts.
  • On that note, WTB NZ JoCo Tour!
  • I just got one of these for my mate. Best gift evar!
  • zoman! DO WANT!!! XD
  • Do you make squid scarves on commission, JadeSnake?

    Plus, blaming things on the _____ Nova is perfectly logical, because of its Magic Spell, Jon Who. Refute THAT, if you can.

    Oh, and this is stupid, but what exactly is IRC?
  • I don't do them on commission yet (mostly because I haven't worked all the bugs out of my pattern), but I may consider doing them in the future.
  • edited January 2008
    Internet Relay Chat, tis older than the net itself.

    EDIT :: I also would like a squid scarf for my mate. Or possibly the pattern so she can knit her own.
  • Yeah -- the most familiar part of IRC is the multi-user "channels" (basically similar to what Internet users might think of as a "chatroom"), although there are private channels and lots of other functionalities.

    IrishLion, wherever he's gone, once tried to set one up for JoCo discussion. If we were to do that, it'd be... basically a much-faster, less-permanent version of what this thread is starting to turn into.
  • "...(mostly because I haven't worked all the bugs out of my pattern)..."

    As a software development student who knits for fun, this comment warmed the cockles of my nerdy, nerdy heart XD
  • So much to respond to. Hi, all you people! :-D

    ShaggyJD: I think you are my fraternal twin. I wanted to be a bio-chemist when I was a kid, but the music exerted too strong a pull. And instead of selling out to the legal profession (as my actor-friend did), I went with accounting. People like accountants OK, but auditors, not so much. I also aspired to go to Yale - especially when the Music School got that bignormous endowment a couple of years ago. Free Yale! But, alas, it's not in the cards. And instead of being rejected by Yale, I was rejected by Oberlin.

    kerrin: My husband is a partner in a web-development company, and he does the back-end database development and all that jazz that makes the interwebs go. When people call him a "web designer," he likes to retort, "Web designers pick color schemes; I write code."

    And about being a fangirl: I've seen and met JC three times, and I think I've made a bigger jackass of myself each time - and he's always so good-natured about it. I first saw him at a John Hodgman book-signing, and it was all so very cool that I posted about it as a blog comment (before my forum days). And at his last LA show, I got JC's handwritten set-list, which he graciously signed and annotated. It's now in an acid-free sheet protector, along with a pic of him with me, and the ticket stub. Yeah, I'm that much of a dork. I also have his personal cell number from when I worked a merch table for him. Thankfully, I haven't ever been fangirl enough to call.
  • edited January 2008
    "ShaggyJD: I think you are my fraternal twin."

    A twin. I've always wanted one. If we meet on the street, I'll know it's you. More weirdness: I also get paid to sing at a church, and have done a bit of choral conducting. Why did you find it so soul-sucking? I thought it was rather rewarding.

    "People like accountants OK, but auditors, not so much."

    Try being a lawyer some time. I'm one of the "nice guy" lawyers; most days I still have to carry an umbrella and a towel to deal with people's spit.

    "instead of being rejected by Yale, I was rejected by Oberlin."

    [inhales with a hiss] Oooooo... We don't like the "rejected" term anymore. So harsh. We prefer "alternatively directed."
  • I seem to have forgotten to properly introduce myself when I started posting a few months ago. Oh, well...

    I'm a male high school student who is cautious of revealing personal information. There.
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