Application
Okay, I'll go through the required steps. :)
1. Pics
Me this last weekend at the Everquest Fan Faire.
Bonus nerd points awarded for:
1. Being at the Everquest Fan Faire
2. Wearing an "I <3 Nerds" shirt
3. Posing for a pic with a guy dressed as a barbarian.
And yes, I'm going to make you click the link for this one because I'm not sure if it's too naughty for this communicty or not (no nudity, but it's a bit naughty)
So click here for cleavage
2. Nerdy Hobbies
Well, it's Saturday afternoon and I'm sitting here applying to this forum, isn't that enough? No? All right....
Internet
I'm pretty much an internet junkie. The first time I saw the internet was at a friend's house in 1992. She showed me a chat room, but no one was there. Then we tried to dl a pic, but it after four hours it still hadn't loaded all the way! I was in love with the place immediately.
I didn't get online until 1994, though, when I got free access through university. Loved it, studied it, learned html and website design, but didn't get into meeting people until about 2000, when I joined a forum for the fantasy series The Wheel of Time...got to talking to people there, which got me into IRC and then ICQ and the rest is history.
My main home on the net now is a forum called Fantasy Freak, which started out as a place for people who love the fantasy genre, but now is just a place to talk.
I also have a blog at www.sassygeek.com - it is down right now because my $@#%& hosting company is a ##*$^@^ piece of @#$*!!! Things to so this week: find new hosting company. My blog is mainly used to write feature stories on internet and gaming cultural issues that are of interest to geeky women, as well as to point out interesting stuff i hear about online life, technology, and so on.
I've made a lot of great friends through online communities and have traveled to different places to meet people and have fun. I've made a lot of great friends from the Netherlands, in particular.
Games
As you can probably guess, I'm an Everquest junkie for the most part, when it comes to gaming. My husband and I play together a lot. We've always played games together (not those kinds of games! well... ;) ) My idea of a romantic evening? Firing up the PS2 and kicking some ass together or drinking a bottle of wine and running around Everquest together being silly.
My main interest lies in RPG's and sim games, but I also dig driving games.
Every since I was a wee little girl and saw Pong for the first time, I've been in love with gaming. I still jump up and don't and squeal when I see a Centipede game I can play! Some of my fondest memories of me and my husband are the nights we stayed up until 5 in the morning playing a new game (simcity, balder's gate, morrowind, the sims).
Books
I read a lot of different genres, but I have to say that scifi/fantasy is the main thing I read. I'm reading the Otherland series right now - excellent! I also love Wheel of Time (but now it kind of sucks - end it already!), George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series, Dune, LotR (of course). When I'm not online, I'm usually reading.
Movies
Well, minus nerd points go to me because I do not like anime. I have -tried- to like anime, but I just can't get into it. Although, I did really like Spirited Away. I think I dislike it because I don't understand a lot of cultural references and I'm not really interested in Japanese culture, so I don't want to bother to understand more.
Nerd bonus points go to me, though, for the fact that I had a LotR dinner party on the opening night of RoK. I didn't dress up like a hobbit or anything, but I did make "hobbit food" including Gaffer's Golden Taters, Lembas bread, mulled wine, mushrooms and bacon, and the like.
I love all the standard nerd movies...Matrix, LotR, Pirates, and so on. Love horror, too. The remake of Dawn of the Dead had me bouncing in my seat for a week!
Okay, enough with the hobbies.
3. Educational history
I graduated from the university of minnesota with distinction (a GPA of 3.7) with a B.S. in scientific and technical communications and an emphasis in graphic design. What does that all mean? I'm a technical writer. I absolutely love it. I get to talk with geeks all day long, write stuff so non-geeks can understand it, learn all about technology without having to actually do anything with it.
When I was trying to figure out what to go back to school for, a programmer friend said "We have these people called technical writers. We all think it looks really boring, but you might like it." Boy, was she right!
4. Hours spent online and how
I spend about 4-6 hours a day average at home. At work, I try to avoid visiting sites and chatting because, honestly, I got myself into trouble doing that about two years ago, so i have to make sure that doesn't happen again. I do have email buddies, though, and I usually make an LJ entry over lunch.
I love to chat and most of my time is spent chatting with people from other countries and visiting forums, but I also read different geeky blogs, political blogs, technology sites, and work on my website. One of my big interests is to study how online communities are changing the real world, so I gobble up anything I can find on that.
And of course, I spend 10 or so hours a week (at least) playing Everquest.
5. Other nerdy tidbits
I call myself a geek groupie because i absolutely love hanging out with geeks. In high school I always dated the D&D players (I would have played, but I lived out in the country where I couldn't meet with people on a regular basis). I loved the geeks. I was a theatre geek, received a scholarship for forensics and was a theatre major my first year, but then left school for a while to hang out and figure out wtf I wanted to do with life.
I love love love what the internet has done for my life. I do have a very close knit group of geeky friends, but being online has allowed me to find other like-minded souls all over the planet. It's an amazing thing!
whew! that took a long time! hope it's good enough :)