I grew up in the suburbs and I've lived in the suburbs my whole life. I don't enjoy going into the city much. The crowds and noise overwhelm me a bit. When I've got the time I sometimes go for drives and try to find the isolated pockets of wilderness to explore from the safety of my car. Bugs are not my friend. Squirrels are pretty neat though.

I didn't spend a lot of time out doors as a kid (as evidenced by my skin tone and weight) but spent a lot of time on computers. I remember everything from the 8088 to the 486, the first Pentiums and roughly up to the gigahertz days. By then I was too busy with other things to spend much time fiddling with computers, I just want them to work now.

When I wasn't on the computer, I was usually reading or playing RPG's with my friends. Yes, that's role-playing games. That includes Dungeons & Dragons. I've grown out of that now, but as nerdy as RPG's might be, I consider having played them a positive. My interest in making up realistic people/characters led to learning more about the world (as it was and is now). It also acted as a nice focus for my interest in psychology and what makes people tick.

If you prefer labels, I'm a bit of a geek, a bit of a nerd (there's a difference), a gamer, and an IT professional. I'd also like to think I'm a comedian and philosopher, but I usually only give myself those labels when I'm feeling particularly awesome (and likely need my ego-bubble burst).

Trying to reboot my career. I graduated from college with an IT degree and got a job doing web development. Then the economic bubble burst and I was laid off and unemployed for 2 years. Now I'm trying to climb my way back up to where I feel I should be at this point in my life, career wise.

Oh, and I'm here. So that tells you something too.

Learning. Sounds weird, but so far the best times of my life were had during college. Partly that's because of the lack of responsibility, flexible schedule, parental funding, and socialization opportunities.

Now that I'm in a professional career though, I really feel like my strengths lay in soaking up knowledge. I do okay at applying that knowledge, but I feel happier learning stuff in lectures and writing about it than going out into the world and doing stuff with it. I also enjoy sharing what I've learned. While in college I considered becoming a teacher but went in a different direction because teacher pay sucks and standing in front of a classroom of 30 evil brats scares me a bit. Even then, I was more interested in teaching people my own age. I think that's partly because, by then, people WANT to learn and aren't being FORCED to learn.

In my mind, this really has two answers.

In person, I think people notice my size first. When you're as big as I am, that's just how it goes. Once they get past that, maybe they'll notice my eyes. Or the way I dress. And after a while, they hopefully start to notice the things that I think they'd see first online.

Online (or via phone), I'd say that my voice is the first thing. I think this probably applies to speech as well as text. I just have a certain way of talking (and strangely, I get complimented on my voice). I'd like them to think I'm funny, as laughter is important to me.

I spend a lot of time day dreaming. Sometimes it's about really mundane things like how a certain conversation I need to have with someone will go. Sometimes it's about work stuff that I need to handle and how best to do so. Usually it's about what I want to do with my life and how I think the world could be a better place. That sounds really cheesy, but like I said, they're day dreams. I don't know how to make the world a better place. But I like to dream about what it would be like if world-changing technologies were invented. Things like dirt-cheap solar power and wireless electricity have been bouncing around in my brain lately. I sit and think about all the different ways such things would change the world. It's just something to keep my mind occupied while sitting in traffic or taking a break from work.

... You're comfortable getting to know someone via e-mail/IM/text/phone before meeting in person.

... Hanging out with friends in a small casual setting is comfortable for you.

... A night in watching a movie with some popcorn and beer/wine sounds like fun.

... A night in playing video games (or board games, or some other sort of game) with some take-out sounds fantastic. (I'm usually realistic, but a man can dream.)