Reply To: Introduce Yourself
Oy, such a long thread! I'm ashamed to say I haven't read it all yet, but I will go back and do so to get to know those of you who've posted.
My real name is Dave Leigh, I live in Union, SC, and I'm a grizzled ancient by the standards of this forum. As such, there is no conceivable abridging of my bio that will make it "mini". I "discovered" Jonathan Coulton through "re: Your Brains" via a Wil Wheaton blog post, and then, of course, got hooked on the Thing A Week.
I'm a "consulting technologist" by trade, which is simply my personal shorthand for "I've been in computers so long there is no standard job category for me, so I stopped even trying." I got started in computers in the 70s while in high school. There were no personal computers when I first learned COBOL and FORTRAN. My life is one continual final exam, as any skills you have become obsolete every five years or so. I span these roles: tech support, software designer, code monkey, project manager, gadget guru, workflow designer, etc., etc. I spent most of the 80s in the USAF, where I was a radio technician for the Presidential/VIP radio network. I worked at Andrews AFB near DC and spent a good five years in the UK (I lived near Bicester in Oxfordshire). I was VP of a security company for a while, then VP of a medical software publisher, and I used to be an Internet provider. Now I'm a contractor and consultant. An impecunious one, because I have ethics and morals. (DAMN! Damn damn DAMN!) I've also been a commercial artist (which basically means I hand-painted beer cans and DJ portraits and other advertisements on buses), managed a cinema, and sold pets. My parents had a farm, so I can also drive a tractor and artificially impregnate a cow (bow-chicka-wow-wow).
I can't listen to a commercial song without changing the words. Here's proof: http://www.cratchit.org/music/2009/06/billy-jean-parody.html (that song is SO out of my range).
Sometimes, I change the words WHILE listening to a song the first time. It drives my kids nuts. JoCo's music is a rare exception to that rule, since his lyrics are ALREADY twisted in my direction. BC (before Coulton) that was only true of Tom Lehrer.
I write music (most of it not explicitly funny), and have done so privately since I was in high school. I have the same lyricist now (William Hoover) as I had then. We just do it to satisfy our craving for music that we want to hear, but we decided somewhat recently to start posting it on the web and sharing. William's a mutant technophobe: I posit that he is surrounded by some sort of dampening field. Anything invented after the Victorian era refuses to work in his general vicinity, so it's unlikely you'll ever see him here directly. I play piano well enough to compose, play guitar poorly, and some other instruments that may or may not be relevant to world peace. I'm verbose.
I love to compose, but don't so much like to perform. I'm active in community theater, where I perform because they ask me to. We do two completely original plays a year, for which I occasionally write songs. However, they always make me perform the song. It's on my bucket list to someday write something that someone ELSE will perform while I sit back and enjoy.
Wife. Three kids, all boys, the two younger ones twins with competing personalities (think Spock and McCoy). Two dogs (mountain feists), two cats, one mouse.
I'd trace my housekey in the box provided, but have no touchscreen. That said, I don't close my doors anyway, so feel free to stop by. We'll cook out.