Introducing your host; Stormdog!
Feb. 17th, 2011 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogIt occurred to me, as I've done a little writing about ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
moiracoon here in this space, that maybe I should write a little update for those late to the game.
So, Stormdog. That's me. I'm a thirty-one year old geek of various varieties. I've been working in help desk and systems administration for about, geeze, nine years now? I wanted to grow up to be a scientist when I was little (I idolized people like Einstein and Tesla, and the characters from Real Genius), but I had a lot of problems in school and that was not to be. I'm still a little disappointed in myself about it sometimes, even though my interests are now, to some extent, elsewhere. I grew up in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. (My family moved to Kenosha from Mundelein when I was of elementary school age.) I moved to Michigan (a near-north suburb of Detroit) from Wisconsin in 2003 to move in with Moiracoon, who I'd met at a small sci-fi con in Wisconsin and who I ended up long-distance dating for a while. Prior to that, I'd failed in my first couple attempts at college so I have no degree, but while living in Michigan I did temp work and attended class at New Horizons, where I got some computer certifications. While doing a temp job that went from 7 to 3 or so, and then going to school until 10:30 or 11 at night, I was fired (as opposed to laid off) for the first and only time. It was the best thing that could have happened to me 'cause I found another job with better hours that involved sitting at a desk all day listening to a Walkman and cleaning used cell phones. Yes ladies and gentlemen, I was a telephone sanitizer. Please let me know when Golgafrinchan Ark 'B' is boarding.
After getting my certs (A+, Network +, MCP on Windows 2000 and 2000 Server) I got a job doing tech support for Ford. Technically it was a Ford subsidiary that contracts out to support various office buildings and production plants. That was kind of fun. I was there for about a year before Moira and I moved back to Wisconsin to be near my family and a bunch of our friends who were out that way.
Since then, I've worked for a company that produces healthcare-related software. Since I was only doing internal support, I was with them for years and years and never actually saw our product. In fact, there came a point where I was honestly not even sure what we made anymore. While working there, my company paid for a multi-thousand dollar class plus hotel stay for me where I earned a CCNA certification. They then failed to have me do anything whatsoever with it. Whee. I've often thought that if I'd gotten into network design like I wanted, I might still be interested in working in IT. Anyway, I was laid off from there about a month ago after a merger with another company that produced 'redundant positions'. I'm looking at it as an opportunity. The job had really been driving me crazy after the last few mergers.
Moira and I rented a house in Kenosha for a number of years. It had to be a house because we had a big bouncy Akita who needed a place where he had a yard to enjoy. In a very real sense, we were paying the extra money for a house just to make sure he had a safe and happy place to live with us, because once he died, it wasn't long before we started looking at apartments. I miss my dog a lot sometimes. Especially given that the way my life is right now, I don't know when I'm going to be able to have another one. Dogs are very close to my heart, and I really miss having one around in ways that probably seem silly to non dog people.
Through the years of our relationship, we transitioned from monogamy to polyamory. We had each dated (more or less; the situation was far too complicated sometimes) a couple other people during the course of our relationship. To make a very long story very short, a number of things in the time leading up to looking for a new place to live lead Moira and I to decide to spend some time living apart from each other. She moved to Racine while I lived with my parents there in Kenosha for a few months as she and I tried to decide where to go from there. In the end, we decided to stay apart, and I moved down to Chicago where I've wanted for some time to try living. After a time, her other partner,mocha_mephooki, moved in with her, and it makes me very happy that the two of them are happy.
There are a lot of really positive things that have resulted from that. Since I'm not financially responsible to another person, and I don't have pets to watch over and take care of, I have a degree of latitude in my actions that not a lot of people get to enjoy. I'm staying in a room that I'm renting in a friend of a friend's condo, so my living expenses are low. I can travel basically whenever I like if I can find a place to stay. I have the opportunity to attend a Japanese class here in the city; I'd never be able to find something like that in a smaller town. My experiences in places like New York City and Chicago have fully sold me on living in a big city. I love it here. There's just so *much*, you know?
While living here in Chicago, I went to a small convention in Wisconsin (not the same one where I met Moira, though I was invited to go by the same person!) where I metdanaeris who I've now been dating since late last year. By coincidence, she was already involved with a friend of mine who I'd known for quite a while beforehand, though I don't get to see too much of him since he lives in the UK. I have some of the most intriguing conversations with her, and she is just wonderful, and a wonderful girlfriend, in general! I have the joy of seeing her pretty regularly these days.
Though speaking of travelling, I'm planning a trip to the UK in the Summer. It'll be my first time overseas, and I'm just inexpressibly excited about it.
I've also been developing a close friendship withred_ceilidh, who lives in Michigan. English is very lacking in terms usable to describe a vast array of levels of personal relationships. She is a dear friend who I enjoy spending time with and who deserves a mention here. She is a ren-faire friend of Moira's from before I knew her, but I was horribly shy when I lived in Michigan and never talked to her (or many people at all for that matter) very much until recent times.
Speaking of shyness, my life has taken a 180 when it comes to that. I used to be terrified of people. There was a time, as recently as high school, when I was too scared of people to call up a store to ask if something was in stock, or to talk to teachers or people I was in class with. It wasn't until college that I figured out that I am Faceblind, and that that's why it was so very hard for me to get to know people and remember who they are. I used to think that I was horribly, irredeemably introverted and would never be able to deal with people. I wanted a job where I could just sit in a cave and deal with computers. I certainly wouldn't want to have to, *echh*, talk to people all day.
Now, I start conversations with random strangers on the train and I daydream about learning about other people for a living. How did this happen? I have theories I suppose, but this is long enough already. Suffice it to say that, in a lot of ways, I am a completely different person than I was just a few years ago. Life is strange, huh? I still have trouble remembering people because of the neurological issues, but now that I understand where the problems are, I can work around them and I think I manage pretty well for the most part.
And let's see. Beyond that, I'm planning to go back to school full time in the Fall, for a degree in anthropology. I'm a serious amateur photographer and all the experiences I've had with abandoned buildings and classic architecture have lead to a fascination in why buildings and cities develop and shrink and change the way they do and how that engages people as individuals. I want to talk to people and understand the way different people in different cities live. I want to do folk histories, and vicariously live many, many more experiences than a person can have in one lifetime.
Questions? Comments? Feel free to leave a note!
moiracoon here in this space, that maybe I should write a little update for those late to the game.So, Stormdog. That's me. I'm a thirty-one year old geek of various varieties. I've been working in help desk and systems administration for about, geeze, nine years now? I wanted to grow up to be a scientist when I was little (I idolized people like Einstein and Tesla, and the characters from Real Genius), but I had a lot of problems in school and that was not to be. I'm still a little disappointed in myself about it sometimes, even though my interests are now, to some extent, elsewhere. I grew up in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. (My family moved to Kenosha from Mundelein when I was of elementary school age.) I moved to Michigan (a near-north suburb of Detroit) from Wisconsin in 2003 to move in with Moiracoon, who I'd met at a small sci-fi con in Wisconsin and who I ended up long-distance dating for a while. Prior to that, I'd failed in my first couple attempts at college so I have no degree, but while living in Michigan I did temp work and attended class at New Horizons, where I got some computer certifications. While doing a temp job that went from 7 to 3 or so, and then going to school until 10:30 or 11 at night, I was fired (as opposed to laid off) for the first and only time. It was the best thing that could have happened to me 'cause I found another job with better hours that involved sitting at a desk all day listening to a Walkman and cleaning used cell phones. Yes ladies and gentlemen, I was a telephone sanitizer. Please let me know when Golgafrinchan Ark 'B' is boarding.
After getting my certs (A+, Network +, MCP on Windows 2000 and 2000 Server) I got a job doing tech support for Ford. Technically it was a Ford subsidiary that contracts out to support various office buildings and production plants. That was kind of fun. I was there for about a year before Moira and I moved back to Wisconsin to be near my family and a bunch of our friends who were out that way.
Since then, I've worked for a company that produces healthcare-related software. Since I was only doing internal support, I was with them for years and years and never actually saw our product. In fact, there came a point where I was honestly not even sure what we made anymore. While working there, my company paid for a multi-thousand dollar class plus hotel stay for me where I earned a CCNA certification. They then failed to have me do anything whatsoever with it. Whee. I've often thought that if I'd gotten into network design like I wanted, I might still be interested in working in IT. Anyway, I was laid off from there about a month ago after a merger with another company that produced 'redundant positions'. I'm looking at it as an opportunity. The job had really been driving me crazy after the last few mergers.
Moira and I rented a house in Kenosha for a number of years. It had to be a house because we had a big bouncy Akita who needed a place where he had a yard to enjoy. In a very real sense, we were paying the extra money for a house just to make sure he had a safe and happy place to live with us, because once he died, it wasn't long before we started looking at apartments. I miss my dog a lot sometimes. Especially given that the way my life is right now, I don't know when I'm going to be able to have another one. Dogs are very close to my heart, and I really miss having one around in ways that probably seem silly to non dog people.
Through the years of our relationship, we transitioned from monogamy to polyamory. We had each dated (more or less; the situation was far too complicated sometimes) a couple other people during the course of our relationship. To make a very long story very short, a number of things in the time leading up to looking for a new place to live lead Moira and I to decide to spend some time living apart from each other. She moved to Racine while I lived with my parents there in Kenosha for a few months as she and I tried to decide where to go from there. In the end, we decided to stay apart, and I moved down to Chicago where I've wanted for some time to try living. After a time, her other partner,
mocha_mephooki, moved in with her, and it makes me very happy that the two of them are happy. There are a lot of really positive things that have resulted from that. Since I'm not financially responsible to another person, and I don't have pets to watch over and take care of, I have a degree of latitude in my actions that not a lot of people get to enjoy. I'm staying in a room that I'm renting in a friend of a friend's condo, so my living expenses are low. I can travel basically whenever I like if I can find a place to stay. I have the opportunity to attend a Japanese class here in the city; I'd never be able to find something like that in a smaller town. My experiences in places like New York City and Chicago have fully sold me on living in a big city. I love it here. There's just so *much*, you know?
While living here in Chicago, I went to a small convention in Wisconsin (not the same one where I met Moira, though I was invited to go by the same person!) where I met
danaeris who I've now been dating since late last year. By coincidence, she was already involved with a friend of mine who I'd known for quite a while beforehand, though I don't get to see too much of him since he lives in the UK. I have some of the most intriguing conversations with her, and she is just wonderful, and a wonderful girlfriend, in general! I have the joy of seeing her pretty regularly these days. Though speaking of travelling, I'm planning a trip to the UK in the Summer. It'll be my first time overseas, and I'm just inexpressibly excited about it.
I've also been developing a close friendship with
red_ceilidh, who lives in Michigan. English is very lacking in terms usable to describe a vast array of levels of personal relationships. She is a dear friend who I enjoy spending time with and who deserves a mention here. She is a ren-faire friend of Moira's from before I knew her, but I was horribly shy when I lived in Michigan and never talked to her (or many people at all for that matter) very much until recent times.Speaking of shyness, my life has taken a 180 when it comes to that. I used to be terrified of people. There was a time, as recently as high school, when I was too scared of people to call up a store to ask if something was in stock, or to talk to teachers or people I was in class with. It wasn't until college that I figured out that I am Faceblind, and that that's why it was so very hard for me to get to know people and remember who they are. I used to think that I was horribly, irredeemably introverted and would never be able to deal with people. I wanted a job where I could just sit in a cave and deal with computers. I certainly wouldn't want to have to, *echh*, talk to people all day.
Now, I start conversations with random strangers on the train and I daydream about learning about other people for a living. How did this happen? I have theories I suppose, but this is long enough already. Suffice it to say that, in a lot of ways, I am a completely different person than I was just a few years ago. Life is strange, huh? I still have trouble remembering people because of the neurological issues, but now that I understand where the problems are, I can work around them and I think I manage pretty well for the most part.
And let's see. Beyond that, I'm planning to go back to school full time in the Fall, for a degree in anthropology. I'm a serious amateur photographer and all the experiences I've had with abandoned buildings and classic architecture have lead to a fascination in why buildings and cities develop and shrink and change the way they do and how that engages people as individuals. I want to talk to people and understand the way different people in different cities live. I want to do folk histories, and vicariously live many, many more experiences than a person can have in one lifetime.
Questions? Comments? Feel free to leave a note!
