Co-Op Nursery School - Urbana, IL

1979-1982

I don't remember too much of Co-Op, except what's been told to me by my parents - I was a terror, I learned a whole lot, and I gained a lot of my personality from interacting with all of those kids and, more importantly, their parents. Overall, it gave me a basis for the rest of my life. Yay.

Westview Elementary - Champaign, IL

1982-1985

I spent most of my time here skipping between classes, because my Kindergarten teacher figured out that I already knew my letters when I started, and it snowballed from there. The teachers were good, and I met Sean here, but that's about all that I remember.

Lincoln Elemantary - Lincoln, New Zealand

1985-1986

I was here for six months total, 3 of which were summer and therefore didn't have any school. We had to wear uniforms, all of my friend kept on moving away, and my teachers tried to make me write in cursive. It was odd.

Dr Howard Elementary - Champaign, IL

1986-1988

Both years here were with Mr Elrick, probably the best teacher I've ever had. I learned, I got picked on, I began to carve myself out a niche, and then I had to leave grade school. At least I learned some Latin on the way.

Edison Middle School - Champaign, IL

1988-1989

Mom claims it's gotten better since I went here; I believe her, since it couldn't get that much worse. The classes were pathetically easy, my classmates were cruel and un-controlled, my teachers usually knew less than I did, and I just plain hated the entire year; the only thing I really learned was how to type. Luckily, I escaped, and only slightly scarred.

University High School - Urbana, IL

1989-1991

Uni is a "gifted" school, half-public and half-private. I ran here from Edison partially because I was good enough to get in, but mostly because I couldn't stand Edison anymore. I started at Uni alone and friendless, but a good student; while I was still picked on, the taunts were a lot more friendly and I felt that I could respond in kind. As a result, at the end of these two years, I'd reversed myself - I had some friends, but was losing out on my grades. And then I got taken to Australia and held back for a year...

Kingswood College - Melbourne, Australia

1991-1992

This was my oddest school experience of my life. The entire school was divided into four teams (I was on Brunning), decided when you or your family started in the school, which always competed in everything; oddly, it was kindof entertaining. Besides, I was a good luck charm. I didn't learn much, especially since they tried to toss me into French III when I'd barely heard the language before. Aah, well. At least it was tolerable, unlike most of my experiences there (going away from home when you're a teenager isn't much fun), and it got me back on track...

University High School - Urbana, IL

1992-1995

When I came back to Uni, I quickly lost my old friends and began caring about grades again. This time, to be interesting, I also immersed myself in computers - or at least BBSes. But by the end of high school, I was back in the thick of things - riling up trouble, making lots of friends, meeting all of the lower classes just because I could, and still doing pretty well in my classes. I'd have to say that this was the beginning of my actual life...

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,

[Electrical and Computer Engineering](http://www.ece.uiuc.edu/) - 
Urbana, IL

1995-1999

When I applied for UIUC, it was just because it was local (and because we'd been forced to apply in English class); I essentially chose my major randomly. I turned out to enjoy it, though, and spent the next 4.5 years stumbling through it as I did far too many extracurricular activities, made more friends than I knew what to do with, and generally learned to be me. And, of course, I learned Electrical and Computer Engineering, like I was supposed to. And I liked it.

The <FISH>< is a symbol designed on a whim.

Really. That's it.

I can tell you about the whim, I guess. It was my junior year of college, and I was hanging out in the ?Allen Hall Commons when they decided to put up a new bulletin board - "Everything I need to know about like I learned from fishing." In my wisdom, I took down one of the fish and wrote up a fish symbol in its place ; as an afterthought, I put the word "FISH" into it, partially as a reference to the whole Darwin/Jesus/Cthulhu fish controversy but mostly because I was just bored. I proceeded to not think very much of the board, because it wasn't very interesting.

Then, one day, the letters for "fishing" had been changed to "Skirv".

That sign gained me more notoriety on this campus than just about anything else. When the ?Uni High seniors came to visit a few days later, they all saw my name on the board, and immediately assumed that the entire building was mine (not all that far from the truth, but still odd). As such, 20% of the class decided to move into Allen the next year. Also, the rest of the building noticed it, and began to fear me just a little bit more. And here, all of my contribution had been a little fish with a FISH in it...a fish-fish, that was all...

I learned to draw that symbol quickly and easily.

There wasn't really too much more to the story than that, though. Other than its personal importance and any meaning you can try to give to the <FISH><, its history isn't all that interesting. But it is cool.

Lawn Mowing

Summer 1994

Doesn't everybody need a job like this once in their lives? I made some money, learned that physical labor sucks, and got myself a whole bunch of books with the proceeds. It wasn't fun, but it was work.

Parallax Software - Playtester

Summer 1995

When I saw the signs around DCL advertising for play-testers, I never figured that the company would actually do well, or that I'd actually work for them. When I eventually started, though, I realized that their game was good; now, I can look out at the world and say that my name is in the credits of Descent, one of the pioneer first-person games (not quite at Wolf3D/Doom/Quake level, but close). And it was fun. Yay. (Look, proof!!)

Sponsornet - Web Surfer

Summer 1995

For the summer of 1995, my real job was sitting in front of a computer and doing web browsing. A couple of friends of mine had come up with the concept of web advertising, you see, slightly before there was a chance of it actually working; unfortunately, it didn't work. But that's okay, I still got some money, and realized that there were non- manual-labor jobs I disliked more than anything else. Advertising is evil. But I was there, at the dawn of the new age of the web...

UIUC Math Department - Computer Consultant

Oct 1995 - May 1999

When I was applying for this, my first real job, I got the impression that their standards were ridiculously high for what looked to be a basic lab-sitter job. After I got the job, I began to figure out why - the Math Department's labs depended on us, because they didn't have enough staff to take care of everything. I spent the next few years here, writing web pages and doing stuff on my own while making sure the lab didn't fall apart; eventually I stopped, and, as far as I can tell, their final decline is in progress as I type this. Aah, well.

United States Army - Construction Engineering Research Labs (USA-CERL) -

Research Computing

Summer 1996

When I signed up to work for CERL, I thought that I was going to be a programmer. Unfortunately, my interview hadn't put my programming skills at the forefront; instead, I was a research assistant/ lackey that just followed my boss (Paul Schomer) around and tried to fix things. This forced me to travel to Fallon, NV, where I spent the summer recording and analyzing explosion noises. It wasn't that bad, but it was enough to keep me from sticking around during the next year, and gave me a healthy distrust for Corporate America.

Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing - News Administrator

Feb 1999 - Mar 2000

While still working for the Math Department, one of my friends (Tom) walked up to me one day and said "want to actually be a news admin?" I gladly said yes, and thereby got the best job of my life... I was actually more of a general system administrator, maintaining a few hundred machines of various platforms with my neurotic but friendly boss and co-workers; still, I got the title, and I learned a lot more about how news works. It was a nice little base of operations, and most certainly the best job that a college student that wanted to be an admin (read: me) could have. Plus, it led directly to my next one...

Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group

Mar 2000 - Nov 2001: Systems Administrator

Nov 2001 - Nov 2008: Senior Systems Administrator

I really enjoyed this, my first real job. My official role was 'sysadmin' - the guy in charge of taking care of all of the 250 machines, and the people (50-100, depending on your count) that need to use them. My unofficial role was 'living memory'; I knew as much about what's going on in this group as anybody, and I'm pretty good at using that kind of information to keep things running in the background. I had a couple of assistants at any given time, and could call upon the help of the staff and 5-10 grad students for additional help. The place ran about as smoothly, computer-wise, as any place I've ever seen; and I integrated myself into it as tightly as anybody could hope.

Center for Women in Transition - Volunteer Computer Guy

Feb 2004 - Aug 2004

My brother's friend John started asking a few months ago whether I would like to make a few extra bucks doing some basic computer support for the CWT, a local women's shelter. I didn't want the money, but I did want to just do some volunteer work, so I worked on it for a while. Sadly, my time started to drop off and I just wasn't able to get much done, so I gave up after a few months; but it was nice while it lasted, and gave me a better impression of what working with a Windows environment is like...

Stanford IT Services - Systems Software Developer

Dec 2007 - present

I'll write this up later.

The definition of a lanyard:

• A cord worn around the neck for carrying something, such as a knife or whistle.

I wore one (nearly) daily from Aug 1995 to Mar 2008.

Personal History

The story of my lanyards began with the question of what to do with my ?buttons. For eight months, I had been wearing a different button every day, and in so doing building up a personality for myself. This was about to change, though, with the start of college - I just plain couldn't afford to get a new button every day, both money- and time-wise, now that I was going to live in ?Allen Hall.

So, what should I do?

The answer came to me fairly suddenly - I was at Champaign Surplus, our local army surplus store, and spotted a key chain on a necklace. Whoa! I thought. Cool! I can avoid losing my keys... I picked one up for that purpose, blue with red stripes, and on the way home I realized that it was just right for attaching buttons...

My first lanyard lasted for a year and a half, from August 1995 to December 1996. It was deteriorating during all of this time, as I did more and more evil things to it (playing with the plastic on the back of the neck, adding more buttons, etc); it was about time for it to be replaced. Then suddenly came the ?Ch@os affair, something which shook me to my heart and threatened to send me spiraling into depression...

I had a nice long talk with myself, and decided to sacrifice the lanyard to the greater good of my sanity.

I chose a new lanyard soon, much to my surprise; I put it on at the beginning of the new year. I was much happier with this one, too - most importantly, the keychain was removable, so I wasn't threatened with strangulation every time I wanted to open a door. I also started putting more buttons on this one, up to about five from three; as such, it started falling apart a lot faster. Then, around the end of the next year, I broke down again due to another personal crisis (this time involving a couple of good friends getting together that really shouldn't) - and the process repeated. Again, on 01 Jan 1998 I chose a new lanyard, and this one stayed for the whole year...

In fact, it stayed until it outright broke.

In 1999, I went through four lanyards. This was due to two factors: one, I had started putting far too many buttons on the thing, which weighed it down and made it break sooner. I attempted to solve this by buttoning the things together on the back of my neck, but this a) hurt and b) only prolonged the inevitable. Two, and more importantly, Champaign Surplus decided to stop stocking the old lanyards. The new ones are just half as thick, and can't hold up to nearly as much punishment as before...

For a while, I was stuck; I couldn't find a new one that didn't suck, and the ones that did suck only last for six weeks or so. This lasted until my trip to ComicCon 2001; on the way back, I found out that America West Airlines was giving out these lanyards to their employees. Giving them out! Can you imagine? They gave me one... and that lasted me until I found out that you could now order them online. And so now, I gathered several in my desk drawer, and all was good.

That's the story of my lanyard. It was there for years, and I enjoyed it the whole time. I really kindof miss it now. It was a part of me, and maybe it's worth bringing back some day.

Reviews and Promotion

Besides the fact that I've worn lanyards a fair amount over the last decade or so, I don't really know too much about them. In fact, until recently I was not really aware that there was a fair-sized industry dedicated to them. I could have guessed, I suppose; after all, lanyards have begun to pop up in all sorts of corporate cultures, and are even worn with buttons at various coffee shops and bookstores. But the only time that this has entered my mind when was when I was off searching for a new one to buy...

One other thing that I've noticed is that I have very strong opinions about lanyards. Most of them, especially the ones with corporate logos on them, are complete, dangerous crap. I won't wear them, and I cringe when I see others wearing them. At some point, it was inevitable that I would begin to review them...

• Sports Lanyard Plus - EK USA

  These are the lanyards I've worn the most over the years. They're comfy, and made of a good material that doesn't tear up your neck.
  Most importantly, they have a breakaway design, so that if somebody tries to kill you, the lanyard will break before your neck. A good, no-frills lanyard.

• Sports Lanyard - EK USA

  I've worn several of these, but the lack of key clip bothered me all the time. I prefer the Plus.

• Thin Sports Lanyard Plus - EK USA

  These seemed like a good idea, but a) they can't hold too much stuff and b) they're more breakable then their non-thin brethren.
  Not my cup of tea.

• CooLanyard Cammo w/Slider

  I haven't actually gotten a chance to wear this one yet. From the outside, it looks great - good material, and the breakaway features appear to do what they're supposed to do (keep me from dying) while being fixable if it does break. The extra toys - whistle, knife, and flashlight - are just candy. I'm really tempted to buy myself one with the cell phone holder, too...

  Full disclosure: they did send me a free lanyard. They asked for a review as well, but it was not required. I just happen to like the thing!

Mom & Dad's House - Champaign, IL

Nov 1977 - Aug 1995, Summer 1997

If you hadn't guessed from the dates, this is where I grew up. It's an odd house, filled with more oddities than anybody can really understand without seeing it; there are entire rooms filled with books, walls covered in buttons, stuffed animals everywhere, disembodied legs hanging over the railing, and just more stuff than I can legitimately explain here. My room is upstairs, an old closet from the larger room I shared with my brother; it's still a great place to sleep, and has a lot of my stuff in it. I still consider it all a home. And luckily, my parents have far too much stuff to ever consider moving.

Lincoln, New Zealand

Fall 1985 - Spring 1986

One day when I was eight, my parents came in and showed us New Zealand on a globe and told us we were going there. I was far too young to understand. It was an interesting sabbatical, if mildly traumatic for a kid who was in the process of finding friends; our house there was nice, at least, even if the TV left something to be desired and we weren't there all that often because Mom and Dad would drag us on trips all the time. But I enjoyed it, which is more than I can say for the Australia trip. And by reports, I was changed by it too.

Melbourne, Australia

Fall 1991 - Spring 1992

When my parents told us that we were going to Australia, this time I had enough experience to know that it might not be in my best interests. This, combined with my age (rebellious teenager!), was enough to make me hate every minute of my time in Australia. Sure, it was neat seeing uncensored movies on TV, I got a whole lot of books read, the animals ruled, I had a cool lizard, and I actually got my own room, but it wasn't enough to keep me happy. Of course, because I went I'm sane today, but that wasn't much comfort at the time - although, again, the animals were.

Allen Hall 2 Center

Fall 1995 - Spring 1996

When I first moved to Allen, I lived with some friends from high school, Andy and George. It was a good living experience, and also gave me plenty of chances to go downstairs and play with others - certainly enough to begin my reign in Allen. And at the time I didn't even mind the floor, even though it was mostly frat wannabes...

Fallon Naval Base, Nevada

Summer 1996

While working for CERL, I spent a lot of time stationed at the Navy base in Fallon. I had a security clearance, I lived in an military hotel, I ate less than $2/day on food... And I won't do that again.

Allen Hall 4 North

Fall 1996 - Spring 1997

Before I lived on 4N, it was the Gay Floor - which is what drew me in (there's certain value in having everybody assume the wrong thing about you). Unfortunately, it seems like everybody else had the same idea, because it became a rehash of 2C... I jumped from room to room during the year, disliking most of it, and eventually ended up living in a room that I didn't even have a key to. All in all, a bad experience, if interesting.

Allen Hall Commons

February 1997

After a particularly bad fight with my roommates that ended with my bed being filled with crap after returning from a long road trip, I moved into the Commons for a couple of days. It was a strange experience, just sleeping down there and watching over the few things I'd brought along. I really didn't mind it all that much, though. If nothing else, it cemented my position as "strange" in Allen, and I'm still happy that Mike eventually gave me a real place to sleep.

Allen Hall Ground South

Fall 1997 - Spring 1998, Fall 1998 - Spring 1999

Ground South was, in my mind, the pinnacle of what Allen Hall was about - a place where everybody had their own strange ideas about how things should go and didn't mind making them happen. I was elected President of the floor as soon as I joined up, and spent my time promoting their interests and doing stuff for my new friends; it was a wonderful experience, and one that I wish I could continue indefinitely. May the Ground South Empire live forever. RAs Tsuck! Damn the Man! And his Doors!

h0l

Summer 1998 and Summer 1999

The h0l, originally the House of Leet, is a house full of computer geeks and other odd people. I lived both summers on the third floor, away from anybody that would try to bother me when I didn't want to be; I learned to get along with a lot of people that I would have never dealt with otherwise, too. And I finally got accepted as part of the local geek Real Life culture as a result of it. All in all, it was a worthy experience. Besides, they're still hosting one of my machines...

Brak's Apartment of Sunshine and Light

Fall 1999 - Summer 2000

Finally done with Allen, my first instinct was to move into h0l to finish off my college career. Then, one day, I realized that this would probably be a bad idea, thanks to a lot of fights brewing (a few of which I got reluctantly but directly involved in - shiver). Instead, I decided to live with Caitte (my recently adopted sister) and James (one of the first people I met my freshman year) - a combination that was almost guaranteed to kill us all. But, through mockery and a good sense of self-preservation, we survived. It wasn't even that bad - well, not most of the time. Sometimes it was downright unlivable. But I got along so well with James, and managed to keep Caitte out of most trouble... It was good. And I even got to put Brak on the door...

Brak's Dungeon of Doom

Fall 2000 - Summer 2001

By the time I realized I was staying in C-U, it was too late to stay in BASL - which would have been my first choice, even without any roommates to keep me company. Instead, I got a hold of Darren, one of my successors in Allen, and talked him into sharing a place with me. Sadly, we chose a place in Champaign. It looked like it was going to work, we had a good landlord and everything... But we had racial slurs directed our way, our apartment vandalized, the ceiling of the bathroom fall in, and our landlord sell the place to CPM, the worst landlords on campus. Dammit.

Brak's Tower of De-Light!

Fall 2001 - Summer 2002

Escaping BDOD was a good idea, especially since I didn't have to lose Darren as a roommate. BTOD was in a nice location in Urbana, across from a church; it was much larger than the last place, in better shape, and just felt nicer in general. The best part was that it was within walking distance of work and all of my friends (particularly useful the first half of the year, but still nice the second). We left, though, because Darren bought his own place and asked me to live with him. Fair enough.

Darren's House

Fall 2002 - Spring 2005

Darren took possession of his new place (a condo by name, it looks closer to a townhouse) on May 15 2002, and we moved in in late July/early August. It's a nice place in deep Urbana, much larger than anything else we'd lived in before but also way off the beaten path; on the other hand, it's also right across the street from groceries and plenty of other stores, and is on several major bus routes. I lived here for two-and-a-half years, before finally going out and buying my own place.

Skirv's House - Champaign, IL

Spring 2005 - Winter 2007

I really miss owning a house.

Birch Creek Apartments - Mountain View, CA

Dec 2007 - present

I'm not used to the rent, but it's a nice 1100sqf apartment in Mountain View, CA. I have nice furniture, there's fish ponds, and I'm well off the street. It's... adult. So odd!