Five Questions Meme

From jducoeur:

What was your first SCA experience? I actually don't know much about your pre-Eliz history.

Alexander the Landless and I went to college together and lived on the same floor and occasionally the same room. One day there was this loud clatter from outside...
I dabbled for a few years, going to local events, irregularly attending fighting practice, then moved to Carolingia. Shortly after Eliz and I moved in together, I realized that I didn't have much attachment to Halfdan Valesson the boring generic Viking.

You read a vast amount of science fiction. From that field, who is your favorite current writer -- the one you would most avidly hope to see more books from?

What, I only get one choice? My favorite currently-writing authors are Charlie Stross, Iain Banks, Walter Jon Williams, John Varley and Jerry Oltion. All of those have books in process right now, except Oltion -- he should write more. On the front of 'authors who really ought to write more but don't seem to be doing much':
John Steakley, Daniel K. Moran and Janet Kagan.

Systems administration is a field involving a lot of disciplines, ranging from programming to mediating between the geeks and laypeople. Which aspect of it do you consider yourself best at?

I'm a solution-finder more than anything else. I figure out what problems people really have (as opposed to what they ask for) and then come up with ways of solving them. It helps to be an uber-generalist, and I am -- I spend a lot of time looking for the solutions other people have found to problems I've not yet encountered. Apart from that, I'm pretty good at keeping complex systems in my head.

What aspect of yourself do you most like -- specifically, what would you most hope to see your sons emulate?

I believe that intellectual freedom is the root of all other freedoms, and I'd like them to think the same thing. Hopefully I'll teach it to them by example.

Flip that: what would you most hope to see your sons do differently than you?

So many things have come so easily to me that I have almost no willingness to practice anything difficult. I hope they can overcome that tendency.

Five Questions Meme

From jducoeur:

What was your first SCA experience? I actually don't know much about your pre-Eliz history.

Alexander the Landless and I went to college together and lived on the same floor and occasionally the same room. One day there was this loud clatter from outside...
I dabbled for a few years, going to local events, irregularly attending fighting practice, then moved to Carolingia. Shortly after Eliz and I moved in together, I realized that I didn't have much attachment to Halfdan Valesson the boring generic Viking.

You read a vast amount of science fiction. From that field, who is your favorite current writer -- the one you would most avidly hope to see more books from?

What, I only get one choice? My favorite currently-writing authors are Charlie Stross, Iain Banks, Walter Jon Williams, John Varley and Jerry Oltion. All of those have books in process right now, except Oltion -- he should write more. On the front of 'authors who really ought to write more but don't seem to be doing much':
John Steakley, Daniel K. Moran and Janet Kagan.

Systems administration is a field involving a lot of disciplines, ranging from programming to mediating between the geeks and laypeople. Which aspect of it do you consider yourself best at?

I'm a solution-finder more than anything else. I figure out what problems people really have (as opposed to what they ask for) and then come up with ways of solving them. It helps to be an uber-generalist, and I am -- I spend a lot of time looking for the solutions other people have found to problems I've not yet encountered. Apart from that, I'm pretty good at keeping complex systems in my head.

What aspect of yourself do you most like -- specifically, what would you most hope to see your sons emulate?

I believe that intellectual freedom is the root of all other freedoms, and I'd like them to think the same thing. Hopefully I'll teach it to them by example.

Flip that: what would you most hope to see your sons do differently than you?

So many things have come so easily to me that I have almost no willingness to practice anything difficult. I hope they can overcome that tendency.