User Profile

OK, here's me in a nutshell.... no wait, Austin Powers already used that lame joke....

I am happily married to the most wonderfull woman on the planet. No, she didn't write that bit. I actually mean it. Even on those days where she completely annoys the crap out of me, she's still the one I want to wake up next to. The fact that she says the same sorts of things about me speaks only to her own poor judgement in men. I thank her for that small failing as it benefits me greatly.

I'm a consultant. this means that people seem to want my skills, but not enough to actually put up with having me on permanent staff. Can't say as I blame them really as I suffer from a severe deficiency in tact from time to time. However, it seems that having the ability to get Oracle databases to vomit out massive sets of correlated data in a timely fashion is a skill in demand, so people keep on finding reasons to pay my mortgage.

We have kids. We love them more than life itself. Children have an amazing ability to fill you with love, tenderness, anxiety, guilt, and frustration. Worth every minute of it.

I'm an atheist-leaning agnostic. Which is to say that I find absurd the notion that some dude created me in his image just so he could spend all his time looking for reasons to find fault with my use of that image. A dude who sent his own son down to be brutally whacked in order to teach me the true meaning of love. I label myself as agnostic only because I have to concede that I am NOT all-knowing, and so must admit that the farfetched notion that there IS a supreme deity does exist in the infinite realm of possibility. People who claim to have absolute certainty on either side of the argument are, to my mind, awfully high on themselves (or other substances). If there IS a God though, I'm not sure that I'd be tempted to do anything besides kick him in the 'nads for some of the things he allowed to happen in His name if I ever met him. So, probably best if we don't meet.

I have a mind like a steel trap, but it's a rather porous lobster trap. A rusty one at that. Really, it's like having no trap at all.

I take pictures. LOTS of pictures. Some of them are even borderline presentable.

Sarcasm may be the lowest form of humour, however I find it indispensable for dealing with the world around me. I'd be more optimistic about the average person if I hadn't already met too damn many of them.

I have wonderful plans for all of the improvements I want to do to the house. And I'll get them all done sometime before I die. I'd have them done already if it weren't for the fact that I tend to procrastinate. In this context, "tend to" is to be taken in the same framework as how, for example, gravity "tends to" cause objects to drop to the ground.

My spelling sucks and I punctuate in a manner consistent with how I would narrate verbally. Yes, I know that my MS Word has tools which would facilitate correcting these deficiencies in my posts, and I'll get around to using those tools at some point in the future. Right after I finish my projects around the house.

Politically, I am a social liberal (nay - borderline social libertarian), and a fiscal centrist. Which is to say that I don't think the government needs to moralize on many subjects, nor should they care which adults are having sex with which other adults, saving that I'm tired of them f*cking ME when it comes to some of their spending priorities. Icebreakers that won't break ice? Ad campaigns pointing fingers at each other for every problem instead of working to come up with solutions? Piss off and just put the money I sent you into health care and education where it belongs. Thank you.

I write several type of posts. About a third of them are rants on current events. A third are vignettes of family life. Another third are lame attempts at humour, and a final third are simply poorly written stories used to tie several photographs together into a theme. The final quarter are notes on how bad I am with fractions.

I've been using the name "Zeppo Marx" online since the early days of Kermit, blazing fast 128baud external modems, and posting to local BBSs. The reasons for initially adopting that nickname are long, long gone, but I've been Zeppo for so long now that I've grown comfortable with that schism in my personality.

I knew that the Internet would take off the day I downloaded my first free nudie pic. In black and white. Took about an hour. Oh, as a teenage boy, how I knew that I would love the internet that day. Now I can't surf for an hour without at least one pair of breasts popping up unbidden in a little window somewhere. The fact that breastss online have gone from novelty to nuisance in just a couple of short decades is the truest testament to the miracles of modern technology.

I live in Ottawa. Voluntarily. No, there's no other joke to go with that. Some things stand up quite nicely on their own.


Some posts related to my personal life are "Friends only", but most are not. New additions to my friends list who want can get caught up on the journey thus far via the following milestone posts, not all of which are public:

First Contacts.
Things progress.
I discover parenting
We Honeymoon...with Dad.
Then we get married.
Ultra-what?.
And Holly makes four.
Which is enough!.
Until Jacob makes three.

Plus some other random yet personally meaningful scribblings over the years.

Between restricted online access from work in my current position and the time constraints of family life, frankly I am not neccessarily the most involved online friend you will encounter these days. I try to stay caught up, and to take the time to converse with everyone - but often find that I have gone a day or three without accessing LJ. That's just the way life is for me these days, so please don't be offended if I don't reply to every post you may make.

I would if I could.