Hello!

I've lived Stateside all my life but do my best to view the 
world through a portal to international status. I'm not very 
political, however, so just because I don't keep in touch with 
your world happenings don't consider me inane; I'm cultural 
diverse, not newspaper diverse.

Hmm...

I've been heavily interested in writing since I could remember. 
My sister recieved a word processor for her birthday and I 
immediately took to it, using it more than her. I've written 
many a chapter of unpublished (and thankfully long ago purged) 
work but continue to live the dream.

I've never been formally trained in writing a novel or any other 
material beyond what public schooling has lent me but I get 
along fairly well, some of my stuff you can find at...

http://www.writing.com/authors/alieninhead

I can be matter-of-fact but thats just because I'm better 
writing out my sentences than speaking them, I'm TOTALLY a 
different person off the computalator. So much so you don't even 
know.

In any case..I'm 20 now, 21 in a matter of months. Stateside 
this is the legal drinking age. In reality I've been consuming 
alcohol liberally since I was 13, so I'm pretty unphased about 
this whole thing (Thanks Mom'n'Dad!) so I don't expect to be 
having a wild time.

I enjoy music profusely and read a lot. My favorite author as of 
late would have to be William Gibson and I also have a shelf 
full of Shadowrun novels. 

In the end, I consider myself to be a 'cyber(goth,punk),' trying 
desperately to recreate a lifestyle portrayed in modern science 
fiction. How sad. :D

But my understanding and lust for knowledge reguarding computers 
does grant me some credibility..right?

Ahh..computer background. I've built a monster out of circa 1999 
hardware given to me by my ex-chiropractor (nice guy!). The deal 
was that I'd build it and he'd get to see it. Never happened 
because I moved to California. Sucks! But I did put it together 
finally in 2003 and I'm currently running...

P3 900Mhz (throttled at 600 or 800 if I wanna push my luck)
256MB SDRAM/PC100
1 8GB "Bigfoot" 5400RPM Quantam hard drive 
(Original to an IBM PC, where most this stuff came from.)
1 10GB 7200RPM Western Digital Hard Drive
(Both IDE)
1 100GB 5400RPM Western Digital Hard Drive
(USB 2.0)

I have an 8x DVD-ROM (not installed)
and a 52x32x52 CD-RW from TEAC (I do recommend the brand.)

I also have an old serial 100MB Zip I use for mostly backup.
I don't trust optical storage unless its MiniDisc! :D

Graphics card is a Radeon 9000 AGP, I don't really play games on 
my 'puter and the first thing that'd be upgraded would be 
graphics card.

I dualboot Windows 2000 and Mandrake 10.1C, I belong to Mandriva 
Club and have the 2005SE editions laying around but won't be 
installing it anytime soon.

I also own an iBook G3, which needs upgraded hard core. We won't 
discuss it very much..nope.

I've worked with many computers and enjoy them for various 
functions and have always liked getting inside them hardware 
wise and to some extent software wise. I tried programing a bit 
but without formal training I'm a lost cause.

I do know networking to some degree. I spent all of my high 
school in a Cisco Internetworking Class and A+/Netplus Prep 
class. I didn't get any certs because of two beautiful excuses:

Cisco: BORING! Although I'm willing to pick it back up. I wanna 
be a SysAdmin..mmm..security..power..(*evil laugh*)

A+: Hmm..I failed the test in the class due to Windows 3.1 
questions. Yes, I know, even in the day and age of 2001-2003 
someone was using Windows 3.1. But we don't care about them, 
because they're obsolete and should be recycled at the human 
bank.

Global Heap being RAM startup terminology..*grummbles*

Other than that I'm generally a cool person (because I say so). 
I try to be active in my community but the culture shock of 
California is not working out too well. I don't mean to sound 
like a hypocrit but the rampant culture clashing (and thats what 
many people see it as) causes a lot of people to just close up 
and not dwell on things.

And then you have SVUSD Church. The people who go there have 
learned to mainly not talk about their chosen path to oblivion, 
which is good, but lets face it...there's a lot of conservative 
people here. And thats coming from a Republican! (In political 
beleifs only, not on social ideaologies!)

I do currently hope to get more involved with my community but 
will probably be relegated to just helping advance the queer 
agenda. Not that I don't mind.

~Allexus