Proust Questionnaire: James "justifiably james" Nathan

So, let's see...the first time I met James I was jacked up on chemo sitting in his office trying to figure out what the fuck he was talking about regarding RBAC, ISSM, and wanting me to write a paper on the security features of Solaris 10. I went to the nearest bathroom and puked. He got me out to Denver on a project and supported me through my time with the c. He is one of my true friends and I know if anything every happened to me I could count on Jamesy to help me out. We are going to work on a book together, as soon as the other one is out the door, called "the player chronicles". Hugs & xxx to you J.

http://iamanmd.multiply.com

What is your current state of mind?
BLESSED

What is your greatest fear?
That I wont live long enough to see my children prosper

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
my Patience and acceptance of people

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
lack of integrity

What living person do you most admire?
Muhammad Ali

What living person do you most despise?
hmmmm any conservative talk show host

On what occasion do you lie?
"daddy is santa going to grand ma house too"

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Vera Viera my second wife

When and where were you happiest?
Hawaii

Which talent would you most like to have?
SING

If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?
my height

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
my girls are my greatest achievement

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
hmmm OBAMA

What is your favorite occupation?
the one i am now

Who are your favorite writers?
lawd!! JR TOLKIEN , Philip Margolin, LA Banks, Cornel West

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Aragon

Who are your heroes in real life?
Ali, OBAMA, Ben Disraeli, my grand pop

What are your favorite names?
James, Franki, Aayana, Aanisa, Aarika, Aakira, to name a few :)

What is your greatest regret?
that I didnt go back to art school

How would you like to die?
in my bed in my house, in my sleep with my children around me

What is your motto?
Today is a day worth LIVING FOR!

Proust Questionnaire: Tami "XT" Knight

An intro to Tami: the Canadian version of me, illustrator and author of a lot of books including Everest: The Ultimate Hump and a book about household knots. She works with cirkids.org and knows how to make hats!

What is your current state of mind?
Slightly rushed & preferring a bit of a slow down

What is your greatest fear?
Barfing. I really don't like barfing.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Inability to advocate on my own behalf.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Dishonesty.

What living person do you most admire?
Jane Goodall.

What living person do you most despise?
My ex-boss at my old job who was a pompous asshole but thought of himself as a mystical genius.

On what occasion do you lie?
If it keeps others from being hurt......or asking too many questions.

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
My husband. I'm serious. I won the lottery meeting him.

When and where were you happiest?
Rite now here at home with my family & especially when my son is here with the five of us ( 3 humans ; 2 kitties )

Which talent would you most like to have?
To play the violin and speak Japanese.

If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?
Lower blood pressure.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Becoming a circus arts coach to children

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
......as opposed to "want it to be"? I'm likely to come back as a Jack Russell terrier.

What is your favorite occupation?
Teaching circus arts.

Who are your favorite writers?
John Irving, Kurt Vonnegut, Gunter Grass, Michael Ondaatje, Tom Robbins ; I'm currently reading Truman Capote.

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
I don't seem to have one.............yikes. Even searching and thinking about it I can't think of one. I'm not drawn to "the heroic" in literature but , rather, the complex web of a story that an author can tell.

Who are your heroes in real life?
My mum and my favorite coaches and teachers.

What are your favorite names?
I don't have favorites but, being a teacher of children I sure have non-favorites and those are , first, any name that is spelled weird or unordinary to it's norm ( e.g. "Jaimz" for "James" ), secondly, names that are just plain silly ( "Spitfire", "Ramamoon", "Moss" ). Yes I've come across those last three.

What is your greatest regret?
I've divested myself of having regrets and make a monumental effort not to have them. Regrets are a massive waste of time.

How would you like to die?
In a long time from now and at the same time as my husband.

What is your motto?
Carpay all the diems hahaha

Proust Questionnaire: Kerreck "hug me I purr" Jones

An intro to Kerreck: one of my best friends from back in the days of San Fran, ballet, and gourmet cooking (by Ker). A gifted mathematician that got away with a lot more than the rest of us regarding our customer and occupation. The culmination of our partying was the exotic erotic ball where he was interviewed on national TV wearing the star spangled g-string about a month after 9/11. He will hopefully remember me breaking into a boat house in my vampire costume to get my ticket and almost taking a swim in the bay. Our best heist was stealing someone's box at the ballet and then staggering over to Alcatraz the next morning for a tour. We did the sharkfest together although he got out of the water about 40minutes before I did. He is also the one who served me with divorce papers. He even dressed up for the occasion, walked into my cube, slammed them on my desk and said "You've been SERVED!" My last hug in San Fran...

What is your current state of mind?
mildly contented

What is your greatest fear? Becoming morbidly obese

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Not having a job I love

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Gargantuan Ego with extremely large body fat %

What living person do you most admire?
No one, right now

What living person do you most despise?
Certain disgusting repulsive obese people at my last job

On what occasion do you lie?
I'm at the point where even I can't tell

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
My kitty

When and where were you happiest?
When I was in the cast of the musical "Good News" in the summer of 1991.

Which talent would you most like to have?
Strolling and playing accordion while singing Rodgers and Hart ballads

If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be? Acquire the above talent

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Having less than 9% body fat at my age.

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
A poolside towel boy at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas

What is your favorite occupation? Entertainer

Who are your favorite writers?
I loved Hemingway. Kafka is cool as well as Isaac Bashevis Singer. I am now getting into Gabriel Marquez Garcia

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Can't think of one right now

Who are your heroes in real life?
Navy Seals, Marines and Rangers who whip it up on the Taliban

What are your favorite names?
Don't have any

What is your greatest regret?
Getting involved with hateful Zionists when I was younger.

How would you like to die?
Being attacked by jailbait while performing as a male stripper at a sweet 16 party

What is your motto?
Don't have one.

meta crap, broken fingers

Great find by Anonymous:

http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm



My favorite quote from this article: "Short of breaking fingers or sending out squads of vengeful info-ninjas to add metadata to the average user's files, we're never gonna get there."

super eyes

So, by the end of this week, I may have one super eye. And if things go well with that, I will, in a month, get another super eye. Right eye is going first.

When I was a kid my parents would make gifts because we didn't have a lot of money. My dad started making me chemistry sets when I was six. I also had my own microscope. He would get the chemicals and then put together a lab book of experiments for me to do. That worked out well and as the years went on the chemicals I got became more and more dangerous.

Around the time I was 10 I think, I got my usual chemistry set, did the experiments in the lab book, and then began improvising. For one experiment I put some chemicals in a test tube. Nothing happened. So then I corked and shook the test tube. Still nothing. So then I applied heat to the bottom of the test tube. This was all being done in my "laboratory", a pile of bricks on the side of our house. The yard went down a steep slope to our neighbor's driveway, and my dad had been trying to grow grass there, finally succeeding. So there I was, sitting on the side of the house, applying a lighter to a test tube.

The test tube exploded. I remember stomping in the grass because it seems there was a fire in the grass and I was worried about burning the house down. My brother ran inside to tell my mom what I did, which was lucky. She rinsed my eyes out with cold water, almost drowning me in the process. That likely saved my eye sight.

The explosion caused a lot of scar tissue on my eyes. By the time I was 14 I was developing major sight issues and could barely tolerate normal light. This is because, with the scar tissue, my pupil was not reacting as quickly as it should to light. Also, my vision would star and halo in low light or darkness. I ended up going through a treatment for my eyes, but through the military so the treatment sucked. At one point I started wearing sunglasses all the time because I couldn't keep my eyes open in normal light because it was too painful.

In 1994 I had started to get tunneled sight so badly that I could barely read and had lost almost all peripheral vision. A doctor operated on my eyes and attempted to clean up the mess. This was when I was dating a guy named Arthur, who was from South Africa, and the poor thing was in the waiting room, saw me coming out, and then I fainted so he had to carry me to the car. I was wearing these things that looked like paper cups on my eyes to protect them. We had not been dating long. In the car I started describing to him how I saw these metal rings laying on the table that they had used to cut up my eyes. He wretched. I had been given valium before the surgery, making me chatty.

Anyway, as we headed towards my apartment Arthur was pulled over by the hate because my vehicle tags were expired. The cop was confused by his South African driver's license and me sitting in the passenger seat with these cups on my eyes babbling about my surgery. He gave us a police escort to the DMV and got my tags renewed in 20 minutes. He even let us park in the handicap parking space. Arthur had to sign everything because I couldn't see. He told everyone he was my husband which was the first time a guy had ever referred to himself as that. Years later he left a comment on a web page I had set up. We wrote a manual together on object oriented design but they took our names off of it and it was never published: http://www.idef.com/IDEF4.html.



So now, a million bilion years later, I have to get surgery again because I'm losing my peripheral vision due to a build up of scar tissue. Also, currently my vision can't be corrected to better than 20/40 in one eye and 20/70 in the other. The haloing is so bad I probably shouldn't be allowed to drive at night. And my depth perception is shit. Since I spend a fair bit of time teaching classes and in rooms lit only by the light of a projector, this has become a bit of a problem. Also, while in Paris, I was unable to navigate around the various bars and restaurants I was attending without having someone to hold on to (thank you JJ and Dunc, aka bad snow white). But, the surgery, which has been performed for the past year, will fix many of those problems, and possibly even give me 20/15 vision.

Having always had bad eye sight that was never 20/20 it will be interesting if that happens. I keep telling my doctor I will have super eyes. He just smiles at me and asks if I want a prescription for valium to take before the surgery.