G00f

Hello there. First, I am not John Candy. The avatar confuses some people. I am a long-time first-person-shooter addict. When Age of Empires came out I refused to play it because it would mess up my Quake fingers. Recently I spent a few years away from gaming, convincing myself I wasn't interested in it any more (except for some Civilization). About two years ago I started playing World of Warcraft, but that was getting boring, and then this Orange Box appeared. And that was it, really. The FPS+multiplayer+co-op objectives combination was irresistible. And the graphics - not too gory, not uber-realistic, but just the right mix of amusing and purposeful (watch the designer-notes videos in TF2 to see what I mean).

In real life I run a network at a small, fast-growing software company outside of Boston. I've been working in IT since about 1993, which makes me 127 years old (more or less). Since 1995, all of my jobs have been at software development or application-service-provider businesses. I don't write code, but I like to work with programmers. I know enough Linux to stub my toes or cause a rash, but most of my useful knowledge is about Windows, MS server applications, and network infrastructure (routers, switches, firewalls, load-balancers, etc.).

It was very difficult choosing a side in this pirate/ninja setup. I had been thinking of sailing the high seas and plundering unsuspecting merchant ships, but that's mostly because my game-play isn't as snappy as I'd like. I like a sturdy beer or two, and I'm a terrible spy (and a worse sniper). But, as far as personality, I'm not really a pirate. I prefer to be quiet, focus on building my machines, and killing the bad guys of the moment. But eventually I will make a sarcastic comment or sly (I imagine) joke, before fading back into lurker-mode. And this seems much more ninja-like, so I switched the tag to the venerable [n].
/bows