Getting to know you: Carnix

Hey Carnix! I see you're only a few hours down the road from me, but we'll get to that in a bit.

You were nominated as a victim by several users, which was actually not needed, as you were already on my list. So, let's get to the interiga...questions.


1. Maybe it's obvious, but I have no idea. What in the world is your avatar supposed to be?

2. Tell us about Hotlanta(Atlanta).

3. So, do you have a favorite in the race for President? LOL. Seriously, you seem to have very strong political opinions. Tell us how your philosophies evolved (*note to others: There are plenty of threads for debate. This is NOT one of those)

4. Tell us about your favorite meal/food.

5. I'm sure it's been stated in other threads, but how old are you?

6. What were your favorite cartoons as a kid, and then as an adult?

7. You are a regular poster in the Scripting forum. Take a moment and tell us about the languages you use and how you developed your skills.

8. Tell us about something that is dear to you.

9. If you could meet and hang out with anyone you wanted, who would it be?

10. Who is your hero?


Please feel free to add your questions for Carnix to my list.
Just remember, this thread belongs to Carnix. Violators will have a voodoo curse placed upon them.

I can't help but think he's hinting at something...
*cough* getting to know jess *cough*
But back on topic...

If you could have any super power, what would it be and why?

If you had only one year to live, what activity/purpose would you pursue?

Good questions guys!

If you had to hack off one limb, what would it be, and with what weapon?

(In the line of weird questions:)
Do you have a reoccurring dream or nightmare, and if so, what is it about?

Carnix: You better say, "Two chicks at the same time"! j/k

Would you rather live forever or die right now?

Who _are_ you?!

I guess Carnix has been busy. Looks like his most recent post was 3 days ago. So, bump goes the thread. Hope he comes back to us soon.

Thats a shame. I was looking forward to knowing more about him.

Where is Carnix?!

Hooooboy...
First off, sorry it's taken me so long. I've been away on yet another adventure, this time only up to DC... no rebels with guns this time, luckily.

heh, not yet anyway!

So, without further ado:

1. Maybe it's obvious, but I have no idea. What in the world is your avatar supposed to be?

My avatar is actually a photo of me. Seriously.
I mean.. there is a *TEENY TINY* bit of Photoshop tweeking... But otherwise, it's just a plain old photo of me.

2. Tell us about Hotlanta(Atlanta).

Hmm. What to tell. It's not like where I grew up, that's for sure. I grew up in Seattle. Actually, for those familiar with the area, I really grew up in Kitsap country in a place called Silverdale. To be honest, I like the Northwest better, but now that my parents have retired and left Washington, I don't see me going back there ever except for a visit now and then. I live in town in an area called Grant Park, I own my own my house, such as one does in the day of the mortgage anyway. I have a wife, a dog, a cat and a daughter on the way (due in February).

3. So, do you have a favorite in the race for President? LOL. Seriously, you seem to have very strong political opinions. Tell us how your philosophies evolved (*note to others: There are plenty of threads for debate. This is NOT one of those)

Oi. That's a loaded question! Yes, I do have a favorite in the presidental race and anyone interested can look up my post history and very easily figure it out. My political philosophy is based around two override principles. The Golden Rule and the Tragedy of the Commons. For those that aren't familiar, those are (respectively) "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and (this is a HUGE paraphrase on a very complicated subject...) "Individuals tend toward maximizing their personal utility of any resource, and when the resource is a public good, they will desire to use it at the expense of those who are paying for it"

So, #1, most people get, everyone knows the idea. Don't kill someone unless you wouldn't mind them killing you, don't throw poop on someone unless you want them to... wait... bad example!.

#2 is more complicated. A good example is a public park. Public parks are paid for with tax dollars and are open for everyone's use. Some people, however, don't want to pay taxes, but yet will complain if the park across the street from their house is not kept up by the city due to lack of funds. You can think of it as Want-your-Cake-and-Eat-it-Too.

In general, the political right tends to violate one or both (depending) of my rules. They either want to infringe upon my freedom of choice (rule #1... Because I would let others live as they choose, given the simple guidelines of this rule, I would expect my government to allow me the freedom to choose how I would live) or they would violate the tragedy of the commons by transfering resources once controlled by a public interest (and funded by taxes) to private interests (and funded by memberships that are not necessarily in the public interest).

There are a few republicans that I have supported over the years, and a few democrates I have denounced... NONE have ever been perfect, no person can be perfect all the time, the real politik won't allow it, but if you look at the trends, in general, the political left generally upholds my two principle standards to a much greater degree than the political right.


4. Tell us about your favorite meal/food.

Shrimp Feta, the way my wife makes it...
Or. Mac and Cheese the way I make.
OR. ANYTHING Carver's Grocery happens to be serving (if you live in Atlanta and have never been to Carver's...Oi.. you're missing out! Best southern food in Atlanta.)


5. I'm sure it's been stated in other threads, but how old are you?
I am 29 (as of Friday, Oct. 15th). Happy Birthday to meeee!!



6. What were your favorite cartoons as a kid, and then as an adult?
Kid: Scooby Doo.
Adult: Scooby Doo. =] not the new ones.. only the oldies. Scrappy needs to die.

7. You are a regular poster in the Scripting forum. Take a moment and tell us about the languages you use and how you developed your skills.

Let see. The languages I use on a regular basis: Perl, PHP, JavaScript, ASP(VBScript). I done ColdFusion, but try not to as best I can. I didn't start out to be a tech guy. I got in some trouble when I was in high school before there was really a thing called The Internet (you could dial C to C and use BBSes, but Mosaic hadn't been invented yet) and as a consequence my family wasn't allowed to have a modem on our computer and my father pretty well stopped me from doing much more than writting papers on the system. As a result, when I went to college, I wasn't well versed in current computer technology. Plus, I wanted to save the world, like all 18 year old GenXers did... So I started studying Environment Science and Economics.

My sophomore year, I got a job teaching a class for the university. Basically, it was a 2-credit learning through technology seminar for Freshman. The final project was supposed to be a website, and I didn't even know what HTML was at that point. It only took me a couple weeks to learn it, and I moved on to JavaScript. By the end of that year, after two semesters, I started doing tech support for the program and learning ASP while helping develop online courseware for the university's CS department. By the end of my 5 years in at WSU, I had ASP and JavaScript down pat (along with the requisit systems and db admin skills) and had done an internship at Hanford Nuclear Reservation that cleared up any doubt I had about actually persuing a career doing Environmental work (again, that's another story).

My next stop was a crappy software company in Poulsbo WA. Crap pay, LONG hours.. But I learned PHP and Perl and the various requesit systems and databases that would go along with those (Unix, Linux and MySQL in this case). A guy I shared an office with while teaching at WSU offered me a nice job in Atlanta doing ASP and GUI design, so I came here to hotlanta, got laid off after 8 months , was unemployed for a few months, mooching on my girlfriend (who is now my wife) and got a job at CARE where I've been for a few years now doing a bizarre bastardization of ASP and Perl and JSP and JavaScript that I can only describe as "very interesting..."


8. Tell us about something that is dear to you.
My family. As I mentioned, I'm having a daughter in february.

I don't know how many of you out in Ozzu-land have had kids, but let me tell you... as a man, anyway (can't speak for the women... they're very much aware of the little larva crawling around inside them, but the man really only seen his mate's belly pooching out a bit in the first 20 weeks or so), the ultrasound was a pennicle moment in my life... seeing my daughter, more or less for the first time, really changed, or reinforced, a lot about my way of looking at the world. Suddenly, things I held as very important were no longer important at all, and things I didn't consider that important became instantly some of the most important things I could imagine.

Those of you who have had childern will undoubtedly understand, though who haven't yet had the experience... well... you'll understand when the time comes.


9. If you could meet and hang out with anyone you wanted, who would it be?

Living: Jimmy Carter. I've heard him speak a number of times, and have had the opportunity to shake his hand once (The Carter Foundation and CARE have done some events together in Atlanta), but never to sit and chat with the man. While he probably wasn't the best president, he's a genuine humanitarian and wonderful man, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for him.

Dead: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I know, it's a cliche answer... But it's the only one I've got.


10. Who is your hero?
This is a tough one for me... I guess I'll have to give another cliche anwser and say my dad. We didn't get along very well when I was growing up. My parents both worked and I was an only child, so I would fix my own breakfast, and my parents wouldn't get home until after 5 or 6pm so I carried a key (so-called latch-key kid, I guess). I never really understood where he got off telling me what to do when I would only see him for a could hours a day... but he told me once, when I was still young and in awe of him, that (speaking in time), "right now, I'm smart, but as you get older, I'm going to start getting dumber. But at some point in time, I'll start to get smarter again."

He was right. =]