Get to know the author!   A short narrative on the creator of this page.

This may or may not be an interesting introduction to the person behind the scenes of Yobes' page (me). I'll try not to make it sound like a personal add! :)
I'm a native Californian that graduated Hanford High School with the class of '83 (that's the only hint to the age factor that's going to be ref'd here, so figure it out yourself). I joined the Air Force in 1987 and have worked as a linguist for the past 10 years. While I'm currently preparing to end my service commitment (11 total years), I wouldn't trade my experiences for anything. My tours have taken me from one side of the planet (England) to the other (Japan). At this particular point in time, my travels have concluded in the wastelands (a.k.a. San Antonio, TX). If that last statement wasn't clear enough, let me spell it out for you--I'm not at all fond of this neck of the woods. The weather really sucks down here! I'm not a fan of humidity at all! :) Fortunately, it's almost over...

I've always had an interest in art and computers which is not the usual sort of interest partnership that most people have. It's been my experience that you're either a technical minded person or an artistic one. Somehow, I was lucky enough to get the best of both worlds I guess. ;)

As far as computers go, I've been playing with them since the early days of the Radio Shack TRS-80's (OK...there's another age hint!). The puter growing pains have included the Apple IIe, the Texas Instruments TI-99 (I think that's what it was...you know, that old, brushed-aluminum thing that had the cartridge port and used a dataset...), a Commodore 64SX (the 26lb. original portable computer), an Atari 1040ST, and finally many mutations of the PC clones.

Currently, I have 4 computers running in a small home network: two workstations running Win95 (a P-Pro200 with 128MB and the works as far as peripheral enhancements go, and an AMD K6 233), an NT4.0 server (Cyrix M2-200), and a small Novell NetWare 4.11 server (Cyrix 5x86-133). I've got parts for two additional systems, but not much need to have them running at present. :) The two servers are more for experimental and learning purposes than practical use, however the NT system does allow some additional networking abilities on the peer portion of the network. Anyway, all of these systems were built by myself, which is one of my favorite pastimes. I've built a lot of computers for a lot of individuals. To the best of my knowledge, all are still running well. :) (knock, knock)

As far as my artistic side goes, I've been drawing--although not well--since the early days (still have some early drawings from about the seven year old period...). Lately there's been more expression in the computer graphix arena than on the pulpy sheets. However, when I do wax nostalgic to place an image on paper, I prefer to use Plain Jane graphite. I'll be posting a couple of scans of my work in few days, check back if you're interested. My son (currently 7yrs old) is also shaping up as a little artist. He still lives with his mother in England (will explain later) and I've received a few of his works of art through the mail. I'll post some of them as well.

Going to end this here for now and update some of these pages. If you're interested, look for more tomorrow or the next day.

--Darrin (980610)

Well, looks like it took a little bit longer than expected to venture back to the story telling. Let's see if we can make it worth the wait...where was I? Looks like I wasn't "anywhere" in particular. Let's ramble a bit.

How about getting down to some other interests (outside of computers). Yeah, I know, I mentioned the art thing already, but there are a lot more hobbies hanging around in my life. I'm a big fan of the outdoors! I love to fish, camp, hike, etc. Not big on the hunting thing. Have never really had that testosterone rush that egged me into running out and looking for something to kill. I'd rather buy my meat in a store and am of the sound thought that as long as it's not bothering me, I won't bother it. :)

I'm not big into sports, but I do enjoy tennis a lot. Racquetball is pretty good too. It's usually easier to find a partner that's up to par in racquetball than it is tennis, so I've played a bit more of that lately than the other. Although Sue would attest differently to that--don't ask! Anyway, I'm usually game for just about anything, but just don't actively seek out any sports activities.

My wife and I really enjoy movies and theater (her more-so on the theater thing than I, but I've been known to sit through a play or two). We usually see at least two or three movies a week, when there are movies worth seeing. There's been a dry spell lately though, hasn't there? Science Fiction and Action are my favorites, but I enjoy just about anything that tells a good story. I'll even scope out the occasional "chick-flick" as long as it's of the "Sleepless in Seattle" or "While You Were Sleeping" variety.

I like to read--again SciFi and also Fantasy, photography, renaissance festivals, music--metal, rock (none of that rap, techno, country, etc.), favorite TV shows are all Star Trek series, Xena, Hercules, X-Files, and Mad About You--pretty much in that order...and that's about all I watch. The wife and I also have a pretty extensive video collection and have started a DVD collection as well. Oh boy, don't get me started with DVD! Let's just put it this way--WE LOVE IT!!!

I think I'm going to stop there and try to get some of those pictures up that I was talking about.

--Darrin 980626