You can learn a lot about me and my diverse interests from the stuff that's here. I'll try to add more things here from time to time.
I guess like most of us. In my case, the hobby is also my profession, with me having my own LAN system (I used to be running Novell, but I subsequently changed over to Little Big LAN, which is more flexible and in particular supports CD-ROM sharing better). (At one point while I was living in Paris I was planning to start up my own BBS, but the plans didn't materialize before I returned to the USA.) Following several years of running Little Big LAN, I've basically de-facto switched over to Windows and NT networking.
My favorite programming language, hands down, is SNOBOL4+. I've really enjoyed some of the fun things I've been able to do with it! I also use a wide variety of other programming languages, depending on what I need to do.
I have collected a very nice (although by now rather ancient) stereo/video system, a lot of which I thoroughly enjoyed building from Heathkits (a product line now gone, sadly... I truly believe that their passing will hurt American entrepreneurialism in electronics). This includes a lot of pretty unusual items, including Technicolor/Funai video tape units and the like. Some of this stuff I'm still trying to gradually get back into service, now after years in storage.
I've produced some really very fine recordings of both musical performances (for one, a friend at Datapoint owned a jazz club nearby and was in fact a very good jazz pianist), and theatrical plays (quite a number of theatrical performances at several San Antonio theatres, including the (lamented) Melodrama Theatre that used to be in Hemisfair Plaza. I think our table still holds the unofficial record for having thrown 176 boxes of popcorn during one especially memorable performance there). Unlike some recording people, I believe in a minimalist dual-mike approach but with very careful microphone placement.
For recording, I like to use a Tandberg 9000X open-reel recorder with external dbx and Dolby-B encoding units. Although today, even cassette decks (good ones, anyhow) can produce recordings essentially indistinguishable from the originals... as can Hi-Fi VCRs, for that matter. I have both Electro-Voice PL-9 omni dynamic mikes, and AKG-D200E cardioid dynamic mikes.
I have a collection of various home game systems, including Atari Pong, Bally Astrocade, ColecoVision, and Vectrex machines, each with a comprehensive collection of cartridges. I also have two full-sized arcade game machines, Asteroids Deluxe and Crazy Climber. I've got a decent collection of games for the Atari ST, and of course now for the PC.
I have my open-water NASDS certification, which I got in Hawaii.
Although I hesitate to formalize it to that degree. In the past, I've enjoyed planting some spring bulbs and other plants, to the extent one can outside an apartment. At this apartment, I've tried planting some annuals such as zinnias, marigolds, morning glories, sunflowers or the like (but with almost no success, up to now... sigh). I'm also especially fond of sunflowers, which I like in part because they're a flower that's not the slightest bit feminine. (Big, thick, hairy stems... I think they're really phallic!) Grin!
I've also enjoyed raising a number of cactus from seed (not a task for impatient people, since they grow VERY slowly), although I had to give them up when I moved to Paris. I hope that my friend who I left them with is still enjoying them.
Nothing fancy here, no great racing-sports biking or anything. But I used to ride a lot when I was a student at college and still have two bikes (my old college touring-type 3-speed and a newer 15-speed) waiting for me to (someday) get back into the habit.
I 'm nothing great here either, but it's something I enjoy. I think my favorite miniature golf course I've ever played at is still "Cool Crest" on Fredericksburg Road in San Antonio.
I've got good memories from some "family vacation" type camping trips we did while I was living at home, and figure that sometime I'd like to take the time to go out into a nice area with a group of good friends and leave the strictures of society behind for a while.
I am quite an avid traveller. In fact, I consider this to not just be a fun and pleasurable vacation pursuit, but think it a professional asset to have experience travelling and to be able to get along in a wide array of different countries, whereever a project or other professional assignment might take me.
I love ocean travel. The excitement of travel, great food, lots of interesting people to meet, excellent entertainment, and plenty of time to enjoy all of them. What more could one ask for?
The ships I've traveled on include (how many have I forgotten?):
I'm very fond of travel by train. It's a way of traveling where you sometimes tend to meet really interesting fellow passengers aboard. Used to be that you could eat really well aboard, too... although this seems to be getting harder, everywhere.
I've done numerous trips on Amtrak including:
I've also done lots of train travel in Europe too, including travel to nearly all countries in Western Europe and even most of Eastern Europe.
I've visited a lot of theme parks, including:
While talking about theme parks, it would be remiss to not mention a love for World's Fairs that started when I attended the New York World's Fair in 1964 (as a thoroughly hopeless addict). Since then, I've tried to attend about as many as were feasible for me at the time. I have attended:
I also enjoy trade shows, mostly in the computer industry, and have been a frequent attendee at the old National Computer Conferences, and more recently at the CeBIT shows (the world's largest) in Hannover, Germany. I also enjoy auto shows, and have been a visitor numerous times to both the Chicago Auto Show as well as the Paris Motor Show. I've been to the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget, too.
I've also visited 48 of the 50 states, plus a lot of other places and countries. Click for a list of states and countries I have visited.
My native language is English, but I also read and speak French reasonably fluently, and am passably fluent in Spanish (despite not having much practice in rather a while).
It seems like I never stop reading. Yet curiously, I never finish, and rarely get a chance to read books just for pleasure. There's just not enough time. Among the things I read regularly are:
I've basically all but stopped reading these, due to the spam plague there.
I read portions of several mailing lists, including:
I've previously spent an awful lot of time on the FIDO and Intelec bulletin board networks, although I'm afraid that's rather fallen by the wayside since I've been on Internet. Unfortunately, there really just isn't time enough to do everything I want to do. For quite some time I was the moderator of the Intelec Novell conference.
I subscribe to a lot of magazines, even though a lot of them end up unread. Among the magazines I do or have recently subscribed to are:
There are other magazines which I have traditionally subscribed to, but where my subscription has unfortunately lapsed (and I will get around to renewing my subscription to at least some of these!):
While living in France, I used to listen all the time to either BBC Radio 4 on longwave (an interesting mix of programming, to say the least), or BBC World Service. It's a huge shame that the BBC doesn't see clearly enough to make their domestic radio and television services available via satellite to American audiences via American cable TV systems, perhaps as a subscription package of premium channels.
Since returning to Dallas, I've been listening mostly to either the local national public radio station (KERA), or several local talk radio stations (KGBS, which used to have a really amazing amount of computer and Internet-related talk programming prior to a change of ownership, and more recently KRLD). More recently I've gotten disgusted by the behavior of much of the electronic media, and am listening more now to KEOM, a station that plays 70's "top 40" and disco-era hits and run by the Mesquite Independent School District (!). My favorite programs on NPR include:
Of course I love the theatre in the great theatre meccas of New York and London, where I've been fortunate to see a number of plays. But I've also been very fond in the past of some excellent local productions in the San Antonio area too, including productions at:
Since coming to Dallas I've been very impressed by the overall high caliber of theatre produced at Theatre 3, a local in-the-round theatre.
Although I don't get out nearly as much as I should, I enjoy most kinds of films quite a lot. Usually I prefer funny or light films, but also tend to be a very sentimental type, who cries at all the sloppy emotional places in films like E.T., Beauty and the Beast (WOW! I'm still amazed that an animated film can invoke such an incredibly strong emotional response), TITANIC, and the like. Curiously, I also am one of those apparently rare few people who sits in the theatre until the very end of the credits, and enjoys the final closing music of films... I never leave until it's really finished.
I am especially fond of IMAX/Omnimax films. One of the great joys of living in Paris was having two (no less) superb Omnimax theatres there... one of which sponsored a periodic Omnimax Film Festival, which was always a wonderful experience. Now that I'm living in Dallas, apparently there is an Omnimax theatre in Fort Worth, about a one-hour drive away. And now we have a new "Founders' IMAX Theatre" (a misnomer, it's actually an Omnimax theatre too) now in Dallas, too (it's in Fair Park).
I like most kinds of music. The ones that I like the least probably include:
During the years I was living in Paris, I was fond of attending the Festival Interceltique in Lorient, a Celtic music festival (very few Americans there, a handful at most) held the first full week of August each year. It's another thing that I'll miss now that I'm living back in the USA.
To see what I'm probably listening to right now, I've put my personal "playlist" online... this is the music that's in my CD jukebox, and which I broadcast throughout my home 24-hours-a-day using a small, low-power FM stereo transmitter.
I've got a nice and rather large collection of artwork, including stone sculptures, carvings, prints, original paintings in diverse media, prints, etchings, ceramics, glass, stitcheries, drawings, metal sculpture, posters, and lots more.
I really love meeting people. Before I went to college, I was a member of Mensa, and although not a member afterwards I have still attended a lot of Mensa social functions. But wherever the people are met, I always love meeting interesting people. I've been fortunate in my life to have met a lot of really interesting, stimulating people.
I spend entirely too much time doing these. But it's a good social and intellectual outlet (or should that be "sink"?) for someone who would otherwise spend a lot of his time in front of a computer doing even more solitary pursuits.
I really enjoy finding neat restaurants and going out to enjoy them with friends, whether for lunch or for dinner.
Although I sort of got out of the habit while living in Paris, I also enjoy cooking and baking. While I lived in San Antonio, for example, I was quite fond of making my own bread (hey, not with one of those wimpy bread machines... I mean, I started with GRAINS OF WHEAT and even ground my own flour).
Who doesn't like shopping?
After having greatly enjoyed the numerous massages I've had onboard various cruise ships, I finally decided to start doing massages myself. After getting recommendations from several cruise ship massage staff, I've gotten a variety of books on the subject and finally in 1994 actually took a class in Paris to help give me a more solid training base. I'm particularly fond of doing long (two and a half hours is not unusual) and deep massages with scented oils, and like to mix a specific combination of essential oils to the tastes of the person I'm going to massage. I especially like the music of Kitaro in the background while I'm doing massage.
I'm also very fond of other spa-type activities such as thermal baths, saunas, steam rooms, jacuzzis and hot tubs, long hot hydrotherapy-type showers, and the like. I do NOT like cold water, however.
Although I've not done much "old fashioned" photography in a while, in the past I've done a lot of picture-taking (much of it using Polaroid cameras) and have a nice collection of the pictures I've taken. I've gotten away from it, largely due to the high cost of Polaroid film. (Why is it that so many American companies with an unbeatable technology lead in a particular area destroy the market for their own products by being so damned price-greedy?!)
One pleasure of living in France was being able to attend the annual international fireworks competition held on the grounds of a splendid chateau in Chantilly, north of Paris. This event, lasting two evenings of the weekend nearest the summer solstice, pits the premier display fireworks companies of six to ten countries, each trying to outdo the others. Grin!! A wonderful weekend of music, fireworks, and pageantry.
Which in fact I don't have other than on recordings, but admire perhaps due to the fact that today's best computer bums are the same types who were creating those wonderful technotoys a century ago. And while we're talking about such things:
I own two nice cuckoo clocks, one of them a VERY nice one which I bought in Germany's Black Forest. Unfortunately, as of this writing that fancy one is messed up (in truth, probably just needs cleaning and oiling) and occasionally goes quite LITERALLY 'cuckoo', cuckoo-ing continuously without stopping until the weight reaches the bottom. Sigh.
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This page and all linked contents originating with me are Copyright (C) 1995-6 by Gordon E. Peterson II, all rights reserved worldwide. Last revised October 22, 1998.