Who Am I?

I don't know who I am. So I'm going to try to figure it out.

I'm 19 years, 7 days old. I was born in Waukegan, IL, where I lived for the first four years of my life. I've lived in St. Charles ever since then.

I could do a life history, but I don't think that much of that has shaped who I am today.

I'm a nerd. I'm a computer geek. I like sitting in front of the computer a lot, and it makes me very happy to just code away.

I'm the Development Manager for a website that I work for with a couple of my friends. I have a goathack account, and I play with it a lot. I've coded patches for LJ, and I've worked for support.

That's getting closer to who I am.

I like to play with computers. I like to poke at things on them and make them break, or see how they work. Lately, I've been looking at the LJ database schema. no real reason, just for fun.

I'm a computer science major in the engineering college at UIUC. It's in the top 5 engineering schools in the country. It's hard. College classes aren't easy. (Yes. I'm a whiner. So shoot me.) I like math and science, but I'm not really GREAT at either of them.

I like girls. With a friends list that's got at least a small number of people who aren't purely heterosexual, that might be interesting. I'm not gay at all. dougb declared me, on a gayness scale of 1-10 (1 being not at all, 10 being kylecool) of being a -1. Some people think I'm serious when I talk about getting a boyfriend next: I'm not. it's all jokes ;)

I'm still growing up. I've only had one relationship, and it was a doozy. It's definitely changed how I am.

I don't have many friends. I have lots of people who know me, but I don't have lots of friends. At school, I've got Christy. I've also got erin, and a couple other people online that I'm good friends with.

I'm at least partially a loner. I like being online, but I'm rather anti social. I don't go out, I don't party. I don't drink, smoke, do drugs. I don't go out much. I don't go to bars or clubs.

I like to dance. I love high school dances and mid 90's dance music.

I like to laugh at stupid people. I like nerdy facts. I like the fact that my userinfo is a combination of BML tags.

I like pie. I like watching dvd's curled up on my bed or sitting in my nice comfy computer chair. I like listening to music on headphones, even though my roomate is deaf and can't hear it anyway.

I like pringles.

All of this, and I"m no closer to knowhing who I am.

I think the answer to "who am i" is quite simple.

I am Chris.

when i grow up...

What do I want to do when I grow up?

I've asked myself that question so many times.

It's changed a lot. When I started college, I was totally convinced I wanted to design roller coasters. Write the 3d graphical simulation programs, understand all the physics, do everything like that.

Slowly, I'm beginning to think that's changing.

I'm a computer science major. I love working with computers. I love being able to get something work, knowing that I did it. But lately, I'm becoming more and more interested in dealing with PEOPLE too. Recent experience has showed that I'm not bad at dealing with people on a professional level. I can converse and work out issues, as well as understanding the person and what they mean to do.

I'm learning mysql one step at a time. I can actually do things now: create and drop tables and databases, do simple selects. I can sort data and output it fairly nicely. I'm learning perl slowly but surely as well. I can do some programming, and I can modify code fairly decently.

I'm starting to wonder if maybe this is where I belong. Managing a project, doing development. Coming up with new ideas and implementing them or learning how to implement them, or getting someone else to implement them ;)

Working on a small, dedicated team on my current project has been one of the most worthwhiel experiences i've had. I'm having fun, I'm enjoying myself, and I really want this project to succeed. I could see myself working on this for years. I could see working it into a business and just staying here, adding new features, fixing bugs. I think that would be a cool job. The problem is that right now, I don't think that this projeect is looking very stable *sigh* We're good for this month, but we're not seeing a huge influx of business. I don't know how to get business. I don't know how to attract people. And I don't know that anyone else does either. The stress is going to be high at the end of next month, I think, and I don't know what I can do to solve it.

That's the major problem with working a startup project. It's a startup. There's little to no support. You have to work your ass off to get it to stay in business. And eve then, it's hard.

But even though all that, I enjoy it. I think that this might be what I keep doing. Whether it be where I am now, or another project: I like working with a small group of people to make an idea come to life. Starting from the beginning is the best way to be. And I'm happy I found this one.