I suppose I should write a bit about myself here. I'm a Canuck, living in the Okanagan Valley in BC - beautiful chunk of country. I used to do tech support for a living - I get called by the 'rents whenever their box beeps funny - and work nights by choice when I can.

I grew up on Star Trek, watched the heck out of ToS reruns, watched TNG when it was on TV(we taped most of it, not sure where the cassettes are anymore), as well as DS9 and Voyager. I think DS9 was probably the best of them. And Enterprise never happened. I love the Star Wars movies and a decent chunk of the expanded 'verse. When I could I also watched Blake's Seven - even as a lad of 8 I could tell that there was something amazing in that old British show, and rewatching it again now, I am consistently amazed at how much awesome the BBC can produce with so little. I didn't catch much of Babylon 5 when it was on TV but I've watched it since. I'm a massive Firefly/Serenity fan, and am probably never gonna forgive Fox for killing it. I also love the new Battlestar Galactica, and rather enjoyed the finale.

According to my parents, I taught myself to read at age three using Dad's old Garfield comics. Given how well I can remember them, and how long it's been since I picked one up, I can believe it. I've always loved reading, and writing is a great passtime of mine. I still have a few old, dog-eared books about Dinosaurs, with big print and interesting facts and ideas. After dinosaurs it was space exploration, and studying NASA and its Russian counterparts. Dad's got a taped radio broadcast(on a really old style tape reel, too) of one of the Apollo launches and prelims, and it is awesome. When I'd read everything the school library had on space travel I started learning about airplanes, a passion my father and I share, and from there to the military and a generalized interest in history. The best way to prepare for the future is to try and avoid the mistakes of the past, and to do that we need to study history. Too few people look back, and thus mistakes are repeated.

I'm something of a history/computer/wargames geek these days, and it's a lot of fun. When I'm not playing MMOs(I've successfully kicked the World of Warcrack habit only to fall headlong into EVE Online), I tend towards older games. Betrayal at Krondor, the early FF games, Heroes of Might and Magic II, Star Control II, Dungeon Keeper, MoO and MoM are all old friends, dusted off fairly often for another play through. Xcom: UFO Defence is probably the best strategy game ever made, and it's from back in the early 90s. Amazingly fun, and addictive. And I cannot recommend Dwarf Fortress highly enough to serious gamers. It's like a city-building version of NetHack, an amazingly well designed, brilliant city-building game. It's only in alpha now, and it's far and away better than anything you'll find in a similar genre on the shelves these days.

Anime is something I knew about vaguely growing up, but never any specifics. I caught a bit of DBZ on cable, of course. Everyone did, back then, but it wasn't till a friend introduced me to Slayers that I knew I'd need to check it out. From there, it kind of snowballed to the point where I'm a fairly big fan of anime and that style of storytelling. If I were to put together a recommended watching list, it'd probably go something like this: Slayers, Ranma 1/2, Patlabor, Black Lagoon, Trigun, Cowboy BeBop, Armored Trooper VOTOMS, Ghost in the Shell(and SAC), Bubblegum Crisis, Serial Experiments Lain, and Maho Shojo Lyrical Nanoha.

Though I will advise those of you who value your sanity to not watch all of Serial Experiments Lain in one sitting. It'll mess you up in one sitting.(twitch twitch)