Who are you, and what do you do?

[Ravenshire]

I am a hobby carpenter

So, is your step-son going to be a hobby messiah?!?

[SteelCurtain]

I am a hobby carpenter

So, is your step-son going to be a hobby messiah?!?

It is I who dabbles in messiah-ry.

Allow me to take the wheel:

[robvalue]

Great idea for a topic! It's been lovely learning more about you all

I'm Rob, I'm 37 and I live in Kent, England with my wife, dog and two bunnies. I did a maths degree, and had no idea what career to go into so I drifted into teaching. I always seemed to have a knack for it, as other students often came to me for help.

I worked at a college (ages 16+) for 4 years, teaching "Application of Number" keyskills. It's a ridiculous way of trying to pretend to the kids that it's not maths. Of course, it didn't work, and they all just called it maths lesson. I found out once I started that most of them hated having to do it, claiming they had not been told it was a requirement when they started. It was mainly a vocational college, so I was teaching bricklayers, hairdressers, mechanics and so on. Sometimes I wasn't teaching them at all, as entire classes refused to turn up.

Anyhow! Eventually the work dried up there. I was not sure what else to do, so I tried doing some high school teaching (ages 13-16). Worst mistake I ever made. I met some of the most vile, evil kids you could imagine. I'm small in stature and lacking natural authority, which had always been a problem in my teaching as they expect you to also do crowd control. The kids saw an easy target and treated me with absolutely no respect. After just a few weeks I had a class that finished me off, one of the little bastards threatened me, and it was much as I could take. I had to get out and try a new career.

I got a job at Norwich Union doing pension admin. It went very well, and I quickly resumed my teaching persona when the other new employees turned to me for explanations about what we were learning! Maybe I am the Messiah...

Ahem, yeah, so... this was going pretty well, until I got a virus. It seemed like a normal one, although severe. It had me out of it pretty bad. And... I never recovered. I had to give up work shortly after, and eventually it got diagnosed (by process of elimination) as M.E., also known as chronic fatigue syndrome. It has fucked up my life to this very day, that was about 8 years ago. It leaves me with very little mental and physical energy and I spend most of each day in bed.

I've tried to do what I can, to make the best of my situation. My wife (then girlfriend of course!) and I decided that we weren't going to let M.E. stop us getting married any longer, as there's no guarantee it will ever go away. I've been building up to do doing voluntary work for many years. I do a shift each week for an M.E. helpline, giving support and information for others suffering from my condition. And I do research for Battersea dogs and cats home, finding them information to help them with their fundraising projects. I'm able to do both these from home and they're going really well, I find them very rewarding.

After a long, long journey I'm finally taking the first steps towards doing a bit of real work as well. I've started a distance learning bookkeeping course, and once I finish I hope to set up my own small business and work mainly from home. I'll be able to start very slowly (assuming they will let me without taking all my benefits away) and then build up over time to eventually come off benefits and earn my own money once more!

OK well that turned into nearly my life story! I feel very happy to share it with you all, my wonderful friends. This forum has been a godsend for me (ooooh see you do bel....
oww oww argh!). It's given me a social life, something I'm not otherwise able to have. Thank you all so much! It is amazing that I haven't met any of you, because it sure feels like I have.

I've started so I'll finish! I've always been obsessed with video games, starting with my Phillips G7000 at the age of 5. I've been through just about every system since then. I love the escapism of games, the challenge and the ability to kill people in lots of interesting ways. My life revolves around my wife and pets. I enjoy computers, and am always learning new things, such as teaching myself basic web design recently. I love my comedy, especially "stupid" stuff as my wife calls it. I play the piano, and have played at several minor events such as carol services.

Well, I think that's everything!

Tl;dr- just some stupid guy in bed all day.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I'm Darrell. I help manage a nature preserve in central Texas. I'm a musician and songwriter with no great success in either field. I write as a hobby, one book completed, two on the slipway, and essays and poems scattered to hell and gone. Crossword puzzles and cooking are my other interests, along with reading science and history.

[Alex K]

I'm Pat (Padraic) and I'm a luthier and sometime musician. Some of my sidelines include selling immigrants shorter names and hiring myself out as a torpedo for the local Maori mafia.

Hobbies include running, cooking, and keeping one eye on statutes of limitations.

Ta for asking.

Boru

Cool! Can we see some of your instruments? Or better yet hear some? Pretty please?

Very much this ^

---

I'm rasetsu and I'm a bum.

Me no believe you

[Thumpalumpacus]

And yeah, Brian, let's see and hear some of your guits, brotha.

[Alex K]

Well, what can I say without spoiling my fiercely-protected (*) anonymity? So my name is indeed Alex, and I hail from the strange land of (south-western) Germany where I was born almost exactly roughly 30 years after the Republic herself. I have a typical German sense of humour, which is precision engineered to be 30% more efficient than the next leading brand. I've always had a fascination for science and technology, and count myself lucky that I could pursue uni studies in maths and physics, now with a degree and a PhD in theoretical physics (all education being free around here helps).

These days I work as a postdoctoral researcher on things like why does the goddamn Higgs boson do what it does, the stupid thing, why can't it do something more exciting? My wife is married to me. We have a few hamsters and were from time to time involved in a rescue shelter for hamsters. Next to calculating the scattering cross sections of elementary particles, I count high-speed Hamster sexing among my more formidable skillz (it's all in the distance between the two holes, in case you wondered. The hard part is turning them over without losing blood). As for other hobbies, I give public science lectures on astronomy and physics topics, do way too little amateur astronomy, and I'm a writer, with my first physics book (as co-author) hopefully coming out this year. I hope to extend my writing career further to lighter public science material once this humongous project is off my back. As far as passive hobbies go, I like listening to classical music in the widest sense, and brvtal metal stuff, and go to festivals and concerts when there's time and opportunity (which is not often enough). I also sing in a choir, mostly about Jesus, which probably annoys God more than me (*).

(*) not really

[robvalue]

Ah! I forgot one detail from my life. I once got a royal flush, but it was during a free game of online poker with no real stakes. For fuck's sake!

[ManMachine]

I'm god, and I'm keeping an eye on you atheists.

[abaris]

Well, what can I say without spoiling my fiercely-protected (*) anonymity? So my name is indeed Alex, and I hail from the strange land of (south-western) Germany where I was born almost exactly roughly 30 years after the Republic herself. I have a typical German sense of humour, which is precision engineered to be 30% more efficient than the next leading brand.

Yeah, as for protecting anonymity, I'm Alex too. I go by abaris on the web since I got my first internet connection back in the early 90ies. Abaris actually was the name of my character when doing the old pen and paper stuff back in the 80ies.

And no, you don't have a typical german sense of humour. Otherwise you wouldn't like Oliver Kalkofe but the things he's talking about. At least as far as clichés go.