CoreBB

Hi all!

My name's Chris. I was born in a suburb of Ottawa, Ontario in July 1971. My dad came from pure Irish background and my mum from a Quebecois heritage which she always insisted went back to French royalty, a claim she could never substantiate

. Both came from large (like 7-8 kids) Catholic families which of course guaranteed a complete lack of Catholicism when we were growing up -- at very least I rarely if ever remember my parents doing or saying anything religious. And I only have one brother

(Mike, 3 years younger). Great parents, very loving, always had lots of time for us.

One of my first memories is at age 4, when I climbed up on the toilet seat to reach into the medicine cupboard to get the pills I was taking at the time. I slipped off the seat and fell backwards, catching the fall with the back of my head on the side of the bathtub. I don't remember it hurting but I vividly remember a LOUD buzzing sound which didn't go away for hours. I was immediately rushed to the hospital and I remember little about the stay, except that I was expected to be "mentally disabled" or whatever they called it back then. This is a perfect segue to mention that I skipped Grade 2 a couple of years later

.

We moved to Vancouver at age 7. My folks were sick of the crap Ottawa weather and my dad wasn't enjoying his work (he's worked in labour relations all his life, on all sides: union, management, and mediation). He interviewed in Vancouver and, feeling that he bombed the interview, proceeded to, er, get bombed on the flight home to Ottawa. He arrives in the door to my mum telling him that they called and want to negotiate a job offer, so he jumps in a freezing cold shower and drinks the only three cups of coffee of his life to try and sober up. He got the job and on a wing and a prayer we go to Vancouver, moving into the lovely forested suburb of North Vancouver.

Fairly typical and noneventful childhood ensued. Because of skipping grade 2, I was never one of the largest kids in my class, so athletics were never a priority, but I was part of the Cool Group for the most part. Enjoyed the home life as well as the folks took my brother and I on fairly frequent trips, usually down to Seattle where my mum would have shopping weekend and my dad would plunk my ecstatic brother and I into an arcade (Silver Coin at Southcenter and Gold Mine at Sea-Tac were our favourites) and go watch a movie and have a couple of pints

. In grade 6 (this was like 1981) we were one of the first schools in Canada to get computers in for a month or so (it was sort of a roving program) and I wrote my first game (Deadly Letters AMG~!) within a week or two, amazing the teachers. Foreshadowing!

When I moved to high school I immediately didn't fit in very well. For some reason, the kids from my elementary school just weren't as "cool" as the ones coming in from other schools -- we were all sort of little-kid like whereas it seemed all the other kids were suave and mature

. This was no problem as while I was a nerd, I was not an uber-nerd like a Napoleon Dynamite. So high school wasn't bad. I was pretty bored though as it was very easy, and rarely studied and got through with As and Bs. Also, while I'd figured out that girls were nice to look at, I hadn't quite connected this with actually, like, doing anything with them.

In Grade 11 I started working summers as a intern type programmer at BC Rail. It was here that I found out about a strange device called a "modem" and from there learned about "BBSes". OMG I can talk to people online! This dramatically increased my social circle as I found people I could Talk Dork with

.

I started at Simon Fraser University in 1988 intending on going into Computing Science and do some programmer stuff. Again, I was bored with most of my classes and got by with doing as little work as possible. This was aided by my first real girlfriend and our preference to finding strange and interesting places to have sexual intercourse instead of actually going to class. I'd met her -- Yes! -- on a BBS where a bunch of my friends chatted and we discovered that we had a couple of classes together. She helped me with a much-needed makeover and was really the first time I'd thought much about my appearance -- she pushed me down Teh Metro Road. This was also the start of my discovery that I liked the big girls more than the not so big girls

. Lots of fun but 7 months later it was over. However the toll had also been taken on the school work and I ended up getting suspended as a couple of my grades were off the scale bad (Calculus, because it was my first introduction to it, and you really need to study when you first learn it, and another course which had papers I didn't bother to write).

This is too freakin' long. I'm so sorry

. I'll speed it up.

About a year later I was dating various and multiple women and generally enjoying myself. At this point I had pulled my grades up and was generally doing OK in school despite being pretty bored. I was not interested in a relationship as this wrecked my school the last time

. However I ran into an old (female) high school pal and she asked me to come to her place for a little party. At this party was some girl named Sally who had been in the grade under me in high school. We chatted a bit there. A couple of days later, old pal and Sally came by my house with a couple other girls to say hi. As we all chatted randomly, Sally secretly passed me a note that read, simply "Do you want to f---"

.

I got her number and gave her a call

. She was quite embarassed by this and let me know she wasn't that kind of girl. Still we chatted all night and agreed to go out the next day. October 15

. Our first date we went for some food, then to a laser light show. At this light show I proceeded to lose the tickets while we were in line. The guy let us in once everyone else had gone in anyway but we had to sit apart on our first date! Suh-mooooth! Luckily we went to a improv thingy afterwards and the night ended well -- but she really WASN'T that kind of girl and in fact it was a couple of weeks before we knocked the ol' boots

.

Good times followed with Sally who was an amazing girl back then as she is now. I ended up moving a couple of years later into the basement suite at her folks' house which was just a few blocks from where my parents lived. I had changed my major to Communications with an intention to go into advertising or rather some sort of Adbusters type writing, as I was idealistically and fanatically anti-corporate back then (I still am now to an extent, but that's another post). Meanwhile my summer job in computers had led to an evenings and weekends gig in a computer room as basically a tape monkey, but I learned a lot here and padded my resume. Of course this meant that when I graduated I was qualified for, yes, a computer job. Oh well. I've still yet to use my degree for anything besides being able to yack on about postmodernity and Marshall McLuhan at length.

After graduation I popped the question to Sally and we got hitched in 1996, March 2 to be exact -- we just hit our 9 year anniversary! AMG I should go buy her a gift I guess!

jk. We also bought a condo in North Vancouver and moved in there. I had moved from being a mere programmer to a DBA and SQL guru and we were doing quite well.

Then in September 1998 we were up in Whistler with some friends. It was morning and I'd just taken a shower, and came out and looked in the mirror to find a golf ball looking lump above that chest bone on my right side. I bailed back to town and went to the clinic, and the doctor there sent me to get x-rays "immediately, go there today". I saw her later and she told me that she knew the second she saw the lump that I had Hodgkin's Disease, which is cancer of the lymph nodes. By mid September I'd been for a biopsy and all the whacky tests -- I near-glowed in the dark! I had a mass near my right shoulder, and some growths in my neck on the left side of my trachea. Soon I was making teh man-mayo deposits into a bank because it was likely that the chemo, while not affecting Mr. Happy, would probably do a number on His Zany Pals (aka The Dynamic Duo).

I started chemo in October 1998. It actually wasn't too bad. The atmosphere in the little ward where I got my chemo done was pretty good, with some nice people (like bar regulars!) My wife and dad always showed up to keep me company. And we watched Babylon 5

. The chemo was successful and over the six months all the cancer shrunk away and died. But there were some side effects.

Luckily the main worry from this type of chemo (adriamycin), which is potential heart damage, apparently didn't happen. However a few other bad things happened. The veins in my arms were shrunk/withered big time, which doesn't affect my circulation but makes it hard for anyone to take blood from me. But more significantly the vincristine and vinblastine had pwned the nerves in my feet, giving me a permanent, 24/7 case of pins and needles which I have to this day.

Even more significantly 6 months later I started having problems walking without pain. A couple of months after that I was nearly immobile and it would take me 5+ minutes to walk a block in agony. Turns out the chemo steroids had caused avascular necrosis in my hips causing them to basically rot inside of me. This hurts. So I got two hip replacements in summer of 2000, ten days apart. But the doctor effed one of them up, so I got ANOTHER one in summer of 2003. However the second hospital stay was more fun than the first. Why, you say?

My wife had been working for the government for several years, and a new party had just come into power. This party proceeded to slash her department's budget by 75%. She wasn't senior enough and was part of the 50% of the employees that got laid off. However they not only gave her a nice severance but an allowance to go to school to retrain in the whatever of her choice for a YEAR~! Sweet. And because my wife is such a peach, she kept up her relationship with all her old workmates. In face, she even stayed part of the old work Lotto pool. Which proceeded to, in March of 2003, hit $22 million on the Super 7. 20 people in the group, half of whom had been laid off, each getting $1.1 million, with many having stories such as my wife's "my husband is going in for a hip replacement next week!" = feel good story of the year, and the group was on the front cover of the local paper

(with me in the background looking stealthy).

Winning the lotto is neat but a mill isn't enough to retire on, but damn it paid off all our immediate family's bills as well as buying us a nice house in Surrey (suburb of Vancouver) and giving us a lovely nest egg. We moved in to the freshly minted house in September of 2003.

Well that's the life story done with thank God. Here's the personal stats. My wife and I are both 33, our birthdays being 3 days apart. I'm 6'6" and my wife is 5'4" and yes, a big girl

. We have no kids, but we are working on it, which is made more difficult by the likelihood that this will involve a dethawing and a turkey baster as chemo tends to flick your switch if you get my drift. We have one cat named Sassy, who is -- gad -- 12. I really actually do like Pokemon, as I think it's a nice innocent show and Pikachu is an icon of straightforwardness, honesty, and curiosity. I own four stuffed Pikachu and a large stuffed Psyduck. I'm also a big fan of reading about random topics, and also of going to NTN Trivia at my local pub (Woody's on Brunette) to hang out with friends and answer questions about random topics

. Any ACFer will get a free drink on me if they show up at this pub. My NTN handle is, of course, TOFINO.

I work as an internal support DBA/sql guy/code fixer for a very large software company. It's not a terrible lot of fun but it's OK. My wife, after graduating with a Medical Office Assistant certificate, is working for various medical places and trying to find a permanent thing near our house.

I like all sorts of music. I don't discriminate against anything. I won't list the types I like but it's literally everything. Currently in my car the CDs are: The Go! Team, Kenny Chesney, 4x I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, Chet Baker "Chet", and Lynyrd Skynyrd greatest hits.

>i should make his virindi mask one of these days :/

Yes, SLAgent

. Incidentally I have played Asheron's Call since before Sudden Season (about month 3). I've played basically every MMORPG as well, but I currently play AC1 and WOW. I also enjoy console games, and play Mario Party 6 regularly with friends. Oh and of course DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION~! I enjoy DDR especially playing it at arcades as for a lanky 6'6" 33 year old I am pretty good

.

>Tof is welcome in my kitchen anytime ! eh ?

Thanks HiHH

. I started to cook when I was a teenager because my mum was a pretty reserved cook with like 7 different dishes to her name. Just started with adding stuff to Kraft Dinner but it moved up from there to stuff like chili and stew, and now I'm a pretty good cook and regularly put on dinner parties for my friends. Friends specifically request my Stilton Demi Glace on a nice grilled onglet (hanger steak)... mmmmmmmmmmmmmm

.

And yes, I am Canadian and proudly so, though I don't believe my country is better than the US -- it depends on the day of the week really

. I post on political threads when I have an opinion to share that I haven't shared 10000 times before. I'm all over the spectrum on different issues and am frankly pretty malleable if someone gives a point of view I hadn't considered.

I don't think I bloody left anything out there. Sorry about the length (said the parson to the nun).

-----signature-----

WoW - Dawnbringer - Horde
- Chef Tofi (BE Tankdin) - Tofino (Orc Hunter) - Tofidots (BE Lock)