Well well! I jumped right in and started posting, not noticing that this "@WELCOME" forum existed where I might have introduced myself first! Allow
me to rectify the situation by saying a big "gudday" to all of you and telling you a little bit about myself.
I'm a thirty-one year old single male South African-born Australian living in a small mining town in Tasmania called Queenstown. I own my own (very cheap) house with most of the value still residing in a mortgage. Over the past decade or so I have suffered from problems (not physical) that have resulted in significant amounts of hospitalisation. Due to my problems I have been living off what in Australia is known as a "Disability Support Pension" - i.e. I haven't been working for some time. I'm slowly recovering from my problems with the help of medication and I recently accepted the offer of a job where I will be programming computers from home, which suits me just fine - I can ease myself back into the working world without having to commit myself to the 9-5 grind. This satisfies me greatly because I like to pay my own way in my adult life and I feel very guilty for living on a pension and not contributing anything back to society.
During the period that I have been unemployed I have occupied myself partly through voluntary computer programming and partly through communicative endeavours: posting to Usenet and internet forums, and chatting with friends over Skype. My first significant posting experience was to the Usenet group comp.lang.c ("Computer language C") under the pseudonym "netocrat", a conjunction of Inter*net* and demo*crat* - promoting my desire for democracy to be strengthened through internet technology, which desire I haven't really done anything with as yet. Subsequent to that (i.e. early last year) I joined and began posting to the philosophical forum, "Genius Forums" (GF), founded and run in part by my real-life neighbour, Kevin Solway. Ultimately I was banned from that forum, not for bad behaviour, but for being too detached from the ideals of the forum. I thought that it was a little unfair, as did a lot of the rest of the GF community, but that's life. Next I founded a philosophical forum titled "Thinking Strait" - a pun on "Thinking Straight" - at a board run by an erstwhile online friend, Robert Larkin: Olio, at his invitation. That all went pear-shaped as anyone reading the "Olio closes" thread in "@Heavy" might have already noticed. For the second time I was banned from a board for no good reason that I could see.
I'm hoping that it's not "three strikes and you're out" at this board. I'll do my best to post respectfully and intelligently - please give me fair warning if I stray too far from the ethos of the community, because another banning would have me really questioning myself. I start my new job today, so I might not have much time to read and contribute here, but I'll try to pick out the odd thread(s) that interest me, and start getting to know you guys.
As you've probably guessed from the tone of this post, I'm a generally serious person, but I definitely have a sense of humour and I love to share it. I might not be able to match Dan or sear in a battle of wits, but I'll make a good go of it.
So: hi! Looking forward to good times with all of you!
I'm a thirty-one year old single male South African-born Australian living in a small mining town in Tasmania called Queenstown. I own my own (very cheap) house with most of the value still residing in a mortgage. Over the past decade or so I have suffered from problems (not physical) that have resulted in significant amounts of hospitalisation. Due to my problems I have been living off what in Australia is known as a "Disability Support Pension" - i.e. I haven't been working for some time. I'm slowly recovering from my problems with the help of medication and I recently accepted the offer of a job where I will be programming computers from home, which suits me just fine - I can ease myself back into the working world without having to commit myself to the 9-5 grind. This satisfies me greatly because I like to pay my own way in my adult life and I feel very guilty for living on a pension and not contributing anything back to society.
During the period that I have been unemployed I have occupied myself partly through voluntary computer programming and partly through communicative endeavours: posting to Usenet and internet forums, and chatting with friends over Skype. My first significant posting experience was to the Usenet group comp.lang.c ("Computer language C") under the pseudonym "netocrat", a conjunction of Inter*net* and demo*crat* - promoting my desire for democracy to be strengthened through internet technology, which desire I haven't really done anything with as yet. Subsequent to that (i.e. early last year) I joined and began posting to the philosophical forum, "Genius Forums" (GF), founded and run in part by my real-life neighbour, Kevin Solway. Ultimately I was banned from that forum, not for bad behaviour, but for being too detached from the ideals of the forum. I thought that it was a little unfair, as did a lot of the rest of the GF community, but that's life. Next I founded a philosophical forum titled "Thinking Strait" - a pun on "Thinking Straight" - at a board run by an erstwhile online friend, Robert Larkin: Olio, at his invitation. That all went pear-shaped as anyone reading the "Olio closes" thread in "@Heavy" might have already noticed. For the second time I was banned from a board for no good reason that I could see.
I'm hoping that it's not "three strikes and you're out" at this board. I'll do my best to post respectfully and intelligently - please give me fair warning if I stray too far from the ethos of the community, because another banning would have me really questioning myself. I start my new job today, so I might not have much time to read and contribute here, but I'll try to pick out the odd thread(s) that interest me, and start getting to know you guys.
As you've probably guessed from the tone of this post, I'm a generally serious person, but I definitely have a sense of humour and I love to share it. I might not be able to match Dan or sear in a battle of wits, but I'll make a good go of it.
So: hi! Looking forward to good times with all of you!
Laird Shaw! Yes, we've met, but consider yourself given an official
warm welcome to TRT. I consider a sense of humor to be one of the most important things about people, and I've seen yours already.
LS visit often with your purpose, issue, cause, idea which is important to you.
