(Available in plain or extra chunky)
Last changed: August 22, 1998
The linkable "permanent" address of this page is http://pobox.com/~irving/
Thanks for checking out my home page! (Note that links with strong emphasis are items that I keep and maintain.)
A special audio greeting from me... to you. Take your pick of
AU,
MPEG,
RealAudio, or
WAV.
(If you liked the original greeting better, it's still here.)
For your perusal...
Fight browser discrimination! Use whatever browser you want. That's the real spirit of the Web.
If you know me personally and want to stay in touch, here are some address-book links I highly recommend:
These are my pages. I made them. They're my fault.
Noooooo! One of my all-time favorite Web sites, the Caustic Seattle Compendium, is gone! No doubt it felt bruised and battered by the commercial success of the slick, ad-heavy Microsoft site Seattle Sidewalk. Oh well. Dave, you done good, my friend. It'll be missed.
The Washington State Department of Transportation has some nifty real-time info online to keep commuters happy. The freeway traffic cameras are fun to look at if you want to see what the weather's like here. There's also a freeway traffic flow map available.
The Stranger is a free weekly paper in Seattle. It finally has its own Web site, though the paper ain't quite what it used to be in the old days (i.e. 1991). Actually, there's three original parts of it still worth reading: The Stranger Personals (which inspired the Presidents of the United States of America song "I Saw U"), Clark Humphrey's "Misc.," and "Savage Love." A notably good exception among the new stuff is Wm. Steven Humphrey's "I [heart] Television."
Say what you will about the Reverend Bruce Howard. I give him credit for creating a religion even more enigmatic than the Church of the SubGenius. His local public-access cable show is the only reason I even think about getting cable from TCI.
KCMU-FM is the last cool radio station in Seattle.
Sonarchy is a very cool audio-oriented Web site run by Jack Straw Productions, the Northwest's largest non-profit recording studio. They're good people and they do Net culture a tremendous service. (I used to volunteer for them, but I buggered off after a couple of months. I won't soon forgive myself for that.)
Real Change is a Seattle newspaper by and for Seattle's homeless population. Homeless people have the privilege of selling the paper on the street and taking a good cut of the cover price, so buy a copy if you can.
I've lived in the Capitol Hill district of Seattle since August of 1991. If you want to see what the weather's like around here, check out the WSDOT's freeway traffic camera at Roanoke Street.
I grew up in Corvallis, Oregon, where I graduated from Corvallis High School in 1985. I've also attended Lane Community College in Eugene, 1985-1986 (under the misguided belief that TV broadcasting was where it was at for me).
![[Bess logo]](bess.gif)
I work for
N2H2,
a company that provides schools and ISPs with a Web "filtering" service similar to SurfWatch and Cyber Patrol, without putting end users through the hassle of installing and maintaining extra software. It's received a four-star rating from PC Computing, an endorsement from Filtering Facts, and raves from our customers. The system is called BESS,
named after the boss's Chesapeake Bay retriever.
(We also offer Internet access, both filtered as BESS and
unfiltered as Rainier.Net.)
Favorite hobbies of mine include music (I once DJ'd at KBVR-FM), photography, drawing, juggling, proselytizing for the Church of the SubGenius, and last but far from least...
Yes, I am a bit of a computer geek. And to erase any doubt on the matter, I present you with my personal Geek Code (curious about what it means?):
GCS/MU/CA/O d(-) s-:+ a30 C++++$ UL++++$ P+++$ L++(+++) E--- W++$ N-- o+>++ K+++>++++ w !O M- !V PS+>++ PE- Y+>++ PGP+>+++ t 5>+ X+(++) R(-) tv+ b+>++ DI++++ D G>+++ e>++ h(+) r(---)>* y--(+*)
(And ladies, geek guys make ideal mates...)
As you might have guessed, I spend a lot of time on the Internet, which I've been a part of since 1988. The World Wide Web (which ensnared me in June 1994) has consumed most of my time, rather like a blue whale consuming krill. I've joined the HTML Writers Guild, and even though I haven't been very active in it lately, I support its philosophy and goals.
I've recently started helping out the
Debian project, a non-profit organization that develops the world's most
kick-butt (and free!) Linux distribution.
Linux is quite simply the best operating system you can get for the money (and
that's saying more than you might suspect). Right now, all I do is maintain
the Debian package for
Xmorph.
I'm pretty easy to find on-line. I'm a bit of an IRC addict; I can usually be found on EFnet in the #seattle or #PugetSound channels. Look for a guy named "discHead." I also use ICQ a lot, and I even have a video camera at home for doing CU-SeeMe and NetMeeting.
Definitely not an all-inclusive list; just people I felt like writing about and friends who I know have Web pages.
Dad (Bill), who deserves a place of honor on the list for several
reasons: (1) being Dad, (2) giving me my start in computers, (3) hinting that
it would influence a future inheritance. (Yes, the picture is a Photoshop hack.)
Mom (Mary) and Sis (Janna), who also deserve a place of honor on the list, even though they have no home pages yet. (I'm working on Mom, though.)
Terry,
one of my bestest friends. I met him when I first moved here and started working for PIP Printing in the U District. He's the founding member and musical genius behind the band I'm in, SpEnt
fiXer. (No, we don't play live yet, but we're on the Kathode Ray Music compilation "Money Talks... and Sex Sells.")
Carolyn -- the resemblance to
Gillian Anderson
is quite striking, don't you think? (Okay, so that's really Gillian Anderson's
picture.)
Carolyn's one of my better friends of recent years; she even bought me lunch
for my 28th birthday after barely knowing me for a few weeks.
She used to work with me at N2H2, but has since moved on.
Kira, another good friend of
mine, who just happens to live down the street from me. I started a home page
for her, but she's never bothered to add anything to it. Ah well. She
recently married James (see below), and I can honestly say that the reception
was the best dang wedding party I've ever seen. (I also got to be a
bridesmaid, but that's a story for another time.)
James, old high school friend and newly-wed husband of Kira.
The lucky sod practically got in on the ground floor at Amazon.com, where he works to this day.
Chuck, a friend from
way back in high school. We've shared many a strange experience, not the least
of which was The Screaming Axolotl Show. On the Net, he likes to hang out in MUDs like
DragonMUD and
GarouMUSH under the moniker of
"Zingaro." (He tells me that the photo is of him dressed for a
costume ball. I'd be worried if it was for something else.)
Anna, another
high school friend with whom I stay in touch. She belongs to a society I've
been wanting to join for most of my life: Mensa.
She and Chuck know who "Irving" really is.
Jill, who I see mostly on
IRC. She helps keep me
sane, in exchange for supplying her with gossip. Attention single guys: she's
a sweetie! (Be nice to her or I'll kick your butt.)
Adrian, a.k.a. "Rassilon"
-- Just call him "Mister Cocktail."
Aren, noted
SpEnt fiXer groupie and Adrian's main
squeeze.
Eric, a.k.a. "Paul Texas," whose home page is the only page I know of that is best viewed with Lynx. He has a rather fanatical devotion to collecting stuff
(especially Pez dispensers). And, yes, he's a bona fide
Teamster.
Jason, a.k.a. "Buck Fifty,"
Smack® fiend and homebrewmeister extraordinaire.
Jennifer, an
accomplished actress friend for whom I've created a separate page.
She once had the privilege of appearing on
KING-TV's "Almost Live!"
You might see her pop up alongside
"Movie Geek" or Leroy Chin on
cable channel 29 every now and then.
Kitta -- I include her here in the vain hope that she really still
exists somewhere.
Lela -- You know what they say about Texas women. :-) (Um... okay,
I don't, either.) The only out-of-town friend with whom I can communicate
by video. Don't read anything into that, though.
Jenny, who responded to my
personal ad despite living 3000 miles or
so away in New Hampshire. We've become e-mail pals in spite of all that.
Then there are the friends I've made at N2H2 while we've all been driven slowly but surely insane; they include (but are not limited to) Kevin, Paul, Michael, J.P., Todd, and Bernie.
Then there are the other old high school friends I managed to locate on the Web (hi guys, don't be strangers!): Florence, Peko, and Sean.
Finally, there is Lurch, the first car I've had the privilege to own. I've retained its page as a loving tribute, but it has been replaced by The Beast, which will soon have a page as well.
My Web Voyeur page caught the attention of a writer at Prodigy who wrote up an interview with me that appeared in the "Hot Spot" section of their Living Digital Web site. It was up on the weekend of October 4th, and one of these days I'll ask them if it's okay to put up the copy I saved of it.
I've written an article on World Wide Web cameras which appeared in the January 1996 issue of WEBsmith magazine. The lead article of the inaugural issue... quite a weighty responsibility. The magazine no longer exists as a publication unto itself, but it lives on as the "WWWsmith" section of Linux Journal.
Did I mention the band I'm in, SpEnt fiXer? And the CD we're on? This isn't the song that's on there, but nevertheless, here's a cover we did of "Hey Bulldog." It's sung mostly by me, so it's worth a laugh. (If you listen carefully, you'll hear Terry's voice cut in over mine for a few seconds after the guitar solo.)
Just for the sake of silliness, here's what happens when I scan my face. ("discHead," if you must know, is the nickname I use on IRC.) If you're into that up-and-coming new graphics format PNG, try out the same picture in interlaced PNG format.
A geek with too much free time is a dangerous thing.
In memory of Big Time Television
© 22 Aug 1998
![[Rated with RSACi]](rsaclabel.gif)
The Point Top 5% logo was provided by Point Communications, now part of Lycos. The Magellan 4-Star Site logo was provided by the McKinley Group, now part of Excite. The RSACi logo reproduced with the permission of the Recreational Software Advisory Council.
