About Me
alakuriel: Well I'm interested in Zach, and hearing about what he does every day and what kinds of stuff he's interested in and likes to do and talk about.^^
viridian: I would like to hear what you're up to these days.
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So, hi. My name is Zach Lome. I'm 23 years old, although if you catch me when I'm tired enough I may forget and say 22. I'm a bit silly like that; I have a strange tendency to forget words, places, and facts, and then remember them just as suddenly. There are more peculiarities of mind -- it takes me exactly two times to remember anyone's name, for example, regardless of how I meet them.
My mind is a very important thing to me. I am a creature of impulse and creativity; to rationalize, to fictionalize, without those I am nothing.
This is not to say that I lack social skills. In fact, I'm as much a social being as I am a withdrawn person, which creates an interesting dichotomy of choice. I need -- compulsively -- to be around people, to discuss logic and politics and games with people. I crave constant attention, and I tell some pretty amusing anecdotes too. I like to drink (but not too often); I like to party and hang out.
For the past year or so, nearly every single thursday night I've gone to play DDR with a few of my friends.
Almost every weekend, I game with a different group of friends -- we've gone through several White Wolf campaigns, a Hero System campaign, random parties, Magic, Descent, other random board games... lots and lots of nerd joy.
Once every two months or so I go down to Normal. I went down last week for amazingtomatoes's 21st birthday party.
I'm a big fan of the Japanese culture and language. I went to the Island Nation in April 2007, and came back 4 months later. There are a lot of posts from around then, and I talk about it incessantly, so I don't need to bring it up here. But it's still a significant part of who I am, and I plan on going back.
After I came back, I got a job, working for Sentact, thanks to _tactics. I don't like this job. At all. I've always considered myself a programmer (and, functionally, I am), but I realized pretty quickly that programming -- particularly for web technology and people as demanding as hospitals -- is exhausting, repetitive, and boring. I always love writing programs for myself -- it's the perfect intersection of logic and creativity to me -- but it's not something I want to make a lifelong plan of.
I want to be a writer. I've been trying very hard to do some writing every day; although it's almost all been poetry, I've gotten into the habit of it. If you're curious, I've split off into a separate writing blog: Crash of Thunder.
I've been a participant of NaNoWriMo since 2004. I finally completed it for the first time in 2007. I'm really, really looking forward to 2008.
As far as the past year, all I've been doing is working and running about. It's been really busy and draining. I've got an interesting balance between work and play; I feel like I work all the time every day until even spending time with people feels like work, and then I have one huge bash or weekend (a cruise, driving down to Normal, etc.), release all my pent up frustration, feel more comfortable at work, and then the cycle inexorably repeats itself. What I'd like is to have a job that feels like a vacation, that I'm comfortable in. Ideally, something where I choose what gets done -- after having to deal with my current boss's awful management strategies ("You know, telling my employees what the customer's been asking for is just asking to frustrate them with details. I think I'll tell them what to do directly, so they don't have to worry about anyone else. Too bad my grasp of English is tenuous at best even though I'm from California, and I have a really bad tendency to think about what I'm going to say without ever actually saying it."), I'd relish the chance to control my own output.
so, I guess that sums it up. I'm compulsively creative, troublingly thoughtful, horribly overworked and underpaid, intelligent and airbrained, absent-minded and keenly aware. Over the past year and a half I've graduated college, gone to Japan, gotten a full-time salaried job and joined the cubicle crew, gone on a cruise, spent thousands on gas, gotten a car, gone to GenCon, gone to Anime Central and met up with a friend I had met in Japan there, and played literally days worth of DDR. I've written enough to fill a novel's length in pages, but nothing worthy of actually putting in a novel.
My short-term goal? to save up enough money to quit my job and live a low-budget lifestyle for MINIMUM three months, and to spend this time re-writing, completing a novel, and hopefully publishing it.
Another goal is to start a business -- dead_pan's idea for a "Geek Store" really resonated with me, and it's something that I could see being successful.
Another goal, of course, is to find a girl who likes me -- to establish a relationship, to be able to kiss and hold someone again, to take their hand and have them smile instead of reaching for the pepper spray. Love's tricky, though, and more than just a little bit cruel. I have a tendency to fall for the people I'm least likely to get. It makes sense, though, if you've ever seen Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
(oh, yes, that too -- I've been watching a lot of movies :D)
addendum: I recently took a bunch of pictures using my brother's camera. They're available here.
viridian: I would like to hear what you're up to these days.
--
So, hi. My name is Zach Lome. I'm 23 years old, although if you catch me when I'm tired enough I may forget and say 22. I'm a bit silly like that; I have a strange tendency to forget words, places, and facts, and then remember them just as suddenly. There are more peculiarities of mind -- it takes me exactly two times to remember anyone's name, for example, regardless of how I meet them.
My mind is a very important thing to me. I am a creature of impulse and creativity; to rationalize, to fictionalize, without those I am nothing.
This is not to say that I lack social skills. In fact, I'm as much a social being as I am a withdrawn person, which creates an interesting dichotomy of choice. I need -- compulsively -- to be around people, to discuss logic and politics and games with people. I crave constant attention, and I tell some pretty amusing anecdotes too. I like to drink (but not too often); I like to party and hang out.
For the past year or so, nearly every single thursday night I've gone to play DDR with a few of my friends.
Almost every weekend, I game with a different group of friends -- we've gone through several White Wolf campaigns, a Hero System campaign, random parties, Magic, Descent, other random board games... lots and lots of nerd joy.
Once every two months or so I go down to Normal. I went down last week for amazingtomatoes's 21st birthday party.
I'm a big fan of the Japanese culture and language. I went to the Island Nation in April 2007, and came back 4 months later. There are a lot of posts from around then, and I talk about it incessantly, so I don't need to bring it up here. But it's still a significant part of who I am, and I plan on going back.
After I came back, I got a job, working for Sentact, thanks to _tactics. I don't like this job. At all. I've always considered myself a programmer (and, functionally, I am), but I realized pretty quickly that programming -- particularly for web technology and people as demanding as hospitals -- is exhausting, repetitive, and boring. I always love writing programs for myself -- it's the perfect intersection of logic and creativity to me -- but it's not something I want to make a lifelong plan of.
I want to be a writer. I've been trying very hard to do some writing every day; although it's almost all been poetry, I've gotten into the habit of it. If you're curious, I've split off into a separate writing blog: Crash of Thunder.
I've been a participant of NaNoWriMo since 2004. I finally completed it for the first time in 2007. I'm really, really looking forward to 2008.
As far as the past year, all I've been doing is working and running about. It's been really busy and draining. I've got an interesting balance between work and play; I feel like I work all the time every day until even spending time with people feels like work, and then I have one huge bash or weekend (a cruise, driving down to Normal, etc.), release all my pent up frustration, feel more comfortable at work, and then the cycle inexorably repeats itself. What I'd like is to have a job that feels like a vacation, that I'm comfortable in. Ideally, something where I choose what gets done -- after having to deal with my current boss's awful management strategies ("You know, telling my employees what the customer's been asking for is just asking to frustrate them with details. I think I'll tell them what to do directly, so they don't have to worry about anyone else. Too bad my grasp of English is tenuous at best even though I'm from California, and I have a really bad tendency to think about what I'm going to say without ever actually saying it."), I'd relish the chance to control my own output.
so, I guess that sums it up. I'm compulsively creative, troublingly thoughtful, horribly overworked and underpaid, intelligent and airbrained, absent-minded and keenly aware. Over the past year and a half I've graduated college, gone to Japan, gotten a full-time salaried job and joined the cubicle crew, gone on a cruise, spent thousands on gas, gotten a car, gone to GenCon, gone to Anime Central and met up with a friend I had met in Japan there, and played literally days worth of DDR. I've written enough to fill a novel's length in pages, but nothing worthy of actually putting in a novel.
My short-term goal? to save up enough money to quit my job and live a low-budget lifestyle for MINIMUM three months, and to spend this time re-writing, completing a novel, and hopefully publishing it.
Another goal is to start a business -- dead_pan's idea for a "Geek Store" really resonated with me, and it's something that I could see being successful.
Another goal, of course, is to find a girl who likes me -- to establish a relationship, to be able to kiss and hold someone again, to take their hand and have them smile instead of reaching for the pepper spray. Love's tricky, though, and more than just a little bit cruel. I have a tendency to fall for the people I'm least likely to get. It makes sense, though, if you've ever seen Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
(oh, yes, that too -- I've been watching a lot of movies :D)
addendum: I recently took a bunch of pictures using my brother's camera. They're available here.