FUQ: Frequently Unasked Questions
In the interest of shedding some light beyond that which shines on me from my info page, here are answers to a few questions that have not been asked. A lot.
Q: What's the origin of your username? Or any of the other nicknames listed in your profile, for that matter?
A: Well, it's an amalgamation of a couple of CTY nicknames. The first CTY nickname I ever got was at LAN.00.1, (Lancaster, summer of 2000, 1st session, if you're unfamiliar with the abbreviation style) at that year's pizza-eating contest. Teper, one of the staff ringleaders, was assigning nicknames for everyone, and he tended to go for puns and/or rhymes. I got the weakly-rhyming "Nathan 'The Tortoise' Curtis". I won that year's contest, so I carried the nickname into next year's Roshambo (Rock Paper Scissors) Tournament, where I got trounced as usual. (There was no pizza-eating contest again until 2003; it has always been a triennial event.) So I dropped that nickname, and waited for a more permanent nickname to be bestowed. Then, in 02.2, I stumbled across such a nickname. There was a group of five or six staffers, myself included, who frequently gathered for games of midnight bridge that session. One night, I walked in on a game in progress, and decided to look over one player's shoulder. Halfway through the game, he made a REALLY stupid play, and I reflexively shouted, "YOU F***ING MORON!" This shocked everybody, including myself, and the next morning, a couple of the players were calling me "YFM". This then got shortened to "FM," and subsequently expanded to "F'n'M". This is a fortuitous pun on F&M, the common moniker for Franklin and Marshall College, which hosts CTY's Lancaster campus.
Skip ahead to 03.2. I was actually working at Bethlehem that session, though I was driving back to Lancaster every weekend to hang out with everybody. For that year's Roshambo Tournament, I was planning on using F'n'M as my handle. Before I could put that on a nametag, though, Timmer, another staff ringleader, came over and made a wise-ass comment. I was wearing a staff T-shirt, which conveniently said "STAFF" in the lapel area. He said, "Oh, your nickname is 'Staff,' that's a clever one." So, when I got the chance, I made two nametags: "F'n'M" and "Staff, That's a Clever One". When my name was put on the big bracket, I insisted that both nicknames be used. Well, both nicknames together were a bit too much to fit in the bracket, so it was abbreivated slightly: "F'n'M Staff T.A.C.O." It didn't take long for people to start calling me "Staff Taco," naturally. The next day, I was defending my title in the pizza-eating contest, and this time nobody was there to assign nicknames. So, I decided to fold all of my previous nicknames into one monstrosity: "Nathan 'F'n'M Staff Tortoise TACO' Curtis". I had the good fortune to win the contest for the second straight time, and in the subsequent contest writeup, I was at times listed as "Nathan 'F'n'M Staff Tortoise TACO Could You Make It Any Longer?' Curtis".
Among CTY staff, I am still more widely known as F'n'M, but when choosing a screen name for AIM, I opted to take the portions which were a little less profane in origin. Furthermore, I switched the order from "Tortoise Taco" to "TacoTortoise," to avoid sounding like I meant "a taco made with tortoise meant". And so it goes.
Q: Um...what is this CTY you keep referring to?
A: CTY is a lot like jazz: if you have to ask, you'll never know. The best I can say is that it's a "nerd camp" that has one of the strongest and most original communities at its heart. I was a student at CTY for four years, (Studying Intro to Lab Science, Number Theory, Theoretical Foundations of Computer Science, and Digital Logic) all at Lancaster, and those were probably the best learning experiences I've ever had, but it's the 6 years (and counting) I've spent teaching there that have really defined my life.
Q: So...you're a music student, and you teach math. What do you do for fun?
A: Music and math, actually. One of the neat things about music as a career is that I get to spend the bulk of my time on my favorite hobby. And I wouldn't teach math if I didn't enjoy it. In my spare time, I listen to too much music (chiefly jazz and post-1950 classical) and do far too many puzzles.
Q: You're a dork.
A: Actually, I'm not. It has been established (during LAN.02.1) that I am a geek, a nerd, and a dweeb, but definitely not a dork. In fact, my being a dweeb by definition precludes being a dork. So either you don't know me well enough, or your definitions are faulty. And I needn't point out that that wasn't even a question.
Q: Anything else you'd like to say?
Hell, yeah, but I've got to find a place to stop. This is it.
-TT
Q: What's the origin of your username? Or any of the other nicknames listed in your profile, for that matter?
A: Well, it's an amalgamation of a couple of CTY nicknames. The first CTY nickname I ever got was at LAN.00.1, (Lancaster, summer of 2000, 1st session, if you're unfamiliar with the abbreviation style) at that year's pizza-eating contest. Teper, one of the staff ringleaders, was assigning nicknames for everyone, and he tended to go for puns and/or rhymes. I got the weakly-rhyming "Nathan 'The Tortoise' Curtis". I won that year's contest, so I carried the nickname into next year's Roshambo (Rock Paper Scissors) Tournament, where I got trounced as usual. (There was no pizza-eating contest again until 2003; it has always been a triennial event.) So I dropped that nickname, and waited for a more permanent nickname to be bestowed. Then, in 02.2, I stumbled across such a nickname. There was a group of five or six staffers, myself included, who frequently gathered for games of midnight bridge that session. One night, I walked in on a game in progress, and decided to look over one player's shoulder. Halfway through the game, he made a REALLY stupid play, and I reflexively shouted, "YOU F***ING MORON!" This shocked everybody, including myself, and the next morning, a couple of the players were calling me "YFM". This then got shortened to "FM," and subsequently expanded to "F'n'M". This is a fortuitous pun on F&M, the common moniker for Franklin and Marshall College, which hosts CTY's Lancaster campus.
Skip ahead to 03.2. I was actually working at Bethlehem that session, though I was driving back to Lancaster every weekend to hang out with everybody. For that year's Roshambo Tournament, I was planning on using F'n'M as my handle. Before I could put that on a nametag, though, Timmer, another staff ringleader, came over and made a wise-ass comment. I was wearing a staff T-shirt, which conveniently said "STAFF" in the lapel area. He said, "Oh, your nickname is 'Staff,' that's a clever one." So, when I got the chance, I made two nametags: "F'n'M" and "Staff, That's a Clever One". When my name was put on the big bracket, I insisted that both nicknames be used. Well, both nicknames together were a bit too much to fit in the bracket, so it was abbreivated slightly: "F'n'M Staff T.A.C.O." It didn't take long for people to start calling me "Staff Taco," naturally. The next day, I was defending my title in the pizza-eating contest, and this time nobody was there to assign nicknames. So, I decided to fold all of my previous nicknames into one monstrosity: "Nathan 'F'n'M Staff Tortoise TACO' Curtis". I had the good fortune to win the contest for the second straight time, and in the subsequent contest writeup, I was at times listed as "Nathan 'F'n'M Staff Tortoise TACO Could You Make It Any Longer?' Curtis".
Among CTY staff, I am still more widely known as F'n'M, but when choosing a screen name for AIM, I opted to take the portions which were a little less profane in origin. Furthermore, I switched the order from "Tortoise Taco" to "TacoTortoise," to avoid sounding like I meant "a taco made with tortoise meant". And so it goes.
Q: Um...what is this CTY you keep referring to?
A: CTY is a lot like jazz: if you have to ask, you'll never know. The best I can say is that it's a "nerd camp" that has one of the strongest and most original communities at its heart. I was a student at CTY for four years, (Studying Intro to Lab Science, Number Theory, Theoretical Foundations of Computer Science, and Digital Logic) all at Lancaster, and those were probably the best learning experiences I've ever had, but it's the 6 years (and counting) I've spent teaching there that have really defined my life.
Q: So...you're a music student, and you teach math. What do you do for fun?
A: Music and math, actually. One of the neat things about music as a career is that I get to spend the bulk of my time on my favorite hobby. And I wouldn't teach math if I didn't enjoy it. In my spare time, I listen to too much music (chiefly jazz and post-1950 classical) and do far too many puzzles.
Q: You're a dork.
A: Actually, I'm not. It has been established (during LAN.02.1) that I am a geek, a nerd, and a dweeb, but definitely not a dork. In fact, my being a dweeb by definition precludes being a dork. So either you don't know me well enough, or your definitions are faulty. And I needn't point out that that wasn't even a question.
Q: Anything else you'd like to say?
Hell, yeah, but I've got to find a place to stop. This is it.
-TT