Interview With A Fanboy
Questions from jazzfish
1) What was your first exposure to SF fandom?
The first convention I went to for real was RoVaCon 8, in 1983. I met Starfleeters, gamers, low-budget filmmakers, and costumers, and knew immediately that this was my crowd.
I wish I remembered more of the details, but it really was a long time ago. I remember being overwhelmed by the sense of finally finding something for which I’d been searching.
2) How many different places have you lived?
I was born in Roanoke, lived as a toddler in New Jersey for a little while, came back to Roanoke, finished high school in upstate New York, returned to Roanoke once more, moved to Salem, for a few years, and then bounced to Virginia Beach and to Norfolk and to Portsmouth in quick succession. 9 different domiciles, with the same house in Roanoke covering almost 3 decades of that.
3) When did you go Mac?
Sometime in 1987, I believe. The Blacksburg Starfleet chapter, USS McKay, built its newsletters on the Macs of Virginia Tech and Bluefield State College, and I helped out. (No hard drives back then – imagine having to pass around the floppy disk with the OS every time someone wanted to change fonts!)
My dad really thought I should have a PC, but I had already gotten used to the MacOS, and rattrap gave me my first one as a gift a few years later. (It still functions quite well.)
4) Do you worry about money?
Yep. I learned what little I know about managing money late in life, and I still seem to have two mental states: “Don’t worry about the expense, we’re fine” and “OMG we’re not going to make it to the end of the month how did this happen!”
But the bills do get paid somehow.
5) What’s the weirdest thing you’ve done?
That’s a hard one – I suspect my definition of “weird” is a little skewed. Discounting anything that happened at a con or a VTSFFC party, and filtering out anything over a PG rating, I would have to say certain starlit mountaintop ceremonies in which I participated while searching for answers to the Big Questions. The sensations and emotions remain indescribable.
Tags: apple, fandom, memes, philosophy, travel
