1. How did you find out about/why did you become of estrip?
I was looking for an old friend and happen to come across his hournal here.

2. How "out" are you about having a publicly accessible online journal. Do your friends know? Does your family know? Do your co-workers know? Does your boss know? Do you use your real name? Do you use your real photo?
I have several blogs, one that i developed myself, more for the gratification of coding than the want to blather on about my life. I am enjoy posting and tell people where to find me online all the time. I use my real name and all things personal are generally fair game.

3. How many epeeps have you met real life?
I have met quite a few. Unfortunately life is so hectic that I havent had time to meet more or continue catching up with those I've met allready. There are also qute a few members who've I've known for years and happen to find them here.

4. How has estrip changed the way that you meet people, on and/or off line?
Ever since I had my first 386 in the early 90's I have used the internet as a social experience. E strip does tend to take the mess that is the internet and provide a nice comfortable "local" feeling internet community. I definitely appreciate that

5. How has estrip affected you love life?
I thought this was estrip, not eharmony. Like I said I was allready an avid internet socializer. Ive met romantic partners on the internet in the past.

6. How many of your friends have joined estrip because of your influence?
2

7. Are you from Buffalo/do you live in Buffalo?
yes/yes

Equipment:
1. What type of hardware or software purchases have you made as a result of using estrip?
I tend to keep updated. My hardware and software purchases are fueled by my professional needs. I am a programmer and I suppose I could say that estrip has had some influence over my want to do cool things with the internet. So it may find some influence in the software I write.

2. Have you used the mobile version of estrip? Why or why not?
I don't really like cell phones. I have one, It makes a great alarm clock. I did check it out once out. Simply because I am a geek and I do similar things for my clients.

Lifestyle:
1. In what way has estrip changed your Internet surfings habits? Describe the amount of time you spend on estrip, when you use it and about how long?
On occasion I will post something and chat for an hour but mostly it has become part of a virtual routine that was allready part of my daily habits.

1a. How many journals do you usually read per day?
I read a lot of random blogs from other places for tech industry. I also read a lot of the estrip blogs. Sometimes choosing at random.

2. In what ways has estrip changed the way you perceive your local community?
Unfortunately I cannot say that estrip has change my overall view of the this area but it has assured me that there are like-minded and not so like minded but open minded people around me.

3. How has journaling about your life affected the way you spend your free time?
I can't say that it has.

4. Has estrip changed your living situation in any way?
No
5. Do you find that you mediate/document more of your experiences now that you share them with others?
It is true that I tend to reflect more on recent experiences because I have to think more about what I am writing. Unfortunately reflection doesn't always provide a mirror image and the process of finding the correct words will sometimes completely change the way a recent happening is viewed.

6. Has publishing on estrip affected the way that write?
I am a lazy writer, I have bad sentence structure, I use surperfluous commas, run on sentences and I rarely proof read. I suppose that journalling has made me more aware of these things.

7. Do you have other online journals? If so, with what service and has estrip affected your usage of that journal?
I usually mirror the journals that I like from my other blog because iI appreciatre that estrip has a built in readership. I usually always post on my blog first because it is my own project and I can back it up directly

8. Have you ever gotten in trouble for using estrip at work?
I am self employed so the boss doesn't mind.

9. If you have stopped using estrip, why?


http://www.estrip.org/articles/news/874.html

Two Words, Create Adventure. Once when I was a young teenager I remember having had to take a bus home from a friends house. After waiting for a few minutes with no bus schedule I decided to walk to the next stop and hope there was one posted. One stop became two stops and two stops became five stops and before I knew it I had walked about five miles and I was at least half way home when a bus finally zipped past me. Needless to say I walked another five miles and arrived home with a new appreciation for living life a little more loosely. In that span of a couple of hours and at an age at least half of what I am today I realized the value of letting adventure happen and in the process I learned to appreciate how much more interesting the journey can be when you are not travelling at 55 mph. I have done odd things in my life for the sake of finding wrinkles in my universe. I have often stretched that last ounce of gas in my tank several miles knowing that running out of gas is not a snag in my ordered existence but a chance to explore some place random. I once had a car on which the tank meter would freeze in place randomly so I never knew when I was close to empty, I did a lot of great exploring that year. It is not uncommon to catch me surfing in lake erie right before the lake freezes, Geocaching in January (Google it) or getting in my car on a saturday morning and driving until I have no idea where I am and I have to ask the local amish shoemaker how to get home after buying some pumpkin butter and looking at a quilt. I believe that much of this side of me was formed walking from bus stop to bus stop late on a friday nite. Adventure will always happen if you look for it and you have more time to let it develop on the way if you take your time getting where you are going. Today I had a meeting on the other side of the city and I decided to carpool without any knowledge of whether or not the carpool would be getting me home. The resulting walk through downtown buffalo reminded me that I live in a city, and cities are full of adventure. I definitley need to find some this summer. I suggest you do the same, or join me on mine.

I think I should have signed up for green peace instead of the Marine Corps 10 years ago, maybe I would still have a full head of hair. But anyways, yesterday I had an experience that caused a serious flashback to my childhood. I was 8 or 9 years old and I remember that the the winter thaw would always leave large pools of water between the train tracks at the end of my street. These pools of water would become full of tadpoles by late spring. A few sadistic kids from the neighborhood would anxiously wait for these pollywogs to become frogs so that they could begin a ritual that caused what is possibly one of the first defining moments in my life. Taking an old 2 by 4 and laying it perpendicular to the tracks they would put a frog on one end and then stomp on the other, sending the frog flying into the air and then letting gravity do its worst to poor little kermit. That was how it started. I remember that with each passing year the feats of idiocy became more sophisticated and increasingly cruel. I can recall fireworks being used in disturbing ways and I even remember one particularly goony kid putting the wheels from an old toy car through the back end of a serverly damaged specimine and watching it hop/roll away.

I remember clearly, the day that I had finally had enough, normally I would just walk away and make a mental note that those were not the kids that I wanted to hang out with but one particular day I snapped, I saw the usual congregation of idiots whose names that I still remember beginning their ritual and I started grabbing every frog I could get my hands on, I remember getting back to my house with tears exploding from my face. I had that face of innocence, a little boy whom I really miss sometimes these days and in my hand was one frog. I saved one frog.

So yesterday I was driving down Tifft street and I saw a turtle trying to cross the road. It was very busy and he was quite slow (as we know turtles are) so I pulled over on to Ohio right before Tifft Nature Preserve and ran back to where I had seen the turtle. My heart dropped because the turtle had allready been hit, in the two minutes from the time I noticed it to the time I got back to it, some oblivious individual in an SUV (Stupid Unipressive Vehicle) had run him over. His shell was cracked and he was bleeding very badly. All of a sudden I was 9 years old standing at the corner of my street, manically clutching at frogs. So after putting the turtle whom I would come to name feisty in a safe place I went home to get a shoe box and some carrots, neither of which was he happy to see. I then had Liz take me to the SPCA where I left him with the vet who seemed to think he had a chance. His shell was very badly cracked and I could see parts of him that are much better left to biology textbooks. I did not call today to find out his status but I thought about it. I would like to think that I have done everything I can for him.

So maybe I'm a meat eating hipocrite, maybe I spent years of my life training to be a marine, maybe uncle sam could have made me a killer as he has some with many of my friends from my days wearing green, but yesterday I think I saved one turtle, and that makes me feel good. It makes me feel good because after everything Ive done in my life all of my post pubescent transgressions have not been able to completely remove that 9 year old boy from my spirit. That turtle may have been more helpful to me than I was to it.

I'm sure we all remember our first day of college, first kiss, first sexual experience, second sexual experience, third sexual experience. They all have one thing in common, excitement. The problem with excitement is that very few things in life can manage to bring about consistent levels of it. I can't seem to remember the last time that I was first kiss excited, and certainly not first sexual experience excited. I'm sure I've been 50th sexual experience excited quite often but I'm sure we don't need to go any further into that metaphor. It could get messy. But anyways. I'm taking a poll. When is last time that you were so excited that you could not contain yourself? I don't mean sexually, although that would certainly be an acceptable mode of excitement for this query.
Not that I'm a gloomy individual, my disposition is actually quite agreeable. I've just had so many wonderful experiences in my life that I think my bar is set a bit high these days. So here is a very abbrevriated list of my most exciting moments in recent memory. Not in any order.
The day I decided to go back to college
The the first time I caught a wave (surfing)
The day I graduated Marine Corps Bootcamp (Very distant memory)
The day I started my own business
Any time I've gotten on a plane to go somewhere new
The day I wrote my first piano composition
The day I played it for my best friend
The Day I got out of the Marines
The Day I got my scholarship for graduate school
.....

The term Geek is actually derived from a word that was used to describe carnival performers with strange acts. Some "geeks" would bite the heads of of poultry and others would do much worse. I believe they were in much the same capacity as a clown, the major difference being that a geek would have some specialized act that made them stand out and usually included something nasty. As a fan of etymology ( and no that is not the study of insects) I am always interested in finding out how such terms came to be used as they are today. I assume that as a geek was a carnival performer the term is associated in meaning with terms like joker and fool. So the question is, how do we find the historical bridge that takes us from biting the heads of chickens to taking over the world one bit at a time?