Today I got a message from a new member on the site, (e:janeokafor) with some questions. I figured I would just answer it here.

Paul I will like to know you more as in where are you from and the kind of work you do?

I grew up in Kenmore, NY. (MAP TO: 309 TREMONT AVENUE)

It is Buffalo first suburb right at the North edge of the city. I attended Roosevelt, Kenmore Middle, and Kenmore West. As a young adult, my favorite hobbies were hiking and raving. By the time I was 18, I was ready to leave Buffalo the first chance I got. I actually hated it here and thought I would never come back. Not because I didn't love my friends or family but because I thought there was no hope for getting a cool job and I really wanted to see other warmer places.

I immediately attended Winthrop College in South Carolina for a year at Winthrop and studied zoology. I went there because we were visiting South Carolina when I was applying for school and I though, oh it is warm here.

I thought I was going to be a tortoise doctor but I couldn't deal with dissecting any more animals and ended up becomming vegan. Three fetal pig dissections and I had had it. I started studying German Language and got a scholarship to go to Flenburg, Germany for a year. It is a small town in Schleswig Holstein. I loved living there and had the best time learning German.

When it was time to come home, Winthrop had dropped there German program and I had to find a new shcool. They hadn't told me until I got there, so my parents and I had driven from Buffalo to South Carolina and then had to come back. It was too late for me to go to school in Buffalo, so I took a year off and worked as a temp at various horrible jobs including a day as a tech guy at a fatcory where they burned formaldyhyde to make other chemicals. You got to love Niagara Falls. I continued studying German on my own and applied for school at Northern Arizona Univeristy where a friend of mine from Winthrop was going to school. Amy Adams, I wonder where she is now?

While there I got really into computers and programming while working as a lab assistant in the Language Learning Center under the direction of Bernd Conrad It was a great combination of learning German and learning about computers. I mean I had had a lifetime of computer exposure and programmed my Commodore 64 as a kid, but it was my first attempt as an adult. I became obssessed with programming and computer graphics.

Soon I met (e:terry) at NAU. I was determined to go back to Germany, so he and I packed up and left for Germany in 2000 and stayed in Jena, Germany at the Frederick Schiller University. I took a class on language software development and really thought that was going to be in my future.

When I graduated and we got home to buffalo I had no money. I saw a job in the paper for a Multimedia Assistant at Canisius College in Buffalo, NY. I ended up landing the job and it pretty much ruined me financially, working for about $16,000/year at a school where the student paid more than $20,000/year for school. I would teach a class for about $2,700.

I also became an Adjunct Professor of 3D modeling and web programming.

Somewhere in here (e:twisted) came into my life.

My boss at Canisius told me to get my MFA so that I could apply to be a full-time staff member. I started working on my MFA in 2003 at the University of BUffalo. There I studied Virtual Reality at first. I was really excited with it because it combined 3D modeling with web and networking. Unfortunately, it seemed to generally inaccessible to the public to make it very interesting for long. I initially had envisioned it as a great tool for language learning as it would allow a sort of tele-immersion.

In 2001, I met (e:matthew) and he and (e:terry) and I became a triple and still are today.

I quickly switched to my focus to web programming and found it was my favorite thing in the world. In 2003, I founded elmwoodstrip.com as my thesis project. It continued to grow a lot and at the same time allowed me a stage to test all kinds of new code out with a large audience. It also broaded my social horizons considerably by allowing me to create my own tool for social networking.

It also started me documenting just about all of my life. At this point I have written over 2000 journals and uploaded over 300 media files. If you really want to know everything that happend in between, you can read my journal. I docuemnt just about everything I do that is of any interest and even things that aren't ;) I became especially addicted to the web when I combined it with my multitude of cell phones - the latest one, a sprint PPC 6700, records mobile video and has huge bandwidth e.g. (e:paul,4434)

When it came time for Canisius to hire a full time professor I still wasn't finished with my MFA. I didn't get the job which I think was for the better looking back on it. When I foung out they hired some guy who didn't even have an MFA, I was really quite devastated.

Then one of my favorite students brought in an article in a classified ad for a position at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, NY. The job sounded like a perfect match. I applied and never expected anything to come out of it because although I am an excellent programmer with lots of experience, I had no computer science degree.

I brought in lots of code samples and talked to them about my previous work. It worked because I got the job. I love my job so much. Working at Roswell has been amazing. The project vary all the time. Th elast thing I designed was a web based image manipulation and annotation program for the dermatology department. It was a replacement for the polaroid/manilla folder system they used to use.

Now I am working on an online employee evaluation system and the have taken over development of the intranet. One of the biggest focuses of my recent work has been an extensive clientside javascript library that will be used by the other team members in order to standardize our javascript and add many convenient widgets to our UIs.

The job pays me enough that I could buy a mansion (e:paul,4343) , well at least, in Buffalo. So I think I will probably end up being here forever, unless someone offers me more than 100,000 a year and moves me.

In 2006, artvoice began hosting our server, which has made it possible to greatly expand the previous constraints on the size and bandwidth of the site. I would like to expand the mobile usage of the site. There is a an xhtml mini mirror for easy access on web capable cell phones. The problem is that Buffalo, NY is only slowly moving towards the mobile web. This month I added mobile video to the journals. I hope that part of the site grows exponentially in the near future.

This is my portoflio but kind of outdated a bit

So hopefully that answers your questions.

About the Ghosts
In response to (e:shawn):273 I dreamed about ghosts all night long. In my dream the radio tower fell on our house and it disturbed the ghosts. Ironically, they lived in the closet and were black and white. In the dream (e:terry) refused to stop playign warcraft to come see them and (e:matthew) wouldn't believ me. Tehy gave me the choice of going into the closet and becomming one of them or them coming out, but then we would have to house them. I had them come out, they turned color and suddenly we went from a threesome to a ssixsome. It was one of the longest dreams I had in my life I think. I rememeber trying to tell my mother, who knows I am an athiest, that I now believe in ghosts and that they are coming over for dinner and she will have to cool for them, lol.

I knew it would finally come to this . I wish I had thought of it. There are men and woman, a little or big something for everyone.



I want this so bad

I came home from a long day of javascripting to (e:terry) and (e:lilho)'s dance revolution. Finally got headphone for my phone so I can listen to music streamed over the net on the go without bothering everyone around me.

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At the company store today they had these Hello Kitty marshmellow pops. I was going to buy one but how could you eat that.



(e:emilyjane) (e:paul,1238) dancing to DDR in 04, she was just here the other day and is skinny as a rail now.

Wow, video so beats my first audio journal from 04 (e:paul,757) when recording (e:terry)'s DDR moves back then,

I saw someone riding a segway down elmwood tonight and remembered I wanted one. So I looked on ebay and they are cheap now.

Segway on Ebay -



It's only $800 on ebay. If I wasn't buying a house, two blocks from my work I would buy it. I want to play on it so bad.

Thursday int the square was quite enetertaining. Jesu McHotty's hotter than hot brother made a brokeback appearance in full cowboy regalia. This journal has a little something for everyone.

Soul Live - live

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Brokeback Mc Christian, hotty mcJesus brother.




Cute frank talks with the brokeback McChristian.


(e:lilho) looking fierce


She had them hanging out to the point where they almost fell out when she walked.


I can't believe hwo many motor cycles are at the event.


These pink pants are too much.






(e:mike) an dme in line for the porta potties

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I am staying late each night this week to make it so that I could take off this afternoon to go to the DMV. It took less time than I expected. In fact the DMV was all smooth sailing and I could have even done it on my lunch break.

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I had not been to this part of the Buffalo MArina in years. It was pleasantly well set up and seemed to be bumping with people. I don't know who the people are that want to live on the waterfront considering there are so many other nice, affordable places to liv ein the city. (e:lilho) says it is people with boats.

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I ate a cheeseburger for my second lunch today. They had a clam bar but I didn't notice it until after I ate the chesseburger. In fact they wine and beer plus free outdoor wifi and sitting areas. It is a great attraction that I think a lot of people don't know about.





















A sign about the robberies around Roswell


A picture of the yummiest ribs they had for lunch. Came with two potatoes and corn on the cob.


The other night I cooked Tuna after the gym but I had no lemons so I tried blackberries. They worked well, it was yummy.



Our first house has been painted, finally.

(e:matthew) and I got in a big fight about Main Street. I have a hard time discussing things with him because he yells and then I yell and then we start hating.

So here is my problem. I am scared of Main Street at night time (sometimes even in the day), should I pretend I am not? Should I pretend that when I go to the Utica subway stop that I am not harassed and that I don't freak out reading the emails I get about Canisius Students and Roswell workers getting robbed in broad daylight.

I feel like I should be interested in it's revival it but on the other hand I don't feel like it is my responsibility. I feel like I didn't create the problem, I have no degree in Urban Planning or Sociology and I am a middle class, athiest, white gay man. I seriously doubt that anyone who lives across Main Street even wants my opinion on the issue.

I really believe the only way neighborhoods can change is from the inside. Something that I feel religious groups and large scale investors (jobs, etc) can help with. However, outside of economic and spiritual investment in a community, both of which I am not able to offer as an individual - outisde change seem so forced to me.

If I go to someone else's neighborhood and start cleaning trash off the street, what am I saying about the people that live there. Maybe they want trash on their streets, maybe their live suck enough where trash isn't even really an issue. If it was me I would be offended. I mean how would you like it if someone just want to your neighborhood and changed it to conform to their standards.

I feel like the situation is out of my control. Everyone talks about the divide and that it exists. And everyone aggrees that it is wrong but what is the answer? At least I am buying a house in the city and contributing $5000 in taxes each year to the city instead of to some gated suburb.

What is the answer? Thinking about it all angers me so much. I guess that is why people move to the suburbs, lol.

I wrote about gentrification when talking about Grant St a while back (e:paul,3819) - I agree (e:mike,505) that while it appears good for the people moving in, it doesn't always fair so well for the people being shoved out.

I really don't know what to do about the situation but I know that it is weird living next to the most segregated wall I have ever seen. Has anyone noticed that other cities are not quite as segregated as Buffalo?

We also make fun of people for being scared of the city but my aunt mentioned the other day that her brother never comes to the city because he is scared from when he was "driven out of his neighborhood." At first I though she was just referring to him feeling uncomfortable or being racist but then she explained more that as their eastside german neighborhood became a black neighborhood people even threw bricks through the windows and generally drove them out. That is a scary scenario. I have no idea what it was like in the 80s. but something was different because the mansion we rent now, which is like 6000 square feet and would go for about $250,000 now cost our landlords only $26,000 in 1986 according to the Historical Society.

Was anyone around in the 80s who can say what it was like?

Like like at UB there is a faculty member who documented the race riots of the summer of 1967.

Can anyone at UB get ahold of that for us?

Besag, Frank P. (Graduate School of Education)
17/F/146
Race riot interviews, 1967. Transcriptions of taped interviews with neighborhood people, store owners, and police immediately after the race riots in Buffalo in the summer of 1967; and paperback book ANATOMY OF A RIOT: BUFFALO 1967, based on the interviews. The interviews were part of a survey commissioned by State University of New York at Buffalo president Martin Meyerson.

The Allentown Art Festival is getting so crazy. It is bigger and bigger each year. It actually feels like you are at some big city festival. I think Buffalo is really growing. At the same time, having it so big seems almost detrimental to shopping. You seriously feel like you are holding everyone uo when you stop for a second.

(e:holly) said taking pictures of people's art is stealing. I don't really agree but it made me feel paranoid about filming the stuff.









The freakin' scientologists have littered the streets with their trash.

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We had my Dad and Uncles Birthday Party today. It was much colder than last year. While there we went to a garage sale and got some furtniture for real cheap. The kid who was working the sale asked me if I likes sports. I said not really. THen he asked, "well do you like to read?" So anyone, who knows me can guess my answers. He was actually trying to sell me a book about sports









This photo was an accident. I can't believ how scared my aunt looks. It is so funny.


Story Time
We watched a bunch of old family films. It was great to see everyone so young. Even Nonna was in the films, all of which were shot before I was born.

I couldn't believe it when shooting the squirrels randomly came up after writing about it this morning (e:paul,4428) Does anyone else remember Mr. Barry from Kenmore Middle?

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The fun of amphetamines

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Syphoning Wine

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