jakedog.org

Hello everyone.  I've known Magus, Xavier, Arcanum, Mego, Wode, and Ed from playing WoW for over 2 years now.  A while back, Mego linked this site on our guild forums and since then I've kinda lurked as a guest.  I recently asked Mego to register an account for me.  I figured after reading all the interesting stories/conversations if I ever post something, I'd probably better make an intro.

I been playing games since the Atari 2600 came out.  The start of online gaming for me would begin with Medievia, a MUD.  I then got pulled into the original Everquest for a couple years.  I gave up MMOs for a while and just played console games with my friends for a while.  Then the brother-in-law of my then girlfriend (now wife) got me sucked into WoW.  From WoW, I've gone onto CoH with Magus, Xavier, Wode and Ed.

In the real world, I'm a chemical engineer.  I work for a small company in Ohio that focuses on designing corn ethanol plants.  However, our process can be used for making tortillas too (or so the owner says).  Since I'm one of the younger engineers, I travel... a lot.  My wife and I celebrated 1 year of marriage last month, even though with all my travelling we've only lived together cumulatively for about 5 months.

Well... that's me in a nutshell.

EDIT: I forgot to mention is that I played on a different shard of UO called "The Alter Realm" until the "3D" expansion to UO came out. The shard switched hands then and became a PK fest, which prompted me to switch to EQ.

EDIT2: I also played P&P D&D from high school into college.

Thanks for the intro and welcome aboard.

Welcome Fizz, good to see new blood around here.

Things have really picked up since Magus showed up and Anti came back.

Welcome Fizzban!  I dig your name and I adore your avatar.

"Magus" and "Antimony" are actually just 2 of my sockpuppet accounts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_sock_puppet) that I created to liven things up.   ;D

Thanks!  Fizzban is my main in WoW, so it's what I'm known by there.  Some people ask me if I meant to name him Fizban after a character in the Dragonlance books, but I've never read any of them. 

Howdy Fizz.  :)

Welcome!

OK... You have been playing games since the Atari 2600 came out... that was 1977. I figure you must have been 5 or 6 when that came out or you would not remember it. That puts you at 36 years old, but it surprises me that at 36 you would be one of the younger engineers at your plant...

Oh well, you will either tell or I will figure it out eventually.

I am also an Engineer, but electrical rather than chemical. I considered getting a chemical engineering degree, I took just about all the undergraduate level chemistry courses including Organic and P-Chem, but never did anything vocational with it.

Welcome, Fizzban.  It's nice to meet you.  :)

Well... I was too young to remember the details, but I remember the pictures.  When my uncle played his new Atari, I was in his lap.  So I e-mailed my uncle to ask about it, and he replied it was an Atari 5200 not a 2600 which he got it for Christmas the year it was released... which makes that 1982.  He claims I would grab the controller and try to play too.  Apparently my favorite game was Pac-Man at the time, and if anyone was looking for me, I would be sitting in front of the TV, waiting for him to play again.  I can't believe I've been lying all this time and not knowing it... sorry for the confusion.

To clarify, I am 27 now. After spending 7 years in college (switching majors from Education to Engineering makes for a long college term) I've been with my company for less than 2 years, and I'm the youngest engineer with my company.  Sadly, we are in an office building, where I sit in front of a computer... making spreadsheets, drawing process diagrams, and filling out spec sheets... I'd rather be in a plant.  There's more action, and I get a lot more exercise throughout the day.


So what made you stick with electrical?  I hear they have more fun.  One of my electrical engineering friends has a job with Anheuser Busch in Georgia and loves it.  He often tells me, "You can't spell geek without EE."

EDIT: spelling and grammar

One of my college buddies (http://hungryengineer.com/) is an EE. He flies all over the place working on various projects.  He's got a gajillion frequent flyer miles.

What kind of engineer do you have to become if you want to make offshore wind turbines? (http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11482484)

What kind of engineer do you have to become if you want to make offshore wind turbines?


The construction of wind turbines would be a multi-disciplinary.  Obviously, there are component of mechanical (which is a huge branch in  itself) electrical, and aeronautical (which may be part of mechanical depending on where you go to school). There is a huge amount of overlap in core engineering courses, especially at the undergraduate level. At the undergraduate level, there may only be a few courses that differentiate electrical and mechanical engineers (chemical engineering is probably the most different at the undergraduate level). It changes a lot in grad school, but there is still a lot of overlap. The math is pretty much the same for electrical and mechanical, just the units are different (Volts instead of PSI, Henries instead of Slugs).

Thinking of yet another degree?

Interesting. I really would love to study that and create the solution to the world's energy problems. The industry is very big in Norway, so it should be easy to get a job - one of the companies in that article is from my town - and it really seems like something worthwhile that I could really dedicate myself to. The problem is that I went to a hippie high school which doesn't teach proper science and maths, and the rules were changed around 2003 so that to get accepted to the applicable programs I'd have to go back to high school and take the necessary subjects. (My brother went to the same school but was grandfathered in and studies biology now, incidentally). And anyway, the field of engineering is too far away from where I am now. I guess I'll just take some economy, politics and business and hope I get a decent job. I'll always admire the engineers and scientists, who actually create knowledge and useful objects, though.