Get To Know Me

Jesse Suggested This

He wants a semi-autobiographic "This Is Who I Am" kind of post so that we can all get to know one another. Sometimes, though, immediate events will supercede even a good suggestion.

The photo is my new niece. My sister adopted her. She has spent the bulk of her young life in foster care and has been brought into our lives and our family. I wrote a series about her being adopted into the Apache.

Asking For Vision (day 1)
Rez Drums
In the Kiva
Hoop Dance
Itsa Ga'an

You might also want to read The Origin Story of the Raven Soldiers

I am the sum of my life experience. Some of it has been noble, some of it cool, a lot of it violent and tawdry. I needed all those lessons to be where I am today, and I needed them all with this little girl yesterday afternoon.

I was spending the day with Dani. She is a total and complete charmer, with beguiling eyes and deep dimples. We were puttering around the kitchen and having ourselves a ball. I was doing cleanup in the kitchen and Dani went into the den to go and get some cartoon time. She took a glass of cranberry juice.

She spilled it on the carpet. Now, you're probably thinking, great big honking deal, nine year old girls spill stuff all the time. Any rational adult should know this. I heard the spill and grabbed the cleaning gear ready to be "uncle-on-the-spot."

This darling girl was in a state of panic, and terror. She was pale and trembling, her breath was coming in pants between sobs. I remembered what my sister had told me about the day she came into our lives. She was removed from her last foster placement by her social worker on an emergency basis, with only the clothes on her back. Most of our inquiries regarding her history of care have been met with silence. This girl's history has more gaps than a 25 year CIA black ops veteran's. There are things that happen in foster care that the state is unwilling to address because it would expose ugly truths about the system.

Think Dickens.

I was looking into those beautiful eyes and all I could think of is that this darling young girl had been beaten terribly. Over spills.

I dropped all my cleaning stuff and scooped her up in my arms. I held her for nearly half an hour, trying to soothe her fears and calm her sobbing. I told her that she was far more important to me than all the carpets in the world, including the ones that fly. I told her that I was her very own personal Raven Soldier who would stand beside her always. I told her that she was one of us now, and that no adult was ever going to hit her for any reason.

While this was happening my tribal side, my combat veteran side was thinking about making a night visit to the sons of bitches that dared to beat this child. Throats would be cut, blood would be spilled, the hands that did the beating nailed to the doorway, scalps taken back to the rez, with the rest left for the scavengers. Vulture food, coyote food, that would be the deserved burial.

Just as quickly I noticed that Dani was sensing this welling of anger inside me. Poor little dear was thinking it was her. I stuffed my anger, quickly and deep. Of course, it stayed there and has festered all night and all morning. Stuffing does that.

I poured this out to a couple of friends. I talked myself down from my anger.

I know a thing or two about violence, and revenge. I know that neither of them would be any sort of a healing for me. I know that they would not help my niece do any healing from her previous life.

She needs me here, loving her. Loving her unconditionally. Loving her without any holding back. Loving her with all my heart and soul.

There's an old story from Xenophon about the Greek mercenaries on their way home from a Persian disaster (read Anabasis). They are sitting around a fire talking about philosophy and life. Talk turns to the old heroes of Greek history, Achilles, Ajax, Theseus, Heracles and such. An old veteran, a grizzled sergeant from Sparta named Glyppus says he wants nothing to do with those heroes of old. They break the integrity of the phalanx to do single combat. Because they don't know the fears of mortal men, they take risks that are unneccesary and often stupid. Glyppus doesn't want those kind of men with him in the line of battle. He wants me who know fear, but also know something else. There are things that matter more than fear.

Courage, he says is not the absence of fear. Courage is knowing that there are things more important than fear.

What then, he is asked, is the opposite of fear? What matters more than fear?

Glyppus sighs at their silly ignorance and says "Love."

There. Now you know a lot more about me than I usually let on. We'll talk more.

There's more...

Hello. Would you like some data with that opinion?

Now that I've posted several pieces, it's clearly past time to introduce myself.

So, who the hell am I? (h/t tlg)

I am a lifetime (GNBs lifetime, not mine) reader of GNB. I'm sorry to say that I was not a regular reader of the original NB, largely because my Google Reader page (after trimming) has 139 feeds and 693 unread postings. I'm going back over Gilly's writing now wherever I can find it.

You might think of me as an information junkie.

But let's be slightly more formal, shall we?

My name is Evan Robinson. I am an American citizen living (as a Permanent Resident, the Canadian equivalent of a green card) in the Lower Mainland (that's the Vancouver, BC metro area) for the last four years. I am one class, 1.5 semesters, and a "project" (thesis equivalent) away from completing my Management of Technology MBA at Simon Fraser University's Segal Graduate School of Business. I blog elsewhere as well, but it seems crass to pimp my own blog here, so I won't. Although "Robinson" and variants is at least the 12th most common English surname, it is no coincidence that I share that surname with the witty, talented, intelligent, and beauteous redheaded blogger Sara Robinson, because we've known each other more than two decades and lived together for almost 13 years. And I love her dearly.

Before coming to Canada (for the weather and the cheap housing, and that's no lie), I had a 20+ year career in Silicon Valley as a programmer, game developer, technical director, project manager, engineering manager, and consultant. I've worked for, with, or consulted for Electronic Arts, 3DO (r.i.p.), The Sierra Network/I.N.N./AT&T, Adobe, Rocket Science Games (r.i.p.), Linden Labs, and the Internet Chess Club. I believe I've been part of six startups (but that number is fuzzy, as is my memory of some of those short-lived startups).

As I child and teen, I tried very hard to work my way through the entire 940.53 and .54 sections of the Eugene, OR, public library system. That led to and complemented a deep interest in what were then called "conflict simulations" and now we would refer to as "wargames." Largely sold by SPI and Avalon Hill, they were the precursors to today's real-time-strategy computer games, and they led me directly into a long period of paper gaming, from boardgames to wargames to early role-playing games (somewhere in storage I have a tattered and decrepit copy of one of the first 1000 of the original 3 volume D&D sets, complete with rat pee stain upon the cover of volume 2).

Before moving to California I spent a memorable year working in Lake Geneva, WI, for TSR Hobbies, the publishers and distributors of Dungeons & Dragons, where I got my first taste of writing and editing for a living. I didn't care for it. That job exposed me to computer games for the first time (Computer Quarterback, the legendary Dan Bunten/Dani Berry's second game) which led me back to California to get a BA in Computer and Information Sciences from UC Santa Cruz with the intent of working in computer games.

Do you have any idea how embarrassing it was to talk about post-college job plans? "I'm going to work for IBM." "I've got a job at Victor Computer." "I'm going to Apple." "I've got a job at this new startup called Borland." "I'm going to write computer games."

What Nietzsche said.

As I mentioned in my health care post and comment, I practice Kenpo 2000 (a variation of Ed Parker's American Kenpo) at Shayne Simpson's Pacific Northwest Karate Center in Bellingham, WA. I also work out at my local USSD dojo in North Vancouver, BC. I studied American Kenpo under John Sepulveda in Santa Clara for about four years in the early 90s. I love this study: it provides me with physical exercise, mental stimulation, an opportunity to use my analysis skills, to learn, mentor, and teach. Adjunct studies include fitness, diet, physical motion, and weapons (notably sticks and knives).

I love Zombies. If you haven't read Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide, you should. Just in case.

I'm a voracious reader. I've just finished Gary Taubes' fantastic book on the science and studies of obesity, diabetes, and diet, Good Calories, Bad Calories and H.G. Wells 1904 cautionary tale The Food of the Gods and how it came to Earth. In my bag right now for daily reading is Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. In the last few months I've also read: The Mind Map Book (Buzan), Fighting Science (Sprague), Why Most Things Fail (Ormerod), The Innovator's Dilemma (Christensen), The Black Swan (Taleb), Fooled by Randomness (Taleb), The Tipping Point (Gladwell), Linked (Barabasi), Emergence (Johnson), The Wisdom of Crowds (Surowiecki), The 4-Hour Work-Week (Ferriss), Ubiquity (Buchanan), and Made to Stick (Heath & Heath). Some of this reading is informed by the MBA program, some is just because I like to read.

Left to my own devices, I use Macs exclusively. I've spent most of my professional career (since 1985) programming, working on, and working with IBM PCs and Wintel machines. I didn't care for it. So I carry an iBook or a PowerBook and have a dual G5 tower at home for the big screen or CPU intensive tasks.

Penultimately, (and if you've made it down this far, I thank you. No, I thank you!), what's that title all about?

I love analysis. Taking numbers, divining the nature of reality from them and using that divination to inform decision making is something I've recently discovered that I love. It's not surprising, because I was raised by Statisticians (it's like being raised by Wolves, except that dinnertime conversation involves more numbers and less howling), but it's something I wasn't given much of an outlet for until the MBA program. If I could get a job (and I'm trying to) with a team doing strategic analysis for a living, I'd be very happy. Few if any of my posts will require extensive math to read, but I hope that many of them will have a solid background of data distilled down into easily digestible chunks.

Lastly, my apologies for my love of parenthetical remarks. Consider it a foible of an old c/c++ programmer, and hope that my editor will be able to cure me.

I'm happy to be here. It's an honour to join "we few, we happy few, we band of brothers" at GNB.

And post-ultimately, I must disclose that I suffer from occasionally severe bouts of paronomasia. You have been warned.

There's more...

Hello. Can I get you a cup of green tea?

Wow,
Here I am posting on one of my most favoritest corners of the Blogosphere, the GNB. I once saw a Japlish T-shirt here in Japan “Mount Fuji the Most Highest Mountain in Japan!”

So, who the hell am I?

I am a long time reader and supporter of the NB and GNB -- even helping with “Kimono-fairy” duties back in the day (sad sniff and warm hugs to Jen). It is an honor to be asked to come and write on occasion- (as one of the leaves- not the tree - doc)

Introductions are in order—

Some of my more colorful and interesting current and past creds are;

Serving the public tasty food and beverage
Writing and publishing my first book in Japan
Climbing around volcanoes and looking down into gorges
Teaching at the elementary school that Noam Chomsky graduated from
Sneaking away with my honey to various and sundry islands in warm locales
Knowing the difference between good and bad sangria
And being adored as my alter ego-- at the tea altar of the “Mighty Chang.”

I hope to write and share with you a bit of my thinking on the world as we know it and the world as we hope it to be. My passions are writing, running a restaurant, travel and trying new things. I have a passion for food politics, and progressive action (with a stress on the ACTION part) And I believe we CAN make it better. (stronger-faster... )

Happy to be here and looking forward to sharing a virtual cup of tea or a glass of wine with all of you wonderful GNB-ers past, present and future.

More soon, brewing up a pot now and will be back to the table in a few.

Apologies in advance for my over fondness of ellipses and dashes. Much to my editor’s frustration-- these are habits I am not yet willing to kick.

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