Article: 5122 of fa.future-culture Path: ifi.uio.no!internet-mailinglist From: Erich Schneider Newsgroups: fa.future-culture Subject: my p-FAQ - delete now if you already have it Date: 13 Nov 1993 18:10:34 +0100 Organization: Internet mailing list Lines: 366 Message-ID: <2c34ea$85t@ifi.uio.no> Reply-To: Future Culture NNTP-Posting-Host: ifi.uio.no Return-Path: <<@UAFSYSB.UARK.EDU:owner-futurec@UAFSYSB.UARK.EDU>> Original-Message-Id: <19931113171022.8378.ifi@ifi.uio.no> Original-Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1993 11:04:29 CST Comments: To: futurec@uafsysb.uark.edu To: Multiple recipients of list FUTUREC This is my "personal FAQ" that I've posted to tribe a few times. I know some of you here aren't on tribe, so I decided to post it here. If you really don't care, delete it now. The //////////// //////////// //// //// . ' . , //////////// rich //////////// chneider \ | / . //// -------------------------- //// -----------------> FAQ - - //////////// //////////// . / | \ . ` , . , . "i dig you, man" - Andy Hawks This is a FAQ file about Erich Schneider, a personality seen frequently on the net these days (if you know where to look). No single file can document an entire human being; this file is intended to answer some of the most common questions. --- 1. Where is Erich Schneider? 2. Early History 3. Education 4. What Erich does for "work" 5. What does he look like? 6. Is it true that Erich can't drive? 7. Some of Erich's interests 8. Erich's taste in books 9. Erich's taste in other visual media 10. Erich's taste in music 11. Erich's taste in food. Recreational chemicals. 12. Erich on the net 13. Erich's political views. His religious views. 14. He sounds like a real package! Is he going out with anyone? 15. For additional information --- 1. Where is Erich Schneider? Physically, Erich currently lives in Bryan, Texas, USA, a town about 100 miles out of Austin and halfway between Houston and Waco. His home address is 4110 College Main #52, Bryan, TX, 77801. His home phone number (please do not abuse!) is +1-409-846-5036. Erich spends a great deal of time on the campus of Texas A&M University (see entry #4). His office is number 414D in the H. R. Bright Building. Mail can be sent to him by addressing it to Erich Schneider, Dept. of Computer Science, H. R. Bright Bldg., Room 301, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843-3112. His work phone number is +1-409-845-3937. Erich can be contacted by email at several locations, but it is all forwarded to the same place, "erich@bush.cs.tamu.edu". Mail sent there goes "straight to the source". --- 2. Early History Erich was born on November 4, 1971 in Covington, Kentucky to Virginia and Edward Schneider. Both of his parents are natives of the northern Kentucky area (his father from Dayton, KY, on the shores of the Ohio river across from Cincinnati, and his mother from Latonia, KY, a town several miles inland). From Erich's birth until he entered the 6th grade, Erich's father was a test pilot for the US Navy. As a result, his family (mother, father, and brother Kurt, 2.5 years younger) lived in many places before finally settling down. Erich has lived, for varying lengths of time, in Virginia Beach, VA, Patuxent River, MD, Middletown, RI, Monterey, CA, San Diego, CA, Lancaster, CA, Dayton, KY (near Cincinnati), Pasadena, CA, and Bryan, TX. His family now lives in Lancaster, CA; his father left the Navy in 1982 to become a test pilot at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards AFB. Erich considers "California" in general to be his home, and would like to move back there someday. --- 3. Education From kindergarten to 6th grade Erich's family was constantly on the move; he attended school in four grade schools in four different cities. It was in the fourth grade that Erich first encountered computers (through the school's Apple II+), setting his life path. Erich skipped junior high and attended high school (entering at the age of 11) at the Covington Latin School in Covington, KY. This school, a Catholic school for boys (in the past few years, girls have been admitted), allows its (approximately 250) students to skip the two years of junior high and go directly into high school, experiencing a rigorous curriculum which includes several years of study of English, math, history, Latin, German, public speaking, and religious study (see #13, however). Erich's father and his two paternal uncles attended this school, and Erich did as well; while there, he lived with his father's parents in Dayton, KY. These years were Erich's first contact with the "computer underground", as he and some friends were archetypical "warez d00dz", pirating software for their Apple II computers. Erich never got into "the scene" very heavily, though, as he lacked a modem (or a phone line to hook it in to). After graduating from CLS (and a summer of work at the office where his mother worked as an X-ray technician) Erich went on to the California Institute of Technology, or Caltech, in Pasadena, CA (entering at age 15). There he "majored" (Caltech only loosely has "majors") in computer science, working very closely with Prof. Fred Thompson, his advisor, on Prof. Thompson's large computerized natural language understanding system. It was at Caltech that Erich read _Neuromancer_ for the first time, as a freshman, and started using Internet services, as a sophomore. Life in Caltech's Dabney and Ricketts undergraduate houses allowed him to live in ways he never thought he would live. After graduation (at age 19), Erich took an "anti-sabbatical" to earn money for grad school, working as a consultant for NCR which was doing a joint project with his old advisor. Deciding that much of the work in computerized natural language processing was not exactly what he wanted to do, Erich decided to switch gears and look at the somewhat related "hypertext" subfield of computer science. This led him to apply and be accepted to Texas A&M University, site of the Hypermedia Research Lab run by Prof. John Leggett. He entered the year after graduating from Caltech and has been there ever since. --- 4. What Erich does for "work" Erich is currently a second-year PhD student in computer science at Texas A&M university. (He decided that since he knew he wanted a PhD, and that he was unlikely to transfer to another school, he might as well skip the MS degree and its attendant thesis.) He has yet to strike out on research on his own, spending most of his time taking classes and working as a teaching assistant for three introductory Pascal programming sections. However, he has done some systems programming for the Hypermedia Research Lab's main project. In addition to the TA job mentioned, Erich is currently taking three graduate level courses: introductory linguistics, analysis of algorithms, and a special topics math course in information, coding, and cryptography. --- 5. What does he look like? Erich, somewhat embarassedly, does not know his exact height and weight; he suspects they are around 5'8" and 130#, respectively. A somewhat thin and pale Caucasian male, Erich's most striking feature is his medium-brown hair which he has been growing for approxmiately 6 years now; it is all the way down his back at this point. His eyes are grey to hazel in color. Erich's dress tends towards the T-shirt and jeans look with black and dark colors predominating. During colder weather Erich is often seen in a dark trenchcoat or black leather jacket. Erich is not pierced in any way (he is somewhat squeamish about body modification; see also #11). --- 6. Is it true that Erich can't drive? Yes, Erich is one of the half-dozen or so post-adolescents in the US who does not drive, in fact cannot drive. He attended high school before it was even legal for him to drive, and as an undergrad he could neither afford a car, nor did he really need one, being within walking distance of most necessities. As such, he never really needed to learn. Nowadays Erich gets around on his bicycle. He has turned his not-driving into a somewhat strange ideological stance and a feeling of spendthriftiness and environmental correctness, as well as a way of making himself feel unique in an automobile-oriented culture. --- 7. Some of Erich's interests Erich's two main interests are computers and reading. Other interests include the study of foreign languages (ancient, modern, and artifical), religious and occult studies, role-playing and board war- games, playing the flute (which he has done since third grade), frisbee, biking, and some other low-stress athletic activites (like downhill skiing and ice skating/rollerblading). In the past Erich has dabbled in the martial arts and the Society for Creative Anachronism. --- 8. Erich's taste in books In fiction, Erich's taste is almost exclusively confined to fantasy and science fiction. His top 6 SF/Fantasy stories are, in no particular order: _Hyperion/Fall of Hyperion_, by Dan Simmons _Neuromancer_, by William Gibson _Dhalgren_, by Samuel R. Delany _Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand_, by Samuel R. Delany _Always Coming Home_, by Ursula K. Le Guin _The Lord of the Rings_, by J. R. R. Tolkien Erich has mostly been reading SF lately, especialy SF of the "cyberpunk" variety. He is also into "hard SF" and "New Wave"-ish SF (especially that similar to Delany). He tends to shun Generic Space Operas and Generic Quest Fantasies, and pretty much avoids (these days) fiction based on role playing games and computer games. Erich's nonfiction taste runs in parallel with his interests (see #7). Books on foreign languages, "exotic" religions, the occult, feminism, postmodernist philosophy, and critical works on fiction he has read are all within his purview. Magazines/journals Erich reads, when he can, are _Time_, _Newsweek_, _Starlog_, _Locus_, _Mondo 2000_, _bOING-bOING_, _The New York Times Book Review_, _The Women's Review of Books_, _off our backs_, _SPIN_, and _Scientific American_. He only touches newspapers to read "Doonesbury". --- 9. Erich's taste in other visual media TV shows Erich watches regularly are _The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour_, _Star Trek: The Next Generation_, _Star Trek: Deep Space Nine_, _EastEnders_ (a British serial shown on Houston's public TV station), _Beverly Hills: 90210_ (a "guilty pleasure"), and MTV's second _The Real World_ series. He also occasionally watches _Beavis and Butt-head_. He does not have the time or inclination to watch most network TV. With respect to movies, Erich tends to avoid most mainstream films and tends toward foreign "art" films and SF films, and certain "cult movies". He is also a great fan of Woody Allen's movies. Some of his favorite films are: _Annie Hall_, _Manhattan_, _The Last Tango In Paris_, _Blade Runner_, _Repo Man_, _Real Genius_ (much of which is based on life at Caltech), _Network_, _Gandhi_, _A Bridge Too Far_, and _Koyaanisqatsi_. --- 10. Erich's taste in music Erich doesn't listen to the radio these days. When he lived in the LA area just before he moved to Texas, he listened to an "alternative"/"dance" type station (KROQ). Erich has fairly wide-ranging musical taste (that excludes "top 40" and country/western music, however). His music library contains classical music (Bach is his favorite "classical" composer), minimalist music (Philip Glass et al.), electronic (Tangerine Dream, Brian Eno, Jean-Michel Jarre), "general rock" (Led Zeppelin, Rush, U2), "industrial/techno" (Front Line Assembly, Front 242, Eon), rap (Public Enemy), punk (Dead Kennedys, Sex Pistols), and some random unclassifiable stuff (Cocteau Twins, Laurie Anderson). Erich is also enthusiastic about non-Western music, especially classical music from India and Indonesia. As mentioned above, he plays the flute. He has not played regularly since coming to Texas; when at Caltech, he played classical music in small chamber music groups and for a semester with a larger wind ensemble. --- 11. Erich's taste in food. Recreational chemicals. Erich took advantage of living in LA to sample many types of cuisine. Currently, his three favorites are Thai, Chinese, and Japanese food. However, these three are hard to come by in rural Texas, so when he goes out Erich tends to patronize a local Mediterranean restaurant. Laziness causes him to mostly eat spaghetti and canned soup at home; if he gets motivated, he is likely to start cooking Chinese food for himself again. He avoids eating large quantities of red meat; chicken is the primary meat he eats. The only recreational chemical Erich employs is refined sugar. He decided long ago that his brain was his primary asset and that he wasn't going to risk damaging it with alcohol or other psychoactives. (He realizes at this point that many psychoactives, like LSD, are not proven to be addictive or to damage the brain, but he still lives with this personal conviction for some reason.) Childhood lung problems and indoctrination have kept him from smoking of any kind. As an undergrad Erich was a real caffeine fiend, but the year after he graduated he decided to stop using it, and has held to this decision ever since (except for small amounts in chocolate). At home and when eating out his primary bevarage is lemonade; at work it is Minute Maid All-Natural Fruit Punch. --- 12. Erich on the net As a computer science grad student, Erich has access to a wide array of network resources, including accounts on Texas A&M general machines, Computer Science departmental machines, and machines in the Hypermedia Research Lab (including a Sun Sparc IPC in his office). Erich also has access to several machines at Caltech, either through "grandfathered" accounts, accounts on friends' machines, or the account he has by virtue of being in the Alumni Association. However, Erich does not own a computer of his own anymore (he controlled the family Apple IIe in high school) because he believes they become obsolete too quickly to justify the investment. Instead, he has a VDT and 9600bps modem at home he uses to tap in to computers on campus. Erich has been a Usenet reader since 1988. On his A&M feed, he reads some A&M local groups, some groups relating to his CS work, groups on cyberpunk and science fiction in general, and a few groups on other topics (like soc.feminism and alt.internet.services). On his Caltech feed, he gets Caltech local groups and access to ClariNet, a UPI wire feed where he gets the news he doesn't get from MacNeil-Lehrer. Erich is occasionally seen posting to alt.cyberpunk and rec.arts.sf.misc; he is the maintainer of the current alt.cyberpunk FAQ list in both plain ASCII and HTML formats. Erich avoided IRC and MUDs (except a brief two-week MUDmania in his junior year) for fear he would waste too much time on them. However, he started using IRC this summer and had good experiences with the "leri/FutureCulture community", and has since stayed. He can be found on IRC under the nickname "NullSet". He also has a character on the MediaMOO, "Erich", gotten when there was a great deal of FutureCulture activity there (which has since died down). Erich's mailing lists generally reflect his interests. He is a subscriber to "FutureCulture" and "tribe" because of acquaintance with participants there. Other mailing lists he is on include "tlhIngan-Hol" (discussion about and in the Klingon language from _Star Trek_), "WELSH-L" (Welsh language), "DERRIDA" (Jacques Derrida and "deconstruction"), "tolklang" (J. R. R. Tolkien's languages), "flashlife" (the Shadowrun RPG), "students.chi" (for students of computer-human interaction), "tekumel-digest" (the Empire of the Petal Throne RPG), "continuing-time" (discussion of Daniel Keyes Moran's works) and two mailing lists of Caltech alums from Dabney House there. Erich is reasonably adept with archie, gopher, and the WWW. He has recently gotten into writing HTML documents for use with WWW browsers; he marked up his alt.cyberpunk FAQ in this form (URL "ftp://bush.cs.tamu.edu/pub/misc/erich/alt.cp.faq.html") and will someday get around to finishing the markup of the FutureCulture FAQ (which is somewhat difficult as some real reorganization of that document needs to be done). Erich also enjoys tinkering with the TeX typsetting system and the Emacs text-manipulation environment (he does nearly everything inside of Emacs). --- 13. Erich's political views. His religious views. Erich has described his own political views as "wimpy crypto-socialist". He voted Democratic in the last US elections. In general, he is a social libertarian and believes people should be able to do what they want so long as they don't phsyically coerce or harm others. Economically, he is not sure where he stands; he doesn't understand the economy (in fact, he think _no one_ understands the economy) so he is not sure what position to take. Realizing that economic status and personal freedom are intertwined, and that laissez-faire capitalism is often exploitive, he is skeptical of radical free-market political philosophy (like that the Libertarian party endorses). Much of his political inspiration comes from novels he's read; the sociopolitical systems of Delany's _Triton_ and _Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand_, and Iain Banks' "Culture" stories are very appealing to him. Erich had rejected his family's Catholic religion around the 4th grade; it just didn't do anything for him. He tolerated mandatory religious instruction in high school, and sometimes found it intellectually stimulating. Since that time he has looked at many other religions and is generally tolerant of others' religions, even though he feels few impulses he would call "religious" himself. He practices something similar to Zen Buddhist meditation on a daily basis; if he were to "choose" a religion it would probably be Zen Buddhism or some eclectic neo-pagan religion. Erich semi-seriously believes in the possibility of "occult" abilities among humans. --- 14. He sounds like a real package! Is he going out with anyone? Unfortunately for the lovelorn out there, Erich recently became involved with someone. Privacy considerations prevent revealing her name here, but she's a first-year math grad student at Texas A&M. --- 15. For additional information For additional info, contact Erich on IRC (nickname: NullSet) or send him mail at "erich@bush.cs.tamu.edu", or call him, or send him physical mail. All of it will be appreciated. --- End of Erich Schneider FAQ.