Hey, Listen!

My Editor-In-Chief has asked that I give you all a sort of “about me” blog entry.  Well, here it goes.

I’m 26 years old and have lived in Indiana all my life.  I have been married for nine months to my wonderful wife, who is pregnant with our first child!  Like the EIC, I attended Wabash College.  Unlike the EIC, I do not have a Bachelor of Arts in English.  My degree is in German.  I have never really had any idea what to do with it, as I was not an exceptional German student.  None the less, I have managed to survive pretty well so far.

My nerd credentials are somewhat extensive.  Star Wars was my first science fiction memory and love.  I couldn’t have been much older than 8 when I first saw A New Hope, in its original release edit.  We were over to dinner at a friend of my father’s house.  I realize now he probably wanted as much to share Star Wars with my brother and me as to distract us so the adults could talk.  But it was that day that sparked my love of space and all its magnificent glory…and sometimes danger.

Additionally, I grew to be quite the fan of Star Trek.  This will undoubtedly draw some hissing breaths from some readers, but we are more common than you might think.  My next major sci-fi love would not come for several years after that.  During that in-between time, my videogame love expanded with such classics as Sonic the Hedgehog, Warcraft (I’m talking MS-DOS version), Rebel Assault II, and the like.  As I got into middle school and high school, I discovered things like the realm of Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Stargate SG-1, the Battlestar Galactica reboot, Shogun and Rome Total War.

There are still more nerd influences that have shaped me into my current form.  Games like Pokemon, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, and Dungeons & Dragons, television shows like Transformers: Beast Wars, Spiderman: The Animated Series, the animated X-Men series of the 90’s, Batman: The Animated Series, and other various superhero cartoons, as well as Doctor Who, Farscape, and Game of Thrones.  As you can see, the list is quite extensive.

It is my hope that some, if not most, of this is something we have in common.  I hope to expand on that commonality as my posting continues here on the Thoughts.  For now, I would love to see comments that highlight some of your favorite nerd influences.  Please comment with them below!