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Reference Point: I was born in July 1970.
30 years ago (November 1974): My baby sister was getting old enough to start moving around and being annoying. I had been reading on my own for a month or so, but my parents didn't realize it until late November, when it almost caused a car accident (Mom was driving me and a friend back from the library, and I started reading one of the books...startled her quite a bit).
25 years ago (November 1979): I was starting to get noticeably chubby after being a skinny little blond kid, and my hair had gone permanently brown by this point. I was clearly going to be traveling the path of geek at this point. After reading the 3-2-1 Contact magazine for a few months, I'd been disappointed by the TV show of the same name. I'd been wearing glasses for exactly two years.
20 years ago (November 1984): This was the first Presidential election where I was informed enough to really care about the outcome, and I was disappointed. An aptitude test I took told me I should be either a writer or an actuary. I had just met Ben Patton, a guy 4 years my elder who ran a gaming group at the private college between where I lived and where I went to middle school (local middle school was 7-9 at the time), and I was kinda friends with a guy in my social studies class who did drugs (which made for an interesting debate in November when he did a mix of speed and heroin just before class!). I spent this school year in public school for the first time since Kindergarten, and it would become quite unpleasant a few months later when my father was arrested (see http://www.brokenyoke.org for details on all of that, I'm sure it's on the site somewhere). It was to be a very formative year.
15 years ago (November 1989): I was starting to get over being dumped back in April, but I wasn't a great roommate...not that my roommate was a great roommate either (he'd move out a few months later with no warning, but was the only roommate I had that I didn't get along with in college). I was starting a seriously one-sided infatuation with a woman named Liz, who was in the habit of pushing people away.
10 years ago (November 1994): Starting my third year of graduate school, I was still working with Professor Lafayatis's Atomic/Molecular/Optical group. I'd been writing Legion of Net.Heroes stories for over two years, and had started my ASH setting a few months before after spending a year working on someone else's universe only to have it hijacked away by other writers. I think by this time I'd left TrekMUSE, but was already an admin on LegionMUSH. My Avengers of Justice RPG campaign had come to an end, during which I'd written my Modern Knights system as a replacement/upgrade. I'd also written RoboMACs partly on a dare, and I was getting active in online MSTings. I got heavily into Shadowfist, both playing and playtesting. Romantically, I'd gotten infatuated with a different misanthropist, and it went nowhere, sigh.
5 years ago (November 1999): I was closing in on my PhD in Physics Education Research, having switched over to Professor Van Heuvelen's group in 1995. I think I'd closed out my LNH writing by this time, but ASH was going strong. I'd started kitbashing in earnest by this point, and was one of the early members of the AllSpark online community. I was no longer gaming in person, having been unable to put together a new group after the old one drifted apart in 94, but I did have a group I hung out with some. I might have played Shadowfist once this year, but the company had gone under. I also was attending Origins and Mid-Ohio Cons by this point, and November 1999 was my last Mid-Ohio Con. Therefore it was also the last time I saw most of my online friends and acquaintances, like Mike Chary, Tony Isabella, Max Ink, Johanna Carlson, etc.
4 years ago (November 2000): Okay, adding this one in because otherwise I skip a phase. I finally settled in to my new job at Michigan State, and also finally determined that while Liz (from 1989) was in the phone book in the Lansing area, she'd recently moved twice and I couldn't find her eventual stopping point. This also marked a two year period where I didn't go to professional conferences, but I did get in a lot of roleplaying gaming.
3 years ago (November 2001): My revamped Modern Knights campaign was winding up, and it was very useful in working out the last details of playtest. While I had a couple of infatuations during this time, none of them went anywhere. I played Mage Knight and did a lot of customizing with them. I got back into Shadowfist and taught some people to play, but it didn't catch on.
2 years ago (November 2002): A few months into my current job at Kansas State, and I'd finally found a good local comics/gaming store to replace the one that closed 3 weeks after I moved to town. I played a lot of clicky games (mainly HeroClix and Mechwarrior), and got back into Shadowfist, since it had a strong following in Manhattan KS. Thanks to online sources, I caught up on all the expansions I'd missed since Z-Man Games took over the property. There was a woman among our grad students (who was actually a little older than me, due to coming back for a degree after years of teaching high school) who I was really attracted to...but since I was her boss, I couldn't even say anything about it, much less do anything.
1 year ago (November 2003): More of the same, but I was now teaching some classes in addition to administrative stuff. I was closing in on the end of my first semester of large class lecture (General Physics 1, mostly pre-med and pre-vet). My evaluations would be so bad that my boss would replace me for General Physics 2 (and he got no better evaluations...it was a tough crowd).
1 month ago (October 2004): Finally shook some serious allergies that plagued me all September. The Protoform Project, where I kept almost all of my art images, went down for reasons I still haven't had explained to me (although a backup exists and I should have it soon). Been teaching studio (a mix of lab and homework sessions) for Engineering Physics 1.
1 week ago: I registered dvandom.com for the purpose of putting my Protoform stuff back up once I get the CDROM. Got a summons for jury duty, made a silly repaint of a Transformer (http://homepage.mac.com/dvandom/kitbash/jpopjazz1.JPG through 4.JPG). Drove to Topeka in search of Transformers, but only found a couple of Transformers watches.
Yesterday: I administered an exam for EP1, since the main course professor was gone at a meeting. Found out that a lot of people don't know what the second hand on a clock is these days. Very tired at the end of a week of administering TA evaluations for 7:30 classes.
Today: I played in a Shadowfist tournament and took an early lead, but predictably then got hammered. Also played some Pirates of the Spanish Main league and trashed a "broken/abusive" fleet. Still in a Transformers dry spell. Drew a picture of the character I plan to play at DC World's Finest MUSH (http://homepage.mac.com/dvandom/drawings/firelad.JPG).
