Biographical Data
Real Name - Alexander Dale Matthews, II
Date of Birth - 27 April 1973
Occupation - Direct Support Professional. For those outside the field, this might require a little explanation. Basically, I provide assisted living and community integration services to people with developmental disabilities. As of 1 November 2008, I'll be switching back to overnight shifts and moving to a new facility (same company, though). This time I'll be working with a bunch of guys, and my boss assures me they won't have quite as many behavioral issues. Yay! Of course, I now have an entirely new group of people to get to know.
Interests - Aside from the obvious subjects appearing on this web site, I also enjoy reading manga and watching anime; playing guitar; cooking; trying out various coffees, wines, and tobaccos; collecting and reading books of various kinds (Tolkien is one of my favorite authors, BTW); spending time in the outdoors (camping and hiking are among my most enjoyed ways to relax); and collecting knives and swords, although my modest income means I do more drooling than collecting and usually must make do with lower quality pieces. I also collect cigarette tins and unique packaging, dust bunnies, and skulls.
Pets - Other than the aforementioned dust bunnies, I share my home with a cats and a dog. The oldest of these is Spook, a blue heeler/rottweiler mix who was whelped 14 April 2001 (Jester died in November 2007). Those who visited during the transitional phase of the second site revision might recognize him and my now-gone tomcat (Jester), from the tale "Two Heaping Sugars and Hold the Cream." The younger of the two furballs, and far from the least spoiled, is Silhouette, a black domestic shorthair with a white chest patch and brown highlights. I adopted her from the local animal shelter in June of 2004, so no one's quite certain how old she is; most the time she still acts like a kitten.
Favourite Foods - Coffee and cigarettes. Whuddya mean that's not a food???
Contacting Me
Back to the Main IndexContacting me via email is pretty much standard. My address is terminal_illness666 AT yahoo DOT com. Remove the spaces and replace the italicized words with the appropriate symbols if you use the ol' point-n-click method of mailing; I've done it up this way to help deter spambots.
Along with the usual netiquette, please ask ahead of time before sending any attachments, particularly anything over a couple megs. My mailbox is decently sized, and I've got a high-speed internet connection, but I still wanna have a heads up if checking the mail is going to take longer than usual. :-P
Another thing I ask is that you make sure my address is not included in any carbon copy (CC) mailings that you may send. If, for some reason, you need to send me the same email as is going out to others, I ask that you send it separately. The reason for this is quite simple, although sometimes a bit difficult to visualize at first. You see, each time you send out a CC message, the entire list of addresses is available to each of the recipients of that mailing. If one of those recipients happens to be infected by a spyware-style macro "virus", or if someone accidentally responds to a similar type of mailer, all addresses in the list (including yours!) are handed over to the spam bot or site. Having been on the receiving end of literally hundreds of spam emails per day, I can guarantee that it's one of the fastest ways to kill an email account. I'd encourage anyone, no matter who they're mailing, to consider giving up the practice of using CC. With better email programs, there is a different method, called blind carbon copy (or BCC) that allows you to use a feature similar to CC, but ensures that your list of addresses is used to send separate copies of the email to each person (in other words, it's like automating the task of typing in the same message and mailing it one by one to a list of people). This method is much more secure (since the recipients don't get a list of the other addresses), and if you do a lot of mass mailing, I'd definitely recommend using this alternative (I'll also gladly accept any BCC messages).
Along those same lines, please don't add my address to your address book. Almost no one in the world deliberately gets infected by a macro "virus," but it is still one of the most prevalent forms of malware out there. Many of the modern ones are more than capable of reading your address book, and they don't hesitate to use it when you're not looking. Although address books are handy, it's much better to keep a separate file listing all the people you would normally have in yours. Even better is to purchase a notebook and pen and keep only a handwritten copy.
Unfortunately, even the best and most current antivirus software simply cannot keep up with the proliferation of these bastard codes, so just the fact that you've one installed on your system and keep it updated can't keep you 100% safe. Since that kind of protection is impossible, there's the chance that every time you type in an email address, even if you use the notebook and pen method, that a macro might be lurking in your system and nab the addy. That's life, though, and I'm not going to hold a grudge against people just because an occasional piece of crud gets through, so long as they take a few precautions such as the ones described above. It's similar to the concept of not advertising your home address and phone number in a particularly scummy bar.
I try to check my email by late morning each day. However, I'm pretty busy between my job and various projects, so you may need to be patient and give me a few days if you're expecting a reply.
Instant Messaging and Internet Relay ChatAlthough catching me by chance is a bit more unlikely these days than it used to be, it's still possible to find me on various IRC networks. If I do happen to be on one of these, it's most likely going to be irc.portalx.org. When I'm there, you can usually find me in the channel #International, and I go by the nick BootSector (surpise, surpise) on that particular network. Although it's a registered nickname (or was...), I haven't bothered to keep up with the latest stuff there, so there's the off chance that "BootSector" won't actually be me. Don't sweat it too much, though: nine times out of ten if it's not yours truly, it's just my friends and me goofing around (sometimes we swipe each others' nicks for brief periods). To access IRC, you'll need a client program of one kind or another, such as mIRC.
As far as instant messaging goes, I can be found on Yahoo! as terminal_illness666. Although I was once able to be located on AIM and ICQ, I no longer use those services (mostly because I haven't had the urge to download them to my new system).
Copyright Notice: Unless otherwise stated within a page, all site content is copyright (c) 2001-2009 by Alexander Dale Matthews, II. All rights reserved. For extended copyright and licensing information, please refer to the Legalities section.
