You know, I just realized that I don’t know much about all you guys. I’d love to hear about your lives (as much as you are willing to share). I’ll start first…
I’m 26 years old and live in Puyallup, Washington (now, just moved from Las Cruces, New Mexico).
I work in Lakewood, Washington for Northrop Grumman a defense contractor. I am working on an Air Force contract developing weather and environmental software.
I received my degree in Computer Science in 2000 from New Mexico State University. Fortunately, it had a good program while I attended, but apparently it is currently going to pot.
I’m married with zero kids, but two dogs. My wife has her masters in Nutrition and works for County offices working with the poorer community to get them to eat better.
Unfortunately I don’t have any pics of me uploaded currently, but maybe I’ll put one up so you guys can see how handsome and attractive I am. 
I like to keep anonymous in every forums, but I feel in the mood of making a short description (though I’m casual user here) (avoiding specific details 
)
-~32 years old male wasted grunt .
-worked as game artist, lately working in very different stuff. Also worked as web designer and pc tech support.
-consider my real profession being realistic oil painter and classic realistic drawings maker, I never had a chance to make a living of it…income is not permanent in this 
I used to draw comics too.
-I cover all fields in art in games : modelling, texturing, animation, concept art.
- not married or with girlfriend. have a dog
- like a lot reading and using new art techniques, some knowledge of the english language made this way easier.
- Live in a secret region of Mars, so, no UK, USA, Canada or Australia, that’s why the language barrier. Martian is a way different tongue…
- We martians are a bit fed up of you all sending robots and satellites to check if we exist…stopi it! …we do, and we eat robots…XD
- Have spent my life learning very hard. techniques , arts, studying…still not had an strong pay back of it, only crappy jobs (though latest were fun(games)).But I never loose hope
17 year old “kid”
hoping to become a doctor in a years time, basically wasting 5 years of my youth in the library studying about humans.
Im in the UK, and im doing my A-Levels. I dont know what that means in the US of A, but its a year before university.
I work for a local supermarket (part time) as a stock controlist, so if you dont see something on the shelf, its my fault
My dad has a PhD in pharmaceutical sciences and he’s a techincal director of a drug company. My mum is a pharmacist and she works in a local pharmacy.
Im a black belt at taewkondo, that kinda explains alot if you think about it…My lazziness for one 
And thats pretty much me.
DP
I’m a 28 year old software engineer. I’ve lived in Raleigh, NC (USA) my whole life, although I’ve travelled a decent amount. I feel obligated to mention this: Despite common perceptions of North Carolina and the rest of the south-east United States, there are certain areas (such as Raleigh and Charlotte) that are not full of hill-billies. My parents were from Pennsylvania, so I got a nice mesh of northern and southern cultures.
I graduated from NCSU in Computer Engineering in December of 1999 (They have a good engineering program, for anybody who’s interested). I had been co-opping (working) for Alcatel (French telecom company) while I was still in school. When I graduated, they brought me on full time. We worked on network management software.
With everybody else in telecom, I got laid off in early 2002. After several months, I started working at a small company called Hatteras Networks, also working on their element management software. Worked crazy-insane hours for 10 months, then they laid off half the company, including most of the EMS group (and me). From the sound of things, they aren’t going to last much longer. I hold no ill-will for them or Alcatel for the layoffs. They did what they had to do.
Anyway… After just a few weeks of being unemployed, I got a job at MCI, where I’m at now. I’m still doing network management software. (I just can’t get away from it… and it’s really pretty boring. Ah well.)
I taught myself Java while I was in college (I was studying microprocessor hardware design, not much software), which is what I’ve been doing in all my jobs.
I got married to my wife Julia two years ago (just had our second anniversary a couple days ago, hence why I haven’t had much time to work on stuff over the past week). She’s getting her PHd in French at UNC Chapel Hill. After she’s done in a year or so, we’ll probably be looking into moving out west somewhere (she’s from Colorado, and would like to get back in the general vicinity).
No kids. One cat. He’s enough.
My game programming and administration experience comes largely from an RPG MOO I worked on through college. For those of you who missed the MUD/MOO curve… they’re basically text-based online games or social groups.
I started developing my own MOO, incorperating some 3D landscape stuff and associated algorithms (still all text based – no graphics), along with a custom client that could incorperate some graphical components. I never got around to finishing it, but I have tons of game plans as a result.
In my spare time (what’s that?), I’ve been trying to learn jME with the intention of creating a game engine for non-programmers, plus all the needed level/item/character designing utilities. One of the goals is to create an environment like MUDs/MOOs were 10-15 years ago… that easy-to-create-and-expand environment in exchange for a little less flexibility.
I have a lot of Swing development experience, although I’m doing server work at MCI. Also, generally unrelated to that, I prefer to think on conceptual levels rather than low-level details. I can do both just fine, but I find the details just get tedious after a while.
It’s also very hard to upset or offend me. I’m generally very easy going, and try to always be respectful of others’ cultures and beliefs, even if I disagree with them.
Okay, that’s enough… sorry for the novel.
–K
(‘K’ is for Ken, which is my name. You know, my real one. ‘Shmooh’ is just the name of the hand-puppet that I use to annoy my wife.)
I’m 31, married for 9 years. I have 2 little girls ages 2 and 3.
I work for Lockheed Martin as a J2EE distributed systems architect. Project is replacing all the stuff in NORAD.
I’ve been programming since I was about 7, started out on an AppleIIe. Failed out of university and started working instead.
In my spare time… jME, or High Command 2.
http://hicom2.resonus.net
http://hicom.resonus.net/phpBB2/
[size=9px]
^
|
shameless plug[/size]
I’m also 26, live in Chandler, Arizona about a 20 minute drive away from downtown Phoenix. I’ve been married for almost 5 years now and have a 2 1/2 year old son who keeps us quite busy.
My programming experience started when I was quite young on a Vic 20. I moved up from there to a Commodore 64, Apple II+, Commodore 128, Amiga 1000 and Amiga 2000… I was programming a lot in Basic until the Amiga days when I started getting into C. When I was 15 or so I started programming with my good friend David (Graum on this forum) and we developed several text adventures, a MUD clone and a few graphical maze and nethack style games.
I grew up mostly in Southern California, but moved to New York City when I was 18. Got a crash course in the business world and worked my butt off in various internet programming, consultant, management and partner roles. During that whirlwind I managed to get in two years at Columbia University. Unfortunately around that time, 9/11 happened, then my son was born and things became more complicated. Last year I moved to Arizona to escape huge rent payments and other living expenses and to be closer to family. I’m still a customer software consultant and a damn good one if I might say so. It looks like I’ll go back to school part time soon at ASU to finish off my degree.
In whatever free time I can manage, I like to work on Dirt (a game using jME,) take voice lessons and just have fun watching my son grow up.
I’m also 17, and live in Toronto, Ontario. I’m proudly Canadian, and not at all afraid to abuse “eh”. It also means that I can speak French relatively fluently. (… not that I’m a particularly competent writer, however!) *
I’m a software engineering undergrad at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario. Or, rather, will be an undergrad in September (I recently graduated from high school this past June.) If you’re curious, you can check out my rather intimidating schedule here, courtesy of a classmate. It’s a great program, and I’m excited to be headed for my res room box.
I’m currently employed as a summer student at Sun Life Financial inc. I work in the On-Site Support department at the Toronto Atria division. I’m responsible for quite a lot: I configure machines, deploy new hardware, pick up obsolete equipment, upgrade stock, do inventory audits, and frequently get lost in the maze of fuzzy pink cubicles. I love the work I do, and the people I work with are great. Everyone in the building is exceptionally friendly, especially when I’m hopelessly lost.
In my spare time, I’m also involved in martial arts. I have a black belt in karate, and have trained in several other disciplines. I kickbox, and also train with a bo staff and kali sticks. I divide my time between traditional techniques and more contemporary ones.
I also love to read, and - of course - spend time with my significant other. Oh, yeah, and I like to code!
- Heheh… I wrote this for one of my French courses. I should note that it’s not particularly translatable, but it’s sorta funny if you understand it: La langue française est difficile
Although I am not a contributor to the jME codebase, I’ll introduce myself here 
I am 40 years old (believe it, people can become that old). I live in Germany in Aachen, a mid-sized town. Have a look at my home town
I studied communications engineering at the local university for applied sciences and graduated as an engineer there. My first contact to computing was through a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, after that I used an Atari ST and quite a few PCs.
I never really worked in communications engineering jobs, I always did software development and design. I specialised in network communications and GUI implementation stuff, even writing display drivers for OS/2. For several years I am now designer/developer of a J2EE/Swing/JSP based application framework for business applications.
At home I still enjoy making (electronic) music from time to time and writing fun software. The “project” I am doing currently is the first game I write. It will be based slightly on the ancient ZX-Spectrum blockbuster Quazatron.